Nichols, Lavon’s Albany treasures

ALBANY — Go to Anytown, USA, and you’ll find a place where people gather, to discuss the world’s problems, to share the latest gossip or just to find a friendly face.

Call it the “Cheers” corollary — “Sometimes you wanna go, where everybody knows your name. Where they’re always glad you came.” Call it the quest for a Floyd’s Barber Shop like the one Andy and Barney always went to in Mayberry.

In Albany, that place is Lavon’s His & Her Hair Styles.

Started by a “scared-to-death” 27-year-old Lavon Nichols at the insistence of businessman Roy Turner, who owned the 1104 N. Slappey Blvd. property where Lavon’s would be located, the barber shop became more than a place to get a trim or the latest hairstyle.

So much more.

“Boy, if the walls of that place could talk,” Nichols laughed as she reminisced about the business that became one of her life’s passions. “Some of our government leaders would come in, and they’d end up deciding city and county business right there in the shop. Doctors would diagnose patients, and sometimes customers would tell me things that I’ll take with me to my grave.

“Luke Bryan got his first haircut sitting on a booster in one of my chairs. I have customers who went 30 years and some 40 years without anybody else ever touching their hair.”

As Nichols waxes nostalgic about her 40-plus-year career, all but four of it at the North Slappey site that bears her name, tears flow freely. A nasty fall and subsequent shoulder injury, in effect, ended her career as a legion of customers’ preferred barber/hair stylist. She tried, despite her doctor’s insistence that she not, to come back after the injury, but the pain was unbearable.

“My orthopedist at the Hughston Clinic looked at my MRI about two or three months before I was getting ready to go back to work, and he said, ‘Girl, what I’m seeing is not good for the career you’re in,’” Nichols said. “He told me that if I went back to cutting hair, I’d end up needing a shoulder replacement.

“He told me, ‘Maybe it’s time for you to think about going out on top.’”

For three weeks, Nichols ignored her doctor’s suggestion. But even she knew she couldn’t continue.

“Every time I think about (making the decision to stop cutting hair), I cry,” Nichols said. “(Husband) Skip will see the look on my face and tell me, ‘Everything’s going to be OK.’ Leaving this place, though, is the toughest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

Nichols had no problem deciding what to do with her life once she graduated Albany High School. She’d started cutting her mother’s hair at a young age, and as word of her talent spread among family members, more of them came to her for styles and cuts.

Nichols became a licensed stylist through a cosmetology program at Albany Vocational Technical School (now Albany Technical College), and she quickly landed a job with Tom Evans at his Evans of Albany shop.

“Ms. Juanita Twitty at Albany Vo-Tech told me that I had a natural gift for hair,” Nichols said. “Going through the program they had typically took 12 months, but after six months Ms. Twitty told me I’d already surpassed what she taught in her class. I sat for the state boards in Atlanta and got my license.”

One of Nichols’ regular customers at Evans of Albany was businessman Roy Turner. He offered Nichols an unusual proposition one day after getting a cut.

“Mr. Turner told me he wanted me to come by his house after I got off work to talk with him and his wife,” Nichols said. “When I got there, he asked me, ‘How’d you like to go into business for yourself?’ I told him I wasn’t ready for that, but he insisted otherwise. He told me he wanted me to go to work at a place he owned and encouraged me to turn in my two-weeks notice.”

Turner talked Nichols out of her initial reluctance and convinced her that his plan was the right choice for her.

“I kind of dreaded going in to talk with Tom about leaving, but he was supportive,” Nichols said. “He told me he was just glad to have had me as long as he did.”

New businesses often take time to build, but the largest majority of Nichols’ customers at Evans of Albany followed her to Lavon’s on North Slappey.

“My first customer at the new place was C.D. Ranew,” Nichols said. “We were cleaning up the shop, getting things ready, and he knocked on the door. I opened the door and he said, ‘I’m so proud of you for making this move. Now, I need a haircut.’ I told him we wouldn’t be open for a couple of days, that I had all this mess sitting around that needed to be cleaned up, but he didn’t care.

“So I sat him in my chair and gave him that first haircut.”

Lavon’s opened on July 8, 1981, and it was an immediate success. House District 152 Rep. Ed Rynders, one of many political regulars, says he understands why.

“I don’t know of anything more Americana than sitting in a barber chair for a haircut,” Rynders, who represents District 152 in the Georgia House, said. “A place like Lavon’s is where you can get the pulse of a community. It’s a good way for elected officials to stay grounded.”

Nichols, meanwhile, said her initial fears about opening a new business were quickly alleviated.

“There were people waiting when we opened the doors,” she said. “And we always had people waiting. I never did haircuts by appointment, I didn’t think that would be fair for the people who were siting and waiting. There were usually five or six people waiting for me, and I steered all of the walk-ins and the people who didn’t have time to wait to the other stylists in the shop.

“There were a lot of people, though, who would always wait for me. If I was on vacation or out sick, they said they’d wait until I got back. I had customers that went off to college who wouldn’t get their hair cut until they came back to Albany.”

Local politicians — Rynders, Lamar Parr, Jeff Sinyard, Larry Bays among them — often led the political talk at Lavon’s over the years, but Nichols’ customer base was as diverse as Albany’s population.

“I cut four generations of customers’ hair, people from all walks of life,” she said. “I cut the hair of doctors, lawyers, ministers, politicians and just regular folks. I even cut the hair of some of the homeless who came in asking for money. My clientele became a part of my extended family, and I’m going to miss them. All of them.”

Nichols said she will even miss giving the “last haircut” to the deceased at Kimbrell-Stern Funeral Directors.

“I got a call asking if I’d do hair at the funeral home, and I admit it was a little strange at first,” she said. “But I knew the families wanted their loved ones to go away looking as good as possible. I told them to bring me a photo of the person being buried, and I’d do as good a job as I could. It was another way that I tried to please people.

“I cut a lot of my clients’ hair when they were in the hospital, and when some were too sick to go out I cut their hair in their homes. And, yes, I buried a lot of the customers that I dearly loved.”

While Nichols laments her semi-forced retirement, there’s never a worry that she’ll become sedentary.

“Lord, that’s not me,” she said. “I can’t sit still. I’ve bought property over the years, and I’m going to spend my time managing the property. One of the nice things about doing this is that mine and Skip’s children (son Chris and daughter Trena) are now getting more involved in the family business, so we get to do a lot more together.

“We’re traveling a bit, and we’re spending more and more time with our grandkids (Wilder, 11, and Chloe, 8), trying to teach them the same kind of work ethic we grew up with. And I’m developing close relationships with some of the people who are renting our properties. It’s always been about people for me.”

One of Chris Nichols’ wife’s friends, Christi Peavy, approached Lavon Nichols about taking over the business at Lavon’s. Though tentative at first, Nichols slowly accepted the reality that it was time for her career as one of Albany’s favorite barbers/hair dressers to end. On June 1, Peavy became the proprietor of Lavon’s.

“She told me people would hate her if she changed the name, so it’s still Lavon’s,” Nichols said, and again the tears flowed freely.

Time, the poets say, heals wounds, and so it will most likely be for Lavon Nichols. She admits she’s “adjusted” — even “getting a little excited” — about the things that occupy her time now. But there’s a bit of her that will never be soothed.

“That place, that profession, they’re just in my blood,” Nichols said. “And all those wonderful people I met over the years, I will miss being around them, although I expect many of them will come see me in my new office (in the former Lamar Parr Plaza on Palmyra Road).

“I’m adjusting. I will adjust. But not being part of Lavon’s, I’ll never get over it.”