The calendar book is a throwback, the kind you still fill up by hand. Casey Wojtaszczyk had it jammed with appointments into the page marked March 21, right up until the moment he cut the hair of a Buffalo pulmonologist who turned out to be the last customer of that day.
“He’s the one who told me what was coming,” Casey said.
A pulmonologist treats respiratory issues, and the physician in the barber’s chair explained to Casey just how dangerous this virus called Covid-19 could be, and what it would take to stop the pandemic from overwhelming hospitals.
The doctor gave him some hand sanitizer and predicted, accurately, that everything would soon shut down. That conversation, one Casey has no doubt he will remember, demonstrates what he sees as the greatest aspect of his business.
“The knowledge you get,” he said of his customers and their expertise. “It’s just unbelievable.”
For the last two months, that might be what he missed most of all.
Casey, at 70, has two qualities that build deep connections as a barber: He loves to listen as much as he loves to talk. He figures he has not provided a haircut at his business for about 70 days, a time frame that swallowed most of the spring.
Yet the phone kept ringing Friday at the Eggert Road shop that Casey calls "Your Head." His calendar book is swiftly filling up in anticipation of Tuesday, when Casey hopes he will formally reopen by cutting the hair of Nancy and Jack Wilcox, already lined up in the prized spot as first customers.
Nancy is eager. She said her hair "looks like a Brillo pad exploded on my head, like I've been walking around sticking my finger in light sockets," and she and Jack booked the 8:45 a.m. appointment the instant they heard of the opportunity.
While no decision has been announced yet by state officials, Tuesday is the day when people who cut hair – under certain conditions – might be able to return to work under the phase two reopening of Western New York. Casey has read everything he can find on how barbers are handling their work in other states amid a pandemic, and he feels ready.
Waiting to reopen, Casey Wojtaszczyk books one of an estimated 75 appointment for haircuts. (Robert Kirkham/Buffalo News)
His customers will be masked, as will he. He will wear gloves and a barber's cape, and he will sanitize his barber’s tools before each new customer – a practice he always did as regular routine. Every haircut will be set by appointment, making it easy to maintain a safe distance in his shop, and he will wipe down any chair where someone happens to sit.
“I’m going to be careful,” said Casey, who expects to be tested every two weeks for Covid-19, based on state mandates. He is also trusting his customers to make a simple choice: If they feel the least bit sick, have the wisdom to stay home.
The long break is strange for Casey, who rarely takes a vacation and has cut hair since he was a teen. There is a photo on the wall of a young Casey trimming up his older brother Dan. Their father worked on the railroad, there were four boys in the house, and haircuts at home saved some money.
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That was in the early 1960s, just before The Beatles arrived from England and changed everything. What people forget, Casey said, is that a lot of barbers would turn away in disgust and refuse to serve anyone who showed up with long hair.
At the Beatles-happy John F. Kennedy High School in Cheektowaga, Casey instantly recognized a new market. He began offering haircuts for a dollar, which is how his close friend Jim Shaughnessy – a retired United Steelworkers official who now lives in North Carolina – became an early customer.
Even now, on visits home, he stops by the shop.
“He cuts it good,” Shaughnessy said of the way his buddy handles hair.
Longtime barber Casey Wojtaszczyk is preparing – he hopes – for a Tuesday opening. (Robert Kirkham/Buffalo News)
Casey is set to get rolling again, but he said he will take more delays in stride. He is a person of faith, he explained, and he accepts that whatever will happen, will happen. He is also a fierce believer in a disciplined routine, and he has done his best to keep a schedule, even during the pandemic.
He still shows up at his shop every day by 7:30 a.m. He drinks his coffee and reads the paper in the quiet morning light, and then he takes care of whatever task lies before him, such as painting or patching cracks in the parking lot.
At lunch he eats his grapes, carrots and yogurt. A few hours later he takes off, going home to his wife, Margaret, and the exercise routine Casey has honored for decades. He used to run 5 miles a day, like clockwork, until knee replacement surgery made that impossible.
Now he does a series of daily exercises that include 200 crunches and 170 push-ups, consistency that he said matches his general demeanor.
“I never get moody,” he said. “I’m the same.”
Casey tells a customer in his car "to come back next week," when the Your Head barber shop reopens. (Robert Kirkham/Buffalo News)
Certainly, that stability is part of the appeal to Nancy and Jack Wilcox.
"There's a lot more to it than just getting your haircut," Jack said, while Nancy – who has known Casey for a half-century – said one fundamental thing simply does not change.
"He's a good, decent man," she said.
The shop is named “Your Head,” based on Casey's response when new customers ask about the way that he cuts their hair. “It’s your head,” he tells them, meaning he does it the way they want it. Casey maintains that being a barber comes down to providing three different haircuts, and everyone – in some way – is covered by one of them.
Roll it all together, and he is ready to get started. His phone rings constantly throughout the day, longtime customers calling to put their names in the book. Visitors also stop by to line up appointments, many with hair longer than they have worn it in years.
“You’re curling up,” Casey said to Raymond Braun, a retired senior fire dispatcher from Amherst, noticing how Braun's hair was slipping past his collar. For that reason, Braun hoped to get in as quickly as he could, and Casey wrote him a card for next Thursday, the next slot he had open.
"People," Casey said, "are begging for a haircut."
Barber Casey Wojtaszczyk last month, a few weeks into the pandemic. (Robert Kirkham/Buffalo News)
His life now is simpler than it once was. He went to barber school right out of high school, then started cutting hair downtown at a shop at Delaware and Chippewa. Casey kept hustling – he and Margaret raised four children, including a set of twins and another child born within a 53-week span – and he eventually became owner or partner in four shops, including several Fantastic Sams.
That was enough. He began scaling back until Your Head remained the only shop he runs.
The place has two chairs, Casey’s and one that has stayed empty since the death of Richard Rice, a friend and fellow barber. Over the years, Casey had the chance to trim plenty of well-known heads: He mentions a list of notables, including U.S. Rep. Jack Kemp, former Buffalo Bills lineman Reggie McKenzie and the late Rick Martin, a winger on the fabled French Connection of the Buffalo Sabres.
Still, the people he talks about the most are his regulars, men and women who are as much friends as customers, the ones who are now calling to fill that calendar book and to seek a haircut with this Casey guarantee:
“Oh, yes,” he says into the phone. “We’re sanitized.”
Sean Kirst is a columnist with The Buffalo News. Email him at skirst@buffnews.com or read more of his work in this archive.
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