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Back Porch
33
Stinky Curls and A Shrinking Dress
by Carmen Ilene Mullins
At the risk of dating myself as being (oh, My God!) over fifty-five, let me tell you a little about what life for a child was like in the 1940s. With no television, VCR, or Nintendo to entertain me, the highlight of my life was walking to Natchez on Saturday with my mother to see a movie at the Star or the Ritz Theater.
Now, you might think, what a terrible was to live! Well, it was, and it wasn’t. I’m contradicting myself, you say? Not really. The things that I thought so terrible then have become etched on my memory as being some of the best.
The old, gray, weathered house of my earliest memories was located about ten miles from Natchez. The house was off the ground on blocks of wood and had a sagging porch across the front. A well with a hand pump was on the side, and a path meandered to the outhouse in the back.
This was my world as a child, and with nothing but books and a radio for entertainment during the week, I became very adept at entertaining myself. Being the only girl with four older brothers, I altered between fighting my dolls and dressing them up, influenced by cowboy and Indian movies and my brothers, no doubt.
My father worked the night shift at the box factory in Natchez and slept during the day. Since Mama couldn’t drive, we would often walk to town. One of the most memorable walks was when I got my first permanent wave.
Now, I was not looking forward to this event. I had gotten my hair cut about two weeks before and was quite satisfied with my new look, thank you. With straight bangs across forehead and hair bobbed off
straight just below my ears, I thought I looked like one of the Indians in the movies. This suited me just fine, but not my mother. She thought it was time for me to look like a little lady and not some “wild Indian.”
She had bought a dark blue dress and was planning on showing off her little girl after I got my perm. Well, to get a perm in 1946 was a major event. First, after putting a foul (it would gag a buzzard!) smelling chemical on one’s hair, the beauty operator would roll her hair on curlers that were attached by electrical wires to a large machine. The machine would then be turned on so the curlers would get hot.
During all this, I hoped my hair would not turn out looking like a well-used mop and that it would still be attached to my head when it was all over. Quite frankly, the whole thing looked to me as if some mad scientist were running some type of experiment or that any lady connected to it by her hair was about to be electrocuted. Since we did
not have electricity in our house and I had a highly developed imagination from reading, listening to the radio, and watching movies, I was double afraid.
But my fears proved groundless, and I came out of the beauty shop with a beautiful head of curls, hair still firmly attached to my scalp, and with just a hint of chemical odor drifting around me.
Mama and I then strolled downtown, down Franklin Street to be exact. She wanted to show off my curls and her new dress to friends and relatives who were sure to be there. After the oohing and aahing was over, we went to the movies and then ate big scoops of vanilla ice cream before starting home.
Unfortunately, my mother had forgotten to keep watch on the weather, something she normally
did.	We had just reached a section of the winding little road that had few houses on it when the first chilly raindrops splattered down on us. We walked faster, but soon we
Come to DO WRITE!
March 14-15, 1997 Lafayette, Louisiana Writers’ Guild of Acadiana, Inc.
Annual Spring Conference
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220 Doucet Road #164H Lafayette, LA 70503 or call 1 (318) 981-5153
Supported in part by funds from the Louisiana State Arts Council and the Louisiana Division of Arts as administered by the Acadiana Arts Council.