I grew up in East Camden during the 1950’s. Unlike the suburbs, most of the essentials were within walking distance of home. One of those places was Tony the Barber's, a storefront on the 2900 block of Westfield Avenue. It had a white barber pole out front with spiraling red and blue ribbons, two chairs, but only one barber. From the time I first needed a haircut and had to sit on the special booster seat placed across the arms of the barber chair, I got my haircuts from Tony. All the men in the neighborhood including my dad did too. In those days a barber shop was a ‘men only’ place.

Tony was a thin man with a thin face and a prominent roman nose. He had dark olive skin that looked perpetually sun tanned, even in the middle of winter. His wavy receding hair was black mixed with flecks of silver-gray and combed straight back. He was also a quiet man and never said much, and worked silently and meticulously, snipping each hair carefully and evenly so that that each hair lay perfectly. Tony had electric clippers, but only used them on the back of necks and for trimming sideburns. He used scissors over comb for the majority of his work. When you left Tony’s, you knew you had a haircut. In the style of the time your hair was closely, almost microscopically cropped, with sidewalls going up that got progressively longer, but the effect was so even and precise that it was a work of art, a labor of love.

As a young lad, going to Tony’s was uncomfortable. First, it was unbearably quiet, almost like being in church. In those days children were to be seen and not heard, especially in Tony’s barber shop. It was an unspoken rule that only men were allowed to speak, and then only in hushed voices. Boys never said a word. It was something we just intuitively knew and understood. The only sound that was to be heard was the snip snip of the scissors and the soft clacking of scissors against comb as Tony lifted each hair and cut it to his exacting standard.

Secondly, you had to wait an interminably long time for any other men and kids in line ahead of you. Tony never rushed or gave you less than the best haircut no matter who you were or how many were waiting. On long afternoons of waiting, occasionally the aroma of garlic and fresh homemade spaghetti sauce would waft in from the kitchen in the back. Tony’s wife was rarely seen or heard, respecting the sanctity of Tony’s workplace, but the aroma from her labors was deliciously inviting.

I was about 10 when I was enticed and fell away into barber shop apostasy. There was another barber shop that opened 3 blocks down Westfield with 4 chairs and no waiting. Better yet, they had an AM radio tuned to WIBG or "wibbage" as it was known, the pop radio station. There was conversation and laughter. The barbers were younger and talkative, but the truth was they didn’t know me, didn’t know my father either, and didn’t care. They used electric clippers over comb, so hair cuts took a lot less time, but the results were never as good, which my mom noticed and complained about. Still, to me it seemed a good tradeoff. I continued to go to the other shop, passing by Tony’s and occasionally looking in as Tony performed his work on his faithful clientele. Our eyes would meet and I would feel that I had betrayed some primal code, like abandoning one’s religion.

Sometime after I graduated from high school for some inexplicable reason, I returned to Tony’s. He ushered me to the chair and draped the sheet around me as if I had never been gone. Men’s hairstyles were different by then and my hair was much longer. Tony didn’t complain. His only terse comment was that what he lost on me, he made up for with my dad, who was bald and only had a little bit of hair around the sides of his head. At the end of this haircut, Tony performed a service that he reserved only for his adult customers, strapping a hand vibrator onto his wrist and rubbing my shoulders. Although I was only a freshman in college, I felt I had passed through a door on my way to manhood. I was now worthy to be accorded this service, now a man among men who had put their shoulders to the wheel.

Within a year or so my parents moved out of Camden and I never saw him again. He probably did not survive age, cigarettes, and the rapid decline of Camden for much longer. I like to think that Tony didn’t have to witness the rise of unisex hairstyle salons in the seventies. There is nothing more detestable to a man than to have one’s hair cut by a woman as she insistently regales you with stories of the difficulties her girlfriend is having.

Tony was one of those men that I didn’t understand or appreciate at the time. Today I would give anything for a haircut by Tony, but barbers with Tony’s character and commitment to his craft are very rare in my generation.

I attended Garfield Elementary School in Camden in the 1950’s. My fourth grade teacher there was Mrs. Molotsky. She was a short dark-haired woman with glasses and a strict demeanor. Though matronly, she had a youthful vigor about her. Opening exercises at the beginning of each school day included a reading of a Psalm out of the Bible. She would read slowly and distinctly, so that we could catch each syllable and appreciate the majestic cadences of the King James Bible. One of her favorites was Psalm 24:

“Lift up your heads, O ye gates;

We were thus lifted up out of our mundane circumstances and had our imaginative understanding of life enriched. Though we did not understand the words and could not understand the meaning except as fleeting dream-like images, we were given to understand that life consisted of things that transcended the circumstances of our daily existence, that there were things at stake in how we lived our life and in how we achieved whatever we were going to achieve that were more important than what our immediate circumstances were or how we might have felt about things at any given point in time.

The other thing I remember from that time of my life is that my buddy and I were fascinated by WWII and used to draw planes, ships, and battle scenes depicting the things we had seen on TV, like Victory at Sea or Navy Log. One afternoon as Mrs. Molotsky was walking the aisles as we did our class work, she took notice of a Messerschmitt 109 I had drawn on a book cover with a swastika on its tail and invited me to stay after school.

After all the other kids had left, she walked over to my desk and gently asked me if I knew that the Germans had killed millions of Jews during the war. Thus it was that I first learned of the unimaginable evil of the holocaust. As she spoke to me of the horrors and inhumanity I was dumbfounded. It marked a turning point in my understanding of evil in the world, that people with power could be not just illegitimate, but also profoundly and irretrievably evil. I didn’t, of course, fully comprehend that at the time, but the most immediate effect was that I never drew another swastika.

One of the facets of city life was the availability of a near-by corner deli or grocery store in every neighborhood. Many of them were dim, dirty, unremarkable places, but one stands out in memory: Brands. It was located on Dudley Street, one block south of Federal. The proprietor, Mr. Brand, was a portly, patient, and kind man who always wore an apron while he worked. I remember as a kid how my buddy and I, in order to scarf up some spending money, scoured the neighborhood for empty bottles to return to collect the deposit. We showed up at Brands with a wagon load. Mr. Brand frowned at us at first, but then paid us for every bottle, even though many were from bottlers and companies he did not do business with. It was a bonanza we never tried again.

I attended Woodrow Wilson from ’65 to ‘68, and Brands was a welcome respite from the school cafeteria. I don’t think anyone could produce food more loveless and forlorn than what they served up in the cafeteria. Who knows what horrors it had undergone in production, transportation, or preparation, or what payoffs suppliers had made in order to keep delivering the wretched stuff. 

Brand’s was conveniently located just one block from school and was always crowded at lunchtime. All the usual high school social games were played out as guys stoked their egos, girls casually flirted or subtly tried to get noticed, complaints about teachers and homework were shared, jokes and wisecracks rang out, and furtive, longing glances exchanged. 

Brand’s hoagies were truly remarkable. Always prepared on a fresh roll, they contained thinly sliced cooked salami, never ham, and always provolone cheese, never American singles. The tomato slices were 
thin but always red and ripe. The lettuce and onions were fresh and crisp and thinly sliced. Oregano, salt, and pepper were liberally sprinkled over the contents. And hot pepper relish, which I always requested, gave it even more zest. It all blended together so perfectly. It may be nostalgia, but there are very few hoagies I’ve had since that taste as good or are as satisfying as the ones I got from Brands.

The corner grocery stores have been largely superseded by convenience stores, particularly in the suburbs. It is the character and personality of the proprietors and the uniqueness of each store that sets the progenitors apart from the impersonal convenience chains of today. Convenience stores are always located on main arteries and intersections, never deep within neighborhoods like the stores of my youth. They require the use of an automobile to access. They’re impersonal and they rarely become gathering places for kids in the neighborhood. They’re not places to linger or socialize. I doubt that a future generation will find them worth remembering.