A Barber's Life
Years ago you had to write a paper describing what you'd like to do upon leaving Plainview High School.
"I said, 'I think I'd like to be a barber,'" says LaVerne Boyd, who graduated in 1959. "I talked myself into it."
He graduated from 'barber school' at a vocational technical institute in Minneapolis in May, 1961 and worked two years in Rochester before opening his first shop in Plainview in December, 1963.
He has operated Boyd's Barber Shop, where most everyone knows him as 'Boyd,' at 415 W. Broadway since July 15, 1968, when Lyndon Johnson was president and you could get a gallon of gas for 34 cents, a new car for less than $3,000 - and a haircut for $1.50.
"That's a long time in this little box," says Boyd, 78. "I got to 10 bucks a few years ago and said, 'I'll never go higher. And I haven't."
He has no idea how many thousand heads of hair he's trimmed over the years. But he's always had just the one chair. No assistants. It's just Boyd, serving customers quickly and efficiently.
"It's good that way," he says.
There is no computer in sight. Boyd is watching re-runs of 'Match Game '77' on a small TV while awaiting customers. A custom-made clock with barbers' scissors for hands ticks on the wall as it has since he hung it there in August, 1970.
Over here is the bowling pin Boyd earned for bowling a 300 game in 2000 at Gopher
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