Ron Clark pauses for a moment to ponder a thought that occurred as he cut John Fitzpatrick’s hair on Wednesday afternoon.

“This is probably the oldest barber shop in the area, I imagine,” he said.

Ron’s Barber Shop, just off the square in Mexico, was Houchin’s when Clark started work in March of 1961. But the building has housed barbers dating back to 1907. So, yeah — probably.

This week Clark celebrated 60 years at the same location. When he started there were five barbers in the shop and dozens in town. Now he tends to customers alone, with some help from his brother, Mark Clark, on Saturdays.

“He’s been a barber for 40 years himself,” Clark observed.

He got his start as a teenager, doing the clean up work at a shop in Centralia. The first head he cut was that of the barber — “it couldn’t have been too good,” he said of the effort — and that led him to barber school in St. Louis at the age of 18.

Clark’s first job after six months of instruction was the same place he stands now.

“They ought to make you a national landmark,” Fitzpatrick said from the chair as Clark worked the electric clipper.

The building certainly has landmark character about it. The cash register was there when Clark took the job on March 4, 1961 and is still in use. Some of the chairs were built in the 1890s.

On a shelf scattered with dated photographs is an image of the building under construction in 1885. Another shot is of Clark’s 1965 Chevelle drag racer, something he took up in the ’70s.

And there’s Clark himself – a fixture, if not a landmark.

“I’m lucky,” he said. “My health is good and I like doing it.”

“I thought he was going to say he keeps going because of all the fine people who come in,” Ed Weber, a customer, chimed in with a laugh.

The number of heads Clark has trimmed over the decades is not countless. He has it recorded in a ledger – “it’s someplace,” he said, looking around – that was started long before he took over the business in 1970.

The tools of his trade haven’t changed much since he started. And his prices remain fair: $1.50 in 1961, $12 today.

What has changed is the camaraderie. The line of empty stations is a reminder of how vibrant the setting was in the 1960s.

“I do miss all the old barbers I worked with,” Clark said. “They’re all gone.”

He hopes the legacy will continue – that a barber shop will always exist in Mexico, a beacon from the past surrounded by stylists.

“I would hate to lock it up and leave and have no one to take it over,” he said of the shop. “I would hate for that to happen.”

It hasn’t for 60 years.

Clark recalls the trends toward longer hair that sent ripples through the industry in the ’70s. He talks of 12 hour days, cutting hair without a break – something he claims he couldn’t do nowadays.

Yet from his perspective, standing at a barber’s chair looking out at a small strip of Jefferson Street and the comings and goings of customers, 60 years just doesn’t seem that long at all.

“If I had it all to do over again, I’d do it,” he said.