It's Friday and I had a hair appointment to do a little gray reversal. Some women look so beautiful in gray, white or silvery hair, but me, I'm not so lucky. I'm still in denial and choose get my hair tinted with a few highlights here and there. My hairdresser, Venessa is the best! She's pleasant, treats me like a valued customer and spends much time caring for me. I love the scent of the shampoo, it's like none other and how the fragrance stays with me for the longest time well into the night and on my pillow. The extra head message given during the conditioning rinse is so relaxing. Once the cape is taken off I rise with a little pick me up and feel a little fresher, lighter and maintained.
While at the trendy modern loft style salon, I noticed only one sit down hair dryer with a hood.
As always, Vanessa felt a need to put me under it in order for my foil wrapped sprigs to develop into a nice honey shade.
(A standard photo taken from a beauty instruction manual. No way I'd have a photo of myself for a visual!)
I was taken upstairs to a loft to use it. Wow, I thought. You come upstairs to sit under a hair dryer. Interesting. I had a few minutes to ponder how technology has changed everything in our daily lives why would cosmotology be left out. Now, all that is required is a hand held hair dryer with diffuser in one hand and a round hair brush for the other to achieve a desired natural effect.
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I also remembered going on Fridays to the beauty shop with my mother after she got off work from the brand new sparkling Howard Johnson's Motor Lodge not far from our home. The beauty shop was appropriately named Sue Little's Beauty Shop as it was owned and operated by Sue Little in the back of her home in a neighborhood close by. She had two shampoo basins, two sit down hair dryers and a couple of chairs for waiting. After several minutes of Sue and my mom discussing the right shade to cover her gray, Mom would finally decide on the medium ash brown that we all knew she would select anyway because she never veered from it! It wasn't too dark and not too light for her taste. Then I'd settle in hopping from chair to chair flapping through the magazines for what I thought would be an eternity waiting on her.
They would chat, chat and chat some more, all the while my gum was getting old and I would wish for Sue to wrap my mother's hair in the brush rollers at the top and a little quicker around her finger to form a circle and held with a silver clip at the bottom.
After primping mom with one last tease, a finessed curl at her forehead and a final spray that would hold her hair in that form for ever, Sue would take off the cape, mom would rise with a pleased smile, pay Sue and we were off in the car to go home where she was ready for a relaxing weekend with dad watching programs on our color t.v., one of the newer technologies of the time, such as Lawrence Welk, The Midwestern Hayride and Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. Also a surprise visit from an older brother or sister, their spouse and tiny tikes in tow, my nieces and nephews might fill our weekend with happy togetherness.
The aroma in the car going home was wonderful! I thought she was beautiful!
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When I was seven my mother was planning for an upcoming family reunion picnic. She thought she would like her daughter to be transformed from a tom boy to a nice little girl with an upcurled perm. Usually the only time a perm was necessary was Easter and then it was a Toni home perm.
She made an appointment with Sue and dropped me off on her lunch hour and my older brother was to pick me up at three o'clock when he got out of high school. After sitting still for Sue while I got that smelly perm, she finally took the cape off of me and I ran out the door where my brother was waiting at the curb.
We sped off in a whirl and arrived home safely a few blocks away in his souped up convertible. My mother arrived home to see her little girl in a hair blown scattered disarray. "What happened to Krissy"?, she asked. As she pulled a comb through my tangled hair which was now straight as before, my brother said, "Gee, mom, I just brought her home like you told me too"! Mom then began banging the pots and pans to make supper a little louder than normal with a frown and turned up mouth to the right side of her face.
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Someone else appears to have an experience with his older sister's cap style portable hairdryer. It appears his mother either needed a helping hand to aid in drying her son's wet head and/or someone felt a need to photograph it for posterity and future use as a playful muse.
My husband as a young boy and his sister's portable hair dryer.
I love his photo on my dresser in a grouping with our daughter as a baby and her first baby, our grandson Blake.
The next time you're at the salon you too will have time to think, remember, relax, get pampered and cared for to a refreshing and revitalized new you!
Love,
Kris
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