Stories of a long-time barber

A long-haired man walked into Doug Pickeral’s downtown barbershop about 30 years ago and asked for “a G.I. haircut.”

The way Pickeral tells the story, he was halfway done with the haircut when the man spoke again: “Doug, I just killed a man.”

“You didn’t kill nobody!” Pickeral said in disbelief.

There’s more to that story, of course, but you’ll need to stay in Pickeral’s chair, or at least his barbershop on Main Street, to hear it all.

He’s got plenty more stories than that and he tells them at the Modern Barber Shop, where he has cut hair, one head at a time, for 51 years.

Through the years he has seen most everything, from murder confessions to Christian conversions. He watched downtown die, and slowly start to revive. He has seen many of his customers grow up and start bringing their kids, and then their grandkids for haircuts.

“If you give a man a good haircut, he’s going to come back,” said Pickeral, who puts in 10-hour days at least four days each week.

“He’s going to tell everyone where he got his haircut.”

Pickeral, 67, was born in Baltimore in 1942, but his parents moved to Virginia when he was young. They settled in Renan, a tobacco and textile town about 12 miles east of Gretna, where they had relatives. They were a poor family in a poor town.

“I come up the hard way,” he said. “I didn’t have no money.”

During his elementary school days, Pickeral’s family moved to Lynchburg, then to Concord. Pickeral remembers coming to downtown Lynchburg for haircuts. Early on, he was fascinated with the profession. He can’t think of any particular reasons why, but he wanted to cut hair. “I used to always want to be a barber,” Pickeral said.

When he was about 14 years old, Pickeral decided to go to a barber school. “I wasn’t learning nothing in school,” he said, so he dropped out and hitchhiked to Richmond, where there was a barber school on Broad Street. He had about $2 at the time.

He was barely old enough to start shaving himself, but Pickeral began taking lessons on shaving other people and cutting hair.

“I remember the first one I shaved,” Pickeral said. “I had been afraid of a razor my whole life.” He accidentally cut that man’s nose.

After more than a year of barber school, Pickeral thumbed a ride back to Lynchburg and opened his own barbershop on Cabell Street. After a few weeks without much business, he asked Floyd Doss for a job at Modern Barber Shop.

Doss’ shop on Main Street had opened in 1920. Pickeral was thrown in with barbers who had been cutting hair longer than he had been alive.

His first week he earned $75 in take-home pay. “I thought I was rich,” Pickeral said.

Ever since then it’s been one head of hair at a time, and usually the same people over and over, clear until they died.

Some of his earliest customers were the Schewels, owners of the Lynchburg-based furniture retail chain. Marc Schewel, president of the company, wrote a short tribute for a book Pickeral’s wife is compiling.

“He cut my father’s hair and, and my grandfather’s hair, and my great-uncle’s hair,” Schewel’s tribute says. “And in the days before there were safety razors, he gave them a hot shave every morning.”

“Beyond cutting hair, Dickie is a reservoir of useful information, ancient history, current events, tantalizing gossip, tall tales and outrageous humor.”

The humor, and everything else that is to be found in Modern Barber Shop today, used to be even more outrageous, though. When Pickeral was young, he was a rough character.

“I drunk and fought just like everybody else,” he said. He allowed smoking, cussing and pornography in his barbershop. They were bad habits he had picked up in barber school and in nighttime trips to dance halls.

In those days “He was right rowdy,” said Gene Falwell, brother of the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, on a recent trip to get a haircut.

Pickeral married in his late teens and he and his wife had four children. They lived near Thomas Road Baptist Church, and his wife began attending church there.

Pickeral wasn’t interested at first. But eventually his curiosity got the best of him. “I said, ‘One day, I’m going to go see what all this is about,’” he said.

On his first Sunday in the church, Pickeral started to feel extreme guilt. He said he was afraid of hell, and decided that day to start believing in Jesus Christ. He promised to change.

“I went home and I cleaned my house out first,” he said. “I had to get all the Hustlers and the Penthouses and the Playboys out.” He burned the magazines in his back yard.

On Monday morning he cleaned out the barbershop, which by then he owned. He threw away the pornographic magazines and banned cussing and smoking, he said.

The tone of Modern Barber Shop changed after that. Today the walls are full of photos of evangelical preachers, plus a few hunting trophies given to Pickeral by his customers. Gospel music plays on the radio, and Pickeral can hardly get through a haircut without talking about God.

If he thinks a customer really needs a sermon, he cuts half of their hair and then preaches to them before cutting the other half, he said.

“I got saved and God changed my life,” Pickeral said. “I just want to tell people about it.”

“It’s a very religious barbershop,” said Bobby Hammersly, a customer of Pickeral’s who visits the barbershop to socialize.

“Did you accept the Lord in my barbershop?” Pickeral asked Hammersly.

“Probably,” Hammersly said. “I’ve done so many things down here, I probably did.”

Today, most of Pickeral’s customers have been coming to him for multiple decades. When asked why they never go to another barber, they say they don’t need to.

“Dickie cuts your hair right every time,” said Ronnie Coleman, a captain in the Lynchburg Fire Department. “…He’s got a good trade using them clippers. But when he pulls out that straight razor, that’s when he gets my utmost respect.”

Pickeral said he hasn’t become rich by cutting hair, but he has what he needs. He has four children from his first marriage, and six grandchildren. He and his wife have a home and many friends, including lots of Pickeral’s customers.

His wife Brenda Pickeral started compiling a book last year to commemorate his 50 years of barbering. She has short memoirs written by dozens of Pickeral’s customers. Greg Meacham, a former Lynchburg Police officer, has been Pickeral’s customer since 1971.

“The good Lord willing, (he) will always be my barber, but more important, my friend,” Meacham wrote.

Meacham’s wish is Pickeral’s plan. He intends to continue working as long as he can, although he might reduce his 45-hour weeks.

“I ain’t never going to retire, as long as I feel good,” he said.