UPS delivery man cashier

story

by Rachel Stone l photos by Can

Türkyilmaz

By job description, they are ordinary people, but these ever-present characters have a life, interests and history outside the roles for which we know them.

And, oh boy , do they have stories to tell.

In a market favoring beauty parlors and unisex styling salons, there is a place in Casa Linda Plaza that still bears a candystriped barber’s pole.

Inside is a row of five chairs in front of mirrors and sinks, nothing fancy.

Most of the time, there are men in these chairs. They come for high-top fades, buzz cuts or just a little off the sides. Drop-in customers might sit in chairs belonging to one of two young guys, including Michael Applebee, who bought A&A Barber Shop five years ago. But if they’re lucky, they’ll find themselves sitting before 80-year-old Jerry Hearn.

Hearn has been cutting hair for more than 50 years, most of those in our neighborhood. In the ’50s and ’60s, he became the preferred barber of many businessmen, including Joseph Campisi and Gene Goss, a car dealer known as “Goss on Ross.” He also barbered Floyd Hamilton, who was affiliated with the Clyde Barrow gang. A few of Hearn’s clients had connections to organized crime, gambling and prostitution.

Hearn heard many an eyebrow-raising story in those days, but he says, the men knew they could talk freely in his chair.

“I sure didn’t bother them and their business,” Hearn says. “I kept my mouth shut.

That’s the best thing to do.”

Hearn became a barber in 1954, while in the U.S. Navy. He heard an announcement on the intercom saying anyone interested in barbering should report to a certain office, so he did. The rest is hair-story. Hearn cut hair “underwater and on the water,” and traveled all over the world, including Japan and the Philippines. He visited Hiroshima about 10 years after it was bombed.

After the Navy, he moved to Dallas and worked for almost 10 years at Ross and Fitzhugh. Back then, it cost about $1.25 for a flat top. The same haircut now costs $14.

“I went to beauty school for a while, but I didn’t like it,” he says. “I decided I didn’t want to do women’s hair.”

Hearn has worked in several shops, including one in the Lakewood Shopping Center, where he worked for 17 years. For more than 16 years, he owned his own shop where the Dallas Arts District is now.

Hearn lives in Mesquite with his wife Nancy now, and he works only three days a week, Tuesday through Thursday. But he remains a popular neighborhood barber, and he is an inspiration to his young colleagues at A&A Barbershop.

“He has so many stories, and he always has good advice,” Applebee says. “We always ask ourselves, ‘What would Jerry do?’ ”

Fun Fashion Folk Art Fiesta

Thereis an employee at the Medallion Center Target who looks like Santa Claus.

But Michael Azari, the man with the long white beard and glasses, assures us he’s not the guy who brings presents every Christmas.

“He’s my brother,” Azari says.

Azari, 66, has worked at that Target store for 25 years.

“I have good relationships with my customers,” he says. “I get along very well with the kids.”

Azari was born in Iran and moved to Texas 31 years ago from Sussex, England, where he grew up.

As much as he appreciates his job at Target, Azari’s passion is music. In the early ’60s, Azari was a singer in a rock-n-roll band called Peter and the Wolves.

“Everyone wanted to be in a band then,” he says.

Back when the Beatles were still the Quarrymen, Azari and his band played any stage they could find, touring around England and Germany.

“We were bums,” he recalls. “We played for nothing. We played for our dinner.”

He still plays guitar and sings any chance he gets, often jamming with friends at parties. Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger are among his favorites, but Azari says he enjoys artists from Chuck Berry to Led Zeppelin and more recent bands.

“Music

is what sustains me throughout life,” he says.

Aside from meeting customers at Target, Azari also enjoys getting to know his fellow employees. They’re an international group, and they come from all walks of life, he says.

Azari has worked at Target so long that he knows generations of families.

Neighbors who grew up shopping at that Target now bring their own kids. Most of them know the proper introduction, telling their kids, “This is Santa’s brother.”