The colorful red, white and blue barber pole
has been revived at Village Green Town Center and now as one walks through
Swiss Alley, the colorful fixture welcomes customers to the newly
refurbished Village Barbers.
The shape of the bottom of the classic
barber poke is similar to the shape of the container used for holding
bloodletting leeches in the late 1800s. The pole itself if said have
derived from the wooden pole a patron clenched while undergoing a painful
procedure.
The red and white stripes are said to
represent the bloody bandages, hung out to dry, which were twisted around
the stake to which they were tied. Some claim the blue stripe denotes the
blood in the veins, while other say it merely was added to the red and
white stripes by Americans to be more patriotic.
Barber poles have changed over the years.
Prior to the 1930s, barber poles were large and free standing on the
sidewalk. But by the 1940s, sidewalk space was considered too valuable and
local ordinances prevented new poles from being installed. At that time
the now familiar smaller glass-encased poles became popular. Even this
style is now disappearing due to vandals breaking the glass.
It was not until the early part of the
century that barber poles came to have the now-classic rotating cylinder.
Prior to 1925, a hand wound clock-like mechanism turned the striped
cylinder. A single winding kept the pole rotating for up to 12 hours. By
the 1930s, new poles were turned by electric motors.
Today there are only three places in the
world to manufacture poles – they are found in Japan, Italy and America.
The one plant that supplies all of North
America is the William Marvy Company of St. Paul, Minnesota. The Village
Barber now has a colorful barber pole outside its door – from the Marvy
Company
Unless destroyed by fire or stolen, a barber
pole is a once-n-a-lifetime purchase.
With the decline in barbershops today there
are actually more barber poles than barbers. Many are used by non-barbers
for decoration in bars or home dens.
