North Adams Barber Still Cutting Hair After 60 Years
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — After 60 years of cutting hair, barber Augustine "Gus" Jammalo has no interest in hanging up his shears.
Frank Sinatra echoes throughout the small Union Street barbershop, while the 82-year-old Jammalo putters around sipping coffee.
The shop is empty on a breezy summer afternoon, but Jammalo's been at this long enough to know there is always someone out there who needs a trim.
The creak of the shop door opening gets his attention.
"Hey Gus, I'm here for my yearly haircut. I brought you coffeecake. You're Italian you got to love coffeecake."
"Hey, you are the cop from New Hampshire. Gene, right?" Jammalo responds.
Gene Cuomo has made the nearly hour and a half trek from Fitzwilliam, N.H., to get a haircut from his favorite barber because "he is the best."
Gus' Barbershop has been a North Adams fixture for decades. Generations of locals and out-of-towners have stopped in to get a trim and experience the authentic barbershop experience.
"I love cutting hair, and I am good at it. I have been doing it all my life," Jammalo said. "I like people so much. I can afford to retire but I like people coming in to talk and I love being a barber.
"I am not quitting until I get sick or die."
Born in 1934 in North Adams, Jammalo said his family never had a lot of money so he was always a worker.
"We were sort of poor so when I was around 8 years old in the 1940s I started shoveling snow to make a couple of bucks," he said. "I mowed lawns and stuff like that."
He quit high school after his mother died and started working at the Williams Inn as a dishwasher for 75 cents an hour. After that, he went to the former Greylock Mill for $40 a week.
Then the Army called and, in 1953, he took off to Kentucky where he was stationed. He was in the Army for three years as a tank commander and a paratrooper. He said he never saw combat.
When he came back to North Adams, he was still broke so he decided to go to barber school after a friend convinced him to give it a shot.
He started working at a shop on River Street in 1956 but then moved the shop over to Eagle Street in 1965.
"Haircuts were a dollar, 75 cents for kids," the Clarksburg resident said. "A shave was 75 cents back then."
He said business was good until the "British Invasion."
"The Beatles came along with long hair in the mid-60s and we had fewer customers, so we closed the shop and made it a variety store," he said. "Then hair got short again, so we sold that and came up here 30 years ago."
Jammalo has been cutting hair in the Union Street shop since 1984. He said the traditional barbershop has becoming a thing of the past but he wants to continue to provide the service and the experience.
He said there is more to barbering than just cutting hair - a big part of the job is just talking with people. Because of this philosophy, Gus has built a following over his 60 years in the business.
"A guy came in recently with his son and he said 'you gave me my first haircut 25 years ago and I want you to give my kid his first haircut,' " he said. "People have come in throughout the years, and they come in from out of town to visit and get a haircut. It makes me feel happy that they like me and like coming here."
Cuomo said he was in the area one day and needed a haircut. He has been coming back ever since.
"I needed a haircut and I saw a barbershop so I stopped here and I have been back since," he said. "I drive 100 miles to see Gus. He is one of a kind and a great guy and we have great conversations."
"Someone has you beat though," Jammalo told Cuomo as he started cutting his hair. "A few years ago, someone came in from Alaska. That is a bit of a longer drive."
Jammalo's shop is very much a reflection of his life and interests. He said it is a place to collect all of his passions. The shop is also his gallery and the walls are covered in his paintings.
"I am an artistic person and that is what drew me to cutting hair in the first place," he said.
In the 1980s, then in his mid-50s, he visited the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge and was instantly inspired.
He took a few lessons but is mostly self-taught. He has created hundreds of paintings, several of which hang in Clarksburg Town Hall.
Jammalo said he experiments with different mediums and has painted on slate, wood and even saw blades.
He ran a second barbershop in Readsboro, Vt., from 1969 to 1978 and built many friendships there. This inspired him to paint the now closed Readsboro Chair Factory on a 200-pound antique saw blade that was used in the factory.
Jammalo's also a big Sinatra fan and one of his early paintings was of the Chairman of the Board himself. He sent the painting to Sinatra's house and later received a thank-you letter from Ol' Blue Eyes' secretary who wrote that Sinatra thanked him for the painting and wished him and his family happy holidays.
The letter hangs in Jammalo's office.
The shop also houses his coin business. Jammalo said he has been a coin collector since the 1950s and was able to sell his collection in the 1980s for $50,000 and put his kids through college.
He looks back fondly on his 60 years as a barber in the city he loves. He attributed his longevity to the support of his friends and family and some wise words his father told him when he was a boy.
"The whole secret is to have a lot of common sense," he said. "There are three things that my father taught me: never lie, never steal, and don't spend more than you make ...
"That has worked for 60 years."
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