Willow Leaves July 26

Trip Plans Altered Althea & Everett Thompson packed all five kids into the Caravan and left for the Grand Canyon on Tuesday. The trip was made ahead of thieir original schedule to accommodate eldest daughter Janice’s wedding plans for August. The family toyed with the idea of cancelling the trip after Janice made the surprise announcement on Father’s Day, but Althea said this was likely to be the last time the whole family would be able to travel together and they weren’t about to miss it. They plan to return August 1st. We asked Janice how the trip affected her wedding plans. “I can’t believe how many wedding invitations I still have to send,” she said. “I’m just going to sit in the back of the Caravan and address them, then mail them from all over the west.” The family couldn’t leave before Janice had finished her performance in “The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds,” a studio production at Manchester College last weekend. Janice’s performance as the coniving and somewhat demented elder sister was both stunning and convincing.	State Fair Excursion Willow Mills 4-H Club members and their chaperones have announced plans for their annual trip to the Indiana State Fair in Indianapolis, August 28. The bus will leave Elsie Hewitt Elementary School at 6:30 a.m. and will return at about midnight. The cost of the trip is $10 per person and registrations must be received by August 20. Registration includes admission and transportation, but club members are reminded that it does not include midway attractions or food. Registrations should be dropped off at the Farm Bureau Co-op. Members under 12 years of age must have a designated chaperone on the trip.

Hair and Beauty and the Class of ’64

You might think it strange that Willow Mills sports three beauty salons and a barbershop. In fact, time was you had to go to Wabash or North Manchester to get any barbering done if you didn’t want your mother doing it with a big bowl and a pair of pinking shears at the kitchen table. And when the idea was to have hair piled up on top of your head higher than your plate at Thanksgiving Dinner, it came to four enterprising youth at Willow Mills High School to ride the wave (so to speak) into a new career.

The interest started at the age of 12 for a mischevious Al Bailey (that’s Albert Jr.) when he decided to use the electric hair clippers to shave Albert’s prize bull. But that’s another story. After the event, though, Albert punished his son by making him learn to cut hair properly and having his own head shaved regularly by his son. Before long, there were a number of farmers who would stop by the Bailey farmhouse on Saturday night for a trim. Albert went to a summer barbering school between his junior and senior years in high school and his dad rented a storefront next to Oppenheimer’s Drug Store as a graduation present for his son.

But Al wasn’t the only one styling hair at an early age. In fact, three of his classmates who were far gone on the Beattles (and were the closest thing that Willow Mills ever saw to groupies) spent most of their Friday nights together on a rotating sleep-over. They were Elizabeth Daniels, Robyn Ayers, and Donna Askins.

Now at first, when they were in their pre-teens and Junior High School, the three were just good friends who spent a lot of time at their sleep-overs doing each other’s hair and nails. These girls could rat up their hair in the biggest beehives under the sun. And then they’d use toilet paper to wrap themselves up like a mummy to keep the style fresh for Saturday. Of course all three had parents who insisted that they wash and comb out their hair before church on Sunday morning, but they felt like glamour queens on Saturday.

It probably would have stayed that way had it not been for the fact that they actually like doing hair and nails and (after their parents allowed it) makeup. They subscribed to every beauty magazine they could get their hands on and built up quite a collection of comsmetics and paraphenalia. They tried everything from straightening gels to orange juice cans to heated rollers. And although they occasionally ended up with a burn on the neck or green hair (some girls just weren’t intended to be blondes), by and large they learned the arts well enough that other girls (especially in the younger classes) came to them to have their hair done for big dates or special events.

After school, the three girls decided to go off to cosmetology school in Indianapolis together for a year. Truth be known, I think their parents breathed a sigh of relief that they were only looking at 18 months of tuition, room, and board instead of a full four years of college. Times were tight in Willow Mills in the mid-sixties.

There was never a question in these three girls minds that they would come back to Willow Mills and set up shop together. But when they started actually trying to get started, they discovered that shop space and clientele were all a little limited. For a while, they actually tried sharing Al’s Barbershop with him. Al’s business had evolved into something akin to the Elk’s club and was always busy. But with just Al and two chairs, there was a lot of empty space back in the shop and he allowed that the girls might make use of it.

But there are some things in which mixing men and women doesn’t work. And it seems that barbering is one of them. Excuse me, that’s hairdressing. Well, there's one of the problems. It turns out that old ladies don’t want to have old men around when their getting blue rinse in their hair, and young girls aren’t crazy about hearing what their dates and boyfriends are saying in a barbershop. It was almost the end of all their businesses and in three months the girls found themselves each working out of their parent’s homes while they looked for a better way.

That wasn’t the real problem, though, if the truth were known. The real problem had to do with three girls all interested in the same boy. Or perhaps it was one boy interested in three different girls. They’d all four been loners when it came to the opposite sex in high school, choosing the company of each other or their friends on Saturday night instead of dates. But the three months of working in the same space began to reveal sexual tensions where there had been none before.

It started with one or another of the girls repaying a favor to Al with dinner at her house. Then another asking for help with some equipment at her house. And a third wanting advice over dinner on some new styles she wanted to try out. And soon, the three close friends found themselves competing for the affections that seemed to be equally given to all three by one boy.

Now I won’t say that the girls didn’t stay friends. You can still catch them on Friday at lunch for their weekly date at Josephine’s. They are still known to go off together for vacations or shopping trips. But somehow, they never put their shops back together as one big beauty salon. Elizabeth (Betty) Daniels managed to put together enough money to buy a little house over on Walnut that her grandmother owned. She converted the parlor into a one-woman salon where she specializes in wash and set for the older generation. It’s called Betty’s Style Hair Salon. Robyn managed finally to land that prize storefront across the street from Al’s and set it up as the Deja View Hair Studio. Her clientele is the younger set who want stylish new cuts, colors, and manicures. Donna got a trailer out on the southeast corner of town, not technically in Stringtown, but just the other side of the tracks. She calls it Askins Beauty Parlor. Her clients are those who mostly want to keep their color the same for life, always have their hair the same length and style, and never want to use an eyebrow pencil again. Donna will also do waxing and facials.

Al, of course, still has the same shop next to Oppenheimer’s. It was so big that he fixed up the back and upstairs and lives there.

Oh, so how did the romance thing work out? Sometimes it just doesn’t pay to ask too many questions. What we know for sure is that none of the four ever got married, and Al’s lights are seldom on at night. And oddly enough, there seems to be a couple weeks each summer when all four shops are closed at the same time.