• Home
• About Nathan
• Free Stories
• Contact

Hair and Beauty and the Class of ’64

YOU MIGHT THINK it strange that Willow Mills sports three beauty salons and a barbershop. In fact, time was you had to go to Wabash or North Manchester to get any barbering done if you didn’t want your mother doing it with a big bowl and a pair of pinking shears at the kitchen table. And when the idea was to have hair piled up on top of your head higher than your plate at Thanksgiving Dinner, it came to four enterprising youth at Willow Mills High School to ride the wave, so to speak, into a new career.

The interest started at the age of twelve for a mischievous Al Bailey (that’s Albert Jr.) when he decided to use the electric hair clippers to shave Albert Sr.’s prize bull. But that’s another story. After the event, though, Albert punished his son by making him learn to cut hair properly and having his own head shaved regularly by his son. Before long, there were a number of farmers who would stop by the Bailey farmhouse on Saturday night for a trim. Albert went to a summer barbering school between his junior and senior years in high school and his dad rented a storefront next to Oppenheimer’s Drug Store as a graduation present for his son.

But Al wasn’t the only one styling hair at an early age. In fact, three of his classmates who were far-gone on the Beatles—and were the closest thing that Willow Mills ever saw to groupies—spent most of their Friday nights together on a rotating sleepover. They were Elizabeth Daniels, Robyn Ayers, and Donna Askins.

Now at first, when they were in their pre-teens and junior high school, the three were just good friends who spent a lot of time at their sleepovers doing each other’s hair and nails. These girls could rat up their hair in the biggest beehives under the sun. And then they’d use toilet paper to wrap themselves up like a mummy to keep the style fresh for Saturday. Of course, all three had parents who insisted that they wash and comb out their hair before church on Sunday morning, but they felt like glamour queens on Saturday.

It probably would have stayed that way had it not been that they actually liked doing hair and nails and—after their parents allowed it—makeup. They subscribed to every beauty magazine they could get their hands on and built up quite a collection of cosmetics and paraphernalia. They tried everything from straightening gels to orange juice cans to heated rollers. And although they occasionally ended up with a burn on the neck or green hair—some girls just weren’t intended to be blondes—by and large, they learned the arts well enough that other girls, especially in the younger classes, came to them to have their hair done for big dates or special events.

After school, the three girls decided to go off to cosmetology school in Indianapolis together for a year. Truth be known, I think their parents breathed a sigh of relief that they were only looking at 18 months of tuition, room, and board instead of a full four years of college. Times were tight in Willow Mills in the mid-sixties.

There was never a question in these three girls’ minds that they would come back to Willow Mills and set up shop together. But when they started actually trying to get started, they discovered shop space and clientele were all a little limited. For a while, they tried sharing Al’s Barbershop with him. Al’s business had evolved into something akin to the Elks club and was always busy. But with just Al and two chairs, there was a lot of empty space back in the shop and he allowed that the girls might make use of it.

But there are some things in which mixing men and women doesn’t work, and it seems that barbering is one of them. Excuse me, that’s hairdressing. Well, there’s one of the problems. It turns out that old ladies don’t want to have old men around when their getting blue rinse in their hair, and young girls aren’t crazy about hearing what their dates and boyfriends are saying in a barbershop. It was almost the end of all their businesses and in three months the girls found themselves each working out of their parent’s homes while they looked for a better way.

That wasn’t the real problem, though, if the truth were known. The real problem had to do with three girls all interested in the same boy. Or perhaps it was one boy interested in three different girls. They’d all four been loners when it came to the opposite sex in high school, choosing the company of each other or their friends on Saturday night instead of dates. But the three months of working in the same space began to reveal sexual tensions where there had been none before.

It started with one or another of the girls repaying a favor to Al with dinner at her house. Then another asking for help with some equipment at her house. And a third wanting advice over dinner on some new styles she wanted to try out. And soon, the three close friends found themselves competing for the affections that seemed to be equally given to all three by one boy.

Now, I won’t say that the girls didn’t stay friends. You can still catch them on Friday at lunch for their weekly date at Josephine’s. They are still known to go off together for vacations or shopping trips. But somehow, they never put their shops back together as one big beauty salon. Elizabeth (Betty) Daniels managed to put together enough money to buy a little house over on Walnut that her grandmother owned. She converted the parlor into a one-woman salon where she specializes in wash and set for the older generation. It’s called Betty’s Style Hair Salon. Robyn managed finally to land that prize storefront across the street from Al’s and set it up as the Deja View Hair Studio. Her clientele is the younger set who want stylish new cuts, colors, and manicures. Donna got a trailer out on the southeast corner of town, not technically in String Town, but just the other side of the tracks. She calls it Askins Beauty Parlor. Her clients are those who mostly want to keep their color the same for life, always have their hair the same length and style, and never want to use an eyebrow pencil again. Donna will also do waxing and facials.

Al, of course, still has the same barbershop next to Oppenheimer’s. It was so big that he fixed up the back and upstairs and lives there.

Oh, so how did the romance thing work out? Sometimes it just doesn’t pay to ask too many questions. What we know for sure is that none of the four ever got married, and Al’s lights are seldom on at night. And oddly enough, there seems to be a couple weeks each summer when all four shops are closed at the same time.

---

Comments

Please feel free to send comments to the author at nathan@nathaneverett.com.