Ralph Whittington’s Barber Shop, Beeville, Texas, Circa 1910-1980 (roughly).
I’m in no position to confirm the specifics of Ralph Whittington’s exact age or period of service as a barber in my birthplace of Beeville, Texas, but I do know he was around early to cut the hair of my late father as a child, and Dad was born in 1910, and also around until either the late 1970s or early 1980s to cut my hair on those trips to Beeville with my folks and really need a haircut. (I grew up in Houston from age 5, but Mom and Dad moved back to Beeville during my junior year in college.)
Walking into Ralph’s Barber Shop was the equivalent of stepping through a worm hole into a place of the past that never changed. Ralph was always the same. And so was his shop. The place wreaked from the fragrance of sweet tonics that the cowboys and ranchers preferred, both as after-shave lotions and hair compression mixtures. Located next door to the downtown Washington Street main drag movie house, The Rialto, Ralph’s chairs were packed on Saturday market day gatherings of men wearing khaki shirts and pants with their sweat-stained tan-colored work Stetsons.
“Have you gotten any rain over at your place lately?” was most often the question of the day. And most often, in the dry, hot-as-Hades-in-summer climate of the upper Texas Gulf Coast above Corpus Christi, the answer to that question was either a resounding silence or an occasional smile of “Yep, about an inch fell, but I could use a whole lot more.”
The way I always heard it from Dad, Ralph Whittington was there in his shop six days a week for about seventy per cent of the 20th century. He closed on the traditional Mondays that barbers always used to take, but God and his family alone only knows what he did with that precious time off. Also the way I heard it, Ralph Whittington never traveled any further than 16 miles from his own birth home in Beeville during the 90 some-odd years he was breathing the air of this earth. That’s enough distance to get you to Pettus in the north, Papalote to the south (I think),Berclair to the east, and a good start on Three Rivers to the west.
I never met anyone beyond the shears and scissor members of his family. Ralph was a small, soft-spoken man, one with the ability to help keep a conversation going without saying much on his own. It’s a social quality that good barbers used to universally share with bartenders. They each knew how to listen. Unlike today’s stylists, the old-time barbers were not filling the air with commercials for new hair care products. Vitalis and Wild Root Cream Oil were usually all you needed to cure and calm whatever ailed your freshly cut hair.
And barbers didn’t spend thirty minutes cutting the heads of bald men for the sake of justifying a fifty to seventy-five dollar fee that today’s style experts charge. Bald guys paid the same four to six bits (50 cents to 75 cents) as everyone else, but they also got the bonus of a quicker finish to their stays with Ralph.
In time, I came to think of Ralph as though he were more like the calendar or clock that each hung on his shop wall than he was anything like all the hot-shot change salesmen in my world from those earlier times in my life. His range of thought was always the same, even though the hours of each day flowed steadily by. His smile never varied either, even though the days of the months and years flew off the calendar as they always once did in the old really classic black and white movies of the 1940s.
Ralph Whittington was just one of those figures who lived out his life as a reliable, friendly symbol of his era. He didn’t live by the clock. He was of the clock itself, and so he shall always be remembered – til the end of time.
Thank you, Ralph, and all you other old-time barbers. Thank you for just being there when America needed a good, quick, affordable haircut.
That was Ralph Whittington’s Barber Shop, in the similar more narrow building that was once just to the right of the Rialto Theater on Washington Street in Beeville.
The Pecan Park Eagle 
June 24, 2012 at 1:03 pm |
We really lost something too when the barbers (stylists, now) stopped doing straight-razor shaves.
June 24, 2012 at 4:43 pm |
Like owning a mortuary,running a barber shop can always depend on a steady business as long as you don’t mind being a one-trick pony all your life. It requires a servant’s heart and a lack of fancy dreams.
June 24, 2012 at 9:41 pm |
Coincidentally, my Granddad on my Mom’s side was a barber and
printer in Bellville, TX. He’s the man who’d played town ball in South
Texas in the 1890’s. Near the end of his life in 1965, I tried to explain to him how baseball was going to be played “indoors” in the
Astrodome. His vision had failed by that time, so I couldn’t use pics
to explain how high the roof was. His two big passions were walking
to the Square in Bellville to visit the Barber Shop and listening to the
Buffs on the radio. Like Ralph Whittington, Ed Peschke could tell he
was approaching the Barber Shop just from the wonderful aromas.
Thanks for the good story.
June 24, 2012 at 11:40 pm |
My father and his father were old time barbers in Kokomo, IN. So, the story you tell hits home in many ways
June 30, 2012 at 5:30 pm |
Bill, sorry to stray from the substance of your article, but the title inspired me to submit these offerings:
December 24, 2012 at 5:27 pm |
My name is Joe Whitenton. Ralph Whitenton was my uncle..the brother of my Father – W.H. (Bill) Whitenton. The real story is – Due to illness, Ralph was forced to take over barbering duties for my Grandfather (Ralph’s Father – David Whitenton) on a Saturday afternoon at his barber shop at a train depot in Berclair, TX. Ralph was 10 years old at the time and had to stand on 2 wooden coke bottle crates to reach the customers head. He moved to Kingsville, TX when he was approx. 14 years old to apprentice under a skilled Barber. He moved back to Beeville later on, opened the Rialto Barber Shop, and cut hair until the day he died. When Ralph died in 1990, he was still cutting the hair of 2 men that he butchered that first day at 10 years old. On Monday’s he cut hair all day at the nursing home in Beeville – free of charge. Some folks would force him to accept payment. In those cases he would charge $1.00. He was one of a kind for sure.
August 4, 2019 at 1:57 pm |
Thanks for the memories. Ralph cut my hair from 1958 until his death I believe. He was a kind man who always had a game for me to play while he was working on me. I still remember the smell of the place and the big Life magazines.
August 4, 2019 at 7:26 pm |
My great grandfather, George W. Smith, was a barber in Beeville in the early 1900’s. He hung my grandmother’s paintings on the wall to sell. His family knew the Guins who had a store there. It would be wonderful to hear if anyone else knows of him.