The legacy of downtown Belleville’s Curt Weisenstein lives on in story after story

The other day at Boeving’s Barber Shop in Belleville suddenly turned into Curt Weisenstein Memorial Day.

Curt’s twin brother, Kent, was getting a haircut and naturally, Curt came up. Curt had been such a big part of downtown Belleville that his legacy lingers on in his big Curt’s clock on the Square and in the Curt stories everybody remembers. He died in 2007.

Curt suffered brain damage at birth and lived with his family near downtown. One day he started running errands for the folks downtown and soon he was indispensable. And beloved. He helped people, he said.

Kent remembers spending a day with Curt downtown to see what he did. Kent was amazed at how many people Curt interacted with and how fond everybody was of him.

His headquarters was the barber shop, but he also spent a lot of time getting jeweler Chuck Blanquart to reset clocks and watches to the correct time, which was 12 minutes fast. Curt Time, everyone called it. Curt would lift the clock off your wall, take it to Chuck and have it reset before bringing it back.

When Curt referred to me he always told the barbers I was “that guy.” After a few years he learned my name and I felt like I had won an honor.

Curt didn’t know about lines or just didn’t think they were a good idea. At the post office, a clerk told me about Curt butting into the front of the line as he usually did. The clerk was going to make him wait, but everybody in line greeted him and told hm to go ahead.

He ran errands for everybody. The Boevings would ask him to get them some doughnuts and then wait to see how many they got and how much it cost. It was never the same.

One day he brought them a big box with dozens of doughnuts. They wanted to know how much money he needed.

“Don’t worry about it,” he told them.

When Curt said that you knew you better worry but what could you do, Jim Boeving said. They set them out for customers to grab. Later in the day a banker came by for a haircut and asked where they had gotten their doughnuts. They said Curt brought them from somewhere.

The banker said Curt had been to the bank earlier during a customer appreciation day. He asked if those were for everybody. Someone said yes, thinking he wanted one or two. But he had barbers to feed so before anyone could react he grabbed the box and took off.

Free doughnuts from Curt’s world.

So many stories. So much fun. Sixteen years later everybody misses him.