Earl Snarr was 95 years old the first time he drove himself up to the Barbery Coast for a haircut in 1989.
After that visit, owner Tim Lupori decided his prices weren’t quite special enough for someone like Snarr. He asked the older gentleman what was the least he could ever remember paying for a haircut.
“Fifteen cents,” said Snarr, who grew up in Oklahoma.
Fifteen cents it was, Lupori decided, for anyone 95 and older. The price never went up.
But the age requirement went down after a 93-year-old lamented several months later that he wasn’t old enough.
Snarr died in 1994 at nearly 100, but his son-in-law, Edward Patterson, has been waiting all this time for his turn. Patterson turned 90 on May 4, and on Thursday he came in for a cut.
“Congratulations,” Lupori greeted Patterson with a handshake and a smile. “You waited 18 years for this day.”
Barber Kelly Martine snipped and trimmed Patterson’s thin gray locks for a full 15 minutes, averaging the price out to about a penny per minute.
“I think you’re getting your money’s worth,” she joked.
Patterson’s wife, Charlotte, watched the process and reminisced about her father, who loved to tell his favorite barber shop story.
“He was so cheap, he loved it,” she said, laughing.
“He’d wait until his hair was really long before he came up,” she said of the days before the price cut. “Then, when it was 15 cents, he came up pretty often.”
After his hair had been trimmed, Patterson strolled up to the register and apologized to Martine for not having change. Grinning, he handed her a quarter.
At the same time, he folded several bills into her hand.
“I hope you have many more reductions in prices,” he quipped.
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