photo by: Contributed by Benjamin Kincaid

Benjamin Kincaid is pictured with his son Owen last weekend at Amyx Barbershop in downtown Lawrence. The Kincaids got their first haircuts at the shop — 35 years apart.

Benjamin Kincaid doesn’t live here anymore, but when it was time for his baby’s first haircut, he headed straight to Lawrence.

Downtown barber Mike Amyx gave Benjamin his first haircut 35 years ago, an event memorialized with a fuzzy film snapshot in the family photo album. And last weekend he gave Benjamin’s 16-month-old son, Owen, his first haircut too — crisply memorialized in a multiphoto digital library.

The technology might be extremely different, but the experience is perennial — and to a proud dad, priceless.

photo by: Contributed by Benjamin Kincaid

Lawrence barber Mike Amyx is pictured with Benjamin Kincaid getting his first haircut 35 years ago. Benjamin brought his baby son, Owen, to Amyx for his haircut last weekend.

photo by: Contributed by Benjamin Kincaid

Owen Kincaid is pictured with Lawrence barber Mike Amyx for his first haircut. Amyx gave Owen’s dad, Benjamin, his first haircut 35 years ago.

For Benjamin, a dentist who lives in Kansas City and works in Tonganoxie, the haircut was primarily about father-son bonding but also about honoring longtime relationships.

“I’ve known Mike my whole life,” he says. “His dad cut my dad and uncle’s hair.”

Amyx, having barbered at a shop downtown where his dad and grandfather had cut hair before him, says he has seen “all kinds of generations come through.”

“I’m cutting guys’ hair now that I’ve cut their kids’ hair and their grandchildren’s hair,” he says. “I don’t know if that tells me I’m getting old or not.”

Amyx’s dad, Tom, took over the family barbershop in 1955 from Tom’s dad, Cecil, who had run the shop at the same location downtown since 1942, although Cecil had been in the barbering profession long before, Amyx says.

“He was there in the 1920s, but the Depression took care of that,” he says.

Now in the 2020s, the Amyx men — including Mike’s brother John, who barbers down the street — have accounted for tons of hair on the barbershop floor and many a close shave.

“It’s a privilege to be able to get to know all the people that we’ve gotten to know over time,” Amyx says.

Now that little Owen has bravely donned a cape and embarked on a lifetime of haircuts, he’ll surely be back in Amyx’s chair for more, and that’s fine by Owen, judging by the delight he expressed with the experience.

“He’s a fun little guy,” says Amyx, who might use a different word to describe other boys undergoing the scissors for the first time.

“We won’t say that they’re not happy,” Amyx says. “We’ll just say that some of them may be concerned.”