This is about hair. Not the musical production that has been playing for years on Broadway in New York and around the country. This is about real hair — my hair to be exact. Now the fad for the last five years or so has been to have long hair; long straight beautiful hair. But lots of luck to us who have curly hair—it just doesn’t work.
My mother found out when I was a baby that when she washed my hair, it turned into a bunch of ringlets-that should have been hint enough. When I was a little older and we went down to Ryan’s Lake to swim with a bunch of kids, they used to be fascinated by the fact that when we came out of the water, I was the only one who had curls as if the hair had never gotten wet. None of them had curly hair—everyone else’s hair was absolutely straight when they came out of the lake. I think it was because most of those kids were Swedish and Norwegian and it seems that those nationalities must have straight hair. On top of that, most of them had the color hair I loved best and back then it was called “dishwater blonde.” Oh, how I wished I had that color hair!
In the 1930s there was a little fad going around, and that was to get a permanent. I believe it had been newly invented. I’m not talking about “Toni Home Permanent,” the one everyone used in the ‘40s and ‘50s to do-it-yourself at home. I’m talking about going to a beauty shop—and what a thrill for a young girl to be actually going to a beauty shop—the domain of older women! And as long as permanents were so popular, everyone had to have one, didn’t they?
So one warm summer day we hopped into mother’s old Plymouth and took off down the drive to the heart of Camden. I did not know which beauty parlor we were going to, or even if there was more than one. I knew we weren’t going to a barber shop because I somehow knew their names—Konnick’s, Peggy’s and Joe’s, probably because my dad went to them. The only beauty parlor name I had heard of was Wanda’s, and that was on 42nd Ave.
I do remember we had to make a couple stops first, one to Blomquist’s market for some Oxydol soap and some Dutch Cleanser, which I was hoping was not for my hair. The second stop was to Baumann’s Camden Bakery for a quick hamburger in their lunch room and to say “hi” to my uncle Earle Baumann who was busy making cookies.
My appointment was at 1 o’clock. Fear set in after I saw the machines. Big metal circles hung from above with octopi-like tentacles hanging down with clippers or curlers attached to the ends. How does one get a permanent, anyway?
The operator, a friendly dark-haired woman, came in from lunch and asked which kind of a permanent I would like, a spiral or a croquinol? Mother didn’t know the difference so she said croquinol. I don’t even know if that’s how you spell it! Meanwhile, I was getting thoughts of innocent people who were put in electric chairs and I was hoping that was not the case! Once the curlers were in, the operator turned on the electricity and the curlers started heating. I could smell something like burning hair, and was hoping it was not mine.
The operator timed the heating to what she thought was my type of hair, about 5 minutes. Then, voila, it was time to unveil the masterpiece: She took the curlers out and attempted to comb out the hair, but boing, the hair would not unroll—it was wound as tight as corkscrews. There was no way it would loosen up, even after repeated dousings of water. What had happened was that it had turned all kinky and nothing would make it budge. The operator was horrified, but it was not her fault. She had never been told I had naturally curly hair: So I was stuck with a head of frizz, which lasted about a month, and I even had the nerve to deny it when asked if had gotten a permanent.
After that, I never stepped foot in a beauty parlor, at least for 30 years, remembering that the moral of this story is “never get a permanent if you have naturally curly hair.”