The first time Anthony Mancinelli cut someone’s hair, Calvin Coolidge was beginning his first term in the White House.
Since then empires have fallen, square fringes have come in and out of fashion and Mr Mancinelli has become the world’s oldest working barber.
“I just kept going,” he said yesterday, having just turned 105. He works at Fantastic Cuts, a barber and tanning salon in Vails Gate in the Hudson Valley, about 60 miles north of New York.
For his birthday this week, someone brought in a cake and a delegation from Gillette arrived to present Mr Mancinelli with a pair of golden scissors. “I’ll have to give someone a golden haircut,” he said.
He lives alone, still drives and works five days a week. Jeannie Negrinelli, the 49-year-old receptionist at Fantastic Cuts, said she believed that his secret was an aspirin every day and no lunch.
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In his youth, Mr Mancinelli reportedly cut the hair of Jack Diamond, otherwise known as Legs or Gentleman Jack. The flamboyant Irish-American gangster and bootlegger from the prohibition era was renowned in upstate New York for surviving numerous attempts on his life. He was known as the clay pigeon of the underworld until his luck ran out in 1931 and he was shot dead in a rooming house.
Asked about this yesterday, Mr Mancinelli misunderstood and instead mentioned Ben Gazzara, the actor. His attention, however, is grabbed when he is asked about his first hair cut. He was 12 years old, he said, and the victim was his father.
A cut and a shave then cost 25 cents. Customers at the time would request additional services, such as blood letting. “People used to come in, they had high blood pressure,” he said. “I would give them leeches to put on their arm. They always felt better.”
His son Robert, 79, has said he finds it hard to believe that his father is still going. “He’s in better shape than I am,” he said.
It was Mr Mancinelli’s day off yesterday but they were a barber short in the salon.
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“They just called me,” he said. “I gotta go in to work.”