End Of An Era For Barber Who Was A Cut Above The Rest
Newcastle Herald
Saturday October 22, 2005
RALPH Della Grotta did not met his father, Leone, until he was 11 years old but he remembers clearly the day he picked up his old man's scissors to begin cutting his friends' hair in the family backyard in central Italy.
Leone Della Grotta was being held as a prisoner of war in Africa but legend had it that before his capture he ran one of the finest barber shops in Italy.From that day in the backyard Mr Della Grotta's destiny was to follow in his father's footsteps.Mr Della Grotta is preparing to retire from his Hamilton barber shop, Ralph: Hair Stylist, after 53 years of tonsorial tenderness.Having come to Newcastle just six days shy of his 17th birthday, in 1953, Mr Della Grotta began working in the city as a tube maker for BHP.His uncle ran a boarding house in Cleary Street, Hamilton, and Mr Della Grotta ended up cutting the hair of the Italian men in another backyard."The Italians liked to be trendy and we used to have it nice and neat," he said."The Australians were different. They liked the army style with the short back and sides."When Mr Della Grotta's wife asked her husband to stop doing shiftwork, he took a full-time job cutting hair at a Hunter Street barber shop, where he trained for three years.Since opening his own barber shop in Hunter Street in 1963, Mr Della Grotta has moved through seven different shops.He was forced out of the first Hamilton shop in which he worked, in Beaumont Street, after the December 1989 earthquake."That day I had two customers with me at the time," Mr Della Grotta said."An Australian just sat down in the chair and it started to shake."The shop was ruined and once again Mr Della Grotta found himself cutting hair from the backyard of his Beaumont Street home while he waited six weeks to move into the Cleary Street shop from which he still works.He said he would miss his clients, some of whom travel from Maitland and Sydney for good old-fashioned service, including the razor-blade shave."I'm 69 and the time has come but I will miss all of the people," Mr Della Grotta said.Mr Della Grotta's business partner, Matthew Lane, will take over the shop.
© 2005 Newcastle Herald
