HARTSELLE, Ala. — This story is cutting-edge.
A pole missing from a northern Alabama barbershop for 14 years has been returned to its rightful owner.
“I don’t know what to say,” Van Stisher, the owner of Val’s Barber Shop in Hartselle, told WHNT-TV. “I mean it’s crazy something like that meant so much to me.”
It's been a fixture in Hartselle, AL for over 60 years, and now, 14 years after it was stolen, it's back home.
— Rick Karle (@RickKarle) March 6, 2024
The story of The Barbershop Pole here 👇https://t.co/77t4NZ6UWF
📸 Van Stisher#BarbershopPole pic.twitter.com/KInlFcIyOK
Stisher bought the barbershop in 1999. According to Rick Karle, a broadcaster for two Birmingham television stations across 43 years, the shop was originally known as Pope’s Barbershop and was run by Bob White from 1963 until he sold it to Stisher.
The barber pole outside the business was a signature artifact from the past, but it was stolen in 2010, WHNT reported.
Stisher had given up on the pole until recently.
She told Karle that she was approached in a drugstore by a customer.
“He told me that he had learned that a local man who had just died had my barbershop pole,” she said. “He told me he was going to do his best to get the pole and bring it back to me.”
The man made good on his promise.
On Facebook, Karle wrote that “while people went to the polls (on Tuesday), the pole went to Van.”
Stisher was beyond thrilled.
“My heart was beating like a hundred miles an hour over a barber pole really but I told him I don’t really know what to say,” Stisher told the television station. “‘Thank you’ is just not enough; it really means the world to me.
“It’s been passed on and passed on and I got the honor of carrying on this barbershop you know.”
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