Constable: The hair Arlington Heights barber has seen in 50 years

As a teenager fresh out of barber school, Cesare Sorrentino took over a chair in his brother's shop in Arlington Heights. He cut the long locks of that era and chatted with his young customers about girlfriends, college and sports. A half-century later, many of those same customers still come to Sorrentino's Barber Shop, where the 69-year-old barber now trims their much-shorter hairstyles and talks with the gray-haired men about grandkids, prostates and sports.

“I've got a lot of generations,” Sorrentino says, explaining how some of his customers came in as kids with their dads, then became dads who brought in their sons and now sometimes show up with their grandsons. “I've cut up to four generations. I know quite a few by name.”

His youngest client is 3 months old. His oldest will turn 100 this year. “His driver's license says he was born on 10/16/16 and it expires on 10/16/16,” says Sorrentino, who knows a lot more than birthdays for some of his customers.

“You ask them a question and they tell you everything,” Sorrentino says. “And sometimes you don't want to know.”

Guys sitting in the barber chair have been known to talk about what led to divorces, the shortcomings of loved ones, what's wrong with employers and employees, their politics and religion, and even graphic details about medical conditions. While a bartender might interrupt the communication to wait on another customer, Sorrentino's clients stay with him until the haircut, and the conversation, are finished.

“I listen, I cut and I talk,” says Sorrentino, whose customers know a bit about his life as well.

“He was in the bakery business as a kid and he didn't like the hours,” says longtime customer Wayne Golwitzer, 85, of Arlington Heights, remembering a story Sorrentino tells about how he turned to barbering because he didn't like having to show up before dawn to work in a bakery owned by a relative.

As a student at Foreman High School on Chicago's Northwest Side, Sorrentino started working in a barber shop in 1963. “I was cutting hair part-time in the afternoon,” he says, noting that his busy workload kept him from graduating until 1966, when he was 19.

“When I went to barber college, it used to be 50 cents for haircuts and 50 cents for a shave,” Sorrentino says. Now, a cut is $18.

Born in the town of Castrolibero in the Calabria region in the foot of the boot of Italy, Sorrentino came to the United States on Jan. 20, 1959, as a 12-year-old. His father, Gaetano, was a bricklayer. His mother, Luisa, was killed by lightning in Italy four years earlier at the age of 35.

His older brother, Carmine, opened Sorrentino's Barber Shop at 6 S. Dunton St. in Arlington Heights. Volunteering to cut the hair of people whose disabilities made it difficult to come to the shop, the older brother visited Clearbrook Commons in Rolling Meadows to give free haircuts. His younger brother followed suit, and both men have won Clearbrook's Leap of Faith Award for their efforts.

Cesare lives in Chicago with his wife, Loretta, who goes by the nickname Cookie, but he has worked in Arlington Heights for a half-century.

In 1992, the Sorrentinos moved their shop around the corner to 5 W. Davis St., where it is today. That's where Carmine Sorrentino, suffering from cancer, was taking a break in one of the customer's chairs on July 22, 1998, when he slumped over and later died.

On Jan. 16 of this year, another old-school barber, Franco Imbrogno of Bartlett, collapsed in the shop and died of a brain aneurysm at age 69.

Sorrentino used to kiddingly call Imbrogno “my maestro” because he was three months older. Imbrogno's nephew, Anthony Imbrogno, 36, an Arlington Heights resident and 1997 graduate of nearby Hersey High School, was hired by Sorrentino in March 2014 and took over the shop last year as owner.

Imbrogno and Sorrentino, both of whom talk about “old-school” traditions, hired Danny Rainwater last April. Rainwater, 43, of Palatine, has piercings and tattoos but says he follows Sorrentino's lead.

“With the experience he has, I learn something every day,” Rainwater says. “The man is full of all sorts of knowledge. I'm trying to keep the tradition going. This is families and generations.”

In the 1960s when Sorrentino started cutting hair, many of the traditional barbers would turn away boys with long hair. The Sorrentino brothers welcomed them.

“We used to get bands. Remember The Shadows of Knight?” Sorrentino says, recalling the suburban band formed by some students at Prospect High School that had a smash hit with the song “Gloria.”

As hairstyles changed, Sorrentino adapted.

“Today, we get a lot of fades and short hair,” says the barber, who doesn't argue with a customer's wishes. “If they like the haircut, it's a good haircut.”

“If the wife likes the haircut, it's a good haircut,” quips Imbrogno, drawing a chuckle from his fellow barbers.

The jokes and camaraderie are part of the appeal.

“It's a fun place to come. You get to talk to the guys and find out what's going on in the village,” says Tom Schwingbeck, 57, of Arlington Heights. He says his son, Nick, a 21-year-old student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, “saves his haircut for when he comes home.”

His younger son, Michael, 17, got his first haircut at Sorrentino's.

“People bring me their first-haircut pictures,” Sorrentino says, pulling out a stack of photographs of boys sitting in the barber chair with Sorrentino going to work. Some are in black-and-white. People who stick with the same barber for decades build relationships.

“One time I left my hearing aids here and he knew where I lived, so he dropped them off,” customer Golwitzer says.

Longtime customer Norm Carlson, 67, of Arlington Heights brought his sons, Jason, Brian and Kevin, into the shop as kids. Now those boys are in their 30s, but Carlson says Sorrentino keeps him up to date on their friends who are still in the area.

Having gotten his first haircut from Sorrentino, Ryan Henders, 24, still comes back with his dad, Jim, 60.

“I like the atmosphere of the barbershop. There's usually some talk about golf,” says the younger Henders, who lives in Arlington Heights and sports a full beard that Sorrentino trims. “When you have a product you like, you tend to come back.”

Just as he did when Henders would come to the shop two decades ago with his big brother, Tom, Sorrentino has one more trick to keep him coming back.

“And,” Henders says with a smile, “he always gives me suckers.”