Help Save Lisa…

My name is Lisa Bridges. I am a barber in west Houston.

History

My father was a barber, he came from a family of barbers that goes back for many generations. My family came from Italy.

My grandparents settled in a suburb of Houston known as Dickinson in the World War II era.

My father worked with a friend of his in a Houston barber shop located in the Montrose area of Houston near Dunlavy Street in a shopping center known as Little Palm.

In 1969 my father met with a very smart up and coming businessman.

Dan Moody was developing a shopping center of the future in west Houston known as Town and Country Village.

My father, Guy Mitchell, Sr., worked with Dan Moody on a “handshake” basis to create a six chair barber shop in Town and Country Village.

Town and Country Village remains located between the Katy Freeway and Memorial Drive at the intersection of Beltway 8 and Memorial.

Those six barber chairs were the last order shipped from the storied Koken factory in St. Louis, Missouri.

The barber shop was known as Town Square Barber and it began serving customers of distinction in the summer of 1969. The customers were businessmen, captains of industry, noted actors, anchormen, reporters and famous restaurateurs.

I was only one year of age in 1969.

My father’s partner was a barber named Frank Martarana.

The Town Square barbershop didn’t take off at first. The Town and Country Village shopping center allowed the United States Postal Service to install a postal station next door to the Town Square Barber. Lisa recalls that the postal station initially had a machine installed to make change.

That machine frequently ran out of coins but Mr. Mitchell always made sure to keep plenty of coins on hand in the barber shop to help the postal service customers who needed to make change.

The women who came to get change would see the customers getting their hair cut and would send their husbands, sons, boyfriends and neighbors to the Town Square Barber Shop to get their hair cut properly by Guy and his colleagues.