FORT SCOTT — Matt Park cut hair in a downtown Fort Scott storefront for six years before moving his barbershop, Hare & Crow, into a more than 100-year-old railroad caboose on his family's farm this fall.
Saturday afternoon, the caboose was packed, with new customers stepping in every few minutes as Park cut hair and talked.
Park and his wife, Krista, moved to Bourbon County from Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 2020. The farm, located on 205th Street just north of Highway 54, has been in her family for generations.
"My wife's family is from here. Her grandmother grew up in that house right behind us," Park said. "Her name was Helen Carson, and it goes back several generations. Helen's mom and dad ran a dairy off of this farm."
The couple's four children, ages 10 to 16, are the seventh generation on the property, Park said. The family homeschools and homesteads, raising cows, chickens and other livestock.
Park said returning to the Midwest was the main reason for the move. The family hadn't felt entirely at home in the South, he said, and wanted to return to the region.
Park opened his downtown shop that same year at 118 S. Main St., in a building formerly owned by photographer Gary Palmer. He bought the building and operated the shop there until August.
The family had accomplished what it wanted with the building, Park said, and further improvements would take too much time or money. Instead, they decided to focus on family, the homestead and the barbershop.
Park said the building has been sold to Jared Weaver. Branch Coffee, which shared the space, is relocating, with owner Ken Walker opening a restaurant and cafe in the historic Kingfisher Inn mansion at 742 S. National Ave in Fort Scott.
Weaver has ideas for the building but no firm plans yet, Park said.
"But I think he's got good ideas and good taste," he said. "So I can't wait to see what he does with it."
Park is a relative newcomer to barbering. He trained at Headlines Barber Academy in Kansas City and began cutting hair in 2020, after about 15 years in the coffee business.
He started at a Starbucks in Springfield, Missouri, worked in local coffee shops in Louisville, Kentucky, and eventually owned a coffee shop in Chattanooga.
"Which I learned very quickly I wasn't very good at," Park said. "Running a coffee business, for me, was — it kind of took the joy out of the coffee business."
The idea of becoming a barber came from a novel. Park said he read Wendell Berry's "Jayber Crow," the story of a barber in a small Kentucky town, in 2019.
"It was kind of the thing that made me realize I think I could enjoy doing — becoming a barber," he said. "I knew like that's kind of what I wanted to do. Space for community to gather like they used to in old barber shops."
Barbershops once served as community gathering places, Park said, but the business has become more appointment-based and consumer-driven.
The shop's name comes from the same book. "Crow" honors the novel's title character, Park said, while "Hare" is a play on words.
The caboose came from Johnnie Walker, whose property Park was exploring in 2020, shortly after moving to town.
"I love the junk, the picking thing, the antiques thing," Park said. "He was like, 'Well, I think I might have something you'd really be into,' and he showed me three barber chairs he had tucked away in a barn."
Park bought the chairs and a shoeshine chair for his son. He said he also fell in love with the caboose but had no reason to buy it at the time.
When the family decided to move the barbershop to the farm, the original plan was to build a small cabin. But the contractor's estimates were "a little bit terrifying" for such a small space, Park said, and the contractor eventually backed out because of other work.
"I was kind of up a creek, I thought," Park said. "And then my wife was like, 'Well, what about that caboose? It's already built. We just have to fix it up.' I was like, 'Good point.'"
Walker had other people interested in the caboose, Park said, but liked the idea of seeing it restored and put to use rather than simply parked on someone else's property.
"We're hatching some harebrained schemes to go along with this now," Park said.
Park said the caboose is a Frisco railroad car. A post on frisco.org, a railroad enthusiast forum, indicated it was on the tracks in 1914, he said.
The renovation took longer than expected.
"Every project takes about three times longer than you expect, at least," Park said. "'Cause it's over a hundred years old, I think."
The shop is open, though work on the caboose is not finished. Exterior work remains, and Park plans to install a wood stove once the roof is complete.
Hare & Crow is open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Friday and 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday.
Park said he has wanted to bring in a second barber for years, though he would rent a station rather than hire an employee.
"That's the thing that I love about barbering, too, is that I don't have to hire somebody," he said. "I can just rent a station to them."
Barbers are a dying breed in some ways and making a comeback in others, Park said, though most younger barbers are working in cities.
"I think there are young barbers that are coming back into it," he said, "and hopefully they'll find their way into rural America."
Park, who holds a bachelor's degree in English, said the conversations that unfold in the barber's chair are part of the appeal.
"That's part of the beauty of a barbershop anyway," he said, "is the tangents, the rabbit trails, the side tracks."
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