The World’s Oldest Barber
Le plus vieux coiffeur du monde
Rencontre avec Anthony Mancinelli, coiffeur italo-américain de 107 ans.
Vous n’avez certainement jamais entendu parler d’Anthony Mancinelli. Pourtant, aux États-Unis, il est la star des salons de coiffure. Sa particularité ? Son âge. À 107 ans, il est le plus vieux coiffeur du monde et a gagné sa place dans le Livre Guinness des records... Rencontre avec un fascinant personnage, incollable sur les tendances capillaires des années 1920 à nos jours !
NEW WINDSOR, N.Y. — Anthony Mancinelli shook out a barber towel and welcomed the next customer to his chair in Fantastic Cuts, a cheery hair salon in a nondescript strip mall, about an hour’s drive north of New York City. “Hey, paisan — same as usual,” said John O’Rourke
1. to shake, shook, shaken out secouer (pour nettoyer) / cheery joyeux / nondescript quelconque, banal / strip mall centre commercial le long d'une grande artère / drive ici, de route / paisan (fam.) "mon frère", "mon pote". Terme utilisé par les ItaloAméricains pour s'adresser amicalement à qqn. Vient de l'italien paisano. / to Mancinelli, who began layering O’Rourke’s hair with his steady, snipping scissors. “I don’t let anyone else touch my hair,” said O’Rourke, 56, of Cornwall, New York. “The guy’s been cutting hair for a century.”
2. Actually, O’Rourke was off by three years. Mancinelli is 107 and still working full time, cutting hair five days a week from noon to 8 p.m. He has been working in barbershops since he was 11. Warren Harding was in the White House. In 2007, at a mere 96 years old, he was recognized by Guinness World Records as the oldest working barber. Since then, the commendations have rolled in — from local civic groups, elected officials and barbering companies — all congratulating him.
LONGEVITY TIPS
3. Mancinelli just keeps outdating the awards. The salon’s speakers were playing hip-hop on a recent afternoon. “He’s used to the windup record players,” O’Rourke teased. Mancinelli has a trim build, a steady hand and a full head of hair, albeit snow white. He spends much of his day on his feet, in a pair of worn, cracked black leather shoes. “People come in and they flip out when they find out how old he is,” said the shop’s owner, Jane Dinezza.
4. “He never calls in sick,” she said. “I have young people with knee and back problems, but he just keeps going. He can do more haircuts than a 20-year-old kid. They’re sitting there looking at their phones, texting or whatever, and he’s working.” Asked — for the umpteenth time — about his longevity, Mancinelli offered only that he has always put in a satisfying day’s work and he has never smoked or drank heavily.
5. But no, longevity does not run in his family, and he was never big on exercise. Dietwise, he said, “I eat thin spaghetti, so I don’t get fat.” He has all his teeth and is on no daily medication. He has never need- ed glasses, and his hairstyling hands are still steady. One reason he continues to work, he said, is that it helps him stay busy and upbeat after the death of his wife of 70 years, Carmella, 14 years ago. He visits her grave daily before work.
HAIRSTYLES OVER THE DECADES
6. As hairstyles have changed over the decades, Anthony Mancinelli has adapted. “I cut them all,” he said, “long hair, short hair, whatever was in style — the shag, the Buster Brown, straight bangs, permanents.” Some customers have been coming to him for well over 50 years, having gotten hundreds of haircuts. “I have some customers, I cut their father, grandfather and great-grandfather — four generations,” said Mancinelli, who has six great-great-grandchildren.
7. Mancinelli said he was born in 1911 near Naples, Italy, and emigrated with his family when he was 8, joining a relative in Newburgh, New York. He was one of eight children — “I’m the only one left” — and went to work at age 11 in a local barbershop. By age 12, he was cutting hair and dropped out of high school to cut hair full time. Back then, a haircut cost 25 cents, he said. Now, a haircut from Mancinelli costs $19.
8. He no longer practices the medical techniques he learned early on from older barbers, such as burning off warts, placing heated glass cups on the torso and using leeches for swelling or high blood pressure. He does keep in his salon drawer — “for when the electricity goes out” — a pair of manual hair clippers he used before electric hair clippers came into use.
9. He is the perennial choice for grand marshal of the New Windsor Memorial Day Parade. A World War II Army veteran, Mancinelli has been a proud member, for 75 years, of local American Legion Post 1796, where his drink of choice is a whiskey sour. For Mancinelli’s birthdays, the salon closes and gives a party, with food donated by the local supermarket. But most days are routine, interrupted by the occasional media inquiry seeking out this centenarian barber.
As hairstyles have changed over the decades, Anthony Mancinelli has adapted.