Pin Curls

     As I passed by the beauty salon in the front of the local Walmart, I witnessed an array of hair care products to shine, smooth, sculpt, and moisturize your hair.  A display of cosmetics for your finger and toe nails was centered there in the midst of rows of barber chairs, and tables for nail sculpting.
     As I passed slowly by I observed the make over routine preformed by the hair dressers and their clients wanting to become transformed into beauty queens, if only for an evening.  I watched briefly the careful sculpting of the nails, and relaxing laid back resting while feet were soaking in bubbly bliss, and with my eyebrows raised, and my lips slightly smiling, I was taken back to a, shall we say, more prehistoric type of beauty makings.
     It all started before I could walk I guess, but Let's go back to say Saturday morning, 1963, in a small town in West Texas.  I was 7 years old back then and playing around in the front yard with the toy I found in the cereal box that morning.  My Mother yelled out the front door, announcing that my sister and I are to come in immediately to get our hair washed for Church tomorrow.  My sister eagerly runs inside and I, rolling my eyes, and kicking my feet at the ground, and wishing they didn't have Church so I wouldn't have to get my hair washed, reluctantly enter the house and head to the kitchen.
     There, my Mother already has my sister laid up on the cabinet with her head hanging over the kitchen sink in my Mom's one hand, while getting her head throughly scrubbed with her other.  Her eye brows are rapidly raising up and down on her forehead with every stroke of my Mother's hand scrubbing her scalp!!  She is holding her tiny five year old fingers over her eyelids, clamping them tightly shut.  She is making a long steady sound out of  her mouth, that is quivering with every scrub, sounding like someone humming while riding over a bumpy road.
     Now my Mother has the essential top of the line hair car product for making our hair shiny, silky, smooth, and tangle free.  Yes, she has the Tame out on the counter.  That's it!  Nothing else!!  She shampooed our hair, and used the Tame cream rinse for the tangles.
     We then left the shampooing area, and proceeded to the styling chair area, the living room floor.  There my Mother would yank, pull, yell, and crack me on the head with comb, to get the tangle free cream rinsed hair ready for the curling stage.
     Now this procedure had to have special tools to achieve the desired affect of the hair for Church tomorrow.  They were the comb, the hair pins, and the paper towels.  First she would carefully part our hair into even half inch squares, straighten the hair and wrap it in the paper towel cuttings, and then roll the covered hair into tiny little curls, and place the pin, sometimes two, into place to hold the curl secure, taking half my scalp with it!  This procedure was then usually followed by "Get you shoes on we have to go the store."
     Now at this stage I am really not liking the whole Church tomorrow every Saturday ritual at all.  Now we are parading all over this SMALL West Texas town, looking like something straight out of the Weird Theater show on TV every Friday night.  It's Saturday afternoon and every Mother in town is out shopping with all our friends in tow.  This was probably one of the most embarrassing things of my childhood, but this particular day I noticed something different.  Something I had never seen before, probably because I had my head down most the trip before, but I was shocked!!!
     There, in the middle of town, were girls I had seen hanging out with my older brother's groups, parading around town with their hair rolled up around tomato, and orange juice cans.  Some of them were even using tomato sauce cans!!.  Great big tin cans all over their heads!  I wanted to laugh so hard.  They looked totally ridiculous!  Something out of the "Twilight Zone" for sure.  There were also paper towels hanging out from under some of the cans, I suppose to keep the gook they had on them from running in their eyes!
    They had some kind of spacers between their fingers which were sporting really, really, red nail polish and most of them had really red lipstick on and lots of eye liner!  I had never noticed this before.  I laughed out loud and pointed them out to my sister, and then in the same breath, stopped, and thought to myself, "Am I going to have to do that when I get big?"  I was horrified!
     After supper and baths, we were tucked in and my sister and I tried our best to sleep without being head punctured as best we could.  The next morning after breakfast, and dressing for Church, the pins and paper towels came out.  What a relief!  All I wanted to do was scratch my head till it bled.  Instead my Mother yanked the comb through all those tight nit curls until she was satisfied we looked like beauty queens, and off to Church we went.
    I must say I was rather proud to have all the ladies of the Church compliment us on our beautiful curls and lace dresses my Mother sewed for us and we indeed did look like beauty queens!  Church never seemed to last all that long and Sunday Roast and Potato Dinner awaited us at home after Mass.
     Still, it brings a smile to my face to think how beauty was achieved back then, when I see the ladies pampered in the Beauty Salons of today. ~~