Remembering Check Gordon’s Barbershop
Written by Justin D. Lamb
Check Gordon’s barbershop in the early 1940s.
Pictured standing left to right: Edgar Hamilton, Shep Holley, and Check Gordon.
Sitting: Sheriff Louis Lilley, Unknown Collins, Unknown
(Marshall County Genealogical Society)
During the early to mid-twentieth century, the barber shop was the center of life in many small communities. Not only was it the place to get a haircut and a fresh shave, but it was also where men went to pass the time of day. With the barber pole situated by the door and the smell of hair tonics in the air, men would gather in the high backed chairs or around a checker board to catch up on the latest gossip and news of the day.
For many years, Check Gordon’s barbershop on Poplar Street in Benton was the place to be for many men. “I remember there would be 12 to 15 men at a time squeezed into that little barbershop,” recalled Gene Hall Gordon, son of the late “Check” Gordon who ran the barbershop for nearly 50 years. “The barber shop closed at 6:30 at night, but it would be nearly 9:30 before everyone got out of there,” said Gordon. “It was simply the place to be,” he continued.
Born in 1899, Chester “Check” Gordon received an eighth grade education in the common schools of Marshall County. His family could not afford to send him to high school, so he took a job working at the Benton Hosiery Mill as a night watchman. It was there that Gordon met Lena Henson, a floor foreman at the mill, on a blind date. After a two year courtship, Gordon and Henson married in 1924.
The young couple lived with the bride’s parents in Benton before they moved to Detroit where Check went to work in the automobile factories. A year later, they returned to Benton and Check went to work on the Henson farm picking tomatoes while Lena worked at the shoe factory in Paducah. Times were hard in the late 1920s as the effects of the Great Depression began to take hold. “We struggled, but we survived,” recalled Lena Henson Gordon
Dissatisfied with life as a farmer and hoping to improve things for he and Lena, Check started working at the Village Barbershop with Mr. Harris in 1929. Soon after, he and Lena welcomed their son, Gene Hall Gordon. Check eventually became sole owner of the barber shop, and after seeing an increase in business, he was joined by partners, Elvis “Shep” Holley and Edgar Hamilton.
“Edgar Hamilton was a character,” recalled Gordon. “He was a jokester and always had some prank or joke going on,” he said. “People would stop in the barbershop even when they didn’t need a haircut just to see what was going on or what they were up to,” he concluded.
Check Gordon’s old barbershop as it looks today.
Stopping at the barbershop became a daily ritual for some of the businessmen in Benton. Some of the more prominent businessmen such as Fred Filbeck, Hatler Morgan, Lomond Trevathan, and Thomas Morgan would visit the barbershop every day to get a touchup trim, a fresh shave, and a shoe shine before going to work.
Another figure at the Gordon barbershop was a man simply known as “Gip” who was one of the few black men in Benton at the time. Gip shined shoes and lived in the back of the barbershop during the week, and on Friday afternoon, he would travel to Paducah where he shined shoes on the weekend.
By the late 1960s, American culture began to change and longer hairstyles became the norm for boys and men which caused a decline in the old fashioned barbershops. Check Gordon continued to cut hair until he retired in the early 1970s. Gordon passed away at age 85 in 1984.
“Many tales could be told about that old barbershop,” said Gordon. Indeed, the stories about Check Gordon’s barbershop are a reminder of simpler times of a bygone era.