HALL OF FAME barber

President Nixon was threatening to escalate the Vietnam War by ordering U.S. forces to cross into neutral Cambodia. Four students were shot dead by Ohio National Guardsmen. The Beatles were releasing “Let It Be,” their 12th and final album. Oregonians were flocking to the State Capitol Building in Salem to catch a glimpse of the Apollo 11 command module that had been on the moon the previous summer.

And University of Oregon freshmen Steve Prefontaine and Dan Fouts were looking for a place to get a haircut. They found it on East 13th Avenue.

It was May 1970.

“It was the only place in town,” Fouts said. The UO football team’s starting quarterback in the early 1970s, he went on to a Hall of Fame pro career with the San Diego Chargers, but Friday he was back at Pete Peterson’s Red Rooster Barber Shop on the UO campus, celebrating 40 years of haircuts with an old friend.

Peterson reminded Fouts that his was one of six shops on campus back then.

“You must have been the cheapest then,” Fouts said.

Peterson recalled charging $3.50 back when he started cutting hair at the shop he now owns. Today he charges $15.

“We’re still under-priced,” said Peterson, 67.

Peterson, who lives in Harrisburg with his wife of 47 years, Shannon, celebrated his 40th anniversary on the UO campus by inviting all of his customers — many of them former UO athletes and coaches — family and friends to a party and serving them cake.

After all, what else goes better with hair? Actually, the party was next door from the shop in a side room at Taylor’s Bar & Grille.

“It’s to thank (them) for being customers and friends,” said Peterson, who estimates that he has given more than 200,000 haircuts since starting his career in Corvallis in 1967. “I wanted to thank them for keeping me in business.”

Is he retiring?

“Oh, heck no,” Peterson said. “You can’t quit doing something you love to do.”

The Red Rooster Barber Shop is an old-school, real man’s barber shop. It’s a place where clients come as much for the banter with Peterson, who isn’t always the most politically correct person, as anything else.

“He’s a funny guy and I relate to him,” said Doug Little, who was known as “Cowboy” when he played basketball at the UO from 1969 to 1973. He still gets his hair cut by Peterson. “Even if the haircuts were $30, I’ll still go to Pete,” he said.

Same with Joe Jameson, a 1972 UO graduate: “The stories are worth $10, and the haircut $5,” he said.

“I’m a barber kind of guy,” said Gary Zimmerman of Bend, an offensive lineman for the Ducks in the early 1980s who played for the Denver Broncos and Minnesota Vikings and, like Fouts, is also now in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

“Guys were going to a stylist and that kind of stuff,” Zimmerman said of other UO football players. “And I always went to a barber, and I went into Pete. He cuts hair on the side. The entertainment value’s worth more than the haircut. You go in there and get all the hot fishing stories and all the stuff like that.”

Fouts, who lives in Sisters and is a longtime pro football analyst for TV, said something else kept him coming back to Peterson for haircuts, even after he graduated.

“He has the best magazines,” Fouts said with a wink.

“I’ve got 40 years worth of Playboys in the back room,” Peterson said proudly.

Peterson’s shop is filled with all things UO sports. From the photos of former Duck greats, to the posters, to the Prefontaine Classic poster in the front window that has a photo of “Pre” and a thought balloon coming from his mouth that says, “Welcome to Eugene! Yeah, this is where I got my hair cut!”

In fact, on May 29, 1975, the day before the UO track legend was killed in a single-car accident near Hendricks Park, he made an appointment to get his hair cut by Peterson.

“Pre came through the door and he walks in and writes down his name for 2 o’clock in the afternoon,” Peterson recalled. “Then he left. He came back, picked up the pencil, drew a line through his name and said he had to go get ready for the race. He wanted to concentrate on the race and get his hair cut later. He died that night.”

Prefontaine was killed in the early morning hours of May 30, 1975, after his final race at Hayward Field. Peterson still has the appointment schedule, framed on the wall, with “PRE” and the line through it.

In 2003, Peterson told a writer for the Sports Illustrated supplemental magazine, “SI on Campus”: “I cut Pre’s hair so that he didn’t waste time flipping it out of his eyes. I was as cocky a barber as he was a runner.”