Mashed Potato
Back in the sixties it was all about the hair, the car, the music and the dance.
This past Halloween, a young girl came to my door with a costume consisting of just a head full of huge hair rollers. It brought back memories of my two sisters in the sixties. They are five and six years older than me and were in high school back then. When they weren’t in school, the rest of daylight hours were spent with their entire head in huge rollers. It’s bizarre because they would actually leave the house like that. It was acceptable…during the day. But at night the rollers came out and the teased hair came on.
I recall my oldest sister in her gold convertible with red leather seats, her teased hair driving “downtown” to buy a gallon of gas for a quarter. She liked to dance. I recall her at times having me stand on her feet while she would teach me steps to dances when I was younger. While my brother came home all excited about the new dance called “the twist,” my sister was spending her time doing the “mashed potato.” I can still picture her now.
That’s all really…a little girl at my door jarring a memory. Me? I never wore those huge rollers – but my other older sister set my, and my younger sister’s hair each and every night for many years with smaller hair rollers. It was a nightly ritual. It was important to have curly hair then. Who knew that long, straight hair would follow soon after? And so much free time that didn’t have to be spent on hair.