Continued from The Penguin 2

There was a guy named Lionel on the block who was such a compulsive gambler that we called him “Gaylord.” He went to a friend’s in New Jersey to go to a dance, sliced his chin shaving and holding a tissue to the cut to stop the bleeding, got a ride to the drugstore to buy a styptic stick. While the cashier was getting him the stick, Lionel held the tissue to his bleeding chin with one hand and began punching picks out of a ten-cent punchboard with his other hand. Every pick he punched out was a loser and by the time the cashier got back, he’d punched out so many picks he couldn’t pay for the styptic stick or his dance ticket. That was when we started calling him Gaylord after the riverboat gambler in SHOWBOAT.

Blue Book, (The Penguin) had completely convinced Gaylord he was losing his hair, but Gaylord was down so much money gambling he couldn’t pay $6.50 a visit to The Mayo Hair and Scalp Clinic. Instead, he went to one of the closeout places on 50th street off Broadway, around the corner from Hubert’s Flea Circus, and bought lanolin-based ointment they claimed would save his hair. He bought a two-month supply for $1.75 and came back waving the jar in Blue Book’s face.

It certainly smelled a lot better than the stuff the Mayo was rubbing into Blue Book’s scalp, but Blue Book Had no patience with apostates and he always checked out all non-Mayo scalp ointments in detail. I went down to 50th and Broadway with him to check out this one.

The lady selling the ointment had hair that was over four feet long and she was standing on an auctioneer’s platform.

“Lanolin!” she said, running a comb through this long, thick mane that went from the top of her head down to her knees. “It comes from sheep. I use it every day! Look what it has done for me!”

Her hair hung over her shoulder like a long black cape with streaks of gray and she kept running the comb through

it as she talked.  “Lanolin,” she kept repeating. “It comes from sheep! You ever see a bald sheep?”

Blue Book treated the entire incident with complete disdain and when we went back up to 88th, he warned Gaylord that maybe he’d save some money but that he’d lose his hair. He turned his back on Gaylord and began feeding the rest us information about the causes of baldness. Waiting for a stoop ball game or leaning against a parked car in front of Theresa’s Drug Store on Broadway and 88th, Blue Book was always feeding us information.

“Never touch anyone’s hair,” he’d say “You can pick up contaminants and transmit them to your own scalp.

“And never wear a tight cap. It cuts off the blood supply to your root system.

“And if you go swimming and there’s chlorine in the water, make sure you wear a bathing cap.”

“Wait a minute,“ Gaylord protested. “Bathing caps are too tight! They’ll cut off the blood supply to my root system!”

Blue Book didn’t even blink. “Nothing’s as bad as chlorine!” he said. “Nothing!”

We were standing in front of Theresa’s one day watching the girls go by, and Kenny Nails came along just as Blue Book was telling us how baldness could spread by putting on someone’s hat, using someone’s comb, or even resting your head back on a bus or an airplane.

“What about from a toilet seat, Penguin?” Kenny Nails said, going into his windshield wiper laugh.

“Go ahead, laugh!” Blue Book did a quick 360 around Kenny Nails, checking his somewhat fluffy hair. “I give you three more years.” 

Kenny Nails sniffed contemptuously, but he had a worried expression as he walked away. And he was touching the hair at the back of his head.

Blue Book’s sense of conviction could convince anyone, including even himself, whereas the only sense of conviction Kenny Nails had was to do whatever Barry Bogardus told him.

To be continued in The Penguin 4

Article Source: http://www.discoveryarticles.com/authors/8714/herb-lobsenz

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