Editor’s Note: Ever wonder what’s the story behind that person you see picking up roadside garbage in Old Lyme? Or what’s the deal with that usher at the Garde Arts Center in New London who takes your tickets with a giant smile? The Day is launching a Get to Know Your Neighbors series, where for the next week you will learn about the people in your community who make a big difference but often go unnoticed.

Waterford ― Lou Pica started cutting hair in the 1950s, long before many of us were born. But it wasn’t because he loved cutting hair; it was because he hated scraping paint off the side of a Navy ship.

Pica began his long career in barbering, which continues to this day at the Jordan Village Barbershop & Salon in Waterford, after volunteering for the Navy during the Korean War. Tired of a thankless job as a seaman aboard the huge USS Iowa battleship, he jumped when asked if he knew how to cut hair, making a fib into a career.

“I didn’t want to do four years of scraping paint, so I BS’ed my way into cutting hair,” Pica said. “If I didn’t learn barbering, I would have been a bricklayer or cement finisher like my father.”

It turned out that he liked cutting hair, and the 89-year-old Pica has been doing it ever since, for a long time operating the Thames Barber Shop on Washington Street and then Methodist Street in New London. He retired for a time a few years back, but found lying around wasn’t for him.

“I had to go back to work just to get the hell out of the house,” he said.

Pica is a people person, and his verbal jousting with clients was part of his shtick, but also a reason why they returned regularly for a haircut and conversation. Dozens of them honored him with a party at Ocean Beach Park this summer to note his amazing longevity and to joke about all the friendly arguments they’d had with him over the years about politics, sports and the latest happenings around New London.

And Lou Pica seems to remember everything and everyone.

Wearing a blue barber shirt and white pants with comfy white sneakers, he was chit-chatting with everyone who came in on Tuesday, including longtime customer Roger Dupont.

“How long I been coming in?” Dupont asked Pica.

“Fifty years,” Pica said. “Some people’s hair I’ve been cutting 60 years, but there aren’t many of them left.”

During his 20-minute cut, Dupont talked with Pica about the people they knew in common and reminisced about one who passed away a decade ago. In the old days, they might have been talking baseball, but Pica is a big Yankees fan and Dupont a Red Sox follower, so they have little to mull over today as New York fights for a division crown and Boston’s playoff hopes dim.

Pica asks his customer whether he’s ever been to Aldi’s.

“Never been there,” Dupont said.

And Costco?

“Too mind-boggling. The place is so huge,” Dupont responded.

Finally done with the haircut, Pica leans in as he shows off the back of the hairline using a mirror.

“How does that look?” Pica asks for the millionth time.

“It’s good, Lou,” Dupont said, noting he has less hair to worry about now than a half century ago.

Pica has strong feelings about New London, a place where he grew up and ran a business for more than half a century. He remembers it as it was in the late 1950s with perhaps 35 barbershops, four theaters, 24-hour restaurants and people so thick in the street you’d have to walk by folks standing in line by hiking in the street.

“They were all over the place,” he said. “Now there’s nothing. It’s like Death Valley.”

Pica moved to Waterford in 1972 and is glad he did. He seems to have recovered from the heart problems that forced him to sell his barbershop and hang up the hair clippers for four years.

“I just say my prayers every day and thank the good Lord for keeping me going,” said Pica, a longtime parishioner at St. Mary Star of the Sea Church in New London.

After his barbering hiatus, he returned to work a year ago at the Jordan Village shop, where he spends four hours a day, two days a week, chipping in a percentage of his take to pay for his chair.

“It’s not for the money,” Pica said. “I just like talking with the guys and seeing them. I don’t take any new customers, just the ones I’ve always had.”

People often wonder, “What the hell you working for,” Pica said, but he enjoys it and plans to stick with it as long as he can.

“The shop I had, there will never be any more shops like that,” Pica said. “It was like ‘Cheers.’ Always guys in the shop bull----ing and telling stories and bringing in pastries. ... There were arguments in that shop every day: who makes the best grinders, sports, you name it.”

Pica said he specialized in flattops rather than the fancy ‘dos that would come and go. One of his most prized customers was Andy Robustelli, the famed defensive end of the New York Giants through the 1960s, but he also cuts the hair of many long-time locals, including New London Mayor Mike Passero.

“I was just a good barber, and that was it,” he said.

“I hope he’s here another 10 years,” his customer Roger Dupont, a retired power-company employee, said with a smile. “He’s a good man.”

l.howard@theday.com