The Hot Wave

No, that isn't a typo.  I didn't mean the heat wave.  I meant the hot wave.  I'll explain, but first I need to give you some background information.  I grew up in Graham, Texas.  It is a small town located sort of on the cusp between North Central Texas and West Texas.  It's economy was and still is based on oil and ranching.  When I was growing up there in the 1940s and 1950s, the population was somewhere between 5,000 and 6,000.  If you ever read Larry McMurtry's The Last Picture Show, you know a bit about Graham.  It's about 35 miles from Anarene, the town McMurtry used as the setting for his book.  The people and the attitudes are a lot the same.

As you can imagine, in a town that size everybody knew just about everybody.  In the fall, the whole town turned out on Friday nights for the high school football games.  On Saturday afternoons just about the entire enrollment of the elementary and junior high schools (even the first graders) went to the picture show for the Saturday matinee with nary a parent in sight.  It was usually a double feature plus a serial and a cartoon.  Admission was 11 cents.  So for less than a quarter you could get into the picture show and have a popcorn or candy bar and a coke.  (All soft drinks/sodas were called cokes.)

We didn't have dial phones yet.  You picked up your phone and an operator said "Number please," and you told her the number you were calling. Our number was 1194-J.  If you couldn't remember the number, you just told her who you were calling and she connected you.  Of course, the fire department was comprised of volunteer firemen.  If a fire was reported, sirens that could be heard all over town were sounded.  The volunteer firemen picked up their phones and gave the operator a code word when she said, "Number please," and she told them where the fire was.  Some would go to the fire station, get on the fire trucks and race to put out the fire.   Others would go directly to the site of the fire and wait for the fire trucks to arrive.  Just about everyone in town knew the code word and would call the operator when the sirens sounded.  Then they would all flock to the reported fire to watch the firemen work.  This was big-time excitement in Graham.

I don't know how many hair salons there were in Graham then.  We called them beauty shops--still do.  The one my mother went to was in a little white frame house on a side street behind a gas station that was located on the corner of the side street and a main street. There was one shampoo bowl and two or three stations.  Instead of wearing the plastic capes of today, the customers wore white cloth capes.  Most women had "standing appointments" and went in once a week to have their hair shampooed and set in pin curls.  They would then sit under a huge, extremely hot hair dryer before having their hair "combed out" (styled).  In addition to hair cuts and sets, the shop offered dye jobs (hair, eye lashes and eye brows) and permanent waves.  The most popular (and possibly the only) permanent wave was the "hot wave."

A Hot Wave Machine

The hot wave as it existed in the late 40s and 50s was developed in the 1920s.  The hair was wound around special metal rollers and saturated with a harsh chemical solution.  Then a clamp that was suspended by a wire from an electric "chandelier" on a metal stand was placed around each roller.  The electricity was turned on and the clamps heated the metal rollers and the hair.  A certain amount of expertise was needed by the "beauty operator" (stylist) to judge when the heat had been applied for just the right amount of time at just the right temperature.  Too little time and the wave didn't take.  Too much and the person literally looked like the "finger in the electric socket" cartoon character.  The hair was literally fried.

Okay, that's enough background info.  Let's get on with the story.  All my life, my mother had a thing about my hair.  In fact, her last words to me before she died in 1984 were, "Go comb your hair."  For some still unknown reason when I was eight or nine, she decided that I needed a permanent wave.  Yes, my hair had just as much natural curl then as it does now so I have no idea for her reasoning.  Anyway, she called the beauty shop and made an appointment for me to get a hot wave.

I remember that I was apprehensive when we left home.  I had seen women attached to that machine with the long wires and it seemed most unpleasant to me.  I was right.  Just the winding of the hair around the metal rollers was painful as they somehow did a double wind and it pulled the hair.  Then came the chemical solution that burned my scalp.  The horrible smell burned my eyes and nose and mouth.  Tears streamed from my eyes so badly that I could barely see when they led me to the electric monstrosity with the clamps suspended by the wires that looked like tentacles. 


The machine was designed for a grown woman.  When I sat in the chair under the machine, the tentacles didn't reach my head.  I obviously had to be boosted up in the chair.  The Graham phone book was less than an inch thick so it wasn't even considered.  Out came all the unused towels and capes.  They were stacked precariously in the chair.  I was  lifted onto the top of the stack with the instructions, "Don't move or the stack will fall over."  That conjured up visions of my hanging in mid-air suspended by the tentacles.  The witch (Oops. I mean beauty operator) then connected all the clamps onto the metal rollers in my hair.  Once that task was completed, she turned on the electricity and the rollers began to heat up.

It  was about that time that the fire siren went off.  Excitement was coming to Graham, Texas, on that lazy weekday afternoon.  Someone picked up the phone and gave the operator the code word to learn where the fire was.  She then excitedly announced to the whole room, that the fire was right down the street.  With that, about half the women in the shop, ignoring their various stages in the unbeautiful process of beautification. rushed outdoors with white capes flapping behind them.  I, of course, couldn't go.  I was being held captive by the medieval torture machine.  I couldn't even move because the stack of towels might fall.

Before long, we could hear the fire truck's siren as it approached.  The excitement began to mount.  We knew the firemen were standing along the sides and back of the truck holding onto special handles to keep from falling off.  I was still attached to the machine when the truck began to round the corner onto the side street.  Then we heard a horrible crash! The fire truck took the corner too fast and rolled over spewing firemen all over the street.

With that, every single woman in the beauty shop, including my own mother, rushed out to see what was happening. I can't tell you what was happening.  I was still tethered to the machine and I was all alone.  I did hear a lot of shouting.  Then I began to focus on my precarious state as I could smell my hair beginning to burn.  I had visions of its catching on fire--blazing with no firemen to put it out because they were all lying unconscious in the street.

I don't know if it was my mother or the beauty operator who remembered me first.  They did finally come bustling in to attend to me.  I began to cry.  I think the tears were tears of relief.  The beauty operator turned off the machine and began to unclamp the clamps.  My hair wasn't going to go up in flames after all.
It was burned, however, and the frizzy ends had to be cut off.  Then she gave me a free hot oil treatment to try to reduce the frizz.  Then I got a shampoo and set and had to sit under the hair dryer.  There wasn't time for me to go outside to see the fire truck.  Mother had made an appointment at the Olan Mills studio for me to have my picture made that afternoon.  By the time I was finished, the fire truck had been righted and all the firemen attended to.  None received any serious injuries.  The reported fire had been a false alarm.


I'm attaching the picture of me taken that afternoon so that you can see all the curls. My hair did develop more frizz and had to be cut again.  Someday I will tell you about the Tony Home Permanent, a "cold" wave, that my mother gave me some years later.  But that story is for another day.