Woman Barber Dispenses Coffee, Conversation and No-Nonsense Haircuts to Please the Spouse
Back when Cudahy was still a town of Midwesterners who settled here because they knew a good piece of farmland when they saw one, Lenora Winger was an oddity. She was smart, had a sympathetic ear and raised three children by herself, but the funny thing was that the woman fancied herself as a barber.
Just down the street from her lived another oddity. Pete Alafoyiannis, the son of a wealthy Greek farmer, traded his position as a landowner’s son for several years of poverty in California because, he said, he was “too proud, or too stupid or too young” to know better. He wanted to be a successful businessman.
Not surprisingly, Winger and Alafoyiannis met. They worked out a deal, and in short order, Winger abbreviated her name to Lee and set up shop on Clara Street near Wilcox Avenue to cut men’s and boy’s hair. The name change from the feminine Lenora to more asexual Lee fooled few, however, and Winger became the object of disdainful glares from some old-timers who believed that, even in the 1960s, only men should cut men’s hair.
“They used to stand in front of the window and point at me,” Winger, 55, recalled. “Then they’d laugh.” Winger attracted customers, though, both men and women. Today, the small shop with the pitched roof, porch and two genuine, straight-from-the-’40s barber chairs, does a tidy little business and no one seems to care that Winger long ago crossed the unseen barrier that kept women from cutting the hair of men who were not related by blood or marriage.
Most of Winger’s customers come for the no-nonsense, just-trim-the-sides-
and-the-top haircut. Winger does not shampoo, she does not blow dry and she does not curl. Customers say they tell Winger what they want and she does it. She even asks wives, husbands, girlfriends and boyfriends for their input. It is her motto, she says, to please the spouse. Customers who want mousse or gel or any other chemical hair product commonly found in a can, should buy it at the drugstore and put it on at home.
They also come for the advice Winger gives, the hot coffee she makes, the conversation, and the security of a shop that is comfortingly static as the neighborhood around it changes.
Today, at least half of Winger’s customers are Latino. Many do not speak English, so Winger has learned enough Spanish “to get through a haircut,” she said. Her first words were cuarto (short) mediano (medium) and largo (long).
On the rear wall of the shop, the head of a nine-point deer that Alafoyiannis says he shot in Colorado hangs over a wooden coatrack and hand-printed sign that lists the prices for men, women and children ($5 to $9). On a coffee table in front of five chairs, the National Enquirer cover shrieks Elizabeth Taylor’s latest plight: “She packs on 35 lbs. in three-month food and alcohol binge.”
A cork bulletin board near the door is cluttered with snapshots of Winger giving a boy a haircut, Winger standing with the City Council, Winger and an Olympic runner. Alafoyiannis shows up in few. He does not like having his picture taken. The shop is small, with room only for a few chairs, the barber stools, the countertop with the sink in which Winger washes her hands between each cut, and a cash register. A small barber pole hangs in one corner. Winger says she can’t hang it outside because technically she is not a barber. She has a beautician’s license, but not a barber’s license. Such trivialities make little difference to her customers.
“She has a photographic memory of my scalp,” said Downey resident Mary Adamowicz.
Adamowicz, 63, said she has been going to Pete and Lee’s for about 10 years.
“It’s different than the beauty parlors,” she said. “Every time I go in there, we sit in a square around the barber chairs and talk. It’s a conversation club is what it is.”
Winger attributes her success to Alafoyiannis, who owns the property and the building, and to her own distinctive style of cutting which, she says, enables her to recognize her customers by the backs of their heads. Both say they may not have succeeded had it not been for their platonic friendship, which is still as strong as it was in 1968, when Pete and Lee’s Haircuts first opened. Winger cuts Alafoyiannis’ hair. He has cut hers. She says he turned her son, Steve, into a responsible man. Alafoyiannis asks Winger’s advice when he is torn by his desire to return to Greece or stay in America.
“She is my best friend,” said Alafoyiannis, 50. “She is closer to me than any of my family. It is a beautiful thing that means a lot more than a successful business or anything else.”
Many say the shop is better than City Hall for finding out what is really happening in Cudahy.
Alafoyiannis, commonly known around town as Pete the Greek, shrugs when he hears that. He says he is just the landlord. He spends little time at the shop, he says. He became a successful businessmen, at one time operating two restaurants in the city of Bell.
Today he is involved in other business projects, he said, and has no time to listen to conversation at the barbershop. But he laughs when he hears that some city employees wonder if this smooth-talking man with the long, graying sideburns and a heavy Greek accent does not actually run the town. All but one of the city councilmen have their hair cut by Lee. “I have a lot of people that talk to me,” he said. “They come to me for advice.”
In April, Winger will celebrate her 22nd anniversary as a barber and beautician on Clara Street. She has no plans to leave, although she says she knows she could make more money elsewhere.
“I love it here,” she said. “If I am 95 and still cutting hair, I will be here.”
