Thoughts on… Someone I Miss

            Recently someone writing on our local social media page asked the question “Who do you miss?” It drew an enormous response by residents, past and present, naming persons (and places) they missed growing up in our town. Here is someone I miss.

            Much has been written about Abraham Skidmore, the legendary son of former slaves who for some 70 years was Mattapoisett’s town barber whose last shop was in the tiny building on Church Street. Few know the story of his successor Al Morgado. After “Skid,” as he was known, passed away in 1954, Al took over the shop and became a fixture in town annals for nearly 30 years until his death in 1983.

            Al was born three days before New Year’s 1917 in Mattapoisett on Cathaway Lane, now Driscoll Lane, in a house his parents, Anna a homemaker and José Morgado, a laborer for Dennis Mahoney and Sons, rented for $10 a month. Al was one of 10 children, a twin one of three sets.

            Life was not easy for this large family. A sister, Erina, contracted tubercular meningitis and died on her fifth birthday in 1919. Five years later, Al’s father contracted tuberculosis and was moved to a treatment hospital in the town of South Hanson where he passed away in November 1924, leaving Anna a widow whose oldest child was just 17 years old. Al was seven. Shortly after, Al’s grandmother, Mary DeMello, who was 88 years of age and well known in Mattapoisett for her daily walks around the village, moved in with the family to help raise the children.

            Al attended Mattapoisett Center School through the ninth grade where he acquired the nickname “Hook.” According to the 1934 junior high school yearbook The Wanderer, he participated in Junior Achievement, Traffic Squad, Drama Club and Baseball. His suppressed desire was “to become a commercial artist.” By 1940 he was working for the WPA (Works Progress Administration) along with his brother Manual as a laborer on a water project. Later, following in his father’s footsteps, he went to work for Dennis Mahoney driving an oil delivery truck.

            In 1941 he married Pearl Duclos and moved in with her parents in a two-tenement house on Field Street in New Bedford. When war was declared after Pearl Harbor, Al enlisted in the Navy and by June was standing watch on the deck of the USS Pennsylvania, an ice breaker battleship plying the cold waters of the Bering Sea near the Aleutian Islands off Alaska.

            Al spotted a notice on the ship’s bulletin board seeking experienced barbers for the ship’s shop, which was well below deck and warm. With no experience at all, he mustered up enough courage to march into the barber shop and declared that he owned two barber shops in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Duly impressed, the head barber assigned Al a chair and tools and told him to go to it. The first customer was an officer. Al set the sheers at the back of the officer’s neck and proceeded to mow a swarth right up and over the officer’s skull. A reverse mohawk. “You don’t know how to cut hair, do you?” the head barber said. Al confessed, saying he hated the cold, and for some reason the head man agreed to teach him how to cut hair. A career was born.

            While the Pennsylvania was docked in San Francisco for an overhaul and an update of equipment, Al was injured in an automobile accident and was transferred to the naval hospital at Treasure Island, California. Later, because of his accident, Al escaped being on board his ship when it was hit by a Japanese torpedo while docked at Okinawa. The ship suffered a hole in its side which flooded many compartments. Family lore suggested that one was the barber shop.

            After discharge, Al used his hair-cutting experience to land a job at the Harmony Barber Shop on Union Street in New Bedford. The shop was so named because the owner was a member in the singing group the “Harpoon Harmonizers.” Using the G.I. Bill, he bought a home in New Bedford and second, two-tenement house that Pearl’s parents lived in, renting the remaining apartment.

            When Pearl’s parents died a year apart, Mattapoisett beckoned. Al wanted to own his own barber shop, so when Skidmore passed away, he acquired the business and settled into the same small building on Church Street where Skid cut his hair as a kid. Al would drive to Mattapoisett every day in his used, late-1940s, green Studebaker coupe which he said he had to spin the wheel twice around to turn a corner! Shortly after, he sold the houses in New Bedford and returned home to Mattapoisett. He found a small house in the heart of the village, just a short walk from the shop. The builder, Freddy Hield, was a local carpenter who built it for himself, then suddenly died before it was finished. Al would spend nights and days off finishing the inside, making it a permanent home for the family.

            Al jumped right in, participating in town activities. He acquired a big base drum and took up the mantle of Skidmore marching at the front of the Halloween parade, sans Skid’s goofy hat. Every kid in town soon realized that a knock on the barber-shop door and a polite please would elicit a tasty lollipop. In 1957, during the town’s 100th Anniversary parade, Al rode in an old Model T truck, dressed as a hobo, tossing candy to the youngsters along the route.

            He started a Youth Bowling League at the old Bowlmor Alleys for all the kids in town. Every Wednesday, Al’s day off, after school a line of kids would exit Center School to march up Barstow Street to the alleys. At the end of the school year, he would throw a dinner at the Colonial Coach restaurant in Marion to present awards to the bowlers.

            The PLC (Professional Loafers Club), a collection of retired “townies,” would meet every day at the shop to solve the town’s problems and the world’s as well. Many of the old timers would be waiting at the door at 5:00 am when Al arrived, complaining that he was late. Al joined the Lion’s Club shortly after its inception and became a member of the Machacum Club, the American Legion and the Knights of Columbus. He would work the annual clambakes as a waiter, and when one of his customers was in the hospital Al would visit to give the patient a free haircut. Some called him the “Mayor of Mattapoisett.”

            One wall of the shop was covered with clippings and stories about the town, notes from customers who had moved away, postcards sent from customers’ vacations and old historical photos. If business was slow, you might find Al at Tony’s PX restaurant next door, grabbing a cup of coffee, or asleep in his barber chair, arms raised, pantomiming cutting someone’s hair. He would never take a vacation nor buy a “new” car nor raise his prices, fearing his customers would abandon him. Not likely.

            Al died in his sleep on Wednesday, August 24, 1983, his day off. His wake was held in Fairhaven for two afternoons and two evenings. At all sessions the line ran around the block with mourners waiting to offer condolences. On the drive to the funeral, the hearse detoured down Main Street past the Town Hall, turning left at Church Street, pausing for a moment in front of the barber shop before continuing past Center School to St. Anthony’s Church. Along the route stood many friends and parents with little children who had their first haircuts at “Al the Barber’s.” Albert Morgado is buried alongside his wife Pearl in St. Anthony’s Cemetery on North Street.

            Mattapoisett resident Dick Morgado is an artist and happily retired writer. His newspaper columns appeared for many years in daily newspapers around Boston.

By Dick Morgado