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WILKES-BARRE — I still remember the first time I walked into a barber shop. It was 1973 and I was getting married in a few months. My hair was long, wiry and a mess.
Aldo Sartorio’s father, Frank, looked at me and asked if I was there for a haircut or an estimate.
Some 43 years later, the barber shop — Sartorio & Sons — is still around and the experience has not changed. Customers still get a haircut, but they also check their egos at the door before embarking upon a journey that leaves them well-groomed, more knowledgeable about many topics and usually at the losing end of a witty war of words.
It was about 9:45 a.m. on a recent Tuesday morning when I got to the shop and Aldo, 57, and his brother, Peter, 61, were engaged in deep conversation with Maggie Domant, who handles the shop’s female clientele. They were talking about Maggie’s new passion — operating a virtual farm on some Internet site.
Serving as a buffer between the brothers and Maggie was Frank, Aldo’s son. Customers were filing in from the cold to wait their turn in the chair.
Bob Schaub, a local attorney, was first in Aldo’s chair. The conversation first went to politics — something about George W. Bush or Bill Clinton and his first day in office. Whichever president it was, Bob told how he sat down and found a top secret file on his desk.
Around 9:55 a.m., the phone in the shop rang. It would continue to ring regularly during my visit — customers looking for appointments and Aldo or Pete telling them when they could fit them in.
In addition to the phone calls, three or four other conversations occur simultaneously. Everybody chimes in on more than one conversation to offer their two cents. And it’s all done in front of giant mirrors while Aldo, Pete and Frank ply their trade with very sharp instruments in their hands.
The talk has now moved to sports. Aldo and Bob discuss the Eagles and former Coach Chip Kelly who’s off to San Francisco. Pete, a devout Notre Dame fan, hears “Kelly” and immediately injects Irish Coach Brian Kelly and tells how he has returned the storied program to national championship contenders.
This is what you get at a barber shop. A constant flow of invaluable, but not always 100 percent accurate, information.
Wayne Miller, a retired banker who lives in Clarks Summit, is waiting for Aldo to call him to the chair. Wayne first came to the Sartorio shop in the late 1960s. Frank Sr. cut his hair back then and Wayne had plenty of stories to tell.
Like the time he called the shop for an appointment and Frank Sr. told him he couldn’t come right now, but he would call him when he had an opening. Wayne told Frank he wouldn’t be in the office because he had to do some shopping at Boscov’s.
“I was in the store walking around when, over the loudspeaker, I heard, ‘Mr. Wayne Miller, please come to the service desk.’ It was Frank telling me to come over. Now that’s customer service.”
Aldo smiles when he hears those stories. He and Peter started out as kids in their dad’s shop. As hair fell to the floor, the conversations — conducted while looking at each other in the mirrors — continued.
At 10:07 a.m., the inevitable happened — talk turned to Donald Trump and Sarah Palin. This went on for minutes, voices rising over the purr of a hand-held massage machine used to relax clients and the vacuum hose used to remove hair from clients’ clothes.
Bob tells Aldo he isn’t a Broncos’ fan, but he respects QB Peyton Manning.
“I’d like to see him win one more Super Bowl,” Bob said. Before Aldo could muster an answer, Peter says, “Not gonna happen.”
At 10:25, as if on cue, in walks Peter Kizis, a customer of 50 years and a huge Notre Dame fan.
“This is like a religious experience,” he says. “When I walk out of here, I’ll look like Brad Pitt.”
Aldo reminds Peter his last name is Sartorio, not Houdini. Peter turns to me and says one thing he has learned by frequenting the shop is how fast scrapes and scratches — during his many haircuts — have healed so fast.
“You know, Picasso didn’t cut his own ear off — he came here,” Peter relates.
It’s 11:45 a.m. and Frank Sr. walks through the door. It’s like a scene from “The Godfather” — handshakes, hugs, cheek kisses. “They have high hopes for this guy,” Peter says of the barber shop patriarch who is 89 years old and still cuts hair when he’s not sweeping the floor.
They all tease Frank Sr., saying he was around when scissors were invented. “He was around when hair was invented,” his grandson says, assuring the Sartorio gene for sarcasm continues.
Aldo says, “You’ll never meet a better father. He’s a great man.” That prompts Maggie to yell from the back, “Is all this being said for the paper?”
Aldo says he has learned much from his customers. He kidded about having to work alongside his brother, his son and his father.
“There’s no place else I’d rather be,” he said.
Aldo and Peter talk about the large mural on the wall done by Joan Schooley. Depicted are Frank Sr., Aldo, Peter and customers. They’d like to find Joan Schooley to commission another mural for the shop.
Aldo took a five-minute break and came back to resume his trade. The phone rang again. Aldo and his dad were talking.
“Don’t worry, guys, I got it,” Peter said.
Just another typical day at the barber shop.
