EDITOR’S NOTE: Today’s column was written by guest columnist Millie Jean Coppedge, former Ore City resident.

THE “MONSTER” PERMANENT WAVE MACHINE

Saturday mornings at our house in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s were a time when everyone washed his hair, cleaned his fingernails, and dressed to go to town (Gilmer). Mother would wash her hair and mine and roll it in spit curls held by crisscrossing two bobby pins. All the women went to town with their hair “rolled up” and many wore a pretty scarf around the curls. It wasn’t considered inappropriate then to appear in public in such a manner.

My hair was blonde, very fine, and wouldn’t hold a curl for long at all. Only a few minutes after the bobby pins were taken out, (even though I had worn them all day long and slept in them that night), my hair would be “straight as a board” in just a few minutes. Mother wanted it curly for church on Sunday mornings.

So she decided to take me to the beauty shop in Ore City where we lived and get my hair curled with the permanent wave machine. All the ladies in town were getting their hair fixed at Miss Katie’s Beauty Shop and the whole town was buzzing about the new wave machine.

When we entered the beauty shop, the smell of very strong chemicals hit us in the face. I could hardly breathe and my eyes were watering so badly that tears were running down my cheeks.

“Oh, come on in,” Miss Katie said. “You’ll get used to the smell and won’t even notice it in a little while.”

We had to sit and wait while she finished another lady’s hair, then she tole me to come on up and sit in the chair. Before she shampooed my hair and cut my hair, she plugged in the wave machine so it would be hot when she was ready to put me under it.

Miss Katie parted my hair off in sections, then began rolling strands onto metal spiral rods. She would dip a big ball of cotton into the permanent wave solution, then while holding a little bowl under each strand, would totally saturate it with the strongest, most horrible smelling chemical liquid I had ever smelled. She would hand me a towel to cover my eyes, but it didn’t help. After the last curl was rolled, she would saturate all the curls again with the solution.

I then learned that a permanent wave machine used a combination of chemicals and electricity to curl the hair!

The next thing to happen makes me think of a medieval torture device. Miss Katie would roll the big hot monster machine over to where I was sitting and would put it behind me. One by one, she would pull the rods down from the top of the machine, clamp each one over a curl, and clamp it on tight. It felt like she was pulling all my hair out.

She told me that I could not move during the entire time. She had asked me ahead of time if I needed to go to the bathroom. In just a few seconds, rods started to steam. My scalp and ears were burning, although she had put a piece of gauze between the curlers and my skin and between the curlers and my ears. I was terrified. Visions of my hair catching on fire and burning were raging through my mind.

The combination of the strong chemical solution and the hot rods were almost more than I could stand. I don’t remember how long the rods stayed on my hair, but it seemed like forever. Upon doing research into the permanent wave machine for this article, the internet information said that in the 1920’s and 1930’s it took half a day for a woman to get this kind of permanent and the rods were heated to a temperature of 200 degrees Fahrenheit. I cannot imagine anyone sitting there for half a day, frying their scalp, just to have curly hair!

Once the permanent was set, she would disconnect the rods from each curl, take the rollers out of my hair, and run her fingers through my hair. My scalp was already on fire, and the rubbing really hurt something awful. I had always been very tender headed as they used to call it. If I remember it correctly, Miss Katie would then put a neutralizer solution on my hair to keep it from burning or frizzing. After she had rinsed that out, she rolled my hair in curlers, dried it under the dryer, and combed it into a hairstyle. I was ready to go!

If one had never had a machine wave permanent before, it may appear that the torture was over. But not so. By the next day, blisters had formed on my scalp, and my ears were fried like a terrible sunburn. The blisters turned into raw sores, then eventually would scab over. My scalp would hurt for a week or two. Just brushing my hair each morning was most painful.

Oh, what little girls and women went through back then just to have curly or wavy hair! I was glad when the cold wave permanents came out.

My experience is in no way a negative reflection on Miss Katie. She was good at her craft of making her customer look nice. Women all over the nation endured the pains of their time under the “Monster Machine.”