An Apple Core, a Toilet: Misadventures of a 1970s Childhood (7 page)

Men parted their hair down the middle during the Roaring ‘20s, as a photo of my grandfather shows; it was taken on the Lake Erie shore in 1922, when men also wore striped swimming trunks
and
striped swimming shirts.

My grandmother wore her hair relatively short — she curled it with rollers and it fell just below her ears. She wore that style — the look of the silent film stars during the Flapper era — until she died in 1972.

All of this is true. But what is also true is that the years following World War II were a homogenous, conformist time in America. 

Most women wore their hair long and flowing — or at least in a distinctly feminine manner.

Most men wore their hair short — parted on the side, or combed straight back, or in a butch cut or crew cut, like Sgt. Carter’s hair in “Gomer Pyle,” which my Uncle Mike wore throughout the ‘60s. I emulated my Uncle Mike’s cut one summer, as he was my favorite uncle.

Throughout this period, the only look that in any way approximated the shag’s tangled youthfulness was the James Dean pompadour — which, as I said, my father had sought to emulate when he’d been a teen.

Dean’s pompadour was greased up and combed straight back and straight up to create a curl above the forehead that looked like a breaking ocean wave.

The pompadour was made possible by oil-based products, such as Brylcreem, made famous by its jingle:

Bryl-creem, a little dab'll do ya,

Bryl-creem, you'll look so debonair.

Bryl-creem, the gals will all pursue ya,

They'll love to run their fingers through your hair.

The point is that from the ‘40’s through the early ‘70’s, most people’s hairstyles were as strait-laced, homogenous and conformist as everything else was during that period.

During the early ‘70s, many men were still sitting around barbershops, getting their hair cut short as they grumbled about politics, the price of bread and whether or not the Pirates were going to make it to the World Series that year. They passed around the coveted Playboy
magazine, which the barber kept hidden behind the counter.

You never saw a woman in a barbershop, except to drop off or pick up her sons — and the place would get deadly quiet until all women were gone.

In the early ‘70s most women went to female hair salons. They sat under large hair dryers, wearing curlers and nets. Marge, the chain-smoking salon owner, covered their mugs in green and blue goop, filed their nails, scraped gunk out of their toes and applied paints and chemicals of every variety — all while a Virginia Slim dangled from her lips.

That all began to change with the advent of the unisex hair salon — such as the one in the back parking lot of the Murphy's Mart Department Store — that era’s Wal-Mart — where I would pay $4.50 to have my hair cut like David Cassidy’s.

***

I had to scrounge every last penny before I could do it.

Up to that point, my father had cut my hair at no charge. He used a dull pair of 1950s hair shears that yanked as many hairs out by the roots as they cut.

Since I only had a few dollars to my name, I borrowed a dollar apiece from my older sisters, then rummaged through my father's change drawer and penny jar to make up the difference.

I jumped onto my Murray five-speed and pedaled the mile and a half to the salon. It was a rainy, overcast March day — a possible omen for what was to come?

I locked my bike to a utility pole near the back door of the salon, then peered inside.

There were women everywhere — women smoking, women having their hair preened and nails done.

This was no place for a male. Good God! What if my father found out?

I had nearly unlocked my bike and headed back home when my sisters’ words overtook me again:

"You'll be able to cover your big, floppy ears!"

I opened the door and walked inside. An older woman with a bleached yellow beehive stood behind the counter. She smoked a cigarette while chewing gum. She'd just finished ringing up a customer when she looked at me as though I were lost.

"May I help you?" she said, blowing smoking through her nose.
 

I moved closer to the counter and dumped four dollar bills and a fistful of change onto the counter.

"Make me look like David Cassidy.”
 

She washed my hair, then conditioned it. She clipped and cut, styled and set. She washed my hair again, then applied goops and sprays and ointments.

She instructed me on how to use a blow dryer. She gave me another goop that I’d need to use for six weeks to “train” my hair to stay in place.

She taught me everything I’d need to know to achieve David Cassidy’s feathering and fullness.

But she was just being gracious.

"What do you think?" she said as turned the chair around so I could face the mirror.

What did I think? I was horrified!

I didn’t look like David Cassidy.

I looked like Danny Bonaduce.

***
 

I raced home on my bike and hid in my bedroom the rest of the day, ignoring my sisters’ insistence that I let them help me style my hair.

I finally had to come downstairs when my father called me repeatedly for dinner. I took my seat to his right, praying he wouldn’t notice.

My father never was the most attentive fellow — especially after getting home from a long overtime shift at the phone company, which he worked every chance he could to keep up with our astronomical water and electric bills brought on by my sisters’ Farrah Fawcett hair.

But even he sensed something was off. As he chomped his burger and washed it down with a gulp of Pabst Blue Ribbon, he kept looking over at me. He had the puzzled expression of a dog trying to do calculus.

Then his eyes got bigger.

“What happened to your hair?” he finally said.

“I got it cut.”

“It’s parted down the middle.”

“Yes.”

“Who parts hair down the middle?”

“David Cassidy.”

“David who?”

“David Cassidy, the Partridge Family guy.”

“Who did this to you?”

“The hair salon.”

“You went to a ladies’ hair salon!”

“It’s a unisex salon.”

“A uni-what?”

“It is a salon that cuts hair for both sexes.”

"You got your hair cut at a women’s salon?"

“A unisex salon.”

His mouth was still full of burger and Pabst Blue Ribbon. He forgot he still needed to chew for a few moments.

He didn't know a lot of things. But he knew, as did all men who were 25 or older in 1974, that if you let your son get his hair cut at a ladies’ salon, it wouldn’t be long before you came home to find him wearing women’s makeup and undergarments.

He finally remembered to chew, but he couldn’t break his stare.

"But it's parted down the middle," he said.

***

I nearly abandoned my David Cassidy hair after dinner that night, but I was so eager to cover my floppy ears that I was willing to endure any amount of humiliation and embarrassment.

I assumed a healthy dose of mockery would await me at school that next Monday, but the mocking never came.

Something totally unexpected did happen: The girls in my class were looking at me differently.

I certainly wasn’t transformed from dork status to the
fifth grade’s most popular kid, but I was greeted with a gentle affirmation, a hint of gratitude, even a subtle acceptance among some of my female classmates that my bold fashion move was “cool.”

Of course, the very next week, Michael Kissinger got his hair parted down the middle, and it wasn’t long before the dam burst and most every boy in our school — every boy on the planet — was rushing to unisex hair salons to be embrace the David Cassidy shag.

By the ninth grade, almost EVERY boy in my high school class — 300 or so — was sporting the Cassidy shag — easily confirmed by looking through my ninth-grade yearbook.

***

I would wear my David Cassidy cut for many years afterward — until I was 30, in fact.

As it happened, my best friend's fiancé — whom I'd not yet met — was a flight attendant. She was to be the attendant on my flight from Pittsburgh to Los Angeles one night.

She had asked my friend to describe me so she could recognize me in the air.

"That's easy," my friend had told her. "He'll be the only one on the plane with his hair parted down the middle like David Cassidy."

So embarrassed was I about my lack of hipness, I went to the nearest upscale hair salon after landing in Los Angeles. My stylist was a young, highly fashionable L.A. lady.

I told her about my predicament — how I'd come to have the David Cassidy hair and how I now wanted something more current.

It was 1992 and, by then, the rock-star look of the ‘80s was long gone — mullets were out, too, thank goodness — and a more minimalist style was in: short hair, slicked straight back.

There would be no more need for a blow dryer, she explained. I was in!

And so it was that she washed my hair, then conditioned it. She clipped and cut, styled and set. She washed my hair again, then applied a contemporary mix of goops and ointments, so she could slick my hair straight back.

“What do you think?” she said, as she spun my chair around so I faced the mirror.

I was shocked by what I saw.

I looked like Eddie Munster.

Don't Take Her for Granted
 

I used to take her for granted.
When my five sisters and I were babies in her womb, she never took so much as an aspirin for a headache. She never put anything in her body but the nutrients we needed to grow, and I took that for granted.
As a child, my world was rock solid because of her. She put our needs so far before her own that we didn't know that she had needs. She loved us without condition. I was so unaware of the fear and pain less fortunate children suffer that I didn't know such concepts existed. She worked hard to create that world, and I took that for granted.
As a teen, I gave her grief. I told her how wrong she was about religion, child rearing, everything. She was just a housewife, I said. What could she possibly know. I challenged her because she was strong, and I took her strength for granted.
She was extraordinarily moral. I still can't tell a lie, thanks to her, and I even blush when I'm innocent and people think I'm lying. The only thing she hated more than dishonesty was phoniness. She made sure we were, above all, genuine. I took her extraordinary honesty and genuineness for granted.
She prized graciousness and friendliness. She treated everyone the way she wanted to be treated. She was always full of compassion and understanding. The phone still rings constantly at her home, people calling for consolation, reassurance or to be cheered up on a down day. I took her graciousness and friendliness for granted.
She enjoyed simple things. The smell of a flower could send her into fits. The silliness of a child could make her laugh for days. She still sits outside on the deck every morning, enjoying the smell of spring, the taste of fresh, hot coffee, the conversation of her husband of 55 years. But I took her simple nature for granted.
As other parents nudged their children toward careers in accounting or engineering, she nurtured our creativity. While accountants and engineers are important, she believed, even more important are wit, imagination and beauty. I took her love of beauty and creativity for granted.
She sent me off into the world full of enthusiasm, hope and naïvete. My early expectations were unrealistic, I soon found. I took risks — tried my hand at my own business — and, early on, I failed. The work world proved to be much more competitive and challenging than I expected. I was frustrated and angry. I took my anger out on her.
She absorbed my anger, as she always did. She absorbed it for a good long while, even as it grew in intensity. As I let it turn me bitter — as I lost my sense of humor and became hopefully lost myself — she revealed her great strength yet again.
She let me have it good that day — overwhelmed me with a clarity of thought that forced me to face what I'd let myself become. She freed me from myself that day, an awful place to be.
That happened a long time ago. And though I have stumbled and fallen many times since, her spirit is strong within me. I often see beauty where others see nothing. I love coffee in the morning. I love how simple things can make me laugh for hours. I am a writer because of her endless encouragement.
I've been blessed to know her a long time. For 50 years she has toiled, struggled, suffered and sacrificed on my behalf. She's given everything she has without asking anything in return.
If you're as lucky as I, you have had such a person in your life — someone who has loved you unconditionally no matter how foolish or thoughtless you may have been. Someone whose presence is so profound it propels you toward beauty and goodness.
She is my mother. I know now how blessed I am to still have her in my life.
I don't take her for granted anymore.

The Bike Jump

There was no way I was going to let a kid from another neighborhood break my bike-jump record — though my attempt at reclaiming my record would nearly kill me.