How I Met Marcia

 I'm going to lay out the events that wound up to our first meeting. So, please be patient. I have to go way back to my early 20's and set the scene. This would be circa late 1950.

    

      I had two aspirations for what I wanted to do in those days. The first was to be a jet pilot. This proved to be the more difficult. I needed a college education and also a learn-to-fly program. Then if I had those, I would be competing with those pilots coming out of the military who had many hours of flight time.

 I enrolled in a flight program under my GI bill program. As time went on I learned to fly and accumulated about 40+ hours of flight time and passed my written exam. I never took the time to take my practical test after my cross-country solo flight. The test was the last step to a pilot's license. I also enrolled in night school at Long Beach Junior College and was taking night classes. As time went on, I felt that I was way behind the curve of this ever being a success.

 

     I turned to my second choice which was to be a hair stylist. I transferred my GI Bill to cover my cosmetology school.

     Talk about radically different career goals!  I got a few raised eyebrows when I mentioned what I wanted to do.  In those days the cosmetology business was viewed the same as a man becoming an airline steward(ess). You've got to be kidding me. I'd never want to be an airline host(ess)!  Although if I wanted to, I suppose I could do it. I never had any qualms about my sexuality. I know who I am. I'm happy, but I'm not gay!  However, I'd like to make three points on the subject. 1. There are more straight people in this world than those that are gay. 2. Neither being straight nor gay is synonymous with pervert. 3. One would conclude that since we outnumber them, our group has more perverts. It would be quite possible for any family to have a pervert or two in its family tree! If so, I'll bet that person could be gay, or not, but definitely not happy!

     I have no idea where I got the bug to be a hair stylist. The very first day that I walked into the cosmetology school to fill out my application for admittance was also the first time that I had ever gotten a whiff of permanent wave solution! YUK!!! I think of it as something like smelling salts or some sort of sinus clearing vapor! It's on the opposite end of the scale from perfume. It doesn't bother me anymore. In fact it was a very lucrative part of my business.

     I enrolled in the class for a fourteen month course that would prepare me to take my California State Cosmetology Board Exam. The student body was composed of about 155 girls ranging in all ages from the late teens to somewhere past fifty. There were also only three guys. The surprising part of that statistic is that in an industry composed largely of females and quite a few of the "also want to be" guys. The three of us were all straight! The instructor, Mr. Ted, definitely would not be called one of the boys!

     I enjoyed the course and did rather well. I took to it like a duck to water. Soon, it was graduation time and then the taking of the state board. They only held the board exams a few months out of the year. My time gave me almost a two month wait before the exam.

     I had learned that the Clairol Co. (world's leading hair color company) had a free clinic at its Hollywood, CA office. The building served as the west coast operations headquarters as well as the clinic. This clinic allowed cosmetologists to bring any of their customers who had difficult hair coloring problems. Clairol furnished all the supplies and also the supervision of their color technicians. All free! What attracted me was that they also trained and encouraged all cosmetologists who came to work with the technicians. What a great opportunity. I went. Everyday, I would commute almost an hour from Long Beach to Hollywood. The clinic was open from 9 am until 9 pm.. It made for very long days.

     While I was there, the western states manager asked to see me. I went to his office and he asked if I'd be willing to come to work for Clairol!  DUH!! That was a no-brainer. I said yes, and found myself heading for New York City, their main office, to attend classes for a few weeks to be trained as a color technician.

     My duties were three-fold. I would work the clinic with the other technicians until I was needed for traveling. My travels were to be flown to a western city, where I would hook up with a beauty supply house. I would go with one of their salesmen on his regular route and visit the beauty salons that were his clients. My job was mainly to offer help if they had any hair coloring questions. It was a huge PR gesture on the part of Clairol. The real reason...I was there to push their products.

     I would also fly to wherever there was a "hair show". That was like a trade show or a convention. Cosmetologists would come to see the latest products and some of the leading and famous hairstylists perform hair styling techniques. The big draw was a judged hair styling contest. My job at these was to assist the featured stylists with their hair coloring needs in preparing the models for the platform demonstrations. While I was working behind the scenes, a stylist mentioned to my general manager who also attended these events, that I be given a spot in the program! That was a huge step up for me.

     They also set me up for a photo shoot with a famous photographer to the stars! This is his work.

     He took great pride in stressing to me that he had put the stars in my eyes! He was a real professional. These were used at the entrance to the ballrooms to display the featured presenters in the program. I had close to fifty of these made.  When Marcia and I moved to Alaska about seven years later, they suffered with the winter in our trailer. They all stuck together and mildewed.  I put them in the trash. Anyway, no need for them anymore. We just found this one with some of my mother's picture collection that Marcia had stored away in California. That gave me the idea to develop this journal on the events that led to our meeting.       NOW, back to my story.

 

     I would walk out onto the stage with a model and do her hair coloring application. What was surprising and unique about that, was the fact that I made the complete application to only the roots in less than a minute! Most of these applications usually take around ten minutes.  I just zipped through it. It stemmed from my work as a technician. At the clinic, I had to learn to speed up the process because I had a class of at least fifty operators who would need help. There were only three technicians per shift.  I couldn't afford to take my time. That was my job.

     My job got a little bit too demanding and I was straying further and further away from my goal of being a hair stylist.  I began to get dissatisfied with it. I had those long commutes to work and spent a lot of time away from home flying around the west in a DC 9.

      I asked one of the stylist, whom I befriended at the hair shows, if I could work for him. He owned a large salon in Hollywood. He said that he would hire me if I had more training in styling hair. He was absolutely right. I had zilch in that area. I only had my school training to offer as experience. This was a top notch salon and he couldn't afford a trainee!

     I set out to get my styling experience. I got a job at the Disney Land Hotel's salon. It was a small shop with just three of us working. It proved to be quite slow and wasn't giving me the experience that I wanted. I left them after about a month. I then found a job closer to home in one of the leading dept. stores, the May Co. I worked there for over three years. It was all that I thought it would be. They did a huge business. They put me in the first styling chair near the front desk and the entrance to the salon so that anybody passing by would be able to see me working. Talk about feeling used!!

     At that time I had two good friends. Al Hatten, Norman Dunn and I were hunting buddies. Al was a neighbor and a salesman for a parts supplier. Norman was a hair stylist who worked in the salon with me. Later when M and I were married, you might say that they were my "Best Men". It was a difficult choice so I said they were both our best men.  You're probably thinking, "At last he's going to tell us how he met Marcia." You're absolutely correct, we are close. But, no cigar! 

     Norman was a rugged looking, semi balding guy who smoked cigarillos (a small cigar with a plastic mouth piece). When asked what he did for a living, he'd take a puff off that cigar a and say, "I work construction. I drive truck."  He was straight but would rather not talk about being a hair dresser!. Al and I would roll in the aisles when he'd pull that one. Al, a heavy smoker, is gone now and I don't know about Norman. He's not on Facebook. I guess nowadays that's as good as being dead!

 

     Now, I felt ready to go out on my own. I bought space in a small strip mall on Artesia Ave. in No. Long Beach, CA. It was a new building and I had to design and build the interior myself. I knew what I wanted and I couldn't afford to have it done. So, I did it. It turned out well and I opened for business. I even designed my own business cards. It was a script written font, Mr. Henri Coiffures, printed on a red velvet covered card.

      My salon had room for four stations for stylists. Soon after opening for business, a young Hispanic man called Ceasar asked if he could work for me. I hired him and it was a good choice. He also wasn't one of the boys, however that didn't matter. In fact, I didn't realize the situation until he introduced me to his partner. I'll interrupt here to smell the roses and tell a story about Caesar. He worked for me for over three years and then opened his own salon. I then went to work for him for a short time after I sold the salon and before M and I moved to Alaska.

      So, we were good work friends. Fridays were very hectic long 12 hour days. We closed at 9 pm., which meant that we would go home before 10 pm. This one evening after work, I decided to introduce him to a small local bar called "Club 85". They had excellent steak dinners with salad and potatoes for eighty five cents to promote their name!!  Well worth it.

     A month or so later Caesar's partner came to pick him up after work. He hadn't made it a habit to do this. In fact, I only saw his partner probably three times in the three years. They pretty much kept to themselves. I happened to mention what a great time Caesar and I had after work on that Friday. Me and my big mouth!  I could cut the descending tension with a knife! His partner turned to Caesar and said, "YOU DIDN'T TELL ME ABOUT THAT !!!" Caesar responded that it had slipped his mind.  I could see that Caesar was in deep poo poo!  I quickly said that it was no big deal. We were both worn to a frazzle and hungry. I made myself scarce and headed for home, leaving the two to settle the matter .That little scene still gives my heart a little chuckle. So, I'm sharing it.

     It was a couple of years later that I was going to hire another operator. A young lady right out of beauty school asked me for a job.

 

 NOW, Marcia makes her appearance !!!!!

 

     I was training her on how I wanted her to drape the customers when they sat in the chair for service. This was a system that I had learned from Clairol that ensured a customer's comfort during shampooing, hair coloring or permanent waving. I was playing the role of the client when Marcia walked into the salon. The salon was an open concept arrangement. This meant that I had full vision of anybody in the waiting area. I acknowledged her presence and told her that I'd be right with her.

     I asked her how she found out about me. She said that her friend Pat, a customer, recommended me. She made a weekly appointment and became a steady customer. We fell in love.

      That was it!  The rest is history. One little side note...later after we had started dating, she confided in me, "That day when I walked into your salon and saw you sitting in that chair with that getup, I thought, oh, oh, he's gay!!!"

     I've spent the rest of my life trying to prove to her that I'm not.  I'm LOVING it, and I see no end in sight!!! 

       If I hadn't gone to beauty school and she hadn't gone to college to be a schoolteacher and then moved to California from New York, our paths would never have crossed. This journal would then be the saddest story never written!

     I'm flying high and I have a wonderful co-pilot.,