While filing my nails memories flooded my head. Bill’s first gift to me when we started dating was a manicure set. To him it must have seemed appropriate, yet not too personal. I kept and used it for a long time. His second gift was an ID bracelet. A few years ago I brought it along with some other silver items to the jewelry shop to trade it for money, a profitable exchange. After all, my ID had not been Laird for many years.
My mother was a beautician, but she did not like doing manicures. She did like everything to do with hair. I recall one story about a regular customer, a young man who had red hair. He would come to the shop to have my mother dye his mustache for it did not grow the same color as his hair.
Before we reached the age of getting our hair permed with wave solution, Mother used a curling iron. The rod was actually made of iron and it had a clamp, similar to the ones used today. But it was not electrical. Mother heated it over the stove top. I would sit on a high stool near the stove while she heated the iron and with great care she would wrap my hair around the rod to curl it in ringlets. Another way we got curls was when Mother wrapped small strips of brown paper bag around sections of our hair and tied the strips. We would sleep in those and it did not make our head sore like plastic curlers of later years.
My sister and I had our haircuts and perms at the shop where Mother worked. Up into our teen years, we got perms at home. During the process, while Mother applied the solution to each section of hair, my job was to hand her the small white papers to wrap the hair. The solution had a strong smell, but it was worth getting curls into my straight hair. The curls were so tight and short that I called myself “cherry top.” The perm process has not changed much over the years.
Ann Coker 