KINGWOOD — Price Street Barber Shop & Salon in Kingwood isn’t just a place to get a haircut, it’s a gathering spot.
“Right now I have like four people here every morning,” owner Bruce Wiley, 73, said. “Before COVID there was as many as 11 people coming in here every morning.”
The people come to talk, drink free coffee and eat free cookies provided by Iris Shaffer for the last 16 years. Shaffer, 84, said Wiley and the guys always sat outside and drank coffee. Her husband, Dick, is the delivery man for the baked goods.
“I like to bake,” she said. “As long as they eat it and I don’t; I don’t gain weight.”
Paul Bishop, 83, said he wasn’t always able to make it into the shop during the pandemic and he’s glad to be able to get his haircut by Wiley again. He “butchered” it himself at home.
“You come to the barber shop. There’s always a good friendship and conversation there,” Bishop said. They talk about “hunting, fishing, the community activities, what’s going on nowadays it’s the COVID and what’s going on now overseas in Kabul.”
“If you want to know anything, this is the place to come,” Wiley said.
“Ain’t that a fact,” said Wiley’s most recent hire, Jacob Knotts.
“And if we don’t know, we’ll make something up,” Wiley said.
In 2004, Wiley retired from 35 years with Peabody Coal Co. as a shift manager. After some golf and “running around,” his wife, Cynthia, told him “you need to do something. Why don’t you go start a barber shop?”
After some looking, Wiley found the Price Street location, remodeled it and opened the “one-chair operation” on April Fool’s 2005. The back part of the shop was turned into a beauty shop, and Wiley hired a beautician. While in the hospital with some health issues, which resulted in the removal of a lung, Michele Hayes was hired and later Sherri Donk.
Knotts came in for a haircut around 2018 and said he wanted to be a barber. Wiley gave him the number for barber school and after Knotts finished school, Wiley hired him.
Wiley said he likes the job because he likes meeting people.
“You meet a wide variety of people, nice people, kids; it’s just a fun job,” Wiley said.
How did Wiley go from working for a coal company to growing a barber shop?
“My father made me go to barber college when I was graduating high school. I wanted to join the Marine Corps,” Wiley said. “I was 17 when I graduated. He wouldn’t sign the papers because he’d been in the Marines. And he said, ‘they only teach you how to do one thing and it wasn’t how to make a living’ so I went to barber college and then I joined the Marine Corp.”
Except for his three years of service in the Marines from 1967-70, 13 months of which were spent in Vietnam, and time spent traveling, Wiley has lived in Preston County.
“I told the good Lord when I went to Vietnam, ‘you get me back to Preston County and I’ll be happy,’ ” Wiley said. “He brought me back here and I’ve been here ever since.”
A lifelong fisherman, Wiley has been to Wyoming 20 times. One of his best friends from the Marine Corp retired to Cheyenne and so each year Wiley travels west to socialize and fish. He also spends time at the beach each year and has visited Abu Dhabi.
One day, Wiley hopes Knotts buys the place from him. Knotts said he hopes to own a few barbershops himself one day, starting with the Price Street Barber Shop & Salon.
Knotts also wants to open a location in Buckhannon to provide the same kind of community there the people of Kingwood get to experience.
“I just want to get them in these towns that don’t have a lot,” Knotts said. “Because we get a lot of these older people that come in here. And I mean, they might not know each other very well, but they act like they’re best friends when they’re here.”
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