My Grand Pa (for Daniel)

My grandfather worked at the La Salle Hotel 

in Chicago, one of the great hotels in the world

of it’s era. He was a barber, a skilled professional.

He was an alcoholic, and my dad would give him

a couple of bucks each day to have a couple of 

beers.  Well, I realized he must have been a great 

story teller, because he usually came home pretty

drunk. I’m sure the locals bought him beer to keep 

him talking. This makes sense, because a barber 

at a fine hotel like the one where he worked would

have had to, of necessity, been good with the gab…
it’s sort of a barber cliche….you don’t want a jittery

customer in the chair when you’re shaving him with

a straight razor. We never talked much when I was
a  kid. He told a few bad jokes over and over. But
I might have gotten the stray story telling gene from
him. I certainly got the drunk one.  One afternoon,
he came home blasted..(remember, he was in his
eighties)… It was hard as hell to pry that drunken
bastard into his room…I was, maybe fourteen.