subject: Razor Park 100 By Tony Fitzpatrick [print this page] When I was a teenager I worked briefly at a car wash. It was hard work -- when it was busy it was ass-breaking work. I worked with a lot of black guys who were old pros at it -- these guys were quick and perfect and earned the lions share of the tips, wiping a car down in about 90 seconds after it went though the rollers and the drapes.
A couple of them were musicians -- one of them wound up in Lil Eds Blues Imperials. The other guys were career hustlers who had more than one job. And these guys loved automobiles.Very often when an Electra 225 came through, or in their parlance A Deuce and a Quarter, theyd swoon. A Deuce and a Quarter WAS the shit. Or a Coupe De Ville. One guy -- C.T., he went by -- told me, "Tony, there is three French words every man of color knows, young brother. . . Coupe de Ville," and he would crack up laughing. C.T. was an older guy with a phenomenal singing voice, and a ferocious alcohol problem -- at the time, so did I. Often he would sing a cappella over the sounds of the rollers in an angelic falsetto --Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson -- his rendering of Lonely Teardrops could make you cry. Hed also sing Teddy Pendergrass and Marvin Gaye songs -- one time he sang a Crystal Gayle song that in his voice was so lovely, you forgot it was middle-of-the-road country music. "Dont it make my brown eyes blue. . . ."
We all tried to figure out what the hell he liked about that song, and he would tell us he liked the way the song was built. I still dont know what that really means. Ive always thought that because he sang it about an octave higher in pitch, that it was a tune that rewarded someone with a pitch-perfect upper register, like he had. Most of the time, C.T. was a joy to be around. On occasion, hed get lit at lunch. One too many shots of 151 and the clouds would come in.
C.T. was from New Orleans. Hed fled there years earlier behind some trouble that he never really elaborated on. He just knew he could not return. From time to time hed let everyone know that as a young man hed stacked some time at Angola prison. And that while he was there hed gone to barber school, and then hed whip out his straight razor and turn its ugly, lean blade so that the light could show you the perfect white line of sharpness on its edge.
He would get this low voice on and say, "Hang around my house, Jim, youre gonna get a shave -- closest one you ever had.
Even the young guys avoided C.T. when he was in his cups. They told me it was not uncommon for black men of C.T.s generation to carry a razor -- that way if the cops picked him up he could say he was a barber.
They told me they themselves carried box-cutters, and other workmans cutting tools. Naively, I asked what for, and Ray, a younger guy, said, "For people who look like you, little man -- not all of you is so friendly." With that the guys laughed and I realized something -- in Lombard and Villa Park, Illinois, pretty much lily-white suburbs, these guys were afraid of us.
I guess I shouldnt have been surprised, but I was. Every once in a while one of the guys would get a DWB -- a Driving while Black ticket -- never for speeding -- all of these guys lived on the South Side and knew well the tender mercies of suburban cops. The tickets were always for chicken-shit stuff like an expired tag, or a busted tail light. Stuff white motorists would have skated by with a warning at best. It opened my eyes a lot, and it explained the deep rage of C.T. after hed had a few belts.
