The vato was cuerda.
Everybody knew him cuz he was the sole barber in the Southside. His specialty: flattops. He became known for his flattops at a time when flattops were a craze. He was the main fuel for it in the Southside. Of course, he didn’t wear one himself. He said it was because he couldn’t work on himself through the mirror. But now looking back years later, the raza says it was really that the pusher wouldn’t partake of his own drugs. Bad business practice. That’s how he thought. That’s what made him cuerda.
Since he was the barber, he generated—also captivated—a steady audience. This is why he always dressed well. Who wanted to have their hair cut but a slob? Likewise, who would listen to somebody who didn’t look successful?
He sermoned about politics, psychology—human and otherwise, religion, world affairs, and of course, business.
“Most people don’t know what business is. They think it’s selling something. It’s more than that. It’s about competing and coming out on top,” the vato would often say.
He also had lots of money-making ideas he was always putting off until he got through the season.
“What’s needed in the Southside is a mutual aid pot, where everybody puts a little in every pay period. Then if something happens, like a medical emergency, the pot covers it,” he began telling all his clientele soon after lent one year.
The vato pitched his idea constantly for months. Then he put up a sign in his shop announcing he was starting a mutual aid pot by putting all his tips in a jar and depositing it in a savings account. The sign said anybody could join by signing their name on the list next to the jar and putting in a few bucks whenever they came in for a flattop. It finally paid off when school started in the fall.
“Anybody on that list gets sick, we’ll pay for it out of the pot,” he told his customers.
The list grew long and the jar filled up every week, as nobody got sick that fall.
Then over New Year’s Eve, a fight broke out at the big dance, and two young men ended up in the hospital, both of them sons of families on the mutual aid list.
When the vato opened his shop a few days later, the young men’s kin came in to tap the pot.
“Nel. They got into a fight and hurt each other on purpose. The pot’s for those who get sick or hurt out of no fault of their own,” he told them.
He got no push back.
Later a cousin of one of the mutual aid families got hurt in a car crash.
“Ni madres. The kid’s not a son of one of the families,” the vato said.
Later that winter, the wife and newborn of one of the signatories were rushed to a special hospital in another city. At the same time, one of the signatories had a stroke.
The vato heard about it like everybody else.
When affected kin came in to collect, the vato announced that days earlier he had committed to a surgery for himself and tapped out the pot.
“He’s cuerda de amadres,” the raza said.
