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| | | (HATCHER HURD/www.northfulton.com)
Barber Don Petree gives Roswell police officer John Watson the deluxe treatment at his shop on Norcross Street. (click for larger version) | |
October 17, 2008
ROSWELL - To hear Don Petree tell it, he hasn't come to work a day in his life since he started cutting hair.
"No, I just get up every morning and come to my shop and talk to people. Every day is different, and every day I make a new friend or meet an old one," Petree said. "I'm just lucky to be doing what I like. I just come in, shoot the breeze, talk politics and get paid for it."
Oh, he does cut hair while he talks, or more to the point, listens. The Cumming resident cuts men and women's hair at his shop, a comfortable old house on Norcross Street, circa 1920, across from the Roswell Library.
So what's the biggest difference between cutting hair of Samsons and the Delilahs?
"Women don't know what they want, even when they tell you. And they take more time, of course," he said.
Petree and his former wife Vicki had been cutting hair in a salon in Buckhead when they decided they wanted to open their own salon nearer their home in Cumming. So in 1983, they began looking for a good spot and thought the house on Norcross Street was a likely place. They leased the house for a couple of years then bought it.
After the couple divorced, she set up shop in Cumming, he stayed in Roswell. He decided to simplify his life and let all the staff go at the same time. Now it was just him and the guy or gal in the chair. Don & Vic's became simply Don's Hairstyling.
"I found out I like it much better that way. Hairstylists come and go like the wind, you are always breaking in someone new to your shop. I don't like to manage, so I just decided I would do it all myself."
And Petree hasn't looked back since.
"This is just a mom-and-pop shop. People tell me they're very comfortable here. There's no loud music and they just feel at home."
Petree was a psychiatric corpsman during the Vietnam War, perhaps that is where he learned to be such a good listener. When his hitch was up, he went straight to barber college in 1969.
"People ask my opinion about a lot of things, I don't know why. We talk about politics, about life. Women will ask my advice about men. But I just try to make people feel comfortable. I cut Republican hair and Democratic hair. Bulldog hair and Georgia Tech hair."
He describes his barbering as "bread and butter" cutting and styling. He just runs a shop not a salon, and he doesn't charge salon prices either.
Looking around the shop there seems to be tons of memorabilia on shelves, the walls, even on the floor.
A lot of it is Coca Cola-related. It comes from having cut the hair of a lot of Coke execs, including the former Chairman of the Board J. Paul Austin. Just about everything in the place was given him by a customer.
What Petree likes best about barbering (he won't call it work) is the socializing and the camaraderie. That's the appeal for many of his customers as well. Roswell Police detective John Watson and Petree banter constantly while he gets his haircut.
"I come to Don because my real barber's out of town," Watson jokes. "All I have to do is come in and sit down. He cuts it, I don't have to tell him a thing. I love it."
Nancy Womack represents the fairer trade. She said he is always attentive and happy.
"He's just a sweetheart. When you go to him, it is like having your own personal stylist," she said.
Petree just enjoys what he does.
"I'm always telling a joke or saying something wild," he said. "It's always fun, especially after you get to know the person. That's why I say it's not just a haircut, it's an experience!"
Petree opens at 7 a.m. every morning except Sunday and Monday, to give folks who want to come in before work a chance to do so. He knocks off at six except Saturdays, when he closes at three.
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