Beauty School

The first few days in Des Moines seemed to be filled with coincidences. Thankfully, all for the good.  Maybe someone was looking after me. 

I remember riding on the bus to Des Moines with an old cardboard suitcase with broken fasteners that I kept closed with an old belt. I worried that it would all come apart, spilling my clothes all over the bus.

I wasn’t sure how I was going to pay for my tuition and room and board, but the school said it would assist students who needed financial help. I’ll admit I was nervous about how things would turn out, but upon arriving at the school, a smiling lady behind the front desk told me that a woman, the wife of a local doctor, had just called and asked if they had a student willing to do housework in exchange for room and board. Considering the fact I was dead broke, it didn’t take me long to decide on that.

Well, the physician’s wife was a Mrs. George, and for the next 11 months, I would live with her, her husband and their two children in a house that the girl informed me, was not a house at all -- but a mansion.  It might not have been a mansion, but it was certainly nicer than anything I had ever lived in before or since.

The law in the state of Iowa says that to become a beautician one must complete 2100 hours of course work and on-the-job instruction, which means going to classes and working under the guidance of an instructor, six days a week for 11 months. The Iowa School of Cosmetology, which I attended, was and is one of the best schools in the state and our days started at 8 A.M. and ended at 4:30 P.M. If for some reason you were late, even one minute, you had to make up one half hour. And if you took a day off before or after a holiday, you had to make up three days for every day missed.

We only had one textbook from which we studied. We studied one chapter every week and on Fridays we had tests. A passing grade was 90%. If you failed, you took the test over until you passed.

After school was out I would get back to the George’s house (excuse me, mansion) around 5 P.M. and help Mrs. George with the evening meal. She did most of the cooking and I helped by setting the table and doing other chores. After we finished eating, it was my job to wash the dishes.

After the dishes were washed, I vacuumed the dining room carpet and swept the kitchen floor. I would then iron clothes, finishing around midnight. One night when Dr. George came home, he asked me if I all I ever did was iron clothes. I didn’t but I knew where I would like to put that iron. 

Mrs. George had a Negro lady (which is what African Americans were called in those days) who came to the house twice a week to do the laundry and clean the house. While I was there this lady’s daughter got married and she invited the Georges and myself to the wedding. The girl made such a pretty bride, but being raised in Northwest Iowa in the early years of the 1900s, I have to admit I felt a bit self-conscious being one of a few white people in an all black church.

More About Beauty Schools Than You Want to Know

In some states such as Florida, introductory beauty courses are offered in high schools and community colleges. In those programs the student receives 600 to 1200 hours of preparation. The state of Iowa certifies private schools to offer beauty degrees, requiring students to take 2100 hours of training. If a woman wanted to cut the same style day after day, year after year, it would not require many hours of training, but since fashions are continually changing, you want to attend a more advanced school to learn the finer points. You should learn about different cuts, coloring techniques, various types of waves and a host of other things. Once you have completed the required hours, you must take the state board examination given by the State Cosmetology Board.

· chemical composition of hair, nails and skin

· bacteriology, sanitation, and sterilization

· shampooing, fingerwaving and pin curling

· straightening, waving, curling with hot combs

· chemical and heat permanent waving

· use of sodium hydroxide and other base solutions

· use of the razor, scissors and electric clippers

· formula mixing, tinting, bleaching and the use of dyes

· hair and scalp analysis and other hair treatments

· skin analysis and corrective makeup

· manicuring and pedicuring

· professional ethics and how to run a small business

Early Daze in Beauty School

The first three months in beauty school were spend as “freshman,” during which time the girls (or young women as we would say today) worked in pairs. Often, my partner was a girl named Betty. First, Betty would sit and I would do things to her hair. Then, I would sit and Betty would do things to my hair. We practiced everything from shampoos to hair sets to permanent waves. (I don’t think my hair was ever as pampered as during those first months.) They never actually gave us any lethal weapons, like scissors, during the first two months, but we did a lot of watching. Then one day our instructor, Mac, put a pair of scissors in my hand and said, “Start cutting.” I was very nervous. And I suspect so was Betty.

After the first three months of being freshmen, we became “seniors” and went on the “floor” -- which meant that we would actually work on real customers who came to the school for the “bargain basement” prices. After we finished working on a customer, an instructor would examine our work and cover up our mistakes. Hopefully we left too much hair instead of too little.

The Upsweep and the “Dreaded” One

The first day Betty and myself went on the floor, our freshman instructor, “Mac,” as we called her, told us our first job would be a simple one -- two young girls had decided on the spur of the moment to come in and have their hair done. Mac said that it would be just a simple shampoo and set. That’s what she said. Well, Betty and I shampooed their hair and then asked them how they’d like their hair done. An up-sweep they said. An up-sweep? I knew about them, but I didn’t have the foggiest idea how to give one. Just then Mac walked by to see how I was doing, I smiled at her and said that I was going to give my girl an up-sweep. “That’s nice,” she said. “Just don’t forget to turn those stems up.” Gulp. Well, Betty and I gave those girls an upsweep and after their hair was dry, Mac came back and took a good look at what we had done. She then took a comb and she combed, and she combed, and she combed. After a while the girls had their upsweep. The girls seemed to be happy the way it turned out. Betty and I were also happy that Mac had combed it out.

Often, ladies that got their hair fixed at the beauty school would ask for the most “experienced” girls and would steer clear of the ones that had just arrived on the floor. The school’s policy, however, was that the customer, unless they made a special effort to ask for a girl by name, had to take the girl next in line.

One day, which just happened to be my second day on the floor, a lady comes in and asks for one of the experienced girls, which, of course, was the polite way of saying she didn’t want a beginner playing with scissors around her throat. Well, since I was the next girl on the list, she was given to me. Mac told us once that if a customer ever asked when we were graduating, we were to either change the subject or to simply say “oh, in about a month.” Well, I told her I was one of the “experienced” ones, which seemed to calm her down. She said she liked the school’s policy of always giving the customer a good senior girl when you asked for one. I smiled and kept on cutting. But she seemed satisfied with what I had done and asked for me every week. Eight months later I was still cutting her hair. I finally told her I was going to graduate and would be unable to do her hair any more. She then asked me how long I’d been on the floor when I first cut her hair. I told her two days. “Oh,” she said.

There was one lady who came to the school who took great delight in finding fault with every little thing the girls did. She was well known at the school and we all knew her name. (I might mention the name that we used wasn’t the one she usually went by.) We all sympathized with the poor girl who drew her number, but on hindsight she may have provided each of us a great service. After all, you run into this type of person in every shop.

Well anyway, one day I went to the assignment desk to get my next customer and sure enough, it was the “dreaded one.” Before going into the fire, however, Mac pulled me into her office and said, “Just go out there and sell yourself.” Yeah. “And how do I do that?“ I asked Mac. “Just do it,” she said and gave me a shove out the door. I walked slowly to my station thinking about what Mac had said. And there she was; sitting there waiting for little ‘ol me. O.K. I thought to myself, here goes nothing. First, a big smile. A real big smile. I then begin brushing her hair trying to decide what to say. “Nice hair,” I say. She nodded. “It has good body,” I say. She nodded again, this time even smiled. Aha, I thought. So I started talking about hair -- hair styles, hair cuts, hair dyes, anything about hair. The more I talked the more she opened up. I talked about the different types of perms and what they would do for her hair. I told her everything about hair I learned during the first three months of beauty school!  Finally, her hair was done. She got up, gave me a dollar tip (big in those days), and walked out the door. When I went to the front desk the supervisor asked me, “What did you say to that woman? I have never seen her so happy.”

“Hair! “ I thought to myself.

One day I was giving an elderly lady a shampoo and her head was resting in the shampoo basin. I had just gone to the dispensary to get some supplies and when I returned I glanced in the basin and saw a very large cockroach. I looked at it and it looked at me. It was maybe an inch from the lady’s neck. I didn’t want to think of what would happen if it decided to run down the lady’s neck. I decided it wasn’t a good idea to tell her. But, I decided the best thing to do was act, so I took a towel and swoooooosh, a very squashed cockroach and towel went down the hamper. I then gave the lady her shampoo. So nothing exciting ever happens when you go to the beauty shop? Maybe more than you know.

Pierced Ears and Pierced Egos

Pierced ears were coming into vogue in the late 1940s while I was in beauty school. To get them pierced you usually went to a doctor. However, one girl at our school told us there was no need for all that since she would do it herself --right in the beauty school. For just for a pittance of what a doctor charges. She had a bang-up business. Of course this was all against school policy, but she and the girl who wanted her ears pierced would just slip into the dispensary and in a very short time, presto, they were pierced. You would then see a girl walking around with long threads wet with alcohol hanging from her ears. Although the instructors knew all along what was going on, they never could catch them. It was lucky no girl ever got an infection from this operation. There was one girl, however, that wanted her ears pierced, but said she was going to a doctor so not to risk infection. She didn’t want an amateur to do it, she said. Well, she went to a doctor and you guessed it -- she was the only girl that had an infection. Since the instructors knew who was doing the piercing, they threatened to kick her out of school if she didn’t stop. She said O.K., but by that time all the girls already had their ears pierced.

Although most of the girls in our school were very conscientious about their work, there was one girl, who drove the instructors nuts. One day she was putting a perm in a lady’s hair and it was time to treat it with a neutralizing solution, peroxide and water. (Nowadays, neutralizing solutions come pre-mixed, but in those days you mixed your own.) But instead of mixing a neutralizing solution, peroxide and water, this girl mixes a neutralizing solution, formaldehyde and water. You couldn’t really blame her -- after all, they both look the same. She then poured it all on the lady’s hair. You could have counted to about two before the lady jumped about ten feet in the air. Believe me, that stuff burns! When the instructor ran to the woman, the girl said she wasn’t sure what the problem was. At this, the instructor took over and proceeded to rinse the lady’s hair -- about a dozen times.

That was the last time that girl was allowed to mix her own neutralizer.

Once this girl was shampooing a lady and used a cream rinse instead of a shampoo. She tried and tried to get that hair to lather. I always thought I’d like to be a mouse in the corner when she opened her own shop.

The Georges had a 10-year-old daughter, Buffy, who had a habit of taking off her clothes every day after school and throwing them down the laundry shoot. If they look the slightest mussed, she’d thrown them down, too. She commented once how nice it was now that they had a maid! The maid thought about throwing the daughter down the laundry shoot, but refrained.

In retrospect, the George family was very kind to me, letting me eat my evening meals with them. Many of the other girls at the beauty school worked for local families and most of them had to each alone in the kitchen.

The Georges often entertained guests in their home and on those occasions, I guess I did act as the maid. Dr. George had a buzzer under the dinner table that he used when he wanted the maid to serve the next course. I had never seen anything like that back in Rolfe!

When the time came for me to graduate from beauty school, it came as a shock when Mrs. George thanked me for being a good influence on her daughter. I never did know what I did to deserve that praise. I didn’t beat her anyway.

A few weeks before I was to graduate from beauty school, I received an unexpected phone call from a young woman, who was a beauty operator in Rolfe. She told me she was getting married and wanted to know if I was interested in buying her shop. Would I ever!  We made the deal over the phone. Two weeks later I was home starting my first day of work.

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