Bill Downey stands in front of his barber shop on Clay Street where he has cut hair for 40 years.(The Vicksburg Post/MELANIE DUNCAN)

[8/31/2001]For 15 minutes Thursday as much time as he has between haircuts Vicksburg barber Bill Downey tried to cover all the things that have changed in his world over the past 40 years.

That’s how long Downey, 61, will have tended coiffures at his 2837 Clay St. location when he opens for business Saturday.

“Everything is different, drastically different,” Downey said as he finished one of the $8 haircuts he now administers every day except Sunday and Monday.

The cuts aren’t as close as they were in the early 1960s, and they’re not $1.25, either.

But through all the changes in prices and hairstyles, Downey has maintained a steady legion of faithful customers.

“Why do I come here?” customer Jerry Kinnebrew asked himself on Thursday, repeating a reporter’s question. “I guess just because he’s the same old Bill.”

A trip to his chair has become a monthly ritual for scores of Vicksburg men, an opportunity to jaw about hunting, fishing and politics with a man they think just happens to cut hair pretty well, too. Some of them, like Kinnebrew, have known Downey since his days at Culkin High School, where he graduated in 1957.

“Really, he runs one of the last true barber shops in town,” said Patty Neal, who’s worked beside Downey for 14 years.

“He’s just a good old guy, a good Christian with a great sense of humor. He makes for a great atmosphere.”

And Downey says he got into the business only upon the suggestion of his cousin, Bill Clark, also a Vicksburg barber.

“I was working road construction, and he said, Hey, Bill, you should try cutting hair,'” Downey said. “I just thought that might be a good idea.”

He started out working under Charles Van Hooser and Dan Butler across from the Vicksburg Hotel in 1959. He opened his current shop about two years later, operating under a motto that he still employs today.

“He says, If you haven’t had a haircut today, you need one,'” says Willie Woodrick, the other barber in Downey’s three-seat shop.

The day will come, Downey knows, when he’ll hang up his scissors. But the gregarious barber says retirement isn’t even on the horizon now.

“I wouldn’t make near enough money to retire on,” he says. “I’ll be here for a while yet.”