MONTAGUE, Mich. — They say the first cut is the deepest.
In Montague, that distinction doubtless belongs to 74-year-old Gary Knapp.
“I've been doing this so long here in town, people need historical facts, they come and talk to me, unfortunately,” Knapp laughed.
Knapp first turned on the barber’s pole at Montague’s one and only old school barber shop, then across the street, when Reagan was still in office.
The shop became a family affair in the new millennium, beginning with his son, Ryan.
“He headed over to Flint, same school that I went to… And he's been cutting here now with us for 23 years,” he related.
His grandson, Dillinger, makes three generations of Knapps, all under one roof and sharing the shears thanks to a recent change in state law.
An apprenticeship program that debuted following the approval of Michigan House Bill 4207 allowed Dillinger to complete the 1,800 hours he’d normally work in a barber college with a couple of old pros, tuition-free in grandpa’s shop.
“We jumped on it,” Knapp said. “Put him in the back chair.”
“Was there ever was there ever a question that you would follow in dad and granddad's footsteps?”
“I love it,” Dillinger responded in the midst of a haircut. “I wasn't positive how I'd feel about it. But as soon as I actually started cutting, it was a whole different experience.”
Dillinger had completed around 500 hours of his apprenticeship at the time of publication.
When he receives his license, Dillinger’s grandfather said he intended to use the opportunity to slow down and encapsulate decades of stories.
“I'm going to write a book,” Gary vowed, chuckling. “I have to be out of the business to write it because somebody is going be reading it going, 'he's talking about me!'”
For more information regarding Michigan’s barber apprenticeship program, click here.
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