By Tom Jekel
A local barber is back behind the chair after a 15-month absence.
Carl Turner, who owned Turner’s Barber Styling at 735 Third St. in Columbus for more than 50 years, stepped away in March 2020 after COVID-19 hit and the shop was among businesses ordered to temporarily close.
With his age placing him in one of the pandemic’s high-risk demographics, Turner felt it was best for his son to carry on without him after Indiana hair-styling shops were allowed to reopen.
But Turner, who spent the past year at home, missed the buzz of the barber shop. So at 85, Turner returns to work today.
“It keeps my mind occupied and your worries down,” Turner said of maintaining a work schedule, planning to spend Tuesdays through Thursdays at the shop.
With 60 years of barbering experience, Turner will not need a refresher.
Turner’s first taste of the profession came at age 13 in the Center Street neighborhood of East Columbus where he, his three younger siblings and their mother Ruby had moved from Garden City.
He cut the hair of kids whose parents could not afford a professional haircut. Turner was glad to do it for free — and he gained experience that would pay off later.
Having dropped out after completing eighth grade at St. Peter’s Lutheran School in the late 1940s, “it was something for me to do,” Turner said.
“I could always cut hair,” he said, calling the skill “a gift from God.”
Turner held several paying jobs as a teen, but none of them provided a good, reliable income. Married at 18 and a first-time father a year after that, Turner was laid off from a local factory and needed a break. On June 30, 1954, Turner enlisted and began three and a half years in the U.S. Air Force.
Stationed in Massachusetts, the military opened Turner’s eyes to possibilities that awaited.
Returning home after his hitch was over, Turner hoped to get barber training at a school in Indianapolis. But without the required high school diploma, Turner needed a different route. He found it back on the East Coast — not far from his military base — at a barber school in Hartford, Connecticut, where admission standards were more relaxed.
“I got a wonderful education,” said Turner, who gave 1,054 haircuts while attending the school for free on the GI Bill from February through August 1960.
But after returning to Columbus, Turner determined that the best way to support his young family would be taking a full-time civil service job in the fire department at Bakalar Air Force Base, now Columbus Municipal Airport.
But on his days off, Turner cut hair.
After completing an apprenticeship with the late Lee Stewart, a Columbus barber, Turner earned his master barber’s license and opportunity was literally knocking at his door. He opened Turner’s Ideal Barber Shop in early July 1964 in the front room of his hundred-year-old, two-story brick home at the corner of Third and Sycamore streets, a former apartment building he had purchased a few years before.
With more than 40 barbers in Columbus, it took Turner several months to build his client base. But encouragement came from the late Clinton Crouch, his hometown veterans service officer, who said: “Carl, there’s always room for one more good one.”
Turner found his niche, and the barber pole outside his shop drew the attention of potential customers as they drove along Third Street, one of the city’s busy east-west thoroughfares.
It was also his family’s home, enabling his son to see Dad at work after school let out for the day.
Earl Turner started sweeping the barbershop’s floor as a fourth grader. By the time Earl started high school, his dad — needing a haircut of his own one day — gave the teen step-by-step instructions on how to do it.
That’s how the younger Turner, now 66, formed his own career aspirations. Earl Turned joined his father in the hair-styling business in 1973.
But butch haircuts had gone out of style and the profession was experiencing significant change.
“The barber trend was over,” said Earl Turner, describing the transformation of the family shop’s name and clientele during the 1970s. Renamed Turner’s Barber Styling, it began attracting female as well as male customers.
Father and son took classes in hair styling and began doing precision cuts on hair they had just washed, then afterward blow-drying it.
Another significant development at the location occurred in 2001 when Earl Turner’s wife Vicki opened The Finishing Touch salon, which she operated until her retirement in March. Their son, Kyle Turner, still works there, tending to hair, manicure and pedicure needs for customers.
While Turner’s and The Finishing Touch have separate names, telephone numbers and clients, they share a common shampoo room and kitchen on the lower level of Earl and Vicki’s home of the past 35 years.
A second son, Matthew Jackson, also worked at the Finishing Touch before opening his own salon, Parlor 424, a few blocks away on Washington Street.
The boys — who became third-generation hair stylists — “grew up watching hair get cut,” their mother Vicki said.
Among the regulars was Bob Arterburn, an up-and-coming supervisor at Columbus-based Cummins in the mid-1960s.
“I was a very young man, starting with Carl when he was just starting the business,” said Arterburn, now 76 and retired from Cummins and a second career as a Century 21 Breeden real estate agent.
“He’s been my barber for at least 50 years,” said Arterburn, who has not seen Turner since the pandemic began but has an appointment with him for a haircut on Thursday.
“He’s always smiling,” Arterburn said of Turner. “I love the man. He’s a wonderful, wonderful guy, and that’s besides the work that he does.”
Over the decades, Arterburn’s commitment to Turner never wavered.
During the two years Arterburn lived an hour away in Fishers starting in 2016, he would drive back to his hometown so Turner could cut his hair.
While contemporaries had retired, Carl Turner continued working full time at the shop into his 70s, then scaled back his schedule at age 80 when he sold the business to his son for $1.
His father’s legacy at Third and Sycamore has been making customers feel like they are guests welcomed into the Turner home, Earl Turner said.
The business thrived as a result.
“It’s the best thing that ever happened to me, being a barber,” said Carl Turner, who has been eagerly anticipating his return to the shop.
“I want to be around people,” said the elder Turner, who has been vaccinated for COVID-19 but will wear a mask when he is with customers. “It’s beneficial to your health to have something to do.”
At 5 feet, 5 ½ inches tall and a fit 133 pounds, Turner attributes his physical condition to healthy lifestyle habits and a regular exercise regimen.
Turner does 60 to 120 leg squats and 55 pushups every day. He also uses hand weights to keep his arm muscles toned.
That comes in handy if he happens to be driving a vintage vehicle without power steering, such as the case with the oldest of three classic cars — all Chevrolets — that he owns:
A red 1962 Impala two-door convertible, purchased 11 years ago, with its original 327-cubic-inch engine and 76,000-mile odometer reading. Turner spent two years restoring the vehicle, including lightening the original royal red color.
A red 1937 two-door coupe he purchased in 2017. Turner has been restoring the vehicle with its 350-cubic-inch engine since then, with only new windows needed for the project to be complete. Turner moved the car battery and gas tank and added tilt-wheel steering, new seats and upholstery, chrome bumpers, a stainless-steel grill and new dash gauges. As a nod to his profession, a pair of scissors and thinning shears are mounted at the back of the rear seat.
A powder blue 1957 Belair two-door hardtop with a Continental kit for the spare tire that he bought about a year and a half ago. After selling his first two 1957 Belairs, Turner does not plan to let this model of “America’s favorite car” get away.
Commuters driving into downtown Columbus on Third Street have seen some of Turner’s classic vehicles parked in front of the shop over the years, but collecting and restoring classic cars are just one of his hobbies.
Turner enjoys playing bluegrass music as a five-string banjo player, owning Alvarez and Frank Neat instruments. He tried banjo lessons while in his 50s, but gave up. Still feeling the desire to play about seven years later, determination allowed Turner to learn the instrument on his own.
Visitors to Turner’s northside home may catch him singing and playing snippets of bluegrass standards such as “John Henry” and “The Ballad of Jed Clampett,” better known as the “Beverly Hillbillies” theme song.
Asked if he had ever played banjo on stage, “Not yet,” Turner replied, a hint of what may still be to come.
[sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”Carl Turner bio” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
Age: 85
Family: Married for 44 years to Joyce Turner, a registered nurse who died in 1998; son Earl of Columbus, a hair stylist, and daughter Janet Pazar, a registered nurse, of Nashville, Indiana.
Residence: Columbus
Education: Completed barber school in Hartford, Connecticut, 1960.
Military service: U.S. Air Force, assigned to Otis Air Force Base near Falmouth, Massachusetts; the airman second class worked at the base’s fire department and on its crash-rescue team.
Career: Barber for 60 years; owner of Turner’s Barber Styling, 1964 to 2016; afterward, part-time barber at the shop for his son, Earl.
[sc:pullout-text-end]
