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Dave Dudek
Sponsored by
The Getup
Save the planet and your wallet! Shop our hand-curated, like-new selection of secondhand clothing and gear for the entire family – from newborn all the way up to adult, plus maternity, shoes, and toys! We buy and sell brands like Patagonia, Gap, Cat & Jack, American Eagle Outfitters, Nike, Lands’ End, and more. The Getup: Community Powered Sustainable Styles. Find great deals in-store or online!
A main street barbershop is so much more than a place to get a haircut.
Dave Dudek, a barber who’s been cutting hair in his hometown of Chatfield, Minnesota, since 1979, certainly thinks so, and his clients – all like family – would agree.
A barbershop is a community information center – “We don’t call it gossip,” Dave clarifies with a wink and grin – a local weather station, a low-cost university, a historical society, and an occasional forum for political and religious viewpoints – “But only if the customer initiates those topics,” he says. It’s also a small-scale commercial establishment, selling things like locally produced honey, and in Dave’s case, a unique culinary item called “Goob Spice,” made from a secret recipe and branded with his nickname, that Dave says, “is good on anything except cold cereal.”
“A barbershop is a connecting place,” he says. “People get haircuts, sure, but it’s also where they drop in to visit, shoot the bull, check-up on local news, tell stories – maybe a few tall tales during fishing and hunting season – and just enjoy being here. Chatfield used to have six barbershops. We’re down to two, mine and Roy’s, who also fixes zippers and clocks. When small towns lose these places, they are very hard to replace.”
Dave loves his career and where he’s doing it. Chatfield (population 2,297) is located 20 miles south of Rochester in scenic Root River bluff country. Dave and his wife, Terri, secretary at the local high school, raised two kids and are enjoying their four grandchildren there. “This is a small town where you can still pretty much know everybody,” he says.
Being a barber wasn’t the life Dave dreamed about as a kid, though. “I wanted to fly jet airplanes. After graduating from Chatfield High in ‘76 I tried to enlist but failed the physical because I was color-blind. No jets for me. The next day I went for a haircut and my barber gave me some advice. ‘Learn to cut hair,’ he told me. ‘Only nine months of school, nice hours, good pay, friendly people.’ I listened to him. Within a few years I bought one of the local shops from Leonard Dietz and here I am, 45 years later. I love what I’m doing!”
Those coming to get an $18 haircut (no tipping allowed) might also get an education – but first, you must greet (and get sniffed by) Bode, Dave’s Springer Spaniel and shop mascot. “Bode’s a good watch dog,” says Dave. “He just lays around, watching everything.”
Next, there’s an obligatory local weather review. “It’s easy to complain about the weather,” Dave says, “because no one can do anything about it.” From there, you never know where the conversation will go. One summer morning, Dave welcomes Don into his barber chair, a gentleman in his late 80s who was a class of ’53 Chatfield High School grad. While Dave scissors away at his hair, they cover everything from hometown history to old-school car hood ornaments. “We had one that lit up!” Don exclaims, pretty much owning that topic.
New faces arrive – a local farmer with his two teenage sons – along with new topics: Hay farming, root systems and area soil, and current moisture levels. “We have a river on our property,” farmer-dad explains, “that in dry years actually disappears underground before re-emerging far away as a spring.”
A pause in haircuts and conversation commences, as Dave helps an elderly customer in a wheelchair navigate to the parking lot behind his shop. You’re soon aware that this “family thing” applies to everyone here. Dave gives gift certificates to each graduating senior in town as well as weekly Twizzlers and lollipops to football players and rooting sections. On bookshelves in his shop, you’ll find all but three Chatfield High School yearbooks since 1950. And a prominent photo on a shop wall features former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura after he got a haircut from Dave a few years back.
Dave’s Barber Shop, strategically sitting on Chatfield’s main street across from the park, is not small. Neither are other parts of Dave’s world. In high school he played football, basketball, and baseball, marched in award-winning Drum & Bugle Corps competitions, became an avid hunter and fisherman, and has been the main stats man, still working the sidelines with pencil and clipboard, at every Chatfield High football game since 1982. For 25 years he was a winter ski patroller in Minnesota; for 35 years he worked on courses for World Cup ski racing in Colorado and Canada and two Winter Olympic Games, Calgary in 1988 and Salt Lake City in 2002. He still enjoys skiing and is helping his grandchildren do the same.
Barbering remains Dave’s main gig though. Now 66, he has no retirement plans – except one. “Leonard sold me his shop but kept cutting hair until he was 93. I’m aiming for 94!”
Watch Dave in action – cutting hair, turning customers into friends and family, definitely building community – and you have to think the people of Chatfield, Minnesota, are rooting for him to reach that goal.
