Long-time barber doesn’t Falter

Gerard Falter knows names and dates and faces and places. Now in his 51st year as a barber in Saskatoon, working 46 years in the same shop, he has a razor-sharp memory.

"Some things you don’t forget," said Gerard, 88.

He started work at 15 in the Netherlands, doing jobs in a candy factory. Of the $4 he made a week, 50 cents was spending money and the rest went to support his family with four other brothers and three sisters. Their dad made a living by selling groceries door to door.

In 1950, Gerard met Jeanetta. They married in 1952 and left Holland.

"On May 25th," he said. They picked Canada, attracted to Saskatoon by pictures of the city. Disneyland, they called it.

Gerard said the first house he bought in Saskatoon cost $5,000. They were there for a while, followed by a rental home on 25th Street. It belched smoke from a coal furnace serviced by old heating pipes. He and Jeanetta moved again, buying a house in the Mayfair neighbourhood. By then they had a son Gerry and a daughter Gwen. Gerard added bedrooms to the house and rented to boarders, mostly university students. The Falters had the house for 20 years.

Gerard and Jeanetta have another home now, other memories. Through it all, Gerard keeps clipping.

It was 1964 when he started as a barber assistant at Melrose Barber, a few blocks east of the Exhibition grounds on Ruth Street. He paid $22 a week to rent one of its barber chairs and learned as he went along. By 1970, he bought the shop.

He could have called it a good run and retired long ago, but he goes on. He works from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. every day except Wednesday and Sunday at Melrose Barber.

"That’s dad," said his daughter. Gerard has two barber chairs in the shop. There is a long magazine rack he made, a big mirror, a calendar showing a convertible car. High on a wall is a Toronto Maple Leafs clock done in blue and white, the team colours. On a shelf near a barber chair is a picture of his two grandsons, plus a picture of his dog Cindy carrying a tennis ball.

A handmade poster says a haircut for seniors is $6, adults $7.

"People say I don’t charge much," he said. "It’s enough. Some people don’t have money.

"If you give me a tip, fine. If you add a quarter, thank you. I say, ‘Pay more if you want, but don’t pay less.’ "

He smiled. A small card, decorated with the picture of a yellow tulip, is nailed to a wall. I really don’t have to work, the card says. I just love my job.

Gerard enjoys having people in the shop. "They come here because I do good work," he said, this from a man who cuts his own hair. "I’m not saying I’m perfect, but I can do anything. It shows wherever I’ve worked. I’m no problem for anybody."

"All my life I’ve worked hard for the things I have today. I have a good house. I get to meet people from all walks of life. I’ve never wanted to go ask the government for assistance -do it on my own."

Some of the customers at Melrose Barber talk about their work and their life. Gerard, if asked, has stories, too.

He’ll talk about the two weeks he mixed cement and carried it in heavy pails for $1.25 an hour in Saskatoon. He’ll note the five years he was a cleaner at the CFQC radio and TV building.

He said when he went to barber school, he had classes from 9 to 5, with he and Jeanetta then working from 6 to 10.

Gerard works the way he always has, with pride and purpose. This goes back to when he was 15 and helping in the candy factory. It continued during the Second World War when Nazis occupied the Netherlands. In the 1940s, he was taken by boxcar to East Germany and spent three years there in the labour force, working 12-hour days, seven days a week.

He got by on a loaf of bread a week and whatever food he could find on the black market, sometimes buying cake from a Czech.

"April 23rd. I never forget that day (in Germany)," he said.

"Who comes in? The Russians. For two days we were caught in the crossfire -the Germans on one side, the Russians on the other. The Russians took us to a field, me and my two friends. We had about three months there, hoping it didn’t start raining because our tent was a cardboard box, like a doghouse.

"One midnight, they put us on a truck. I had a little suitcase with nothing much in it."

The war was over. Gerald was on his way home. Some things you don’t forget.