Like Family

With a booster seat as old as the shop itself, King’s Barber Shop owner Larry King gets a slight smile when he describes the generations of clients he served after nearly 60 years in Cameron.

Since its founding in April of 1963, King’s Barber Shop has been a place where area fathers brought their sons for a trim, read the newspaper and lively conversations.

“We have grandpas come in here and tell their grandkids ‘back when I was a kid I sat on that board,’” said Richard King, the son of Larry King.

King’s Barber Shop was originally Clark’s Barber Shop, founded in 1947 and operated by brothers Jim and John Clark. Purchasing their chairs, mirrors, marble counters and cabinets from a defunct hotel barber shop in Kansas City, the Clark brothers opened July 4th and ran it for 16 years until selling it to King. Richard King began working with his father in 1988 and King’s Barber Shop slowly became a Cameron mainstay.

“Somebody was doing a seminar and there were about seven or eight barber shops in town. We all opened at the same time, closed at the same time, kept the prices the same – that kind of stuff,” King said. “… He said ‘You guys ought to raise (your prices)’. At the time it was $2.50 or $3. He said ‘the problem with you country barbers is you operate with your heart instead of your billfold.’ If you have a family of two or three kids, you would hate to raise it on them. I’ve barbered for 60 years. The people you don’t want to raise end up going to Supercuts.”

Larry King said one trick to staying open has been the ability to evolve with the fashion trends. Whether the high-and-tight haircuts of the 1960s, the long-flowing styles of the 1970s or the hand-etched designs of the 1980s and early 1990s, King said hair trends rise, fall and rise again with each generation.

“In the 60s you had flat-tops, high-and-tights and what we called regular haircuts,” Larry King said. “Then long hair came where it was shoulder-length, when the Beatles came. We had that, but we had enough new customers to where it wouldn’t affect your bottom line … It’s evolved, but you just have to go with the flow. In the last couple of months, it’s been mullets.”

With fingers combing through his hair, as if visualizing the business in the front, party in the back style formerly adorning his scalp, Richard King declared anyone looking for the best mullet should come his way.

“I was the king of the mullet back in the 80s. I rocked the mullet all of the time. I was the last one in my class to finally get rid of the mullet,” Richard King said. “Back in my day, they weren’t called mullets. They were a punk-rock haircut. You would spike the top, short on the sides and have the back long. Then, you would end up finding a mom who knew how to do perms and you have them perm the back of your hair and blow it out to make it frizz out to make it a better mullet.”

After more than 57 years of business, much remains the same. With romantic flairs of ‘The Andy Griffith Show’ adorning most of the wall space, much of the other accoutrement also harkens back for a foregone era. On a cold day, steam from the natural gas heater blots the pane-glass windows as sharp slices of scissors add a cadence to the local TV news broadcast. The aroma of brewed coffee fills the room as men flip through the Cameron Citizen-Observer and the Kansas City Star while waiting for their turn. Splotches of diversely colored clumps of hair cover the floor because, at $8 per cut, frequency and customer service are what keep the doors open.

“You have to treat your customers right so they come back. This is going to sound really political, these people can’t vote for me, they live in the wrong district, but you have to treat your constituents like family,” said Larry King, relating his business to lessons he learned as a Clinton County Commissioner. “Our customers, most of them, we know something personal about them. I might have cut his dad’s hair. We know about them. The old man here (pointing to a customer in Richard’s chair) used to grow the best cantaloupe in the country, the best tomatoes … You treat people not like they’re a customer or a constituent. You treat them like people, like family.”