WEST CHESTER - Coming into West Chester on Route 202 from Route 1, there is Jimmy John's Pipin' Hot Sandwiches, countless car dealerships, and just next door to Jimmy John's - Tony Polito's Barber Shop.
When you take your first step into the barbershop, the first things you notice are the barber chairs, Polito, and the military memorabilia he has collected over the decades.
Polito, who has lived his entire life in West Chester, will celebrate 50 years of being a barber on Friday.
Although Polito enjoys being a barber, which you'd assume since he's been doing it for half a century, he chose it as a career because "it got me out of the grocery store," Polito joked.
Polito's parents owned a grocery store in West Chester, and he knew he didn't want to work there for the rest of his life. Through a friend and a relative, becoming a barber was suggested. And on Oct. 1, 1959, he received his barber's license. Not too long afterward, he got his first job at a barbershop in what would eventually become the shopping center at the intersection of Route 202 and Route 1 - before it was developed.
Then, 30 years ago, he bought the shop next to Jimmy John's and he's been there ever since, never taking a week's vacation, he said, but relying on three- and four-day weekends, with the exceptions of getting sick and being in the hospital.
From 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, the 68-year-old Polito said, "[I] just go to work."
But after 50 years, "I keep threatening to take some time off and go somewhere."
He just might.
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