After more that 30 years of tending to people's hair as a barber in the Junction, Michael Hunter has retired to travel the country.

Hunter began working at the West Alaska Barber Shop, 4310 S.W. Alaska St., in 1978 after a stint as a server at the former Pioneer Banque restaurant. He bought the business a year and a half later. In 1989 he opened Hairways at 4430 California Ave. S. W.

“It was always an old-fashioned barber shop with a barber pole outside,” said Hunter, 58, who lived many years in Arbor Heights. "I had one bench and was a one-man band. It was a gathering place for guys to talk, to complain about taxes and politicians.”

Hunter attributes his retirement plans in part to meeting a lady and wanting to travel with her.

“I have taken just two vacations in the last 20 years, and haven’t seen a lot of the United States,” he said. “We will make a big circle, Yellowstone, the Badlands, New York City.”

He said over the years his customers were from “many walks of life.”

He recalled, “Rich men would come in and tell me about their property in Hawaii and complain that they had traveled so much they were trying to think of a place to go where they haven’t been. Others came to me and would say they needed to ‘neaten up’ for a job interview but had no money. I’d try to help with a ‘good-luck haircut’ for free, and asked them to come back when they got a job. And they actually did.”

Hunter has amusing memories of kids coming in for trendy haircuts modeled after movie stars and athletes.

“During the Cindy Lauper era, one girl wanted me to shave one side of her hair, and to create a butterfly on the shaved part. When she was home she’d flip her long hair over the shaved butterfly to hide it from her parents. Then when she went out she’d flip it the other way.

“When the (1985) Arnold Schwarzenegger movie ‘Commando’ came out, and then Dolph Lundgren from Rocky IV (also in 1985) junior high boys all came in wanting a flattop.

“Brian Bosworth (the Seattle Seahawk) was huge. Kids came in wanting the Boz’s haircut, flat on top, shaved on one side.

“A 250-pound Samoan walked in with his petit wife, maybe a hundred pounds,” Hunter said. “She wanted his pony tail cut off. It was a good three inches thick and he’d tucked it under his belt. He seemed more subdued afterward. I rubber-banded both ends and they saved it to donate to the American Cancer Society.”

Hunter said he has had a wonderful life cutting hair in West Seattle and watching many customers who received their first hair cut at Hairways grow up in his barber chair and come in as professionals, with kids of their own.

Said Hunter, who jokes about being bald but in fact sports a distinguished white mane, thicker in the back, “I just want to let people know I have appreciated their patronage and conversation. For 30 years I have lived through their stories and they have enriched my life immensely. I want to say thank you.”