Living History Read Online Free PDF Page B

I had decided the week before to get a more “grown-up” hairdo to begin my high school years. Thus began my lifelong hair struggles.
    I wore my long straight hair in a ponytail or held back by a headband, and whenever my mother or I needed a permanent or trim we visited her dear friend Amalia Toland, who had once been a beautician. Amalia would take care of us in her kitchen while she and my mother talked. But I wanted to show up at high school with a shoulder-length pageboy or flip like those of the older girls I admired, and I begged my mother to take me to a real beauty parlor. A neighbor recommended a man who had his shop in a small windowless room in the back of a nearby grocery store. When I got there, I handed him a photo of what I wanted and waited to be transformed. Wielding scissors, he began to cut, all the time talking to my mother, often turning around to make a point. I watched in horror as he cut a huge hunk of hair out of the right side of my head. I shrieked. When he finally looked at where I was pointing, he said, “Oh, my scissors must have slipped, I’ll have to even up the other side.” Shocked, I watched the rest of my hair disappear, leaving me―in my eyes, at least―looking like an artichoke. My poor mother tried to reassure me, but I knew better: My life was ruined.
    I refused to leave the house for days, until I decided that if I bought a ponytail of fake hair at Ben Franklin’s Five and Dime Store, I could pin it to the top of my head, put a ribbon around it and pretend the slipped scissors disaster never happened. So that’s what I did, which saved me from feeling selfconscious and embarrassed that first day―until I was walking down the grand central staircase in between classes. Coming up the stairs was Ernest Ricketts, known as “Ricky,” who had been my friend since the day we first walked to kindergarten together. He said hello, waited until he passed me, and then, as he had done dozens of times before, reached back to pull my ponytail―but this time it came off in his hand. The reason we are still friends today is that he did not add to my mortification; instead, he handed my “hair” back to me, said he was sorry he scalped me and went on without drawing any more attention to the worst moment―until then, at least―of my life.
    It’s a cliché now, but my high school in the early 1960s resembled the movie Grease or the television show Happy Days. I became President of the local fan club for Fabian, a teen idol, which consisted of me and two other girls. We watched The Ed Sullivan Show every Sunday night with our families, except the night he showcased the Beatles on February 9, 1964, which had to be a group experience. Paul McCartney was my favorite Beatle, which led to debates about each one’s respective merits, especially with Betsy, who always championed George Harrison. I got tickets to the Rolling Stones concert in Chicago’s McCormick Place in 1965. “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” became a catchall anthem for adolescent angst of all varieties. Years later, when I met icons from my youth, like Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Mick Jagger, I didn’t know whether to shake hands or jump up and down squealing.
    Despite the developing “youth culture,” defined mostly by television and music, there were distinct groups in our school that determined one’s social position: athletes and cheerleaders; student council types and brains; greasers and hoods. There were hallways I didn’t dare walk down because, I was told, the “shop” guys would confront people. Cafeteria seating was dictated by invisible borders we all recognized. In my junior year, the underlying tensions broke out with fights between groups in the parking lot after school and at football and basketball games.
    The administration moved quickly to intervene and established a student group called the Cultural Values Committee consisting of representative students from different groups.
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