By Rhonda Bartle

Shaking out the cloth

Brian Des Forges, barber, relaxes in his warm sunroom, while wife Kath makes tea in the kitchen. It's a peaceful, pleasant day to bale him up and ask about his past employment.

He might still be cutting hair if Kath hadn't made him hang up his clippers a year shy of 70. "I'd been going 52 years," Brian says. "I started at 17 and retired at 69."

Brian is third generation Opunake barber. His grandfather and father were both in the business, but he only decided to follow in their footsteps because he was heartily sick of school.

"After three years in High School, I wanted to get out. I worked with my father, Les. Did an apprenticeship. He taught me what he knew."

Brian quickly picked up the skills. "I started off with electric clippers, and you know, the power used to go off quite regularly back then and you had to revert to hand clippers.

"I did scissor cuts as well. Dad did ladies, and he'd be in the ladies' salon half the day sometimes, cutting their hair."

Hugenos in Kiwiland

Des fills in some of the Des Forges background. "We were Hugenos," he says.

"They got kicked out of France. We were Protestants who got out before the Catholics could kick us out. Grandfather Frank was born in New Plymouth, but there's quite a bit in Puke Ariki museum about Great Grandfather Henry. There's a big oil painting of him, stored away.

"Great Grandfather Henry arrived here somewhere around the 1860s. He wasn't a barber. He was probably a farmer to start with. When the Maori Wars began he was sent to Nelson, but I don't know what he did when he came back."

His son Frank worked as Opunake Harbour Master, then opened a barbershop to keep himself busy between ships.

"They used to bring the goods aboard in the surf boats," Brian says. "But how many days can you work a boat in that sea? He started up as a barber and carried on from there."

A new job in Opunake

If Grandfather Frank opened the first barber shop to keep himself occupied during squalls, it didn't take him long to realise what a steady earner it was. When his son Les grew old enough, he took him into the business, too.

Soon, Les went off to Auckland, and cut hair in Queen St, before opening his own shop in Thames. But when war was suddenly declared, he found himself posted overseas, where he fought in Gallipoli and France.

As enterprising as his father, Les ran a regimental barber shop, until ordered to drop his rank and pay from Sergeant Major to Sergeant if he wanted to continue.

His response, according to family legend, was swift and non-negotiable. "That'll be the day!" Les said, and shut up shop instead.

Back in Opunake, with an English bride in tow, the couple produced two sons. Les decided to pick up the shears from where he'd left off, and start cutting hair again in his father's old premises. 

Though Frank had handed his barbershop over to his other son Doug, Doug happily on-sold it to Les. Brian chuckles: "That made old Grandfather Des Forges go crook because he'd given it away for free!"

The original Des Forges saloon: Image supplied TS2006_1102

Haircuts and hullabaloos

When Les retired, Brian took over. A steady line of customers kept the barber chairs filled. "We were all one big family in Opunake in those days," Brian says. "They were a great crowd who came in."

He tells how mothers would haul their sons in every three months, despite money being scarce. "They wanted their boy's hair short and if you didn't cut it short enough, look out!"

On the last week of school holidays it was not unusual to see as many as 20 schoolboys waiting for the clippers.

"Two of us going flat out - and there was George Tucker down the road cutting hair too, and another bloke had started up. But that was about the time long hair started coming in. That finished it, the long hair."

Brian gently laments The Beatles era that knocked the barber business hard. "Kids wanted long hair. Still, they'd get dragged in and the kids would blame you, not their mother.

"Oh, yes, they'd be kicking and screaming, don't you worry. But you had to cut the hair. And some of those kids could really tell their mothers off, but we got the blame."

Don't snip and tell

Brian watched the trend for long tresses slowly disappear, only to return over time, then disappear again.

Today, kids are lucky, he says. They get to wear it however they like, there are no hard or fast rules.

Like most hairdressers, Brian has heard many client stories over the years, but learned not to pass them on - unless they were the jokes told by commercial travellers, who had entire repertoires and long memories!

But today, with few of his old customers around, he can laugh easily about some of the things he's heard or seen. Opunake sure had some characters, he says.

"One chap lived on the booze, then he'd come into town, spend his money, get tight. He'd sit out in the street and sing.

"One Christmas he came in. He wanted an electric razor for his boss, worth more than a week's wage. I wrapped one up and gave it to him. 'Thanks very much,' he said. 'Pay you one day.' Then he walked out.

Though Brian wondered if the man would come back with the cash, supposing he remembered buying the razor in the first place, he was surprised when he appeared at the counter a week later .

'In he comes, going mad, saying how the boss had more money than he did, but he paid two quid then, two the next week, two the next, until it was all paid off. People used to look down their noses at him. He was a real rough diamond. But he paid back every penny."

Because of that, Brian's barber business slid sideways into money lending.

"Yes, I often lent money to him, because he'd paid me back. He'd come in and borrow a quid, then he'd back later to pay it back. Then in he'd come before closing time to borrow it again."

There was also a woman who used to borrow money. "Same story, in in the morning to borrow, back in the afternoon to repay if, borrow it again before night. In the end I did get fed up and stopped loaning it to her. Boy did she go crook!"

Ciggies and games of Coo n Can

Brian recalls Sam Feaver and his father - both early photographers - as favourite customers. He also remembers a world awash with cigarette smoke, and cleaning mirrors black with nicotine.

"Common to cutting hair, everyone would be smoking. Some used to come in like it was a social occasion, have a yarn, catch up on the news. People came in even if they weren't lined up for a hair cut.

"Before the second world war, when dad had the saloon, they'd come in and play cards. They'd play Coo n Can for cigarettes."

He says some of those customers also played fast and loose with the merchandise. "We sold everything, tobacco, pipes, everything. Half of them used to help themselves to cigarettes and not pay for them, you know."

He smiles to think that in those less politically correct days, it was perfectly acceptable for people to smoke while he cut their hair. "We worked in conditions that would make people shudder today."

A New Zealand film premier in Opunake

But one of Brian's favourite tales in one he's told often - and who can blame him - it's a good one.

"Boss Whiting ran the Everybody's picture theatre next door and everything he did had to be double or quits. Even if he came in for a haircut, it would be 'toss you, double or quits.'

"Anyway, he went to Wellington to buy some films and they wanted to sell him half a dozen cheap ones. 'Oh, now, look,' he said. 'What about that one there that's just come in? I'll toss you and if I win, I'll take those six films plus that new one.'

"And that's how the famous Spanish Civil War movie, For Whom the Bell Tolls, starring Gary Cooper, had it's New Zealand premier in Opunake!"

A busy barbershop: Image supplied TS2006_1099

Old photos in a sun-warmed room

Kath arrives with a box of old photos and plonks them on the floor, while Brian spreads the contents on the carpet. "Look - these are all Opunake people."

And most of them would have sat in his chairs. "Donny Richardson, he had the garage. Old Doctor Watt who ran the hospital. Kate Mickelson..."

He lays out a series of 1980 snapshots taken by a photographer determined to record an era before it slipped away for good.

The photos show the inside of Brian's barbershop, almost hidden beneath an incredible array of a working barber's detritus - a zip on the wall, a heater overhead, posters, shelves covered by gaudy curtains, a radio in the corner. "We always had a radio going," he says.

There are mirrors and scissors and clippers and chairs, testimony to three generations of busy Des Forges. Brian rummages further into the box and brings out a couple of fine Feaver images.

When asked if a son would follow him into business, Brian says nope, he had daughters and besides, they were way too smart.

"Look. That's my father. And that old chap is his father. My grandfather always managed to get himself into every single photo. He looks a real poofer, really, doesn't he? He could do with a haircut, don't you think?"

MacGregor's Blacksmith shop, with Frank Des Forges on left: Image supplied TS2006_1103.