My Cousin Vinny

This is how it feels sometimes. We are all related right. All the Vinnies and the Michaels, and the Anthonys, and the Josephs. Anyone with the vowel on the end of their name, only this Vinny was Spanish, not Italian, and he wasn't a cousin, he was a barber, and that was just the beginning, well I guess the beginning and the end.

Understand, that in the time I had been here, exactly a week, I had not seen much traffic in his shop (read none), and Monday afternoon when I decided I needed to "trim" there was one person in the shop, and he was not getting his hair cut, but rather sitting against the wall looking very dead. I later found out that I was not far off, he had stopped in to sit for a minute because he wasn't feeling well having just spent four days in the hospital.

When I opened the door this wave of nausea came over me, instantly. It had to be four hundred degrees in the shop, and there was an odor that could not be placed, described, or believed, but it was sort of a combination of dirty sweat socks, gingivitis, and roadkill. I pressed on.

I actually said out loud "feel like cutting hair," and the dead guy answered, just raising his head up ever so slightly, and in a very breathless manner, "of course." At this point I was not sure if anyone in the place was alive, and feared that I was soon to join them. I pressed on.

Vince rose up out of the chair, painfully slowly, and just stood there, apparently waiting for me to take the seat he had been occupying. I did so feeling like if there was a way I could run without being incredibly rude, and hurting this old gentlemen's feelings I would do so. I put my foot, heel first, on the foot rest and placed myself gently, cautiously, into the chair.

Vince shuffled over to the counter, minutes passed, and he came back with a towel, a full sized towel, and wrapped it around my neck, then the black barbers apron, and some sort of pin. I was in, and he pressed on. I was holding my breath.

Vince reached for the clippers, big, heavy, and long guide. He dove into the back of my neck, not my hair, my neck!! He eventually got the angle right to start cutting some hair, some?? Next came another pair of clippers, with a smaller guard, and then another one smaller yet, and virtually no guide. I was doomed, and stuck. He pressed on, I still did not have the ability to breath.

At this point the dead guy rose...he spoke..."thanks Vince," and he was gone.

Behind me I noticed this noise, getting louder and louder. I was trying to figure out what it was. At first it sounded like the TV at three o'clock in the morning, after the test pattern is gone and the National Anthem is over, and all that is left is static. Does that even happen anymore?? Then I began to pick out sound bites, first Kenny Rodgers on what turned out to be a soft country station, and then someone talking about the BCS standings on ESPN Radio, and then a song that came out when I was in college, early 1980s, and on and on. An infinite loop of three intermingled, and very ill matched radio stations, plus tons of static, to go with the blasting heat and the odd, sickening smells. he pressed on, and I still had not taken a breath.

There was the moment when the chair started to spin, and I with it, because the clippers were pressing into the side of my neck, and with the resistance Vince pushed harder and harder. There was the moment that the sheers came out and I realized that they had never been sharpened, not since he came to this country in 1955. There was the truly unbelievable moment when, like any good old time barber, he took out the straight razor to clean up the back of my neck. If I had not felt like running before I certainly did at this point, but I figured I was in this far I was going to see it through, or quite literally die trying. The straight razor was no sharper than the clippers, or the sheers, or any of the inhabitants of the shop were, your truly very much included.

When he was finished I thanked him, gave him ten dollars, which meant a two dollar tip, and then listened as he told me of when he had come over, and where he had lived in Spain, and of his kids that were born here and now are grown and gone away...to California. I then walked up the street to the "salon" and made an appointment for the next day. My hair is very short now.

If I were rich I would buy this man a palace, and hire him maids, and butlers, and drivers, and whatever else he needed in an attempt to allow him some time to not sit in that shop and wait for someone to walk in.

Thank you again for getting this far with me.