“One of my clients gave me half of his stimulus check. I take care of people, that's what they tell me. So they took care of me for a while.”
“In October of last year, I was thinking I had two more years in the barber shop. Things were going well okay and I started getting my Social Security check and clearing out my credit cards and paying my bills off. I was on top of the world in January because my bills were going away. I wanted to just move on and find a tiny house and retire. Then I just happened to find what I was looking for, a tiny house on a corner of Madison Street in Granite City.
Then all of a sudden I couldn’t work from March up until June because of the COVID shutdown. There was no money. But I have clients who have been with me for 45 years and about 20 of them actually helped support me. They actually supported me through this. One of my clients gave me half of his stimulus check. I take care of people, that's what they tell me. So they took care of me for a while. That’s what happens when you stay in one place for a long time. With people helping me through, I was actually one of the blessed ones. I hope other people thought about their barbers because there's a lot of broke barbers now and I just hope that people have helped them.
Another thing that happened during shutdown is that I found out I need to work because if in the winter I’m retired and I'm sitting at home, what am I going to do all day? Yes, I have my art and stuff like that I'm doing, but I need to work. This is so much a part of me, touching people and making people happy. When you leave that, you've got a big void in your life. When you've been around people your whole life, it’s just kind of necessary. I'm not going to sit in the house by myself, you know. You can't just sit in the house and that's what COVID made me understand. So I need to go on doing what I've been doing my whole life." -- Marilyn #Missouri
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