Dick Kramer jokes that had he gone to college, he might have become an astrophysicist. But because he was a shy 14-year-old and didn't want to lose $50, he became a barber. ¶ How that happened is one of Kramer's famous stories -- the kind that keeps three generations of customers coming back to Dick's Sports Barbers in Edina.

The nearly all-male clientele, who sink down into green leather antique barber chairs for a haircut and a story -- or a haircut and a sympathetic ear -- range from men who've been on the cover of news magazines to teenagers who tell barbers things they won't tell their own fathers.

Tom Morgan, 33, has been coming to Dick's for haircuts ever since his cousins "dragged" him there 20 years ago because they thought his hair was too long. He drives out from downtown Minneapolis.

"Dick knows everything about everybody who sits in those chairs, and he remembers everything," Morgan said. "You might not be here for a month or two, but you sit down and it's like you were just here."

Carrie Knowles of Edina brings sons John, 3, and Connor, 2, to Dick's for haircuts "where the big boys go."

"We love Dick's," Knowles said. "If I drive down the street and they see [the shop] they scream to stop the car."

Kramer believes his is the busiest barbershop in the Midwest.

Nine barbers work there, making it a long way from the small St. Paul shop where Kramer started working as a barber in the 1960s. He said he made $7 the first week and $14 the second. When he complained, the older barber said, "You doubled your money!"

Kramer was still in his teens when a barber supply salesman told him a shop in Edina was for sale.

Kramer bought the tiny shop. This is how he says his first morning went:

A guy walked in, looked at the young barber and said, "Where the hell's George?" "I'm the barber now," Kramer answered.

"The hell you are," the man said, and stalked out.

Another man walked in. "Where the hell's George?" he said. Kramer said he was the barber.

"Good. George was blind as a bat," the man said, and sat down for a haircut.

Kramer built his clientele from there. "Once your name's on the lease, you get real friendly," he said. "You cut hair to make friends, not to make money. And when you get enough friends, you make money."

In the 1980s, Kramer also discovered that he had an artist's touch when high school athletes began asking for "cranial graphics." He and his barbers have carved everything from school logos to numbers to paisley designs into patrons' hair.

But Kramer said he likes it best when someone comes in and asks him to "do what needs to be done."

All four of Kramer's sons have been barbers, at least for a time. Two still work in the shop. Son Ryan was 33 when he fell and died in 2003 after losing his balance while sitting on an escalator handrail at the Mall of America. Kramer said barbering was his therapy as he struggled to deal with the loss.

"I was talking to people and they were there for me," he said. "The support was unbelievable."

Now, more about how Kramer became a barber.

He was in ninth grade when he had to interview someone about his job for a school assignment. The shy 14-year-old was only comfortable approaching Bill, a nice-guy barber in Lake Elmo.

Though Kramer was a talented runner in high school and was wooed by colleges, he thought of that deposit and said "no."

"I didn't go to college because I didn't want to lose that $50!" he now says with a laugh.

Mary Jane Smetanka • 612-673-7380