RIP James “Jimmy” B, the man I both wanted & didn’t want to become

A couple days ago while up the street, I stopped in my barber shop to say hi to Roe (my lady barber) and schedule an appointment for next week.  I was pleasantly surprised to see this on the wall, a framed photo montage of my friend Jim, who died this past October at age 74. 

Jim’s life was that barbershop.  He didn’t work there, more like the shop’s mascot and occasional gopher—but it’s where he spent much of his time for 25 years.  He never owned a computer or cellphone, but kept up to date with everything in the world and was happy to give you an earful if and when provoked.  He managed to tick off half the women he knew, but still had those same women cooking for him.  Everyone loved him.

I first met Jim in the spring of 1999, shortly after he moved into my old apartment building.  One night I was downstairs in the back, talking to Janice (who lived below me) when we saw a chubby, balding man walking away from Janice’s neighbor Teresa’s car. 

Teresa (a retired bank manager in her 70s) got out and shouted “If I’m going to make you dinner then you’d better help with these groceries!”  The man turned around and headed back to her car.  Janice turned to me and said “I think Teresa’s found herself a gigolo.”

Teresa’s “gigolo” was Jimmy B, who recently moved into our building.  He’d been living just a couple streets over with his mother until she passed in February.  Never married and in his fifties, he was on his own for the first time.  And in his first month there, managed to get a couple of the older women in our building to cook for him on occasion.  It went on for many years, too. 

So in those pre-Covid years, before the barbershop became ‘By Appointment Only’ and was filled with a dozen guys waiting for a haircut (myself included), Jim would often pull me into his talks to the crowd.  “Doesn’t ANYONE know a single lady we can fix Doug up with?  He’s loaded!  Doug—tell everyone how much money you have!”

He also liked to share recent (and past) going-ons at our apartment building, and used me as his back-up:  “Doug, remember that night those two meth-heads on your floor nearly burned the place down?  And everyone was evacuated in the middle of the night, except for me because I never heard them pounding on my door?  Tell everyone what Teresa told the firemen when they asked who lived in #203!”

In my best Teresa voice, I said “Oh, that’s just Jim in there—let the man sleep.  Or burn for all I care.”

Sometimes when Jim napped or left to get lunch at the Rusty Nail, some newbie would ask who Jim was and what he did for a living, and one of the other regulars would tell Jim’s story.  Jim was an accounting clerk for Gulf Oil, in the US Steel Building downtown.  In 1984, Chevron Oil acquired Gulf and offered all the Gulf employees a huge severance package.  You could either take a $40,000 cash payout, or 50K in Chevron stock.

Everyone took the cash—Jim took the stock.  “Jim why’d you take the payout in stock?”  “Because my dad always said, do the OPPOSITE of what everyone else is doing!”

Jim’s 50K of Chevron stock split when the Gulf takeover became public, then split again and again.  In a matter of weeks, his shares had quadrupled.  He was 35 years old, and would never work again.

I loved that story, and Jim’s flimsy knowledge of stocks (that still managed to keep him in clover for 40 years) helped inspire me to take my own savings and put it in the market many years ago.

I used to tell everyone I was going to be the next Jimmy B—until I early-retired in 2015 and the barbers invited me to spend more time at the barbershop.  I said “I’m not going to be the next Jimmy B!”

Sadly, when the pandemic struck in 2020 and the barbershop closed down for nearly a year, Jim had nowhere to go.  I invited him to visit me at my new apartment, he was invited to several people’s homes—but he declined most of the offers.  He missed the days of a ‘full shop’. 

When the barbershop finally reopened, but with one barber and ‘by appointment only’, Jim checked himself into New Hope Nursing Home.  He told us he had an audience there, and a staff to prepare all his meals and even help give him a bath twice a week. 

Roe told him to get the hell out of there, that’s where old people go to die, but he didn’t listen.  And one year later, this past October, Jim died in his sleep.  Gone too soon, but I suspect he was pretty happy there.  There will certainly never be another Jimmy B.