1938 - Memories of the Twin Black Girls and Rolling Their Hair

2/15/2010

There was another snow last night; another snow, snow bound again. In my memories I’ve gone back again to the mountains where I was raised and the fun had there as I grew up.

      I remember when we moved onto a hill, next door to a black couple who had a set of twin girls. My sister and I had really long hair. We wanted to be able to roll our hair so Dad cut tin strips, and then wrapped them with poke paper to make curlers for my sister and me. In our family Saturday was for washing our hair and rolling it up on our tin rollers. We sat and watched the black camp below us while we waited for our hair to dry for church on Sunday. Let me tell you, lots went on in the black camp on weekends. But I will leave those goings on for another day; I want to tell what happened with that set of twin black girls when they saw us rolling up our hair on our tin curlers.

      The twins had watched us rolling up our hair and decided that they wanted to have their hair rolled up too. Their hair was short so the tin rollers wouldn’t work for their hair; but I knew I had watched my mother roll her hair with a curling iron that she got hot in the stove before she used it. So I got that curling iron hot and curled both those twin girls heads. The curls laid just right all over their heads and when our mothers came in the twins went running up to their mother to show how nice Ms Alberta had done their hair. Their mother looked at me and looked at them, smiled, and said, “Hmmm Ms Alberta, that looks very nice.” 

        Then she placed a hand on each of the girls head and gently tugged at a curl. Much to all of our surprises except hers, of course, those curls fell off into her hand. You see what I didn’t know was that you could only use a moderately hot curling iron on a black persons head; and you first had to use grease on the hair before using the curling iron. I know now not to curl without grease on hair. But what really surprised me was that the twins Mother was not mad that the iron was too hot, that I hadn’t used grease first and that their hair fell off close to the girls head. But one thing for sure no more curling the twins’ hair!