I can’t tell you how much I hated going with Papa to the neighborhood barber shop in South Philly. In those anything but “Happy Days” before the mop-topped Beatles set a new standard, pre-teen boys like myself were regularly subjected to that classic military crew cut. 

Not only did it make my head feel naked and exposed, it also drew unwanted attention to my already well-endowed schnozzola (proof positive that I was related to Jimmy Durante). Being below average height and weight, I could have been the poster child for the March of Dimes.  

Papa loved his trips to the barber shop. It was his chance to visit with Louie the barber and all the old Italian guys who hung out there with nothing better to do than gossip away their retirements. The women who gathered around Mama’s kitchen table did the same thing, gabbing about who was doing what to whom, and how many times and what time of day they did it. Viva la différence?

Papa always went first. Which left me to sit in one of the plastic covered chairs in absolute dread of what was to come. After Papa’s already short hair was trimmed and his neck and shoulders brushed off with a sweep of Louie’s experienced hands, I took the hot seat. The ordeal seemed to last forever, partly because Louie kept pausing to accentuate some point with his hands (Italians can’t speak without them). 

When it was finally over, Papa would pay Louie a buck (maybe it was less) and bid arrivederci to the guys. I avoided glancing in the wall-length mirror as I brushed hair off my shirt. I had to keep reminding myself that it would grow back. Not quickly enough, of course. 

At some point, I got too old for Papa to take to Louie’s shop. Much to Papa -- and Louie’s-- dismay, I started growing my hair (emulating my hero John Lennon). When I passed Louie’s shop, he’d stick his head out the door and, like Mae West, tell me I should come up and see him sometime.

“I don’t need no haircut today, Louie,” I’d say.

“Ya starting to look like a damn hippie.” 

I know it was meant to insult me, but all I wanted to do was burst into song: “Give me a head of hair, long beautiful hair!” Instead, I just kept walking.

According to an article I just finished reading in the Press of Atlantic City the neighborhood barber is going the way of the shoe repair shop or the small grocer. It seems that, not surprisingly, the chain store hair-styling places are sending Louie and his compañeros to join the millions of others on the country’s unemployment lines.

“It’s a piece of Americana we’re losing,” said Bob Marvey, whose family owns a St. Paul, Minnesota company that, since 1936, has manufactured those trademark red, white and blue-striped poles that used to hang outside barber shops. 

As much as I hated getting my head mowed there, I know that for Papa and the Italian guys who hung there, the barber shop was a place they found comaraderie with their paesani from “the old country.” The barber shop was the kind of community they craved. 

A fancy hair-styling boutique just wouldn't cut it.