Miss Becky’s Barber Shop: Haircut tradition reflects community life

When you look at a Barber Pole of red, white and blue stripes, you can understand the meaning of the days that surgeons were also barbers, and the poles were placed outside so that you would think of: blood is red, bandages are white and blue for the veins that ran through your body.

When surgeons and barbers split the business, the barbers kept the poles so that people would see them and know that they could get a haircut and a beard trim at the barbers’ place.

A few centuries have gone by, and the poles are as much a part of Oklahoma history as anything.

Becky Haddad, Miss Becky, is carrying on the tradition of haircuts and keeping track of what’s going on in Claremore. At least getting the teller’s end of the story.

Becky’s place has 13 chairs wrapped around the inside of the building. Some are plain blue chairs, a couple or three are red-seats and back and maple type chairs that probably fit a restaurant back in the day, and four used barber chairs that line the north wall and point toward that two chairs on the south, that house customers each day.

Becky is the mother to Adam Eagleburger and Clay Rackley (ex-military) both of whom work at Claremore’s Hillcrest Hospital, and the step-mom of Jennifer Haddad, and is the Auxiliary secretary at the American Legion. Miss Becky’s husband Greg is a supervisor at AXH in Claremore.

“Yes, we have all kinds walk in here”, Becky said, “From little kids that sit on the arm rests, to grandpas, and great-grandpas who get their hair cut once every two weeks whether they truly need it or not.”

She also has her “cut” into the fame game, as she used to cut Zach Bryan’s hair the new Red Dirt singer/songwriter from Oologah.

Becky’s volume moves with the attitude of the room. You can see the times when every chair is full, people are waiting in a line that only they know who was first, second, thirteenth or fourteenth, and Becky’s voice penetrates the noise and the TV voices.

“Oh you have to take care of people. There are those that come in and if you check the daily obituaries there will be times that you have to go do their hair that last time,” Becky went on, “but it is that much quicker when the customer can’t talk back to you.”

She has been cutting hair since being an apprentice at Darrel’s Barber Shop. She came here to 416 South Missouri in August 2010. Open from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, Saturday until noon.

There is a giant checker board laying on wooden table.

Two clear bottles of Barbarcide in deep green and Ship Shape in off black still purifies the day’s cutting and trimming instruments that lay next to the sink at the back of the shop.

“It’s pretty funny here, people come up with the strangest things” she said,

“There are the ones who tell jokes, and those who don’t tell jokes but say the funniest things you would have never thought of, and that one or two percent who come in to argue with every move your make,” she said.

Watching Becky move through the clientele, the heads of hair and non-hair, and keeping the shop floor swept and clean are all a part of her day. Policemen, fireman, lawyers, the whole gambit of Claremore uses Becky’s shop. Since she has started cutting hair it has moved from $8 to $12 for you general haircut.

“I can see it coming up a little bit more, maybe to $14 in the future, and it seems sad but that is what it needs to be to keep it going,” Becky said. She graduated from Claremore High School in 1986, and has been serving the community of Claremore from that time.

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