Family barber shop spans three generations

In 1977 Dick Holt moved his growing family to La Conner to establish a barber shop. It was then, and still remains, the only shop in town, and over the past forty-two years has become not only a La Conner institution, but is now a three-generation family affair. Dick still fills in at the shop when necessary, but son Tony has anchored the business for many years, and recently Tony’s daughter McKeighla has joined the family in the two-chair operation.

Dick began his barbering career fifty-seven years ago, learning the trade at Folk’s, one of the three barber colleges then located on Seattle’s First Avenue. It was sink or swim, he recalls.

“There were sixteen chairs, and you started out in the ‘free’ chairs in the back, where you mostly got the bums and winos who came in off the street. As you got better, you moved to the front. Now those days are long gone – there’s only one real barber college left on the west coast.”

Fashions in the business have come and gone, but as far as the essentials of barbering go, Dick maintains that nothing much has changed.

“You need to know how to read people, and you have to like people and you need to be genuinely interested in what they have to say. Even if you’re having the worst day in your life the customer has to be your priority.”

In 1977, making a living cutting hair in a town with a population of nine hundred was a challenging proposition, to say the least. On his worst days, Dick remembers, he’d have only a single customer in his shop, then underneath the old Black Swan restaurant (now the Oyster and Thistle). For many years Dick drove down twice a week to his old job at a barber shop in Lynwood, where he still had a large clientele, and where workdays often stretched out for twelve hours or more.

The family’s finances began to improve after Dick obtained a real estate license and wife Linda began a twenty-six year career at the Anacortes Safeway. As financial pressures eased, he was able to devote more time to the La Conner shop, and soon after Tony joined the operation.

Versatility runs in the Holt family. Even before graduating from La Conner High in 1990, Tony spent summer vacations fishing in Alaska’s Bristol Bay. Prior to joining the shop full-time in 1994, he operated heavy equipment in a log yard for Dunlap Towing. He still spends two days a week working alongside a local contractor, but the barber shop is his first love. He echoes his dad’s sentiments about barbering and about the lasting relationships that the family has built with generations of local clients. “It’s the best job in the world,” he affirms.

Nineteen year old McKeighla, a 2018 graduate of Mount Vernon High School, is the latest Holt to enter the family business. She learned to weld as a high school student and after graduation worked as a caretaker for a home owners’ association on Decatur Island. She’s also already an accomplished artist, working mostly with acrylic paints. McKeighla’s has other motivations for joining the family business besides the ones that inspire her dad and granddad. “I’d like to have a family someday, and this work allows a lot of flexibility. You’re not tied to a fixed schedule.”

Finally, the family would like to remind potential customers that the La Conner Barber shop is just that, an old-fashioned place to get your hair cut the way you like it for a fair price – it’s not a “salon.” As Dick says, “If you want a salon, there’s one next door.”