Friday, May 17, 2024
Robert Lee “Uncle Bob” Saunders was an early-day resident of Gatesville and the son of one of Gatesville’s early business pioneers. Born in 1880 in Gatesville, Uncle Bob had many memories and stories from his childhood which, later in life, he put in writing during the 1940s and 1950s for The Gatesville Messenger in a weekly column titled “Down Memory Lane.”
According to John Frank Post, editor of the Gatesville Messenger from 1946-1978, “Mr. Saunders composed his Down Memory Lane columns from his West Main Street home in the shadow of the county courthouse dome. Deadline time would find him hunched square-shouldered over his small desk pecking away at his typewriter.” Post continued, “disdaining the rules of grammar and political correctness, he wrote like he talked – straight and plain-speaking. He was spared any tedious research, as his gifted memory supplied him with facts that he could weave into his own inimitable embroidery, using colorful anecdotes, local history, and happenings. Yes, Uncle Bob knew how to juice up a story.”
Post recalled that the “Down Memory Lane” column was a hit with the readers of the newspaper from the beginning. Post said that Uncle Bob’s close friends felt he viewed his writing as a “gift to his generation and a legacy to generations to come.”
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The following is an excerpt of Uncle Bob’s Down Memory Lane column that appeared in the February 24, 1950, edition of The Gatesville Messenger:
Early Day Barber Shops in Gatesville
Throughout the ages, it has been an accepted fact that cleanliness is next to Godliness, and way back yonder, the men-folks of Gatesville ‘lowed as how they orter take a bath once a week whether they really needed it or not. Course that didn’t mean you was supposed to rub all the cuticle off; you was just sorter supposed to loosen up said cuticle, for a nice, refreshing bath taken in a gentlemanly manner didn’t hurt nobody. While it was more trouble than using Hoyt’s German Cologne, you kinder felt more like you was somebody.
After the Gatesville Water Company brought in the big artesian well, “Old Jumbo,” and got to piping water all over town, there was plenty for everybody to take a bath. But them tin bath tubs cost lots of money, and they was mighty few folks that could afford to own one. But it’s an ill wind that don’t blow somebody some good – the barber shops of the town, knowing how their customers would want to take baths, put in bath tubs in their tonsorial parlors and charged 25 cents per bath. Every young feller that had outgrown that old No. 3 zinc tub that used to be placed in the kitchen every Saturday night, went up to the barber shop, put his two bits on the line, and the porter would heat him a tub full of water.
If you have never had a good, hot bath in the barber shop, you shore have missed one of the joys of life. I remember way back yonder one of the main barber shops in town had so many young fellers that wanted to clean up on Saturday night they had to put in two bath tubs, and they liked to worked that porter to death fixing them baths and scrubbing out the real estate after from them tubs.
Long about milking time in the evening on Saturday you would see the young fellers along the street headed for the barber shop with their clean clothes wrapped up in a newspaper. You really didn’t have to ask him where he was going, for that roll of newspaper was a dead giveaway. The real sports of the town – the boys that made such big money as $30 a month – would go the whole hog by getting a haircut, shave, shampoo and bath. All of this would cost you one silver dollar, and that amount of money wasn’t to be sneezed at, so the owner of the shop was always polite to them kind of free-spending customers and he would always have the porter brush off their clothes free of charge. Most of the big shots that would spend that much money would have their private shaving mugs which stayed in the barber shop all the time, and some of them real sports would have their names printed on the mugs in big gold letters.
The first barber shop I remember in Gatesville was run by Bennet Jones and Joe Nemeir. Bennet Jones had to have special-made shears as he had two thumbs on one of his hands. They had their shop over on Rat Row on the north side of the square, and they done most of the barber business in town when I was a small boy. Back in them days I would always let my hair grow as long as I could get the folks to stand for it, so I would look like Buffalo Bill and them other long-haired Injun scouts. Most folks would cut their own kids’ hair on Sunday morning and save that two bits.
There was one thing you could always depend on, and that was plenty of gossip. If you wanted to hear the latest news, and some of it was pretty scandalous, you would hear it around the old-time barber shop. The barbers always had a great fund of this idle gossip to retail to their customers while they were scraping their chins or cutting their hair. Barber shops were ever a great hangout for men and boys, especially in the old days before the wimmin folks took over and installed them beauty shops. We can’t be quite as free and easy in our talk as we used to be. Years ago, barber shops were sorter like saloons and pool halls; you could turn loose and say whatever you pleased, but you shore can’t do it now, not with the wimmin folks prancing through the shop going to their hair-do parlours.
