Actually, in the "olden days" of the Great Depression, I was in high school. (from 1934 to 1936). It was a regulation at that time, in a public school, that girls could not wear make -up in school. Some of the girls did sneak to the bathroom and put lipstick on - but when their reddened lips were discovered by a faculty member, they were sent back to the bathroom to wash it off.There was no such goings-on as eye-makeup or rouge or eyebrow stuff. (Of course, we didn't have the allowance power to buy these things any way. My allowance was 10 cents per week).Ten cents went a long way in those days. For five cents, you could buy a big triple dipper ice cream cone that had been so lavishly put on the cone that great big blobs would hang over the sides. We used to walk a couple miles to the Johnson Dairy store where these excesses of dessert were available. This was often the big event when you had a date - he would walk you to get an ice cream cone! I only knew one young man that had his own automobile - and that was a black Ford with a rumble seat. Riding in the rumble seat was not too pleasant an experience, as wind and dust blew into your eyes. Ten cents could also buy you a lavish banana split, which was a big extravagance.
It cost six cents for a student to ride the street car from Southeastern High School at Mack near St. Jean to the end of the line on Warren & Barham. I lived just a short distance from there. I would guess it was a distance of about five miles.
This street car went through a vast open field, by the place where the Connor Creeks flowed. This field was rather swampy and the tracks were not too solid.
WE students would go to the back of the car, the rounded portion, and stand there swaying back and forth while we hung on to the leather straps. That was a big thrill and we would laugh and sing songs. I'll bet the older passengers were pretty annoyed with these raucous young kids!
The conductor would call out the names of the streets; and since we knew them all - we would sing them along with him! To this day I can name quite a lot of the streets in their proper order.
My friend Ethel (Of 79 years, since we were 5 years old) and I often test our memories and recall the names of all those streets. When the weather was good, Ethel and I often walked home that five or so miles to save the six cents! When we could inveigle some boy to carry our books and walk us home,that was quite an event. We did not offer to share the saved six cents with him, however!
Without makeup, or permanents in our hair, we were just like what God made us. What you saw, was what you got. I can remember dousing my hair with beer, and putting it all into bobby pin curls. That was an attempt to beautify that never succeeded - my hair was so baby fine that the curls would not stand up to the slightest breeze.
When you see movies of that era, or snapshots, or yearbook pictures = we gals all had the same hair=do. Our bobby pins results in a bunch of curls around the side of the face and the bottom of the back, usually with a mass of bangs hanging in the front. Of course, I didn't resort to much of that beautifying stuff until I got to the university - where the competition was more fierce.
There were seven fellas to every girl at the University of Michigan at that time.I think I had more than my quota of dates. Of course, some of the gals which were referred to as "goons" in those days) never had a date - so that raised the percentage for the rest of us.
One time, Ethel, her sister Norma, and I went to downtown Detroit, and risked being banished from our homes by getting a permanent. We had saved quite a lot of six cents-es by that time.
We walked up a rickety set of wooden steps to one of the new beauty shops that that had opened on Woodward. There we found huge metal semi-circular affairs that were hung from the ceiling. This was one of the first permanents available, and it was called a Spiral. Your hair was wound on a metal pipe-like affair which was then plugged into that big circular thing that hung from the ceiling. It was rather a terrifying experience, because we were attached to this electrical device and had no way of escaping.
Lucky thing for us that there was no fire - we would have been fried - in more ways than one. Well, when we were finally released from the monster, we had tight closely woven spikes of hair. We looked terrible - but that wasn't the worst part. We still had to go home to face our parents. My mother immediately cut off all the frizz, and even that was an improvement.
