A few years ago, I was taking a walk down the street in New York. I had just come from breakfast at a diner (breakfast at the Waldorf Astoria, where I was staying, was just too expensive. Why I was staying at the Waldorf is a story for another day). Anyway, as I ambled down Lexington Avenue, I looked up and saw what seemed to be a familiar figure. At first, I did not believe it could be who I thought it was - the man was far too important, and famous, to be walking unaccompanied on the street. Plus he was exceptionally tall. But he is one of my heroes, and I decided to take my chances (and risk arrest for harassment) and try and catch up with him.
For a man nearing his ninetieth birthday, he walked surprisingly briskly, and when he turned a corner, I quickened my step. To no end. When I got to the side street, the man seemed to have disappeared into thin air. It would have been a shame had I not spoken to him, so I decided to search for him for a few more minutes. And true enough, through a window in a small barbershop, I saw my quarry.
Paul Volcker.
Perhaps the most legendary central banker of all time. I walked in and introduced myself.
‘Hello, are you Paul Volcker?’
‘Who’s asking’, he asked, quite pleasantly.
When I told him who I was and where I was from, he was quite surprised that someone from so far away, and who was obviously too young to have had any personal experience of his heyday, would recognise him. But we had a brief, interesting conversation, and he agreed to my request for a photo (he was already prepped for his haircut, which is why he doesn’t have his glasses on).
Paul Volcker was a remarkable man. To fully appreciate his influence, you’d have to get into the intricacies of monetary policy and inflation, which I will spare you. Suffice it to say that the awe in which he is regarded is fully deserved. Mr. Volcker died on Sunday at the ripe old age of 92. His memory will live long into the future.
(By the way, there is a postscript to this encounter. After I had finished speaking to him, one of the barbers invited me to sit on a chair and get a haircut. I told him I’d be back - I needed to pack. But I did come back a few minutes later. The barber, a guy named Rafaele, was straight out of the movies - elderly guy with a thick Italian/ Noo Yawk accent. He told me that he had been James Wolfhenson’s barber for decades. As a matter of fact, the very chair I was sitting in was the one Jim sat in when he came every few weeks. Rafaele had been cutting hair since 1965, so he claimed to know his way around any head. I warned him that miro hair was different from odiero hair, but he said it was simply bad barber skills that made it seem so.
So I settled in for my haircut. And boy, that old Eetalian was skilled. Mara a clipper; mara some ointment; mara some cream; mara some delightfully vibrating thingamajig. At the end, I had a perfectly shiny scalp (and he even gave me some advice after telling me - ‘Meester, your scalp-a is very dry’. Turns out you should use Listerine on it three times a week). The final flourish on my head was a go with a straight razor.
I had never actually been shaved with a cutthroat razor, and I decided that this was the day. I warned Rafaele that my skin tended to break out when subjected to a close shave, but he insisted that it was as a result of a bad barber going over the same area multiple times. Then he got to it. Oh man! Hot towels. Ointments. Three different kinds of shaving creams. Omera by the time I was done the skin on my face was smoother than it had been since I was fourteen.
We finished. When it got to the time to pay him, I had only an unbroken $100. I handed Rafaele the hundred bucks. He put it in his pocket with a ‘Thank-a you. Make-a sure you come by here when you come-a to Noo Yawk’. HUH? Where’s my change?? That’s when his face darkened and suddenly all the barbers were speaking in rapid-fire Italian. Single African dude against the cast of the Sopranos. Eventually, reluctantly, he gave me back fifteen dollars. A haircut and a shave for more than EIGHT THOUSAND SHILLING BOB? But you know what? It was the best haircut and shave I had ever received.
Until I got back to Nairobi two days later. With my face in a breakout of pimples and blackheads worse than a hormonal teenager).
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