El Paso Times from El Paso, Texas • 23

Of. (C -yr ection euncs Welcejday. Jincirj 28. 1381 Pane 1-C fersonality. Dapper barber cuts with 'shear' elegance I I 4 9 mm or- y-fMy vwtiiM suns a 4P Vf y3 -1 43it i'- noon on those days Young comes in for a cut.

Son Sam Jr. and grandson Robert Hoover III also get their locks trimmed at the shop, Perez says. The barber, who sports a black-vested ensemble, black patent leather shoes and diamonds in his tie-tack and pinky ring, likes knowing the heads that he styles. He keeps a collection of polaroids of his most prized clients. And he's not interested in cultivating any more.

When first approached for a story, Perez stopped the reporter short in the doorway. "No, I'm sorry. I don't do long hair." "Wait, I just "No, I'm sorry. Go to a hair stylist." Perez later apologized. "I hate long hair," he says, but in this case he just needed an excuse not to do another customer.

"He's a real lazy barber," his wife, Maggie, says. Mrs. Perez is a retired beautician who accompanies her husband to the shop. "After 50 years, I can he lazy," Perez retorts. His lifetime career began in 1926 when Perez began apprenticing in a San Antonio shop owned by his two uncles.

"I used to wait for kids to get out of school, and I then I would bring them to the shop" and practice on them. Finally tired of doing the service for free "I then raised it to 5 cents and then 10 cents." He moved to El Paso in 1935 where he's stayed except for an Army stint and a 10-year detour to Los Angeles in the '60s and early '70s ever since. While in California. Perez worked in the Statler-Hilton Hotel barber shop where a favored customer was hotel chain-owner Conrad Hilton. Others accommodated in Perez's chair were former President Herbert Hoover's son (Herbert former President Richard Nixon's brother (Donald Nixon) and George Brent, a star in By JIM BROOKS Times staff writer Some of El Paso's influcntials just can't seem to get Louie Perez out of their hair.

The list reads like a local "Who's Who" in business, politics, religion Mayor Tom Westfall, U.S. District Judge Harry Lee Hudspeth. Bishop Emeritus Sidney Motzger, former El Faso Times publisher Dorrance D. Roderick, Sam D. Young, El Paso National Bank board chairman Perez, a squat, dapper character, reveals the roster with the possessive air of an adoring parent.

"These people have confidence in me," he says. "There's things I hear and I have to forget I heard them." Oh, the tales this barber could but never would tell, Perez says. "I have stories that would knock your head off." With that teaser, the 69-year-old haircutter flashes a mischievious smile. "A doctor never discusses a patient with others," Perez adds coyly. After more than half a century of polishing his craft, he knows where his loyalties lie with the man in the barber chair.

Especially if that customer owns the shop, so to speak. Perez's El Paso National Bank Barber Shop is in the basement of the bank building. Hence, and because he's a friend as well, Young receives top-notch treatment. Last Christmas Eve, Perez locked up his shop at noon and boarded a SCAT bus to his apartment on the West Side. That afternoon he was picked up by a black Cadillac with a red interior.

Young decided he needed a haircut, so he sent his car to retrieve his favorite barber. Perez beams as he recounts the incident. "This is Mr. Young's barber shop," he says. Perez, as a matter of course, shuts down the shop in the after 6 feA4tfUtiITHi1ij (limes staff photo bv Louie Villainous! LOUIE PEREZ ILS HIS THREE-CHAIR BARBERSHOP ALL TO HIMSELF early films.

More recent performers Frankie Avalon and Tommy Sands "used to come and see Louie" when their acts brought them to Juarez, Mrs. Perez says. Through the years, Perez has re-, corded a history of hairstyles from the flappers' finger curls of the '20s to the hindenburg and pompadour to the flat-top. Of the latter, he says, "it's the most horrible haircut. The person looks like a school kid." His personal favorite is what he To relax he fishes.

Only occasionally does the couple pull out the 10 black Cadillac they bought new two decades ago "It doesn't have a scratch on it." They started using the bus two years ago because "I'm a real American. I'm trying to beat these Iranians down." He also gave up golfing on his time off. He needs the rest, Perez says, "so I can regain my energy to work I love my haircutting." calls the "medium haircut." In fact, he refuses to cut hair too short. Instead, "I always reserve a little hair so you ran come back and do few changes if the customer isn't happy with it. His key to success: "1 try to work relaxed.

I don't like that fast work. Someone comes in and wants a quick haircut and I say, 'Go to Fort Eliss. Get a GI Perez retreats from the term "hair stylist." Only under pressure will he allow that some of his cuts are "semi-style." With haughty assuredness, the barber declares, "The way I cut hair is something else. 1 make some of these hair stylists look sick." Maybe that's why most of his customers are years-long clients. "Viejitos," his wife says.

"Just old friends," Perez says. He adds, "I've lost a lot of doctors lawyers and judges, too." At 69, Perez refuses to retire. That would be the end, he says. Old wives' tales aren't true cross my heart cross-eyed; poisonous mushrooms will not turn a silver spoon black; touching a frog does not cause warts viruses do, and viruses, not drafts or wet feet alone, also cause colds; nursing a baby does not prevent pregnancy; cats will not suck away a baby's breath; swimming right after eating will not cause you to drown; waking a sleepwalker does not cause him to die, stutter or go insane; copper bracelets do not cure arthritis; while cigarettes are health hazards, they do not stunt your growth; nut w. What? Touching a frog does not cause warts? Eating a fruit seed will not cause a tree to grow in your stomach? mustard plasters may feel good, but they won't cure a chest cold; and eating a fruit seed will not cause a tree to grow in your stomach.

Honest. On the other hand, as Slotkin says, "just because we say something is folklore doesn't mean it isn't true." So a ring around the moon called a moondog likely does mean it will rain tomorrow; growing an elder bush outside your kitchen window just might keep flies out of the house, since they'll probably find the elder berries more to their liking anyway; carrots contain Vitamin A and, thus, are good for your eyesight; and chimney smoke does tend to sink rather than rise if the weather's turning bad, probably caused by lower air pressure. Ms. Hiser, Slotkin and others who have delved into the misty world of folklore fact and folklore fiction say that much of what has been handed down is simply a matter of observation something that happened once, and might or might not happen again, or everytime. For instance, Ms.

Hiser says, a cat may lie with its back to the fire if the weather is going to change, as folklore would have you believe. Then again, it might not. "Somebody probably noticed a cat do that once, and that's how the story got started. Same thing goes for woolly worms and tree barks that are supposed to predict hard winters coming on," she says. "These things are all a matter of observation, and superstition plays some part in it." But superstition or not, Ms.

Hiser tells the story of an eighth-grade pupil who came to her one day to show her a badly burned and blistered hand. "She told me she got it the night before, helping her mother fix supper. I looked, and there wasn't anything there her hand was in just as fine a shape as mine." When Ms. Hiser asked the child why there was no trace, the child told her of a "mind-over-matter" cure proferrcd by her grandmother, who was there when the cooking accident happened. "The grandmother had asked her if she really By CAROL SANGER Gannett News Service Toss it over the backyard fence.

Bounce it around for a generation or two. Inflate it a bit, and throw in some folk wisdom and an abundance of dire consequences. Then put it away until just the right moment. Don't worry. It'll keep.

Maybe even improve with age; certainly with use. It's called an old wives' tale, and it has been around for ages: "Don't sit in a draft or you'll catch cold." (Alternate version: Don't get your feet wetget a chill or you'll catch "Don't touch that frog or you'll get warts." "Don't pull out that gray hair or two more will grow back in its place." "Don't stop nursing that baby or you'll get pregnant again." "Don't go swimming right after eating or you'll drown." You've heard them all before these and hundreds more. You've grown up with them, a dash of superstition mixed with wisdom of the ages. A blend of fact and fancy, separated somewhere by a fine line that time has blurred. And some of them you probably still believe, or at the very least you wonder: You touch a frog and when you wake up next morning, you look to see if warts somehow have sprung up on your hand.

Just in case. You never can tell. You plant a laurel tree in your backyard because somewhere you've heard that "the land that beareth the laurel tree is safe from lightning both in field and house." Who knows? What can it hurt? You keep the cat out of the room where the baby is sleeping because you remember hearing that a cat will creep up on a sleeping infant and suck its breath away. You remember hearing lots of bad things about cats, and you aren't sure whether any of them are true but you're not taking any chances. You get a dog instead.

You hope the dog you get is a dog that barks, because you ence heard that a barking dog doesn't bite. You wonder about that, too. But you forget to ask the one person most likely to know the mailman. "Many of the things that we classify as folklore are ridiculous as statements of fact, but taken metaphorically they do seem to have an element of truth in them," Edgar Slotkin says. Slotkin, professor of literature and folklore at the University of Cincinnati, says the expression "old wives' tale" is "remarkably sexist" and inappropriate.

"In general, what we're talking about are a variety of superstitions and beliefs, the origins of which are impossible to trace. We only call them old wives' tales at the point which wc stop believing in them," he says. Still, he says, some of the lore passed from generation to generation in the form saw a doctor, or a nurse either for that matter, until I was 16 and went to Berea," she says. "When we got sick we had to come up with a lot of our own cures, with herbs and the like. And a lot of them worked real well." A retired teacher of English and mountain crafts, she now spends countless hours compiling, cataloging and writing about folk lore from her Walton, home.

"We never thought about it as folklore it was just the way we lived. We lived the folk life," Ms. Hiser says in a voice that smiles, and twangs like a mountain fiddle. "I think a whole lot of it started originally to set an example for young people they were tales that had a moral to them." Others, she says, were merely yarns spun by mountain storytellers, embellished and polished and passed around the pot-bellied stove as entertainment on a frosty winter's day. "Nobody was ever meant to believe those talcs," she chuckles.

"They were just made up for jokes, and superstition played a part in some of them." In case you're wondering: Wearing high-heeled shoes while pregnant will hot cause a baby to be born cross-eyed, nor will dangling a watch fob too close to a baby's face cause her to become of these tales merits more than a passing glance. "For instance," he says, "the one about not pulling out a gray hair for fear that two will grow back in its place expresses a kind of truism about human nature and life itself. It's on its way to becoming a proverb because while it is not scientifically true (two hairs will not grow back in place of one, no matter what the color) it states a kind of metaphorical truth you can't stop the process of aging." One of Slotkin's favorite tales comes from ninth century Ireland and is a cure for tapeworms. You simply tie the afflicted person to a chair and starve him for a few days. Then you pass a plate of food back and forth in front of him, and sure enough the starving tapeworm will fall for the bait and jump right ov.t of his mouth.

(Unfortunately, there are no documented cases of tapeworm cures being effected in this manner recently but no doubt that's only because there aren't all that many cases of tapeworms around nowadays.) Old wives' talcs that deal with home cures and simple remedies are no stranger to Berniece T. Hiser, who grew up in the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky "born in the first decade of the 20th Century," is all she will say about her age. "I never believed the grandmother could effect a cure, and the child said she did. So the grandmother passed her hand over the girl's in a circular fashion and said, 'There came two angels out of the East; one bore fire, the other frost. Out fire and in frost.

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy And the burn disappeared. That's the story but that's not all. "I tried it myself, and believe me," Ms. Hiser says, "it really works..