ENID, OKLAHOMA — Longtime customers are starting to trickle back in to Jack’s Barbershop this June, chased by summer heat and stringy hair.
Most of the familiar sights are still here; Jack’s barber pole, Jack Cisco’s name plate, his scissors, the name on the window.
The only thing different is Jack Cisco himself.
He closed up his shop after 60 years last November and was gone by December.
Jack’s son Ken Cisco says, “It was very sad to say goodbye to the shop after it being in our lives for all of our lives.”
Jack opened his shop in 1957.
He was an ex WWII Marine who raised 5 kids including Ken and Sandi on strict orders.
“Oh my goodness. Yes,” says Jack’s daughter Sandi.
And haircuts for MEN.
“I can remember asking him to do mine,” she continues. “He told me, ‘I don’t cut girls’ hair! I’m a barber!'”
Ken and Sandi both helped clean up on Sunday afternoons for Coke and bubblegum, and a little time with Dad.
Over the decades he became an institution in Enid, always on the job to cut the hair if Air Force personnel from Vance AFB, and whoever might walk in with a good story.
“He got along with them all and had stories for all of them,” says Ken.
For close to six months it just wasn’t the same with the lights off in here.
None of Jack’s kids or grand kids took up barbering, but great-grand daughter Chellsie Redinger did.
“I remember he and I telling stories about the hair that we cut and our clients.”
She took it upon herself to do most of the work herself in cleaning up the dust and modernizing the old shop.
The lease came through and she re-opened Jack’s June 5th.
“I knew I didn’t want to see it close,” she says. “It had just been on my heart the whole time.”
Chellsie has another shop in Fairview.
Ashley Weston rents space in Jack’s old spot, but that doesn’t mean Jack isn’t still here in spirit.
Chellsie says, “Whenever I sat that chair in the corner, I could just feel him sitting there.”
On July 21st, 2018 Chellsie is planning a grand re-opening of Jack’s Barbershop complete with a ribbon cutting, free hot dogs, and free coke from the old machine.
The ribbon cutting is set for Noon.
