Stanford barber marks haircut history

STANFORD – Distraction is what turns a howling 3-year-old into a child cheerfully waving a first haircut certificate.

“I’ve had kids screaming and I look out the window and say, ‘Is that a rabbit?’ He’ll come to me to look and then I’ve taken his mind off that chair and his idea a haircut is painful like a cut,” he said.Don “Andy the Barber” Andersen loves to give children their first clipping.

Andersen has a crow hanging from the ceiling and yells at that. Anything to be animated and amusing.

He takes off his barber’s coat so he doesn’t look like a doctor who might have an injection for them. He lets the kids comb their own hair. He has them turn on the clippers and demonstrates the tool on his arm to show their not painful.

“Pretty soon all they’re thinking of is turning on the clippers again,” he said.

Andersen is celebrating 55 years cutting hair in Stanford. The photos that surround his barber’s chair tell the story of lively, meaningful career.

“It’s the oldest business in town, start to end,” he said. (The bank is more than a century old but under different owners.)

“It’s been a fun profession,” he said. “You get close to people, and you have a new one every 20 minutes. You can say the same ol’ thing every 20 minutes. I wouldn’t have done well in a cubicle or up a power pole. It’s been pleasant surroundings, 90 percent of the people you like and so many people have been loyal.”

Some people who have moved away bring their children back for their first haircut to “Andy the Barber.” He’s cut hair for six generations of the Lillegard family.

Andersen’s photos showcase local scenery – who in the area doesn’t have a Square Butte photo or 10? – and one of his favorite photos is of Stanford in 1925 with the courthouse under construction.

“Here’s a car, here’s a car, here’s a horse,” he said as he pointed out details in the photo.

He has a ticket to a 1957 Elvis concert in Spokane, and a portrait in his Mason attire with Walter Breuning at 114 years old. He framed a belt buckle from the 2009 C.M. Russell Stampede recognizing him as one of the Jaycees who helped start the rodeo in 1964.

A Don Greytak print is signed by the Havre barber it depicts. A photo of his house shows the message he painted on it before the first coat: “My wife is making me paint this house.” People stopped to laugh, he said.

Andersen has a framed certificate from his three years on the state barber board and an “Andy’s Barber Shop” print that was a gift. He has photos of Stanford’s White Wolf from the 1930s and a print celebrating Stanford’s centennial in 2008.

A photo caught son Rene as a child on a horse. Another shows Andersen and son Scott in front of the shop not long after Scott returned to his hometown to do hair.

Scott did the math and realized the going price for perms, coloring and cuts may be much less in Stanford but also that he would get more of the money per hairdo than he did in Seattle, Atlanta, New Orleans or Missoula, all while enjoying a lower cost of living.

Scott said his dad is easy to work with and full of stories. He passed on many of his ways with the razor as Scott’s training had focused more on hair dressing than barbering.

“People, when they get comfortable, they want to stay with their barber. They enjoy his stories and jokes,” he said. “People laugh, smile and have a good time.”

Danish flags festoon the shop and speak to Andersen’s homeland. His grandfather came from the city of Middelfart. On a visit to Middelfart, Andersen saw the sign on Mr. Andersen’s Clothing Store; he’s taken to answering the phone “Hello. Mr. Andersen’s Barber Shop” in homage. Customers joke back saying, “Yes, this is Mr. Jones ...”

In the “hot seat” on Monday, Pastor Jack Bell heard from Andersen the words every man dreads, “That’s as close as I can make you look like Donald Trump.”

“Gee, thanks,” Bell said. (His actually haircut was much less weird.)

Andersen is known as “The B.S. Guy,” by reputation, or “B.S. His Self,” per his parking spot.

That’s B.S. for Bible Study, Bell suggested. Or maybe it’s “Barber Shop” or “Bald Spot.” Or maybe it’s the usual meaning and speaks to Andersen’s infamous gift of gab.

Weather, sports and a customer’s family members are his go-to conversation starters. Other than the unavoidable Trump hair jokes, he steers clear of politics because “I like to see people go out laughing not ticked.”

And Andersen does like customers to leave laughing.

One of his best jokes was brief but good. All his life he coveted the highway sign pointing to the town of Barber, west of Ryegate. Finally when the sign was updated he got the old one and erected it in the empty lot next to his shop. Two weeks later, construction started on a new building in that lot. The sign went into storage, but Andersen plans to put it back up again.

“It was just hilarious,” he said. “It couldn’t have been any better.”

Another sign, this one smaller and above the door, marks Leonida Lane. It’s named for a longtime customer who drove onto the sidewalk to get as close to the door as possible as she aged and mobility became an issue.

“She was such a part of my business,” Andersen said. “The worst thing is the death of people.”

Andersen started cutting hair at age 18 and came to Stanford at 21.

He snapped his fingers.

“It went by like that,” he said. “I can’t believe the years went so fast.”

The 76-year-old plans to reach 60 years of hair cutting before he hangs up his clippers. He is still fine on his legs all day and his hands are steady.

Andersen never dreamed at 21 he’d have so many years of cutting hair ahead of him.

“When we came here, the missiles were just starting. Stanford had a lot more here in those years. It looked like a great place to raise our kids,” he said. “It’s been a great town.”

Andersen had six months of hair school under his belt when he started. He had a lot to learn, particularly about women’s hair. His first haircut for his wife, Alverta, was all square lines. She looked “just like a man.”

So Andersen studied up with the Roffler franchise and learned perms and hair pieces. He wore a hairpiece himself for more than 30 years but took it off at age 65.

“I’ve lived long enough that bald is beautiful,” he said.

The biggest change in the hair business has been a “who gives a damn” attitude in the population. He still refuses to let men leave with bad comb-overs, whatever their inclination.

“In the time I’ve been a barber, styles have come in and gone out like a roller coaster,” he said.

In the 1970s, Andersen earned the animosity of high school boys booted from school and sent to him for haircuts. Looking back, the boys’ hair wasn’t even that long. The boys in Denton accepted being shorn of their “long” locks on school orders with better grace, he said.

About 45 years ago, Andersen built his shop in time for a downturn in Stanford. He started traveling to Denton once a week to cut hair and still goes. He’s never matched the first day, though, with 40 haircuts between 8 a.m. and 10:30 p.m.

And after all this time, what has he learned about the value of a good haircut?

“If you’re asking about the cost, $15,” he said. “In life, it shows you take care of your personal appearance.”

Reach Tribune Staff Writer Kristen Inbody at kinbody@greatfallstribune.com. Follow her on Twitter at @GFTrib_KInbody.

If you go

Andy’s Barber Shop, 63 Central Ave., Stanford, is celebrating 55 years in business with cake and coffee from 2 to 5 p.m. Thursday.