Barber Gene Bridge plans to end 58-year Garfield stint

Garfield barber Gene Bridge charged four bits for a haircut when he began cutting hair in 1952.

Fifty-eight years later and three weeks away from retirement, Bridge, now 84, now just takes donations for a haircut, which range from $7 to $10.

“Still going to retire next month?” asked customer Bob Felgenhauer of Oakesdale as he settled into the barber chair last Thursday.

“Yeah, I think so,” Bridge said.

“About time isn’t it? You’re only 85 aren’t you?”

“84! You’re trying to jack me up a year,” Bridge said with a laugh.

For the past 58 years, Bridge has been shaving heads and swapping hot small-town news with a steady flow of customers from around the Palouse.

“Most of them are dead now,” he told the Gazette. “They came in from the Potlatch area, Palouse, Steptoe.”

Bridge plans to call it a career Aug. 27.

His shop, located across from Grumpy’s Tavern, will be open all day that Friday so well-wishers can drop by for cake and coffee, said his son, Dick Bridge.

Bridge was raised in Nebraska and graduated from Neligh High School in 1944. He served in the U.S. Navy during WW11 and was honorably discharged in the late 1940s.

He moved to St. John shortly after his time in the service and worked as a barber there for several years before moving to Garfield in 1952, he said.

He met his wife of 60 years, Mabel, in St. John on a blind date and they were married in 1950. They have two children; Dick, Garfield, and Angela, Clarkston.

Dick can still recall the simpler days in Garfield when his father ran the barber shop.

“There was only two telephones in town. There was one in the barber shop and one in the tavern,” Dick said. “When he’d go home at six, that only left the tavern.”

Bridge’s service to Garfield didn’t stop at the end of his clippers.

He served as Garfield mayor for four years and served as city clerk out of his barber shop for 15 years. He also served as a volunteer firefighter and drove a bus for the Garfield school district.

Dick said his father would shoo customers out of the shop when it came time to drive the school bus.

“When it came time to drive the school guys, he’d say, “Ok, guys, out you go,’” Dick said.

In its busier days, Dick said his father’s shop was a gathering place for the town locals to swap small-town news.

“In the mornings, all the old timers would gather in there,” Dick said.

Bridge worked on cutting Felgenhauer’s hair, carefully shaving around his ears with shaving cream and a straight razor. There is no phone or computer, and, despite all his years here, the walls are unadorned.

“You get many people from Palouse?” Felgenhauer asks him.

“I would if they would stop dying off,” Bridge said. “When I want to visit, I go to the cemetery.”

His barber pole with its red and blue stripes fading still spins faithfully outside his barber shop door. Bridge claims he installed the pole in 1954.

Felgenhauer asks him what he will do when he retires.

“I’ll probably stay at home,” Bridge says with a quiet smile.