Mark Weidel New Agent Made Easy

Mark weidel new agent

welcome to this special fctv oral history of the town of falmouth i'm troy clarkson your host and it is my honor and pleasure to have two very distinguished gentlemen here in falmouth to share some of their history you know the barber shop is always the heart of a community you can always get the pulse of a community by attending the local barbershop and understanding what's going on in town and and who the movers and shakers and personalities are in any community well here in falmouth there have been many but two very important local institutions over the years over the decades over the last half century have been stones barbershop and andy's barber shop both which had prominent locations various locations in our downtown and so it's my great pleasure to share some time in this wonderful oral history of our community uh with two of the icons of barbaring and falmouth phil stone and andy dufresne so please join us as we take a walk down memory lane and explore the history of falmouth and the history of barbering in falmouth uh with two gentlemen who share more than 100 years of barbering in our community so fellows welcome phil stone and andy dufresne welcome we're glad to have you with us today troy thanks for inviting us inviting us so between the two of you as i just said you have over 100 years of experience of cutting hair and really being the backbone of our community and just about anyone uh who was anyone over the decades has walked through this door here at stone's barber shop or andy at your shop which was recently closed so we'll start with you phil before the cameras came on we were talking about the fact that you've been cutting hair uh since you were in your teens so tell us the story about how you came to be a barber illegally i went to bible school between my sophomore and junior year in high school i took a six month course in six weeks because my old man paid the barber school double so they can't arrest them because he's with heaven so you compressed a six-month course into six weeks and began cutting hair right after now that was that was in the world war two era no that was 1952. it was after okay so so korean war but your dad i know i'm a korean vet yes you are a proud navy veteran as is andy uh and and so uh at the time your dad frank stone had uh a barber shop uh both on the the base right yeah he had two or three of which was then otis air force base yeah it was care bedwoods and camp edwards okay and then you began cutting hair for him but is it you shine shoes at stones before you cut hair i did so for nearly that 17 years you're 84 now so for nearly 70 years you've been in in the trade so to speak that's right and that's a similar number for you andy you started tell us your journey to barbering well my journey to barbarian of course my father came here in 1927 and bought i think was donnelly's barber shop across next like cajun fish market down on main street met my mother and i'm a product of that and uh so he settled here he had uh two grown sons one became a barber one enlisted in the navy in 1927. and uh so my start in in the barber shop of course was uh in 1904 i used to come down from new bedford i went to parochial school in the city of new bedford and i was a ladder boy i started out my father's shop in 1944 as a ladder boy get get them ready finish them off shave around the ears comb their hair and whisper them which i still have in my car and uh that was my responsibilities and then in between shine shoes that was back in the days when every boy had to work there was no such thing as taking a whole summer off so i shined shoes and surprisingly back in those days all the money that i made and i made as much as 17 to 20 dollars a week shiny shoes that i would give to my mother and my my mother would my no my father would give me two dollars to spend so back in the days today most kids you know that's my money i worked for that yeah they worked for it but back then we all contributed to the house shoe shine shoe shines with 10 cents and uh if you're lucky you got 15 cents the gis from the base and uh so it's for me it's been a good beginning and uh taught me how to work young caused a hell of a fight between my father and i in 1948 when i made the football team and he wanted me to come down and work in the barber shop and i said well i can't i'm i'm going to play the games on saturday when he says you better and i said what if and back then nobody talked back to their father the one if what if ended me with a with a left hand slap right across the kisser never talked back to my father after that and so again the history if you want the history i can start right now on the history of me as a barber is uh because of what i learned in my father's shop when i joined the navy my first year i was in fire control which is gun direction and then there was an opening and ship service and because of my experience with my father i spent three years in ship service aboard ship and uh with more experience than most barbers would ever get you know uh and i've cut hair from admirals and foreign agents and you name it aboard the i was in the pacific fleet and so i had plenty of experience and when i got out i had to go to barber school because the korean veterans were not recognized until august and i got discharged in april so my discharge because of the experience i had to go to barber school to get a license i didn't have you know a contact with with the barber board at the time so i financed my way through the barber school with my 300 bonus discharge bonus and my wife gave me uh we were married i got married between korean trips and uh she uh she used to give me twenty dollars a week she worked in the venetian blinds in new bedford and uh so they finally approved the barber's uh korean veterans in august but the school that i went to was not approved until october so technically i got screwed i'll use that whether we're on tv or not out of quote the gi bill even though i spent four years in the navy two korean trips my ship lost 58 men and uh combat we were right off the korean coast ship still holds the the record of the number rounds fired in a six-month period but all of that is the history of me growing up and uh i look back and have no regrets whatever when i came to discharge i went to work for my father that didn't last very long because he him and i had difference of opinions of what a haircut should look like and uh i have had a very successful barbering career in different shops so we'll get to those shops in a minute and thank you for your service so as you've both joked over the years uh andy you have a few years on phil so phil you were in the navy as well but shortly after andy because you're just a few years younger than me but tell us about your service in the navy because you served around the same time i went in the navy right after graduation in 1954 i was on a world war ii ship destroyer and we were a radar pick a ship picket chip and we saw plenty of ocean but we didn't go to europe or china or any place like that so i get kidded with all my friends because i had a good friend bob joseph who went to europe and everything else he and i were in boot camp together his father was a commander at woods hall at the coast guard base and we went in right after high school so i i saw as much deep water as anybody but i never saw the beautiful hawaiian islands i went with your mother to the hawaii but that was on my dime not uncle sam so with that kind of an expression i uncle sam paid my way to five beautiful stops in hawaii on the way to china so i i saw the china coast from uh uh korea all the way down to uh singapore and uh borneo i did a complete tour of uh of the pacific before the korean war so i had beautiful cruises plenty of ocean philippines five times i tell you i just i can get talking about uncle sam's trips that he gave me and i have no regrets whatever just to put it in perspective what's amazing is these trips that we were talking about uh your service to our country was between 60 and 70 years ago yeah and it was after your navy service that both of you came uh to falmouth yes and then started your careers as barbers so uh that i think for our viewers helps put things in perspective what we're talking about our lives in this community that unfolded over the last 70 years and here we sit able to talk about it so uh you know that that's the real gift of what we're doing today is that you get to share your history but your history is part of falmouth's history so you both came back after your service in the navy uh and started your careers here so phil your dad uh helped you uh get that license in a compressed amount of time and andy you went to barber school so walk us through so now we're in the we're in the mid to late 50s here in falmouth where was uh so you and your dad worked together but then you went out on your own i went out on my own because uh we we just had a difference of opinion on on on cutting hair it's well you've never been uh shy in sharing your opinions on haircuts andy i mean i've been involved in politics and government here in the community for close to 30 years now and we've always joked about my haircut yeah and it was most of those 30 years was the guy sitting next to you yeah no yeah but i knew that i knew that which means with me barbaric has never been personal uh it's been personal for the barbers i've i've never considered uh stone's barbershop a competitor because they were very busy and so was i so you know i i started my my civilian uh life actually politically in 1954 when i helped organize the uh oh oh god how can i figure teaching the kids how to weight lift at the at the municipal uh community building uh oh god we had a name for it but anyway and hey andy i'll give you some of my memory pills to help you well you you know you were probably too busy playing golf or whatever right now i never had that uh that bad habit but i did start out uh oh jesus i wish i like a remember it was an organizat police athletic league oh that's right yeah i knew that right one of the briefs of the edition long before my brother brought it back and then the 90s or early 2000s your brother brought it back to falmouth andy was in the pal in new bedford no no we organized right here in falmouth well you died in louis because it died it died when they got into go-karts and a lot of other things i had 58 kids that i was teaching how to lift weights because i was a pretty good size guy when i was younger and uh and most of it was for the safety of lifting weight so that you don't hurt yourself and uh and then i went on to i can remember somebody saying you know yardy arthur vidal young arthur vidal when he was young and i i knew him in high school and he said to me he said you know he says you ought to get involved i said what he says well he's put the town so i wish i could remember the guy's name that i took his place on the beach committee because i went to his house and said what does job involve being a beach commissioner because in falmouth back then the beach commissioners were elected autonomous public officials had 78 men nine beaches and we had a sole authority other than town meeting i did that for eight years eight years and developed a certain element of what goes on in town hall and we presented our case and oh one of my first controversies was to uh limit the head of the beaches and he was a coach and he used to have all out outside kids come down and gave them jobs on the beaches so i served with a guy joe joe corey and mill carlson and one of my first controversies like i told that that the old head of the beaches i said i'm going to give you four jobs i says the rest are all going to be local employment and back then we had all local lifeguards hired the first female lifeguard to teach kids because we found that kids uh young kids four or five years old reacted better with female lifeguards we used to have all the lifeguards trained at mass maritime we made arrangements for that and i had 78 78 employees and uh lifeguards and maintenance two trucks and served the town for all of those years until they talked me into going on the finance committee you know that history most of you guys are pretty well aware of yeah well and that's sort of when our uh our lives converge that would be in the in the mid 90s uh when you were on the finance committee but back to just for a minute back to the barbering so phil we are uh seated here in stone's barbershop uh through the the uh the generosity of trish stone uh who uh who currently owns and operates stones barbershop um and she continues the the stone legacy stones has been here on this site here on on main street uh for about 35 years right it was 1986 or 1985 or so when i moved here i remember well i don't know what year it was but we we originally were on main street downtown i call it times square right where the laurel kitchen store is today no we were next to harvey's hardware when i was five or six years old when i got into barbering we were downtown opposite ben ben and bills and we had a two businesses there a beauty salon which my mother and my wife ran and we had the barber shop which my father and supposedly i ran but it was all him ah and so then in the mid 80s you moved here to this part right and uh we this used to be cara lakis's vegetable place or whatever you call it remember that yes i do yeah when when dick kinsler my uncle dick he he bought our block and he forced us out of there and so john karalikus who was a customer of ours he said if my brother and me my father was gone he says why don't you come up to my place he owned all his property and he's going out of business so we moved the barber beauty shop up here from main street times square and we've been here for the last 20 years yeah actually probably i'm going to guess 35 or so because i remember in high school helping to paint these walls when you were first moving in here so you've been in several different locations now andy folks obviously you had an another iconic location similar to this one where you were in the falmouth plaza for many many years tell us about how you wound up there because i've heard that story before and any locations you were at before then yeah uh just one correction and listening him to him speak stone's barber shop originally it was a beauty salon and stone came it was his sister i believe and i don't think that i agree with yeah and that's harvey's was next to harvey's hardware we had this difference of opinion earlier before and uh then uh he moved to the downtown area which was a very very busy barber shop stone's barber shop in the center of town was very busy san soucy's barber shop was the next one which is now the hardware store so sans suzy's was next to eastman's hardware eastman's hardware was i i imagined and i realized that you're an old guy and in your memories is not too good oh yeah but you know i i want you to get mad at me i like you yeah i bet you don't remember joe chappelle i do he had san souzi's barber's shop no he worked there well so this is great this is why it's so great to be together because two guys that have been part of this community yeah for seven decades sharing their shared history is just it's so important to capture that so the future generations watching this show will understand what a rich history we have not just in barbering because both of you in different ways have been part of the community so you were in falmouth plaza for many many years until you closed recently but how did you wind up there i had a little shop my father and i had that difference of opinion and i didn't want to open a shop in town because he still had dewfrain's barbershop next to uh next to the fish market right next to cahoons fish market up across the street from the fire station okay so boxwood circle area yeah yeah yeah i know right with cahoons fish markers right on main street oh okay which these pizzeria is oh all right yeah how about that for history excellent that's why we're here that's great keep it coming yeah but anyway uh don't forget harry i started there and uh my father had a difference of opinion so i went to work with harry kameteris who harry worked for frank stone right and he helped me get learned the business harry had to harry yeah harry i worked with harry he's a wonderful guy yeah harry and i worked together for six years and uh then he ended up taking over the base baba business and i ended up going off on my own i ended up on the shop in east falmouth young arthur weidel was a customer of mine and i was there for uh two or three years and when the plaza was being built uh i approached the uh the manager who was a customer of mine his name will come to me a little in a little bit let me give you some of my memory pills andy to help you out a little bit anyway uh i ended up uh where was i i ended up in eastfield at the plaza you spoke to the manager there yeah and i i told the manager of the then stop and shop who was very well connected with the whole uh corporation that owned all these plazas and i said that uh they had provided for a beauty salon but not a barber shop so they got in touch with me and they said well uh how much space do you need so my shopping family was 35 by 35 and i says well i says uh oh they said okay we'll get back to you so when they came back to me they said could you work in a shop 10 feet wide so that was a big reduction based on how the barbershops were set up so like this here this is the old-fashioned setup the customers were always there in the barber shop in front so anyway uh i said sure i can make it work because on one of my trips to florida i went to a barber shop in coral gables and that shop was 15 feet wide long and narrow and i ended up setting up the shop that i spent uh 57 58 years in over there in the plaza until the car the via the virus put me out of business yeah so but that was a long and and storied history i know i've asked you both over the years as you cut here in those locations for more than a half a century you've had people sit fill in these very chairs these are chairs that have been with stones since the previous location uh so the chairs that in which you're sitting have seen some pretty amazing people so i'm going to ask you both the same question we'll go with you first phil but over the years because falmouth has for decades been a location where people from all over the world come to visit you've had the opportunity to cut hair for some pretty famous and interesting people so tell us about a couple of those i cut cesar romero's hammer here he was the joker remember him i sure do so for those of a certain age caesar romero was the joker in the original batman tv series yeah also an accomplished classic yeah okay and i cut dana andrews here and karlie strimsky's here so tell us about yaz he he spent the summer here with tony caneglierro who got hit in the eye right and he came to falmouth to open up a nightclub tony c did tony c did where zach's is now what was where's zach's out on sandwich road yeah yeah that would be charlie brock's old place yeah yeah you remember that and yeah he was a bartender there for him you know my brother dick right anyway tony c talked diaz and he come to me for two or three haircuts i said hey i must have given a pretty good haircut because he came back two or three times so tony c and yaz and cesar romero andy tell us about there must have been a few people over the years that you remember sat in your chair uh a couple probably from uh the playhouse but none that really stands out frank sinatra's son-in-law there's a name there but he was very famous in the play house but to me everybody was important and uh i've done some political figures some high military figures and you know and every every haircut yes sir no so thank you please like my father taught me back in the 40s and used the duster to clean them off and barbering to me is uh there was no no specials uh jk lilly i gave i gave jk lily a haircut after he waited for his turn like everybody else there was nobody special and i can truly say we just ran a nice steady barbershop but that's a great point because the barber shops are the great equalizer whether you're jk lily or karlie ostravsky or just plain old troy clarkson when you come into the barber shop everybody sits on the bench they wait their turn yeah uh they may wait for their special person to cut their hair but sitting on the bench everybody's the same yeah but you guys obviously didn't stand alone in your shops right you had uh other iconic people in this community that stood alongside you for many years phil you mentioned just a minute ago for you it was your brother dick who stood by your side for decades yeah and we lost dickie a few years ago but he still for many is a is a real memorable iconic person in this community who contributed a lot yeah and and uh like andy gave a lot back to the community and of course augie perry for nearly 50 years stood between you or beside you and your brother and and really contributed a lot to the shop as well so yeah talk to us just a little bit about dickie and auggie what they meant to stones over the years uh they all had a good following as i did too uh and we had three of the best babas on cape cod and my brother dick was more like andy and he got involved with the town's workings and i was always a back row guy and and andy you know billy uh stood by you for what most of your time at the shop there right and 55 56 years 56 years 56 years amazing and we never had a disagreement never had a disagreement we never went out socially he had his people that of his age and uh when i when i got involved with uh with the town which of course that history is pretty well known by now the years that i served and i'm going to go back to from the pal to the uh finance committee no speech committee first then i went to the finance committee and after the finance committee you got no i got known publicly and people thought i may have something to contribute so i ended up running for selectmen and i lost the first election to dr jones and uh i didn't get discouraged i tried the second time and i beat doc jones and uh then i went into town hall and worked there for i left the battle shop for three years went to work in town hall a little controversial took no backs no bad talk from too many people as far as i'm concerned what's right is right and you know which i've done in my my political life uh to me there was no special people the lowers the lowers the law i was a special police officer for 20 years and uh very very active in every one of the jobs uh that i undertook in my 50 years of government participation and uh to this day i'm still welcomed into town hall although it's beginning to change a little bit since we have a new form of government now that i don't quite agree with every everything that's being done but and i stay out of the picture i don't go to one in the town hall i don't go to i still go to the veterans office because i'm i was on the veterans council i think i still am on the veterans council but i don't i'll be 90 years old pretty soon i don't i don't want to step into the picture too much well but uh do you and i share a lot of that history right so you were on the board of selectmen now that's back when the selectmen were full-time full-time uh and shortly after your term on the board uh the town changed its government so it's funny i still think of it as the new form of government but actually that was 1991 when it changed so it's been around for a little while yeah but i came in of course right after that change in 1993 yeah and became a member of the board of selectmen right uh and so i like you got involved at a young age and you and i have a lot of that shared history and i think although that incident with your dad uh uh may have changed the way you spoke to him i think that maverick streak that you have uh continue throughout your service and government and i mean that as a compliment because over the years you have always been someone that was not afraid to speak up for something you thought was right yeah you and i have disagreed over the years but here we sit andy 30 years later as friends yeah and people who care about this community and i know phil although he wasn't uh active as he said he was a a back row guy the politics of the community occurred here in stone's barbershop and in andy's barbershop because nobody as far as i remember in the heyday of your two institutions nobody got elected to any position in this community without stopping in stones and andy's barber shops all right the candidates and phil you you and your brother dick had a i think a very egalitarian policy and that is that uh anyone that wanted to put a sign in the window could instead and still can yeah but you had really a sort of a right of passage that was different from me because phil's my stepdad right so i obviously was going to come in here when i was running for office but anybody that ran for selectmen had to go to stones and had to go to andy's yeah and probably back in the day you mentioned harry kamateras a little while ago of course his family's still very much in town his daughter ann served honorably as a public school teacher for many many years in this community uh so that public service was instilled because i think this is where politics and government yeah happen i used to call aunties and stones the town hall annex because that's where stuff got discussed and talked about yeah but you know every one of the positions that i've held i've had one or more controversies i remember the beach committee i was a brand new member of the beach committee there was three of us and we were autonomous and i banned parking on surf drive you want to see if you read the headlines of the newspapers back then of all the people that lived in that section of town they used to drive their cars right into the dune and of course being a semi-environmentalist that i am actually for christ says so anyway i banned it well sure enough i ended up and but right going before the port of selectmen all right and i can remember john demillo john demelo saying to me well andy if that's the way you feel about it i said john i said as far as i'm concerned i says we have ample parking i says the dunes i said and then i started a dune restoration program if you go down now and surf drive and see how beautiful that dune looks from the from the bar the bat house all the way down to the river uh that the inlet that comes in it was never there you know fresh river you mean yeah yeah yeah whatever but anyway and i started it out by uh they used to truck the seaweed for the dump right that corner was full of seaweed so i had them take the seaweed and the stones we used to grade the beaches and all the stones and put them right near the road cover it with seaweed and then cover it with a little bit of of sand and today is the result of all those years of building that doing so i guess what i'm talking about was when you're a public official and you have something to offer that's in the best interest of the town you can't worry about one or two person that don't feel as though were taking away their parking space that didn't bother me one bit so you know andy's barbershop still thrived and i and i got a reputation then of not not taking any uh to use the word crap from anybody because that was my responsibility but people knew uh at andy's and here at stones that they could this was a place where they could come and talk about those things yeah learn about those things and and it was all respectful it's sort of like the old days after town meeting we would go out no matter how controversial it was we'd all go out and answer it and in the in the the spirit of ronald reagan and tip o'neill you and i could do battle on the floor town meeting and then go have a drink at clyde's uh or in later years to the mortar deck mcguire's you know there's so many cases i used to throw the party at leah mcguire's and pick up the chat oh i remember that's back when i was still doing it so i would love to go there with you anyway it was a way of for everybody to get together forget what you didn't agree with let's all have a drink and go home yeah and that was so important but phil yeah although you weren't directly involved in politics you know uh i've been blessed to be part of your life and have you as my dad for the last almost 40 years and i know because i got involved in politics at a young age that sort of thrust you into politics as well because people would come in here to stones and whether you liked it or not they would either praise what was going on a town hall or complain about it and you had to put up with it so yeah every every customer was always right in here whether they were right or wrong they were always right except when they gave you a hard time about me right then yeah i stuck up [Laughter] you know i can't say the right words that i when they were knock on you i said that's my son that's right and if you want to get out of here with two ears you better change your mind yeah i have a lot of stories that i can tell when i was uh a select one there's a lot of things that go on that most of the people don't understand and a lot of my controversies were in the best interest of the town well and i think you and i certainly share that uh yeah but taking it back to here one of the things i loved about coming in here particularly when i was on the board of selectmen is and and i know it was the same way at your place because andy over the years even though i came here to stones to get my hair cut i would stop in and see you and we would talk about stuff and so i've spent a lot of time in both places and almost always when you would go in there there would be someone from the community some community volunteer or a politician yeah that you could talk about the issues of the day with right and you know i know uh uh you talk about john demalone of course his son jack was sheriff yeah i don't know which one of you cut his hair but i'm going to guess it was one of you uh i got john demello and jack the melon okay there you go and i think they were andy's customers too because they were public officials well that but i cut john demelo's here when i didn't know what the hell i was doing and i was a pretty goddamn good bob well i think you still are you still are so so phil you have officially retired last year uh last summer after 67 years cutting hair and andy you recently retired just a few months ago uh 70. so between the two between the two of you that's almost almost 150 years of barbering in this community yeah if you had to pick one or a couple of most memorable moments uh could could you could you come up with one not in the barber shop but my my most memorable moments with the political moments that i made a decision which affected maybe one or two people but turned out to be in the best interest of the town and uh they're highly controversial i remember the uh well i don't want to get into it because it was a cape verdean incident and so phil uh i can tell you some stories i'm sure you could what's your most memorable time at stone's barber shop it spans almost 70 years the day quit maybe it is maybe it's the day you retired when mondays mondays so barbershops are always closed on mondays and one of the things i like wait wait the correction on that moment they used to close on wednesdays and the bible was good that's right when we first got it we decided everybody else gets two days off i said why the hell can't we that was harry harry and i and and stone and we changed we changed the uh the hours to monday there was a the guy in east film at the independent nice farmer he didn't want to do it there was a couple other shops they did was that danny no no who's there i don't remember a baba shop oh christian there was a barber shop in that little house right one near acapeska road oh no kidding yeah so we're all learning something so speaking about locations yeah uh one of the things phil and i did in preparing for today a couple weeks ago on a sunday we uh we grabbed a couple of bagels in the morning and sat out uh on those picnic tables and just walked up and down main street yeah it took a stroll down memory lane because some of the uh uh stores are the same as they were when when you were cutting hair there 40 50 years ago but many of them have changed so uh uh i know over the years in the plaza where your place was for so many decades uh when i was a kid stop and shop was where staples is right uh yeah yeah pretty sure friendlies was in the plaza there right in the middle right fiercely foreign cards and gifts yeah yeah and uh the bowling alley is was uh uh a grocery store where our town clerk mike palmer worked as a kid where was the bowling alley well before the bowling alley see you know i'm saying the bowling alley but it hasn't been a bowling alley for 20 years where cappies is it was built jack cavanaugh owned that bowling alley he started us and he was a good friend of our family and of course across the street there was gardner lewis's pancake man oh yeah that's did that start out on worcester court gardner-lewis moved that whole building across the plaza a lot the whole building no kidding the whole building came right down across the lot and got settled because there was nothing on that side on the other side and first national had the first option for that property stop and sharpen their wisdom invited the first national come over here with a 99 year lease and that's how first national got in the same block first national and grants came together woolworths and stop it sharp were and then the in between there was the uh the beauty salon the bank uh the cleaners uh woolworths warwicks was down across the street from our baba shop who woolworths yeah you mentioned woolworth don't you that was across the street from my stones beauty and barber shops or was it before it went in the plaza yeah when i was a younger baba yeah and you mentioned the the the cleaners so right almost well a couple doors down from andy's right it was so probably that my dad had right right right yeah that's that's good i know you're way back yeah wait a minute i i made a mistake it was jj newberry right across the street right and we're worth put them out of business okay and wolves had a lunch counter didn't they they did i remember sitting at that lunch counter as a little kid because that's almost 50 years ago but uh yeah amazing and so going down main street now and the folks love these strolls down memory lane because you guys capture so much of the town's history of the last century uh we've talked about this before so you were down further down main street uh in the block that now has celebrations uh next to what's max wells yeah uh back then was a movie theater that's right uh elizabeth theater what other stores were in that area then uh we were in the the cape cod times was that's right cape cod times yeah next to the baba beauty salon that we owned yeah and uh ben and bill's where the ice cream place is that used to be the store of three wonders do you remember that the guy and his saying was you wonder where it is and i wonder if i have it and you wonder how i find it it was a mismatch it was it's great that was before max corn you remember maxi corn he gave me my first mortgage i used to run errands for him yeah yeah isn't that great so another local i mean he was harry's baker still manages many of his properties yeah i want to give you guys a little humor about jj newberry i grew up my first couple of years of my life on walker street hasn't had oh yeah all right yeah all right that's the village school huh no but anyway haddon avenues right next to village school glenwood place glenwood place oh yeah we lived in the third house so anyway one day i was about three or four years old i walked into jj newbury and took a little car one of those crank up cars off the counter and i was playing with it on the sidewalk out front right so the woman come out and she says you got to put that back up there meanwhile chief baker comes by and uh the woman tells you know that i was playing on the sidewalk in front with the car but i have to put it back so the chief baker says uh let me let me take you home i says i don't like you and i don't like your goddamn car and i ran home 44 years old i never forgot the goddamn story i was chief baker chief maker that was harold becker right harold baker yeah him and my father were very close friends but anyway yeah that's a little nostalgia for what took place downtown yeah but they understand the town started to move up it was probably what in the 60s before you guys came here yeah it started yeah yeah well you mean so the village started migrating migrating yeah and uh when i said before dunkin donuts yeah right i i i remember because uh the uh just down the street one of the original uh deangelos was not where this one is but on the other side of the street if you remember next to the summer theater that we had yeah it was mary pino do you remember her who of course mary pino oh god yeah mary's son john justin she had a marriage dream mary's dream restaurant looked like a hawaiian building right so let's talk about that because that's that's another uh long time location that's got a storied history so i'm gonna tell the history as i've learned it but i have only learned it from guys like you and others i wasn't around then i wasn't alive then but where d'angelos is now originally was a small little place called mary's lunch like a shack that's right and then and mary's lunch became married because she had this beautiful dream of building the a-frame now in my lifetime i remember after mary's dream because that didn't quite make it but mary continued to live right back in that little greenhouse yeah and that mary's dream became the house of wong the chinese place yeah yeah right right yeah i know part of that history because mary's son john yeah who recently left us uh i worked with john pino as a kid when i worked at john's liquor store yeah down the street and of course that location uh has been in the ferreira family for as long as stone's barber shops around uh runs still by mark ferreira an old and dear friend of mine and i started working for mark when i was 16. i kind of like and that was a stone's barbershop connection so i got the job it's uh john's liquor store because a guy that worked for you steve bricato yeah who then went on to open steve's barber shop in mashpee worked part-time at john's for mark and i was looking for work when i was in high school for the summer and steve went and talked to mark and i went and introduced myself i think i dressed like this to go an interview to do bottle redemption and the rest is history i worked there for 12 years all through college and yeah a lot of memories there because out front at john's liquor store now uh where the the uh the window is right was an ice cream shop wasn't it where at john's i'm pretty sure uh if you look at the building to the left so that would be on the east side of the building there's a cut out that used to be uh they used to sell ice cream out of there so maybe that's a little trivia that you guys do my memory is as bad as andy's well i'll tell you we're going over 70 years of history and both of your memories are pretty good yeah i'm trying to think uh mary's mary's original little lunch and she had john who used to be a mailman and he got canned because he threw threw some mail away i remember that story yeah i was very friendly in school with his younger brother edmund yes yeah did you know him i knew them all yeah yeah yeah but anyway uh i once worked one one day for mary mary's dream as a shot of the cook she was working this all by herself because her chefo one of her relatives that was working with her had walked out on her and the place was so goddamn busy it was a busy busy little place so i told mary i said i'll help you i said i'll go in the kitchen and she she was the uh counter girl taking care of the customers and i i ran the kitchen yeah no kidding yeah just that one day yeah wow well that's a little bit of local history though i think that probably we wouldn't have known yeah we're not sitting here i didn't want to see a struggle because she was a workaholic for crisis uh you know four foot 11 and then uh i forget how old she was at the time i remember mary because john would uh take her always uh to uh to mass at st anthony's where he sang in the choir yeah and then he would take her to dinner yeah on saturdays a lot of history here oh god there's so much that has changed and uh some of it i i had to accept but i didn't didn't have didn't want to agree that uh you know at the senior center i can't stand the uh the new senior center oh worst goddamn location ever but it's there i'll never go in it because you know my mother was part of that for years but now at 90 years old are you allowed to go in the senior center is there an upper age limit to go in there uh i'm yeah i'm kidding with you no no i'm trying to think if i don't think there is enough i think i think you have to have somebody wheel you in [Laughter] well you're both pretty ambulatory for almost 90 years old feels a few years behind you yeah he still gets around pretty good yeah and that's so you've seen so much uh not only nationally right i mean when you think about it you got into barbering in the 50s and everything that's happened in the united states since then uh you've seen half a century of history unfold but even here locally you know we've talked earlier about the changing government and the different people the different characters that have been involved in the government over the years and all of them at one time or another came across the threshold of of stones barbershop or andes or harry's or danny some of the others but uh you know two prominent institutions uh those characters you know all came across this threshold and we would talk about uh you and i phil have talked about you know uh politics here in town and the government and people movers and shakers decision makers in town yeah where you've cut their hair i think bob marshall the longtime moderator sat in your chair and had many great discussions and of course he had marshmallows he did bob had where is the surfboard place right on this used to be isaacsons yeah remember isaacsons yes i do do you remember stanley oh stone stanley oh is this x-rated show no no but we do have the magic of editing so we'll wait and see what uh what we don't want to take anything out of this show but but that's that's what i love is that there's uh in a barbershop there is no editing right i mean what happened happened and sometimes there were strong opinions yeah but there's never language like andy and i have views i haven't said anything bad [Laughter] well you don't hear i have hearing aids and you so you guys have had as our viewers can see and it's wonderful uh a rivalry but not a competitive rival competition over the years and you both thrived and had wonderful storied careers uh but in recent years uh with the dawn of the internet uh they've they do this thing called online polling right and people go online and they fill out a poll and they do the best of their favorites right online and so uh for many years now they've been conducting the best of of the upper cape falmouth mash be born in sandwich yeah and stones and andes actually have been neck and neck in the best barber shop in the upper cape no stones was picked the best barber shop this year well that's where i was only because i closed so so andy sort of had the mantle for the last few years but phil stone jumped out before your clothes andy so at the end of your career you can say that you you retired from the best barber shop in the upper cape right that's right yes so yeah i always think of stone's barber shop as the best barber shop in the world well and you rightfully he thinks his place is right better but this year not because of me because i haven't been involved here for the last five or six years we were voter number one yeah and this is today you can't do anything about yesterday right but we're number one today and and not for me and trish stone deserves a lot of credit for carrying legacy of your dad and your mom and your brother and you and she's really done a wonderful job i think uh preserving what we see here in our visit today much of the artifacts phil here in the shop uh are from the complete history of stone's barbershop over your shoulder is a photograph of uh president john f kennedy uh he's my hero and i know your dad actually had some in involvement with the personal letter written when he was a senator my father was the head of he's more outgoing than i was ever he was the head of the town democratic committee in this and if you didn't come over in the mayflower you weren't invited to cape cod you agree with me that hey listen can't say anything bad about cape cod to me i've been here i started my life here and i'm going to be buried up on gifford street front row the plot is already bought just like in town meeting you always sat in the front row only after betty littner said i could do it did you know that no so tell that story because dickie said dickie stone phil's brother sat in the front row but on the other side because you were both counters that counted the votes at town meeting i used to sit next to betty linton i was the only guy with that kind of courage full name elizabeth buck b littner that's it that's what she how she used to identify herself at town that's right so i was the only one that had the courage to sit next to her we used to call a dragon breath a lovely lady right so the last time she came in she came in on a wheelchair i remember all right gene i had a great relationship and and the seat was empty and i went over and asked her if i could sit in her chair her words to me and i never forgot him i wouldn't want anyone else to sit there a great legacy yeah well i gave that seat up the next home meeting no more i'm all done phil was talking about how his dad had interaction with jfk you've been very politically active over the years andy and i'm sure uh so who's the most uh memorable politician you ever got to interact with other than me of course well other than you it is nobody tops that one no i i can't remember i really don't president kennedy's uh brother senator ted kennedy i know was a friend of yours yeah he was no jack kennedy and you can quote me on that well that but that's the beauty of being in the barbershop we can share our opinions and and walk away friends yeah but uh you know what i got at my house i'm gonna give you i have uh one of these thai one for here and a set of coffee so i love cufflinks thank you yeah they're very very pure gold so but when i see you thank you i got them on my bureau to throw away oh thank you i never used they're in the box wow that's wonderful thank you i appreciate it and i will i could never stand french coffee i will wear them i wear them every day i will wear them in in your honor and speaking of doing things in the honor of others as we get ready to wind down here hey wear them for andy i will don't wear them for me i will proudly i love them but well every day when i get up i honor you phil every day okay thank you and i used to stick up for you and it cost me a couple of customers they probably went to to andy so i've had a flood of memories sitting here for the last hour with you guys talking about so much of our history and it's been my honor to be involved in this community's history for a long time as well and uh i can't help but the still the memories keep flooding back to me about our mutual friend so i have to to pay him some homage here uh uh now which one of you cut eddie marx's here had to be you right because uh you know you and eddie were friends and rivals and uh you know i had the the the honor the blessing to speak uh at his funeral and deliver one of the eulogies and uh around that same time had the honor to speak at your i think at the time 80th was that your 80th party at the kuna mesa mine yeah right there i know it was yours yeah if you remember i was one of the speakers there in bridge wasn't it it was at the pretty sure it was the kuna mesa uh whatever one of bill zamer's properties anyway but yeah but so so uh local figures like eddie marks really shaped the history of our community and he was along with you and i'm being sincere one of my mentors and showed me how to give back and and be part of the community uh but this show wouldn't the show about local history and barber shops and local icons wouldn't be complete if we didn't at least uh pay a little uh homage to to our mutual friend eddie marks a lot of memories with that guy and he used to even though he got his hair cut at andy's i know from time to time he would stop in here just to say hello and yeah eddie was a nice guy he was a good friend of dickies because they were both involved in the community and yeah big on sports he loves sports he and dick corey would stand up on the hill right and watch every falmouth high football game dick corey who's still with us of course and uh just turned 90 himself i played against it corey did you really newbie vocational lost 13-7 in 1947 and they i think dick corey uh and eddie marks were on the same undefeated falmouth high football team 1947. and a generation later dick's son ricky who's a dear friend of mine was on an undefeated falmouth football team so yeah and those are the kind of stories you get when you come to the barber shop really unless you look at the enterprise archives from the last hundred years you can't get a local history anyplace more than you can in the local barber shop because look at the pictures surrounding us here uh show the history of our community there's many photos of dickie stone coaching and playing hockey yeah uh you know there's there's pictures of dick over the register the customers still get to greet him every time they come in here yeah and uh and phil over your left shoulder is uh uh the the nameplates of some people that have cut hair over the years your brother dick and your dad frank uh and even a sign remembering one of the local characters from stone's duck soup i don't know if andy knew duck soup he used to come in here he's a hell of a nice guy not by that name i i forget his real name but his name was george mather i believe george mather yeah and he was he worked at the quarter deck cleaning the quarter deck for dave jarvis yeah i don't no he didn't work for dave who did dave jarvis buy that from uh rob and rita pacheco yeah but he worked for the chat right right did he right right that's right he worked for we just went through the 50 years of the history of the order deck there you remember better than i do you should be sitting in this chair well it's because of what you both have shared with me over the years yeah the quarter deck another local institution well let's do this all right and you know what what a great way to close thank you for doing that all right okay so uh we're gonna wind down our time here uh thank you hard to believe more than an hour has gone by yeah and i am so profoundly grateful well if you want to go another hour we could we we could but i don't know if people would watch more than that and i have to get back i'm just kidding so but let's do it again yeah this was a lot of fun yeah so any closing thoughts andy as we wind down our time here together well no i i think uh phil and i are both in our retirement era yeah my goal is 105 is a few people i haven't ticked off yet but i want i want to make sure i get everybody going and uh i've had a good a good public life good business life and i looked back when i was a kid growing up i started down on in the center of town i'm been in film at height for 40 50 60 70 60 odd years 70 years i i don't have a complaint going none financially i'm well off uh it's been a good life hey thank you andy i wish i was as financially well off as you were like hell you collected a ton of money you're the one that who got who who won all the money uh phil dickey a little more local trivia phil's brother dick one mega bucks yes yeah long time ago dick did yes yes i thought it was you so but phil all in all uh uh barbering has been good to you as well you've got poor baba he's a rich bobber yeah but you've lived a rich life i've lived right if friends uh and and the love of others were life's currency you would both be very very wealthy men right uh friendship were gold you'd have unlimited resources isn't that not true and that all comes from your life in the barbershop i'm glad i took the advice of max cohen when i got out of the navy and i the falmout national bank turned me down my first mortgage request i never forgave them right was that gordon miller yes yes i used to cut his hair you should have told him he had a hell of a haircut i wasn't good enough to be in that bank that was a goddamn yankee bank and i don't give a damn what who hears me say that huh well and i thought gordon miller was a nice guy because i took care of him yeah well but anyway the uh we don't want to put people down andy what's that can you hear don't me your finger right now all right so i asked you i i'm italian i speak with my hands oh okay i you know i got all all through the last hour i wondered why you spoke that way so you know what so i can't i can't let us the show finish now that you guys have brought up that up without telling this one last story so phil people know you as phil stone yeah it's a common and prominent name in the community because you and your brother uh and now your sister-in-law and your parents built that name up uh as hard-working honest business people in this town but stone truth be told isn't your real last name right when my father moved from boston do you remember i told you if you didn't come over in the mayflower right you weren't welcome in falmouth well that's why i'm having you tell this story okay my name was peter feda that's a good italian name italian names in end in vowels a e i o u they're all vowels and my father had to change his name to stone which is it petrol was italian for rock and petrified it was a derivative of that and in order to be successful there was no more barber and beauty salon more successful successful not for me from frank and teresa stone so we were the biggest on the cape interesting piece of local history that was around world war ii where there was a lot of anti-italian sentiment so dad actually changed the name to be more accepted in this community that wouldn't happen today because falmouth is a richly diverse and very accepting community but it's interesting to see that journey over the years when there was perhaps less tolerance in this community than there was than there is today that's right so uh any final thoughts for our visit it was great good thank you well thank you both hey i'm glad you invited me i'm glad i did you we'll do this again for sure andy dufresne from andy's barbershop navy veteran we thank you for your service and thank you for coming today phil stone from stone's barbershop thank you for your navy service and thank you for coming today fellas it has been an absolute pleasure to take this stroll down and thank you for joining us for this wonderful oral history of barbering and falmouth but as you saw we really gave you a history of this community from the last 70 years so thank you for joining us be safe and we'll see you soon you