90-year-old barber still clipping along
MANDAN, N.D. — In life and at work, Allen Wanner just keeps clipping along.
His DeLuxe Barber Shop in Mandan is open Tuesday through Saturday, the same hours he’s kept since becoming a barber in 1956. That schedule works well this year, as Wanner had July 27, off to celebrate his birthday.
But he was back at work Tuesday. Turning 90 doesn’t mean retirement.
“I really haven’t thought about it,” Wanner said. “I gotta do something anyway.”
Family members believe Wanner is the oldest North Dakota barber still working full time, though the State Board of Barber Examiners doesn’t track that statistic. Being a barber wasn’t something he dreamed about as he grew up, and as an adult he got started because “there wasn’t anything else I could do at that time,” he said.
He served for two years in Korea with the U.S. Army during the Korean War and upon his return attended Moler Barber College in Fargo, N.D. About halfway through his schooling he thought about quitting. One of his instructors talked him into staying.
“So I kept on going,” he said.
After graduation, Wanner worked in Jamestown, N.D., as an apprentice. In 1956 he was hired as the third barber at a shop in Mandan. He and wife, Leone, married that year, and in 1962 they built the house Wanner still lives in.
“I got stuck here and I stayed here,” he said. He moved to his present barber shop location in 1967 and at one point had three barbers working for him. Business stayed steady through most of those years but hit a lull in the 1960s and 1970s when longer hair became the style.
“We had kind of a rough time for a while,” Wanner said.
Barbering hasn’t changed much over the years, Wanner said, though $1 haircuts have long since become a thing of the past. He’s built a good following at his Third Street Northwest location.
“Lots of people have come and gone,” he said. “I’ve had a lot of good customers through the years.”
Eddie Breuer of Mandan is one of those customers. He’s 75 and Wanner calls him a kid.
“He’s cut hair for our family for five generations,” Breuer said.
It started with Breuer’s dad and continues now with his great-grandson. Breuer’s son Eddie Lee got his first haircut from Wanner in 1965 — in a high chair in the Breuers’ kitchen — when he was 3 months old.
That’s one of many haircuts Wanner has done outside the shop. In past years he’s often taken his skills and tools to a Mandan addiction recovery clinic and offered his services to shut-ins.
Wanner fills any slow time at the shop by fixing electric razors and sharpening scissors and other cutting instruments. He also repairs and collects clocks, whether they be of the wall, cuckoo, mantle or grandfather type. He fixed a clock that came to the U.S. from Germany and belonged to Breuer’s grandfather. Breuer inherited it years later.
“It still runs,” Breuer said. Wanner acknowledges he’s slowed down some. He still walks to work even though one leg — wounded during his time in the service — is giving him trouble. When he’s home, he tends to his yard. It’s work, a walk, yard work and tinkering with clocks and other mechanical devices that keep him going and keep him happy, his son Mark Wanner said.
“That’s his deal,” Mark said.
On that Monday he’ll share the birthday spotlight with his great-granddaughter, who turns 1 on the same day. It won’t be a big affair, just a low-key family barbecue at the home of his son.
After all, he’s got to be at work Tuesday morning.