Mam-ma's Hair

Jessie Maggard had very long hair that had some black in until she died altho it was far more gray than black. Her wedding picture shows her wearing it "Gibson Girl Style."

She loved for Kristi and I to brush it...that kinda surprised me because my mother could not STAND for anyone beside a beautician to brush her hair and she complained about lots of them.

I can remember she always rinsed her hair in cold water and maybe a vinegar rinse. Kristi was to use a lemon rinse because she was blond.

Helen Bryan Smith, Jessie's niece, tells of the time Mam-ma visited Jackson and her sister, Aunt Johnnye, was giving her a permanent. Half way through the perm...Jessie determines it is time to return to Montague County, TX. She wouldn't even let Aunt Johnnye rinse OUT the perm solution. They laughed wondering what the people who sat beside her must have thought...and I thought, "how did her hair keep from falling out?"

When I was a little girl I'd say,"Mam-ma...why don't you wear your hair in a ponytail?" I was after her all the time to put it up in a ponytail...and, of course, that wasn't gonna happen...I remember us sitting, maybe in her green pickup behind the A&P grocery store and this old dried up woman was there in another vehicle with her hair in a ponytail...my mother pointed her out to me, "See, that's what Mam-ma would look like in a ponytail"...never again...did I ask Mam-ma to put her hair up in a ponytail.

When I was pregnant with Brent I grew my hair out and kept it up...not exactly my style then or now...and I was surprised my mother encouraged me to grow it out. She and Harriet, her hair dresser, thought it would be easier for me to manage with a baby...as I COULD wear it up in a ponytail. Mama said one time, "I love to see you swoop your hair up...it reminds me of Mam-ma...all that black hair being swooped up."

One time we, I'm sure Kristi and I, were asking Mam-ma..."who did I get this or that from" and I said something about my hair...she cut her eyes over at me, fly swatter in hand and with REAL PRIDE, something I'd never heard in her voice in regards to me say, "THAT hair's MINE." I remember nervously laughing and saying "oh, it is?"...When I see Katy, my daughter, swoop her hair up in a ponytail...I think of what my mother said and imagine how my grandmother must have looked as a young woman...with this long, beautiful, "almost" black hair...And, to you, Audrey...I think the same thing. Well, when your hair isn't blond!!! ;-)

Mama would often say she was glad she never cut her hair as so many women did of that era because it was so thin...it would have looked "plastered" on her head...which leads me to....

Oh, and one last story...I was preteen or early teen...bored and getting in the way....it had to have been a holiday when Kristi wasn't there "to entertain me" :-( I was sent off to mam-ma's bedroom to "clean it up"...I had the time of my life...I took everything off, cleaned, dusted, cleaned out her hair brush...rearranged, etc...and I came across all this HAIR...hair was every where...it was like it had been rolled up and SAVED?!?!?! I probably thought, "forever more? why save hair?" The wood burning stove was burning wood so I threw the hair in there. Sunday morning Mam-ma's in a fizz looking for her rats. My mother wants to know if I've seen her rats. Well of course I hadn't seen any rats and who saves rats anyway-- I either asked or thought to myself....Then finally one of them say, "hair...what did you do with the hair that was rolled up on her bureau?" Oh, I proudly told them...I threw it in the wood burning stove..."You told me to clean up her bedroom" and THAT'S what I did...I think Jessie might have pee'd her panties she laughed so hard. They couldn't be mad...I was just so innocent. I think she was long dead before I really realized what I'd done....and now I laugh when I see those "bump it" commercials. http://www.bighappiehair.com/