was slicked down by pomade, and his eyes seemed peculiar in their shape. It wasn’t until later when I studied anthropology that I learned about the tribes who had lived in the Steppes of Russia.
He looked my father squarely in the eye and said, “I am Putchenkov.” He extended his right hand and Papa did the same. I relaxed when both men shook hands and my father replied, “I am Antonio Galen.”
The other man winked.
“Was not Gallini?”
My father nodded and again the man laughed.
“Ya, they tried make me ‘Putch.’ I said I was not dog, and Putchenkov was good name.
“Now,” and he looked down at me, “what is name?”
“Berto,” Papa replied.
“Call me Thomas, Thomas the Barber.”
“It’s my birthday,” I said.
“Ah, Berto, come in. I cut your hair!”
In those days, haircuts for men were twenty-five cents, thirty-five with a shave. Kids were ten cents. Papa shook his head.
“I cannot pay you.”
“No, no. Is birthday gift.”
To this day, whenever I enter a true barbershop for men—not those fancy, unisex salons and hair-stylist joints—the scents of bay rum, lilac, allspice, and antiseptic trigger my olfactory memory of that day when I first entered the shop of Thomas the Barber. Other scents I never learned to name emanated from the bottle-lined shelves on the mirror-covered walls. Shaving mugs, many of them personalized, hung from the back, and the small sink held the magical shaving soap and bristle brushes in a row. There were three, creamy-white, enameled pedestal chairs and six customer seats capped off by a table laden with issues of Police Gazette and Grit.
Mr. Putchenkov reached into a dark corner and pulled out a small, wooden, cushioned shelf. He placed it over the black leather seat, picked me up as if I were a feather, and sat me on the cushion. Then he draped a pinstriped, blue sheet around my chest and neck.
I kept looking at Papa, not knowing what to expect, especially when I saw Thomas pick up a big pair of scissors and a comb. He ran the comb through my hair, and suddenly I heard the snip-snip click, as the barber began to cut the shrub on top of my head.
Snip-snip click, snip-snip click. On it went, until my head actually felt lighter. He ran the comb through my hair then took another gadget, flipped a switch, and I felt the buzzing hum of the electric trimmer, as it moved up and down the back of my neck and under my ears.
When he stopped, he looked at me and asked, “You want shave?”
Papa laughed—again!
Mr. Putchenkov took a conical milk-glass bottle from the shelf and sprinkled a nice-smelling liquid on my head, massaged it in, then combed my hair back and said “done.”
I looked in the mirror. Damned if I didn’t look good!
Thomas turned to my father.
“When he need haircut, if he sweep floor that day, I do it. Okay to you, Antonio Gallini?”
They shook hands, and we left with me basking in the hair tonic Thomas the Barber had sprinkled on my head.
We walked a bit farther that sun-bright day and then slowly ambled back home. Mama saw us coming from the front window and waited for us at the top of the stairs. She stared at Papa in disapproval as we trudged in, but Papa’s face, his wide grin lighting up the furnace-burnt darkness, stopped her. He put his arms around her, the way he must have done when I wasn’t there, seemed to nibble on her ear and whispered, and then she giggled and smiled. She examined me, eyes sparkling, and said, “Bravo, Berto!”
What an amazing man Papa was!
I think of him now, when I see all the kids on medication to help keep them focused. If he were alive today he would have wrinkled his nose in disgust. I laugh to myself when I think of Papa and my first week at school.
When I started first grade, the teacher handed out workbooks. We didn’t have a nun in that grade. I suspect our teacher was a newly minted member of the education community paying her dues in a religious school in a bad neighborhood.
I looked through the manuals for spelling, reading, and arithmetic. By the end of the first week I had filled them all out, front to back. The teacher had a hissy fit when she saw what I had done. She wrote a note to my parents and sternly instructed me to take it to them.
I took longer than usual to walk home that day, and then I waited a bit before giving the note to Mama. She read it and frowned but said nothing. Later, when Papa came home, she showed it to him, and he frowned, too.
And me? I was afraid—very afraid.
Mama and Papa said nothing to me.
Next day at lunch I almost peed my pants, when Mama and Papa both walked into the classroom. He was wearing his work clothes, so he had given up his lunch break to come to my school.
I heard the young teacher greet them, somewhat surprised as well. I heard her describe my crime of completing all my work the first week of school. And then I heard something wonderful.
“Teacher lady, why is this bad?”
It was Papa!
She stammered for a moment, as my father’s eyes bored into her. This was no ignorant immigrant worker.
I am sure she is dead now, but I bless that young woman for having the common sense largely missing today when she replied, “You’re right, Mr. Galen. Let me see what I can do.”
I hope God lets her know about my words of thanks. From then on, that dear woman brought in books from her own library for me to read, while the other kids did “Dick and Jane.”
Maybe if I had been a schoolchild today I would have been classified as ADD, ADHD, or QRSTUV. On the other hand, my mind does tend to wander.
We were talking about the barber.
About every six weeks I would show up at Mr. Putchenkov’s shop. There I would grab a broom handle—which was far taller than I was—and round up the piles of black, brown, blond, red, and gray-white hairs lying in clumps on the tile floor around each barber chair.
It used to remind me of the shaggy fur falling off the mange-laden dogs that wandered the neighborhood, often serving as large-sized cats when they chased down and ate the numerous rats living there.
It was a steamy-hot July day. The air was heavy, a mixture of various shop scents, musky male sweat, and stogie-smoking customers, all overpowered by the stench of whatever was decaying in the river. I had been sweeping for awhile but had to stop and catch my breath.
This was in the days before air conditioning, and even the black-enameled, reciprocating, metal-bladed fan did little to relieve the stifling humidity.
How did Papa manage to survive the foundry furnace heat?
“Here,
