Long road to short cuts: One-handed barber overcomes adversity

Chuck Reid is a man with irony woven into his being.

It's fair to say it's been a roundabout journey for a guy who specializes in short cuts.

He's finally arrived at his destination, trimming hair in his narrow, two-seat barber shop with a huge picture of NBA basketball star LeBron James looking on.

It's a ways away from where he started, a route that started in Springfield, Illinois, took him to the Chicago suburb of Joliet, and ultimately landed him in Cape Girardeau, where he cuts hair five days a week at The Shop, a place he's worked at for 12 years and owned since 2012.

He also has been moonlighting at the Gibson Recovery Center since August, where he is a behavioral health assistant. He files paperwork, transits patients and runs group sessions.

Chuck Reid, who lost his right hand in an accident at the age of 15, trims behind the ear of James Brown at The Shop.Andrew J. Whitaker

"That's my favorite part of the job is doing groups," Reid said.

That's where he can connect with people who are down and out. He can relate to their plights and be a voice of hope.

"If you feel like you've hit rock bottom, I've hit rock bottom," Reid said. "Your rock bottom may be different than my rock bottom, but they're both rock bottom. And I know when I was at the bottom, I was able to crawl out the hole, and if I could do it, anybody could do it."

Reid made the crawl out of his hole with one hand, the result of being hit by a train when he was 15 years old before the start of his junior year of high school in Springfield.

The accident occurred Aug. 4, 1995, as Reid was taking a shortcut along the railroad track. He says he never saw the train coming, much like the events that followed: two years of flunking his junior year at two different schools, homelessness and, ultimately, a fresh start.

After 12 hours of surgery, two to three days in an ICU and nine days in the hospital, the kid who wrestled and played baseball his first two years of high school was left trying to figure out much that he already been taught when he returned for the first day of school that year.

Tasks like brushing his teeth, bathing and dressing all were just the first brushes with a new frontier.

At school, the humbling encounters would sometimes catch him by surprise, like the time he broke his pencil tip in class and raised his hand to use the pencil sharpener.

"It didn't dawn on me when it first happened that I wouldn't be able to use that pencil sharpener until I got all the way up to the pencil sharpener," Reid said. "It was just, like, kind of an embarrassing moment because I really didn't know what to do. Now I'm standing up here and everybody knows I just asked to use the pencil sharpener."

His high school sports career was over, and even the invites to join pickup basketball games after school dried up.

People were changing -- himself and others. He said one of the biggest changes was the way people treated him, and a previously confident teen became depressed and lacking self-esteem.

"My first junior year I basically didn't even attend it," Reid said. "I was a student, but just felt sorry for myself. I wouldn't start fights or be disruptive; I just didn't do what I was supposed to. I would just leave when I wanted to leave and wouldn't turn in any homework assignments."

He later moved when his father relocated with his job to Joliet.

It was in the vicinity of the Windy City that they were introduced to pricey $24 haircuts, and consequently Reid was introduced to his first pair of clippers, which he found laying on his bed when he returned from school the next day.

"I never asked for them or anything," Reid said. "I asked my dad what they were for, and he said, 'You're going to learn how to cut my hair and you're going to learn how cut your hair because I'm not paying $24 apiece for those haircuts again.' And that was the first time I started cutting hair."

His father, Lindell, wore a hat on the job that covered up some of Reid's early work.

"I messed my dad's head up, and I messed mine up pretty bad," Reid said with a laugh.

Despite the butchering, he said he enjoyed using the clippers bought for him. His dad even suggested Reid take up barbering to have a trade after Reid flunked a second half-hearted attempt at his junior year. A school counselor had recommended Reid quit school and pursue a GED.

Instead, Reid wandered down a directionless path. He moved out of his father's house and later found himself staying up all night drinking coffee at casinos to stay out of the cold, sleeping in hallways, sometimes on streets and at homeless shelters. Amid the instability he did manage to get his GED, which he needed to attend a year of community college.

He went through what he calls a "laundry list" of jobs, sometimes losing them because he failed to show up.

"It was really hard for me to work all the time or be around people," Reid said. "I was still dealing with being different. It wasn't too far removed. Now it's been over 20 years, but at the time it was like four or five years."

The turning point came when Reid was doing subcontracting roofing work for a friend, who allowed him to work off the payment of a car he sold to him cheaply. He had $500 in his pocket when another friend offered to pay gas money to drive him and a girlfriend to Cape Girardeau to visit the woman's mother.

"I didn't know much about Missouri, period, let alone Cape Girardeau," Reid said. "I always say everything happens for a reason. It was just a way of guiding me to go where I was supposed to go because I was lost at the time."

Reid did so, and on the visit noticed the lower cost of living. He also received a room-and-board offer from the mother, Jonnie Bridges, if he wanted to give the town a try.

He returned to Joliet and said he had an epiphany moment a week later in a hotel room, where he was staying.

"I was like, 'Man, I've got to try something different,'" Reid said. "I think that was the moment where I was like, 'Man, I'm tired of being depressed all the time or thinking the world owes me something. Oh, man, I got hit by a train. I got a bad deal, you need to give me something.' That was my attitude. I think I was about 23 when it finally clicked to like, 'Hey, this is not what I want to keep doing. I'm walking around feeling sorry for myself, and it's causing me not to go anywhere or do anything or be anything.'"

He moved to Cape Girardeau in February of 2004, and a hair-fashion school, the Cape Girardeau School of Beauty Culture, on Broadway caught his eye on a stroll around town months later.

"I just happened to go for a walk to see if I could find a different job, get into school, do something, just to explore the town a little bit, and I walked by the barber school and was like, 'Hey, I like to cut hair,'" Reid said.

He got an application, filled it out and returned the next day. Upon his return, he was told a student due to graduate in a couple weeks wanted to speak with him.

The student was Aubrey Daniel, who was paralyzed from the waist down. Daniel, the current owner of Fro Shapers, already had a shop lined up across the street. Reid said he was offered a chair at Daniel's then-place, "The Shop," if he completed the course and got his license.

"I think it was because he was facing, not the same challenges because I'm not paralyzed, but similar challenges as far as mentally and things we had to overcome to do what we were doing," Reid said. "I think he was more, I don't know, proud of me for even making an attempt to do this. And basically if I succeeded, he would reward me with a chair. He didn't know me at the time, and I didn't cut any hair for him. All he did was hear about me."

Reid completed the 1,000 hours of course work over seven months, then had to pass the boards in St. Louis, performing tasks before a panel. He was most nervous about being able to put perm rollers in hair, and was just hoping his grading on hair cutting would balance out some of the trickier requirements that he didn't see himself performing down the road.

"As far as cutting hair, I was pretty confident I could do it, but I was more worried about other people's confidence in me, than my own, at that time," Reid said. "It was more what will other people think, because I can get 100 barber licenses, but you still need someone to let you cut their hair. Barber licenses don't come equipped with customers. You know, 'Here's your first 100 customers, congratulations.' You still have to get people to sit down in your chair. So that was probably my biggest concern."

The customers have been coming, especially on days after a Cavalier loss. Reid said some of his clients like to "push his buttons" about LeBron.

"I don't like when he loses, but when he loses, people tend to want to come in and get a haircut from me," Reid said with a laugh.

He'll play along, pretending not to know who LeBron is or to even be a sports fan, ignoring his decor or the TV in the room tuned to ESPN.

It's his home, a world away from where he was.

"I like people," Reid said. "I talk to the people and talk about sports, life, anything, just what's going on with them. I like to be appreciated and making people look good, and just being able to interact with people again. Being a barber kind of helped me come out of that shell. It got me back to my real personality again. When I got hit by a train, I kind of shut down and went into a shell in a real, real dark place.

"I went through homelessness, depression, self-esteem issues, and barbering makes me feel important again. You know, like, regular, normal again, and I hadn't felt that way in years before I started cutting hair, or to be known for something other than having one hand. When I became a barber, I became 'Chuck the Barber' now, not 'Chuck the Guy with the One Hand.' You know what I'm saying? It gave me, like, a new identity. I enjoy it, and of course the money is not bad either. You get paid to do something I don't mind doing, and I like doing. I guess they say that's the best career to have if you get paid for doing something you like doing. And I definitely like cutting hair."

His father, a man Reid said should have turned his back on him but never did, passed away in 2014. Spiritual but not necessarily religious, Reid said he still receives daily pep talks from his dad.

Reid married his wife, Jarica, in 2010, and the couple has a 4-year-old son named Lindell, after the man who bought his son his first clippers and was his first customer.

"Dad kind of lit the spark," Reid said. "I didn't know that day that he was basically handing me my career, or my future, or how I would eventually provide for myself or my kids or my family. And now looking back, I know that's exactly what he did that day. His intentions might have been that he was just saving him some money from paying $50 for two haircuts. That day he actually started me on my career path I ended up choosing, and Aubrey gave me my first shot, and I can never forget that. That meant a lot."

As for where he was going as he walked along the tracks that day more than 22 years ago, he was taking a shortcut, one he always was told not to do, as he readied for his grandfather's funeral the next day.

"I was on my way to get a haircut," Reid said.

He's finally arrived at The Shop.

jbreer@semissourian.com

(573) 388-3629