After 30 years, well-known Havre barber calls it quits

Havre Daily News/Nikki Carlson

After 30 years, Kleen Kut Barber Shop owner and barber Ralph Cross hangs up his clippers for retirement Saturday morning. Cross said he will miss talking and joking around with his clients the most.

Bonnie Holden Benson walked into the back door of Kleen Kut Barber Shop Saturday afternoon, rushed up to owner Ralph Cross, who was cutting a man's hair, and gave him a big hug.

"I hear you are retiring, " she exclaimed. "God bless you. "

"I thought they would carry him out the back door, " she told another customer.

Benson and Cross marked important roles in Havre barbering history.

In the early 1990s, they worked together at Kleen Kut. She was one of the first women to barber in town.

"Some men wouldn't let me cut their hair, " she said, laughing.

Barber shops had always been a male bastion, places where men traded gossip and solved the world's problems. Now women were entering the once male-only stronghold.

But if some men wouldn't let a woman cut their hair in the 1990s, they won't have that choice in 2012.

When Cross left his shop at 5 p. m. Saturday, there were no male barbers in town.

Jenny Cochell of Joplin will take over Kleen Kut when the doors open Tuesday.

Penni Lipp, a native Havreite, has opened a barber shop on 4th Avenue. Like Cochell, she has an entirely female staff.

That's a far cry from the days when men were aghast when they saw a woman ready to cut their hair.

Benson recalls a day when an old-timer asked her why a woman would want to run her hands through a man's hair.

"$4.50, " a fellow barber interjected.

"That's how much a haircut cost on those days, " Benson said. "Can you believe that. "

Cross spent this last day cutting hair as usual, eating cake that Cochell bought to celebrate the occasion and accepting praise from well-wishers who said they would miss Cross, who has become a Havre tradition in his 30 years at Kleen Kut.

"This is the only place I have every worked, " he said.

The barbershop he is leaving has quite a tradition. The building has housed a barbershop for at least a century, and once had a secret tunnel that brought people to the Havre Hotel, directly across 1st Street.

Pictures depicting the barbershop's history were displayed on a table beneath the "Happy Retirement" sign.

Cross said he's ready for retirement.

"I have a lot of work to do around the house, " said Cross, who lives south of Chinook. "and I have a lot of fishing to do. "

"I'll see if those fish have my name on them. "

He will take with him three decades of memories.

Will he miss the day-to-day grind?

"I'll miss the people I talk to, " he said. "There are a lot of good people. "

He won't stay completely away from the shop.

"I'll be back to get a free haircut, " he said, smiling.