Baltimore during the 50s and shaving memories.

I grew up in Baltimore during the post war period; when burlesque still reigned and Baltimore was a collection of ethnic neighborhoods. There was Little Italy and Germantown (but they were all Austrians) and the Polish neighborhood off Pulaski and the Valley was Horse Country and Pimlico was all Jewish (I grew up there and thought the lions really ate all the other Christians since I was the only one left) and there was Chinatown where all the Japanese were Chinese and Downtown Mount Vernon Place that was hotels and statues and the Peabody Conservatory and Enoch Pratt Library and one of my favorite places in the world, The Walter's Art Gallery.

Each neighborhood smelled strange and the folk looked strange and the food was exotic and everyone knew that THEIR neighborhood was the best but the others certainly were wonderful to visit.

Each neighborhood had their own barbers and their own barbershop smells. In Little Italy it was the smell of Mint and Eucalyptus, the Germantown it was fresh tobacco, in Pimlico it was rose water and lavender and in the hotels around Mount Vernon Place it was polished wood and lime and Talcum Powder and in Hunt Valley it was leather and freshly mowed green grass and in Chinatown it was sandalwood and incense.

But it was the barbershops down near the docks, the ones where the merchant seamen frequented, where the stevedores cleaned up for the weekend, where the folks that had been unloading bananas (we used to stand at the dock and sometimes they would show us the critters that hitched a ride in the green bananas; big hairy spiders and snakes of all colors and sometimes even a monkey) or spices and tea for McCormick & Company could be found where you could find the most amazing smells, amber and jasmine and lotus blossom all mixed with the scent of whatever was being processed that day at McCormick; cinnamon or clove or pepper or nutmeg or thyme or basil or lemon grass.

For a young boy out exploring and free from the family insurance office Baltimore was an ever changing education.

What great memories, thanks for sharing. Baltimore sounds like it was quite the place back then.

Here's a Barbershop memory of my own - I was in the barbershop last week waiting my turn (I've only been to 2 barbers in my life - the first from when I got my first pro haircut at age 5 until age 39 and the second from 39 to now (57) both Italian barbers), so anyway, I notice that my current barber Jerry, has only 1 set of electric clippers that he uses. I ask him why he has only 1 set of clippers because I remember that my first barber, Tom, always had two sets. I thought of them as the hot clippers and the cold clippers because the one that he used to do the bulk of the cut was always hot and the second set that he used to clean up around my neck and ears was cool. Well, Jerry tells me its because the clippers back then used to get really hot so that you could burn people so barbers had a second set to switch to when the first set got too hot. They were identical clippers. Modern clippers are better made and don't heat up like the old ones so you can get by with just one set. And here all my life I thought that there were two types of clippers, hot ones to do the haircut and cold ones to clean up close. You learn something every day. I'm also learning that the age of the Italian barber is coming to a close. Jerry is getting up there and he can't find anyone to buy his shop, Italian or otherwise. Up here in Canada there was a wave of immigration from Italy in the 1950s-60s and a lot of them opened up barbershops - you could be your own boss and make a decent living. Living the dream. I guess their sons and grandsons don't want to follow in the father's footsteps. I told Jerry that when he retires I'm going to cut my own hair. Have you ever noticed that when a guy tells you he cuts his own hair, somehow, you already knew. Maybe I'll just shave my head.