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REMEMBER CREW CUTS AND STYPTIC PENCILS? JOHN ACETI DOES
AROUND AND ABOUT
Author: Joe Barkovich
Photographer: Dave Hanuschuk
[Date Unknown]
WELLAND-John Aceti has clipped his last customer.
The well-known West Main Street barber has retired, but he’s not happy about it.
Aceti says he decided to take his doctor’s advice to slow down a bit. He says he was just too tired to go to work anymore-even though going to work just meant walking through his house and into his shop-they’re in the same building.
But hey, it is understandable that he’s too tired to work; John Aceti is 81 years old.
He’s cut hair here for about 50 years and before that, for a few years in Toronto.
He says a lot of his clientele who were boys when they started coming to him stayed with him all these years.
“I watched a lot of the guys grow up,” he says.
The affable haircutter got his first job at an East Main Street shop in the basement of a building which was adjacent to the old Park Theatre. A few years later, he bought an established barbershop on West Main, changed its name to John’s Barber Shop and has been there ever since. That was in 1947.
The price of a haircut back then was 75 cents. When John decided to call it quits, he was charging customers $6-not much considering some of the prices for a haircut these days.
“I own my own building,” he says. “I didn’t have to pay rent so I didn’t charge my customers too much.”
He wishes he was back cutting hair.
He misses the people and is touched that they still miss him. He’s been getting phone calls and cards and letters from many of them, wishing him well.
Every so often, he goes into his barbershop and thinks back to the old days. John Aceti says he wishes he could turn back the clock to when the brushcut reigned supreme to when barbers used styptic pencils a lot more than they do today; to when a barber’s service charges listed things like singles, 25 cents; hair tonic, from 25 cents; and razor honing, 75 cents. He wishes he could turn back the clock to when he was younger. Ah….those were the days.
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