"It don't make a damn bit a difference to me," said Kenny, kind of sidling up straighter in his stool. "It's just personal preference. And that's the way I always did it."

"Well, I'm just tellin' ya, because you might not know better."

"It's just personal preference. Like I don't judge a man on the length of his hair. I got to see what the man's got to say first."

"But sometimes, the people that smile at you are lyin. A man's handshake's his bond. Like his word. I tell you, you know that no member of the Klan shakes with his thumb. Not a single one. You know why there's a Klan? It's so men will remember how to be men. Sometimes people forget how. I'm a member of the Klan. Let me show you something." He took a picture out of his wallet of his wife and daughters. He meant it as a proof that he hadn't been fooling about being much else but a man, because he had five daughters. He seemed to be in his early thirties.

"Those are fine children," said Kenny. "I got one lil' daughter myself."

Eugene talked on, insinuating that there was quite a lot to protect these girls against. Like people who have forgotten the basics. Like handshakes.

"Well," Kenny concluded, "if it'd make a man feel better, I'd shake hands with his foot. It's just custom. Glad to meet ya."

And Kenny offered his hand and stood up to play some eight ball. Later Kenny told me that he had heard the lowdown on that character." His daddy used to have a lot of land, then all the sons got it and he just lost all of it. He's mad at the world cause he lost all the land. He lost everything. You see him trying to give trouble there? I didn't care how he shook hands, but I did it his way so there wouldn't be any trouble. And it looks like he's just droppin in and got bitter. I been around here three years and I haven't seen him."

Kenny used to make more people nervous when he first started frequenting Sopotnivk's. Now, Danny says, "Oley loves me and the kids I brought. We brought her a lot of business. Hell, one night about a couple of weeks ago Oley threw out eight people who came in drunk and started making remarks about my hair. Oley told 'em, "If you can't get along with my customers, you can get out.' And she threw 'em out. But when I first came in there, before Rick Stacy and I cooled 'em off, I almost got killed."

"One night I was just having a few drinks and mindin my business when this guy gets real drunk and comes up to me with this knife and asks me if I wouldn't mind gettin a haircut. Well I sort of sidle away from him til some woman by the jukebox laughs at the man and tells him he ain't man enough to cut that boy's hair. Then he really went after me. He had me from the back and had that knife at my throat when Patty yells at him "You son of a bitch!" and punches him so he lets go of me. I think the only thing that got me out of there alive was that he was more ashamed of having to hit a woman to get at me than he was determined to prove to the lady at the jukebox that he was man enough to get me."

Now, a few years later, it looked like Eugene Smith was the outsider to the confident, longhaired blond boy.