Pompadours and Bobby Pins

Snippets of memories

Pompadours and Bobby Pins

Memories of my mother

Some of my first memories of my mother were her pompadour, a style popular in the 1940s and 50s in the USA.

When she would be scrubbing the floor or peeling potatoes in the summer heat, since we had no air conditioning, she would make a sound like an elephant to blow her hair out of her face. At night, bobby pins and water set her waves, training her perm to do what it was supposed to do: curl her straight hair until it got too long.

Reminders of those permanents

Then a hair trim and that smelly stuff called a “home permanent” would be bought and used each year, of course, to

• keep the hairdo to keep up with the Jones,
• look like Shirley Temple, the styles and appearance of the day.

I was to look like Shirley Temple. I was given a Shirley Temple doll when I was 7 in the 50s. That doll sat there in that house in my room for 50 years, too.

Curls were in. Straight hair was out. She never liked bangs. She had them as a child. No bangs for me until I was 63.

Priorities change

Born in 1918 at the end of World War I, she had lived through a lot. Born in a farmhouse, counting pennies through the Depression, rationing in WWII, married in 1940, and then I came along after the war was over.

In her 80s, in this next century, she came to live with me. I did not live in the little town where we grew up. Out of nowhere with no prompt or context, she said one day,

“It’s all just a bunch of hooey.”

I asked her what that meant. She described that most of her life was lived worrying about what others would think. She passed away in 2010. The Shirley Temple doll still sat in the house where I grew up. Years had passed. She still looked the same with her curly locks and sweet smile.

An era is gone. An era past. Good memories of the “bubble of history” in the 50s. But I think styles and pompadours and “keeping up with the Joneses” is a bunch of hooey, too, Mom.

I stopped worrying about what others would think. I am accountable. My identity does not depend on popular opinions or peer pressure now or then.

Pompadours and bobby pins are out. Straight hair is in.