slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

By Lavale Kennedy Mills; Vina, AL...from Reminisce Magazine

Home permanents were curls in a box...the answer to all straight-hair problems. But the results didn't always look like the sleek style worn by the smiling model on the package...sometimes "fried hair" was the best description. In the 1950s, every community in rural northwest Alabama had at least one housewife who was the "home-perm beautician." In the summer, her beauty shop was her front porch. In winter, it was her kitchen. My aunt held the title of home-perm expert in our community.

I remember watching her give my mother a perm. The solution was applied using cotton balls. Tissue paper was place around the saturated strand, and the hair was rolled, tissue and all, tightly to the scalp on little rods held in place by rubber bands.

But the home perm went the way of crinoline petticoats. The 1960s brought beehive hairdos shellacked with hair spray and tresses teased high, which called for a professional's touch.
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'Lunching with a legend,' by Katie Gillespie; Piedmont, SC...from Reminisce Magazine

When I was 12, my father, who worked for a local TV station, invited me to a media luncheon with country/rock-and-roll singer Brenda Lee (I'm Sorry and 'Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree). I was rather shy around her, but I did ask if she could clarify some lyrics to her song 'Sweet Nothin's.' She was very pleasant. That great voice was wrapped in a petite young lady. I bragged about that day for a very long time!

badbobby Loc: texas

memories
memories
Thanks Slat
Now I remember my mother doing my sister's and her own hair
in exactly that manner
I'll be thinking about and remembering her a lot more today

slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

Yeah, I pretty much have the same memories of my mother, sisters, aunts and cousins.