April 3, 2026
Alva’s Parlor of Beauty and Oral Literacy
“But the hair was only part of what brought them back every Friday.”
- By Dennis Easters
It was an ordinary Friday morning in July. As we made the turn off Grange Hall Loop into the long shell driveway that circled the house, we could already see the cars parked near the side door at Alva’s place.
Set back off Grange Hall Loop, the country home sat beneath grand oak trees ringed with azaleas. Woods on one side, cow pastures on the other. An old tractor sat among the landscaping.
Nana had made Mama’s appointment weeks before.
“Make it for the same day you have your hair done, Annie,” Mama would always ask. “That way we can visit and go to lunch afterward.”
We parked and made our way to the side door, but we weren’t entering the house. We were entering Alva’s.
As we stepped inside, hair dryers hummed beneath the chatter. Curling irons and rollers heated curls into place, filling the room with that familiar warm, slightly sweet chemical smell of hair being set. Over it all hung a fine mist of Aqua Net.
The moment we opened the door, Alva looked up.
“Well, look who’s here. Did y’all just get in from Costa Rica? Annie, Dennis and Gaynell are here.”
Nana, sitting beneath the hair dryer, glanced up from her magazine with a smile and motioned for us. “Come hug my neck.”
Someone’s name led to a memory, a memory to a song, and before long the room held sixty years of shared history.
The room itself was decorated with delicate country touches collected over the years. Mementos. Everything had meaning. A pair of wingback chairs sat near the front door, with aged doilies crocheted by Alva’s grandmother draped carefully across the headrests. A small side table held a bouquet of flowers; a crystal candy dish filled with York Peppermint Patties, starlight mints and other assorted treats; and a few bottles of water for whoever wanted one. Flyers announcing homecoming at Dry Prairie Baptist sat beside jars of Mr. Alderman’s orange-blossom honey offered for sale.
In the back sat two old-fashioned drying chairs. Along the opposite wall stood a large bookshelf filled with magazines, local histories and cookbooks—favorites among the ladies, who were always searching for a new recipe to try on their families before committing to taking it to dinner on the grounds.
At the center of it all stood the beauty station itself—a swivel chair, washing sink, oversized mirror, shampoo bottles, mousse, curling irons, blow-dryer and a rolling rack of curlers that Alva moved from side to side by memory, never looking up.
For the ladies of the Loop, Fridays were a social event—something they looked forward to each and every week. Before they walked out the door, their next appointment had already been set. For most, like my Nana, it was a standing appointment that had existed for decades.
Each week they arrived one by one—Cadillacs, Lincolns, the occasional BMW—many stepping out dressed for the occasion, polished to the nines in what looked suspiciously like Sunday clothes, though never the actual outfit they planned to wear to church.
Alva was the local beautician—and cousin. She was related, in one way or another, to most of the women who came through her door. She had been doing many of these ladies’ hair since graduating from East Bay High School and passing her state-board examination in the late 1960s.
The ladies were sophisticated country women, possessing what we called “country class.” Many were still blonde, brunette or auburn, holding tightly to the colors of their youth, their set hairstyles sitting high upon their heads and lacquered into place. Most were well into their eighties and nineties and, dare I say, a few were brushing against one hundred.
The appointments were staggered thirty minutes apart. To an observer, the process itself seemed tedious. Not for Alva. She had created a one-woman assembly line that Henry Ford would have admired.
First, a hand towel was tucked carefully around the neckline and clipped in front to keep the ladies’ blouses from getting wet. Washing and combing were followed by rollers pinned tightly into place before they disappeared beneath the dryer. Some sat for thirty minutes, others forty. When the timer rang, Alva checked to see whether the hair was dry.
“You could use a few more minutes,” she’d say, adjusting the timer.
While one lady’s hair dried, another took the chair. The rotation was constant. Once dry, back to the chair they went, the rollers coming out one by one before the teasing, picking and spraying began. If Alva was still working on someone else, the ladies sometimes helped one another remove the curlers from their dried hair. Another might pick up the broom and sweep as Alva cut.
The set hairstyles of the 1950s and ’60s were still very much alive at Alva’s—and they worked. I couldn’t imagine seeing these women with any other style. They seemed timeless.
But the hair was only part of what brought them back every Friday.
The social gathering sat at the center of the visit. The ladies bantered constantly, catching up on the goings-on around the Loop, giddy as schoolgirls.
“Annie,” Alva said, “did you hear about Velma? Bless her heart, she’s been down in her back ever since Jesse died. Losing him really took the wind out of her sails. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, she’s raising that great-granddaughter of hers. She’s too old to be raising an eight-year-old girl, if you know what I mean.”
“My lands,” Nana chimed in. “She’s no spring chicken—got to be in her mid-eighties.”
“Alva, do you remember when she used to make those beautiful ruffly curtains, like Dorothy’s Ruffles?” Nana continued. “I’m sure being hunched over that sewing machine all those years didn’t help her back any.”
“That’s right, she did. I’m sure that didn’t help at all,” Alva said softly.
Mama, now sitting in the chair, asked, “Alva, tell me what happened to Ann.”
Alva paused from her work, pick in one hand and hairspray in the other, looking at Mama in the mirror.
“Gaynell,” she began, then paused. “You know, that poor thing.” Her voice cracked slightly. “I hadn’t heard from her in a few days. We were supposed to go to lunch. I got there that day and she didn’t answer the door. It struck me as strange. Worried, I walked around the house. Everything was quiet. Everything seemed fine. I checked the front door and it was unlocked. I went in and found her hunched over between the bed and the nightstand. I called, and the paramedics came. The next few days were pitiful. She passed peacefully.”
“What happened to her, Alva?” Mama asked.
“A stroke,” Alva said softly.
By then, Mama and Alva were both teary-eyed.
Nana, looking at my aunt who had been listening, interrupted gently. “Carolyn, would you hand me one of those hard mints, please? My throat’s dry.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Aunt Carolyn said, passing her the candy.
Without missing a beat, Mama continued.
“Alva, I’d known Ann since we were girls—we couldn’t have been more than five or six years old, I guess. We went to Riverview Elementary together, then Eisenhower and East Bay, where we all graduated together. Ann Smith, Barbara-Jean Swilley and I used to sing in front of the congregation at the First Baptist Church of Riverview. Mansion Over the Hilltop—that was our song.”
She paused.
“We didn’t know then that one day we’d all be this damn old.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Alva said, shaking her head in agreement and disbelief.
“God bless her,” Alva continued. “She was always musical. You remember the group she was in—Mercy—and their song, Love (Can Make You Happy). There won’t be another like Ann.”
“Alva, that song was part of the soundtrack of my childhood,” I said. “Every time it came on the radio, Mama would say, ‘That’s Ann Smith. We went to school together. I’ve known her my whole life.’”
That was how appointments unfolded at Alva’s. Someone’s name led to a memory, a memory to a song, and before long the room held sixty years of shared history.
Whenever we were back home visiting, I was admitted into Alva’s inner sanctum as something of a guest of honor—an observer holding onto every word as if words were in short supply.
It seemed taboo—a man sitting in on the conversations of a small-town beauty parlor. Some might say about as appropriate as an outsider sitting in on a meeting of the Freemasons.
Membership was required.
There was a hierarchy.
Rules.
Certain subjects weren’t discussed openly.
An unspoken code of honor existed among the ladies.
They all instinctively knew what could and couldn’t be discussed or brought to light.
One would quietly ask, “Did you hear about…?”
Then answer, “Don’t say a word, but…”
“I heard she’s…”
“He’s no good.”
Everyone immediately knew exactly who “he” and “she” were and precisely what “no good” meant.
Another responded, “You’re right—he’s no good. She’s even worse. Every time her husband goes to work, he slips in through the back door. Must be better than we think he is.”
And just like that, I smiled to myself, having understood what “no good” meant.
As for who she was—only the ladies knew.
No names were exchanged.
Unwritten rules.
The reputations of the guilty remained protected—at least publicly—all within the confines of the twelve-by-twenty-foot salon.
The stories continued to roll off their tongues, one after another.
“You know, Alva,” I said, “I have a few clients that are the Hollywood types. I bet we could get a deal to film a reality show from this shop. Survivor doesn’t hold a candle to these ol’ gals on the Loop.”
Alva laughed. “It’d be scandalous, don’t you know. People would eat it up. The Real Housewives of Grange Hall Loop. I can just see it now.”
She shook her head with a knowing smile, never looking up while working her magic on Mrs. Brown’s hair.
A moment later, Alva glanced out the window.
“Oh, looky who’s coming up the walkway, Annie. It’s Betty-Jo—Mema. She’s Marie’s little sister, you know.”
Nana, Marie and Betty-Jo were all cousins.
After they greeted one another, Nana said to Betty-Jo, “You’re probably too young to remember…”—which I found amusing, considering Betty-Jo was already in her nineties—“…but Marie and I used to make biscuits together when we were little girls, no more than six or seven years old. Your mama would pull out an old orange crate for us to stand on because we were too little to reach the countertop.”
The talk of little girls grown old made me think of someone else.
“Alva, do you still see Mrs. Daniels? You know, I used to work with her daughter-in-law.”
“Mandy? Honey, Mandy passed away a few months ago. Ninety-seven. I’d known her my whole life.”
She paused.
“I go to the funeral home much more frequently than I ever dreamed I would—to make them pretty for the last time here on this earth.”
“You’re a special person to be able to do it,” I said.
“That’s an ability that only came from the Lord.”
As Alva handed Mama the mirror so she could inspect her ’do, a thought crossed my mind. How much longer would I be able to observe this unique gathering? Even then, Alva’s felt like a relic of another time.
As we hugged and said our goodbyes, the question lingered. How much longer would Alva’s Parlor of Beauty and Oral Literacy exist? With every visit, it seemed another one of her girls had “gone home to be with the Lord.”
Now that my girls are gone too, I find myself longing for those Fridays with Alva, Mama, Nana and the ladies.
Every chance I get, I still stop in.
Betty-Jo sits in the chair of honor while Alva teases out her hair. Aunt Carolyn waits beneath the dryer. The conversations are familiar—the same in some ways, different in others. And for a little while, the years seem to fold in on themselves.
I love the banter.
I love to sit quietly.
Observing.
Taking part and taking it all in.
I came all those years ago to drive my Mama to her appointment.
I stayed to listen.
I still do.
Holding on to what was, and grateful for what remains.
Inside the beauty parlor she operates from her country home on Grange Hall Loop, Alva cuts her granddaughter’s hair. Surrounded by the familiar tools and collected treasures of a lifetime’s work, she carries a ritual practiced for generations into the life of one more little girl.
Nana and her cousin Betty-Jo embrace while waiting for their hair to be set at Alva’s. Still wrapped in towels and crowned with rollers, these little girls grown old embody the affection, laughter and shared history that made Friday appointments about far more than hair.
Alva stands beside Mandy Daniels, whom she had known her entire life. Mandy lived to be ninety-seven—one of the many women whose stories, joys and sorrows Alva carried with her, and whose beauty she tended with tenderness and dignity until the very end.