ABERDEEN, S.D. (AP) - Aberdeen barber Don Gisi has racked up about 300,000 haircuts since he opened his shop on South Main Street in Aberdeen 50 years ago.

Celebrating a golden anniversary of work isn't quite enough to make him hang it up, though.

"A customer asked me the other day if I planned to retire," said Gisi, 74. "I told him, 'I am going to retire when I die, and I hope I am halfway through your haircut when that happens.'"

The customer said he would prop up Gisi and make him finish the job, Gisi said.

He's also a stand-up comic who gets on stage at Centennial Village, a re-created pioneer village he maintains and helped develop at the Brown County Fairgrounds. Humor comes in handy because a barber, by his attitude, can make or break a customer's day, Gisi said.

He even sees the lighter side of rising costs. He charged 50 cents for a haircut in 1958. Today his fee is $11.

"When I started I drove a cheap Chevy, and all I wanted was to drive an expensive car," he said. "Now I drive an expensive car, but it's still a cheap Chevy."

When he started, Aberdeen had about 40 barbers. Today there are five, he said.

Learned to laugh

Gisi learned early in life how to laugh.

"Mom always said, 'If you have no sense of humor, you're already dead, and they might as well bury you,'" Gisi recalled. He, however, has no intention of ever going 6 feet under.

"I'm going to be cremated and have my ashes spread on the fairgrounds, so people can walk all over me like they did when I was alive."

Some people display trophies of deer and antelope they've shot. Gisi displays a set of bull horns that stretch across the top of the front door of his shop.

"That's my trophy. I shoot the bull," he said.

Gives back

There's a serious side to Gisi, too, especially when it comes to community service. He puts up the 50 state flags at Wylie Park and has plans to install 50 state flags and nine tribal flags at the fairgrounds.

He has become a friend to many an inmate at the Brown County Jail, where he cuts hair and in some ways serves as an advocate for those who are paying for their mistakes.

"I have friends in low places," he said.

For 27 years, he has enlisted the help of inmates, juvenile and adult, to perform all kinds of work at Centennial Village.

"They are good workers" who relish the chance to be outdoors, he said. "I tell them if they don't work, I won't bring them back."

'Kids are the greatest'

His heart has a special place for the children brought to him for haircuts, too.

"Kids are the greatest," he said.

Gisi's shop features a gum ball machine. He gives each child client a penny to operate it.

"It teaches them two things," he said: how to operate a machine, and that there's not always a choice in life because you take what the machine gives you.

But people can choose to be positive or negative, he said.

"I like to say, 'I've seen yesterday, I love today, and I can't wait until tomorrow.'"