By WENDY STIVER

wstiver@lockhaven.com

LOCK HAVEN — A new barbershop opened recently on Vesper Street, adding to the local options for people in search of a crewcut, a fade, or short back and sides with a part.

Around the same time, just two blocks away, the wooden barber’s pole and sign were quietly removed from in front of Caprio’s Barber Shop.

WENDY STIVER/THE EXPRESS Three friends who spent many mornings in Caprio’s Barber Shop are Mike Caprio, left, a brother of the two Caprio barbers, with Bernie Zbicki, seated, and John Keeler. They reunited recently for their last hurrah at the now-closed shop. Over Mike’s shoulder, a sign states: “Haircuts $11,” the last price charged in the well-known shop in Lock Haven.

The name Caprio is synonymous with “barber” for many who live here. Brothers Jay and Buck Caprio cut hair side by side for more than six decades. Although their shop moved over the years, all three locations were within a few blocks of each other in downtown Lock Haven, and their customers had no trouble finding them.

Famous and familiar local residents have graced the shop’s antique barber chairs.

Both Jay and Buck are gone now, leaving brother Mike as the last of 11 siblings.

Mike Caprio was a barber too, starting in 1952, but he left the profession and obtained “a state job.” In his retirement years he often visited his brother’s shop. He became one of the regulars, stopping by to maybe cook up some hamburgers or just sit and enjoy the activity.

“We used to spend the mornings here with Jay and Buck,” said Bernie Zbicki, another of the shop’s former regulars

PHOTO PROVIDED The Caprio brothers are seen at the Sons of Italy Campground. They are, from left, Mike, Rocky, Joe, Frank, Buck and Jay.

About a month ago, Buck’s daughter Janaan Maggs invited her uncle Mike, Zbicki, and John Keeler to get together one more time in the shop and share memories of Buck and Jay.

They remembered coffee — lots of coffee — sausage, and sometimes a hot breakfast cooked and served by Maggs who lives upstairs.

She bought the building, at 113 E. Water St., in 2005 so that her father and uncle could retire from one aspect of their business — property ownership and upkeep.

They had moved their business to that address in 1983.

Before that, Caprio’s Barber Shop was at 10 Bellefonte Ave., where Main Street joins the avenue, next door to the former location of Keller & Munro Drug Store.

PHOTO PROVIDED Above, Caprio’s Barber Shop has been closed since Jay Caprio stopped cutting hair this past December, but it still looks pretty much the same inside, with the drawers still full of scissors, clippers and other implements of the trade.

And before that, Caprio’s was up the avenue just a bit, in a building no longer standing. First National Bank and a little park area occupy the space now.

Janaan is a legislative assistant for state Rep. Mike Hanna and works across the street from that park. She said she remembers the original barbershop there.

Jay started cutting hair when he was 13 and barbered for 72 years, Mike said. Buck, whose real name is Carmen and who was the baby of the family, cut hair with Jay for 65 years. Both worked under their uncle Jimmy “Mage” Caprio.

Caprio’s Barber Shop itself was a downtown staple for about 68 years.

The Caprios cut hair six days a week, closing at noon on Wednesdays which was a strong tradition for Lock Haven businesses at the time. The shop also did not open until 11 a.m. on Tuesdays because that was the morning the farmer’s market set up. It was open on Saturdays but never on Sundays.

WENDY STIVER/THE EXPRESS Janaan Maggs, Buck Caprio’s daughter, stands in front of the former shop her father and uncle ran. The pole and sign were removed just last week.

Uncle Jimmy chose not to make the move to Water Street, and Jay and Buck took the opportunity to change the hours, closing the shop every Wednesday and Saturday.

Uncle Jimmy may not have worked at the new location, but he came by once in awhile to “loaf around,” as the regulars remember.

At the Water Street shop, Jay’s customers sat in the 100-year-old chair by the window, with Buck’s customers in the matching chair next to it.

Buck always took the young customers, giving kids a bowl cut when that was popular. Customers might ask for something different, but they’d get the same old-fashioned styles.

“They’d always tell a customer, ‘Two weeks. Give it two weeks,'” Keeler recalled.

Janaan’s daughter, Mandi Maggs, started cutting hair in the back room of the shop the same year her mother bought the building. Kali Maggs, an outgoing 11-year-old who is Mandi’s daughter and Buck’s granddaughter, served as a young secretary for her mom and her pop-pop.

Since the barbershop has closed, Mandi is planning to move two doors down and work at Headlines by Kim and Co.

Other people in the family have barbered or styled hair for a living. Janaan sister Sharon Caprio has a license, and they have a cousin who has worked in that profession.

Wherever they were located, Jay and Buck never missed a work day of cutting hair, Zbicki said.

They’d have breakfast and coffee at the old Woolworth’s (now Dollar General), then Newberry’s (now the Salvation Army Thrift Store). It had to be fish from the Town Tavern every Friday, Janaan said. In later years, the brothers patronized The Second Cup, Leo’s Italian and Specialty Foods Deli, and “pretty much every restaurant in town,” she said.

Every Friday night, they’d go out to eat, to the 40&8, The Village Tavern, Furst Corner Restaurant, The Valley Hotel.

When they strolled out for a meal during work hours, they’d leave the shop open. Their customers knew to go right on in, that it wouldn’t be long before the brothers would return to pick up their scissors again.

All the Caprio brothers were active in the Giosue Carducci Lodge of the Sons of Italy.

Jay lived on Coudersport Pike, and Janaan remembers a day when the area got two feet of snow and “nobody went to work, there was nobody on the roads, and all of a sudden, I heard the radio come on downstairs. I went down and there he was. He didn’t understand why everyone was closed.”

Buck seemed healthy and well on his 80th birthday, but within a year he was gone, Mike remembered. Buck stopped cutting hair in January 2016. He died that August, at the age of 81.

Jay was diagnosed with cancer in November 2017, but it didn’t stop him from coming into work at 8 a.m. every day, Janaan said. He stopped cutting hair that December due to his illness and died the following month, at the age of 85.

“Jay would be serenading on the guitar,” Zbicki remembered as he looked at the empty barber chair. Janaan said she’d sometimes wake up early to the music of Jay’s guitar-playing in the shop below her.

Buck, however, “was not instrumentally inclined,” as Mike remembers.

Jay was a member of The Deacons of Dixieland, the Consord Sounds big band, and The Last Resort, playing with that band last year at the Holy Spirit Parish Fair.

Buck was a jokester and enjoyed playing cards. He was the funny one, Jay was the musical one, and Mike was the quiet one, as some remember.

“Dad preferred to sit in the chair and Jay preferred to cut,” Janaan recalled. “They were night and day.”

After she purchased the building, she said, the shop got a new door, new windows and a new floor. The rest, including the shop set-up, is exactly the same as when the barbering brothers moved in, she said.

She just goes out the back door now, she said, so she doesn’t have to see the shop and be overwhelmed with memories. It is still the same as it was on its last day, with drawers full of professional clippers and scissors, family photos on the walls, and jokes. On display at the big mirror the customers faced are “the Italian flashlight” — a match on the end of a stick — and the bald man’s hairbrush — a brush with no bristles. These fun items are joined by a flock of little wooden chickens Mike enjoyed whittling.

The barbering Caprios are gone now and their customers have scattered among the three barbershops in town and the one in Mill Hall.

The three regulars, Mike, John and Bernie, don’t see each other as often as they used to. After posing for a photo in the former shop, they had hugs for Kali on their way out the door.

What do they do with their mornings now?

Zbicki said, “We’re waiting for The Express to open a little coffeeshop.”