Me, My Mama and My Hair

article by LOU DAVENPORT

I have written about this subject before. My dear mama seemed to enjoy torturing me by wanting to fix my hair to look like a little southern belle and that just went against my rebellious little soul. I know she wanted a perfect little princess, but she got me. Bless her sweet heart, because princess, I was NOT! Unless princesses liked to dig in the dirt, play cars, go barefoot, and run around in cotton panties from J.C. Penny. That was my “perfect” outfit, and my “perfect hair” was a super casual look, that I let fly all over the place in wild abandon. That was me, the “little princess.” Our negotiated hairdo was a pony tail. At least it kept my wild hair out of my face so I could build better roads for my cars!

Pin curling was not nearly enough torture for my mama. Back when I was a wee one, there were TONETTES… home permanents for young girls. The older girls had TONI’S. I’m sure they had the same stinky ingredients and those same plastic stick rod rollers and rolling papers. Yes, ROLLING PAPERS. Rolling papers, I wrote that right! That’s what they were called! ROLLING PAPERS!

Those “Tonette’s” should have been banned in all 50 states and several foreign countries. I am sure they had at least 5 or 6 highly toxic ingredients in that box of terror. It had bottles that were mixed together to make the “perm solution.” That should have been enough but oh no, they had a bottle of “neutralizer!” Neutralizer to stop the cooking, oh, I mean curling action of the permanent solution

Mama had a twinkle in her eye when she’d sit me in one of the kitchen chairs and proceed with cooking my hair until it was a fine mess of frizz. First, you had to endure the rolling part… strands wrapped in those ROLLING PAPERS and then, twisted around the stick of the rollers, which took awhile. ( I was never one to be able to sit still for very long UNLESS it was something I wanted to do, like playing in the dirt in my cotton panties). Then, she mixed the perm solution. Oh, it smelled so God awful bad. I’m guessing it was at least 80% ammonia. It sat there on your “rolled and wrapped hair” for a long while, that seemed like hours to me. You lose track of time having to smell that SOLUTION.

The “neutralizer” came next as she held your head under the kitchen faucet. You had to hold your nose and squeeze your eyes shut. We didn’t have one of those “shampoo sprayer things” at my house. Mama would just push your head under the running water as far as possible to get all that mess off. I was squirming and writhing around the whole time. Oh the inhumanity!

But, the torture was not over when you got that stinking crap off your hair. Then, you got UNROLLED and UNWRAPPED! She saved the rollers, and threw away the papers. The rollers were kept in a TONI permanent box in the bathroom cabinet.

Your hair was left hanging, wet, in weird “worm like” spirals. She’d comb through that and I think, roll it in the pin curls again. It had to dry and we didn’t have a hair dryer back then. She’d put the “panty hair net” on me and I think I got to go out to dig in the dirt. I think. My memories are vague here because of all the toxic fumes I’d just inhaled.

Finally, it would be time for the big reveal! Mama would gleefully pull out all those bobby pins, brush it out and start to “ooh and ahh” at what she had created. She’d march me into the bathroom so I could see in the bathroom mirror. O.M.G.! I would look like I had stuck my finger in an electrical outlet., just like Chevy Chase in the classic “Christmas Vacation” poster. And she had the nerve to tell me how PRETTY I LOOKED!

I remember going into a full meltdown at that point; I would wail and sob! And those perms lasted forever. To get rid of all that fuzz and frizz, your hair had to be cut! Cut! I got the scissors once and cut a big chunk of my own hair out trying to rid myself of that frazzled looking hair. Not smart on my part but, mama did have to cut my hair fairly short to “even it up.”

Now, I wasn’t the only child in my family of cousins who had to endure the torture. Sometimes Loretta got those Tonette’s right along with me. Mama and Aunt Mayvonne lined us up, like an assembly line, and permed us both! Judi didn’t even need a perm, she had great naturally curly hair. She was lucky! She escaped, “Perms for One; Perms for All!” We spent years of our lives looking like “old ladies.”

I had one more perm when I was in my late 20’s. The “in style” was a head full of curls, like “Gloria” on “All in the Family.” When I came home from the beauty shop, my husband, Larry, told me I looked like Harpo Marx. I did, really, I did.

Right now during this quarantine, I’m way past getting my hair cut. It doesn’t really have a color, probably because of all those Toneette Home Perms. So, needless to say, I’m pretty drab and my hair is getting long. Hats have come in mighty handy and forget about makeup. I do try to get dressed every day and brush my hair, just to put a hat on. But, this all shall pass and I hope it’s soon. I never want to wear another pony tail as long as I live.