An Apple Core, a Toilet: Misadventures of a 1970s Childhood by Tom Purcell Page A

drop off or pick up her sons — and the place would get deadly quiet until all women were gone.
     
    In the early ‘70s most women went to female hair salons. They sat under large hair dryers, wearing curlers and nets. Marge, the chain-smoking salon owner, covered their mugs in green and blue goop, filed their nails, scraped gunk out of their toes and applied paints and chemicals of every variety — all while a Virginia Slim dangled from her lips.
     
    That all began to change with the advent of the unisex hair salon — such as the one in the back parking lot of the Murphy's Mart Department Store — that era’s Wal-Mart — where I would pay $4.50 to have my hair cut like David Cassidy’s.
     
    ***
     
    I had to scrounge every last penny before I could do it.
     
    Up to that point, my father had cut my hair at no charge. He used a dull pair of 1950s hair shears that yanked as many hairs out by the roots as they cut.
     
    Since I only had a few dollars to my name, I borrowed a dollar apiece from my older sisters, then rummaged through my father's change drawer and penny jar to make up the difference.
     
    I jumped onto my Murray five-speed and pedaled the mile and a half to the salon. It was a rainy, overcast March day — a possible omen for what was to come?
     
    I locked my bike to a utility pole near the back door of the salon, then peered inside.
     
    There were women everywhere — women smoking, women having their hair preened and nails done.
     
    This was no place for a male. Good God! What if my father found out?
     
    I had nearly unlocked my bike and headed back home when my sisters’ words overtook me again:
     
    "You'll be able to cover your big, floppy ears!"
     
    I opened the door and walked inside. An older woman with a bleached yellow beehive stood behind the counter. She smoked a cigarette while chewing gum. She'd just finished ringing up a customer when she looked at me as though I were lost.
     
    "May I help you?" she said, blowing smoking through her nose.
 
    I moved closer to the counter and dumped four dollar bills and a fistful of change onto the counter.
     
    "Make me look like David Cassidy.”
 
    She washed my hair, then conditioned it. She clipped and cut, styled and set. She washed my hair again, then applied goops and sprays and ointments.
     
    She instructed me on how to use a blow dryer. She gave me another goop that I’d need to use for six weeks to “train” my hair to stay in place.
     
    She taught me everything I’d need to know to achieve David Cassidy’s feathering and fullness.
     
    But she was just being gracious.
     
    "What do you think?" she said as turned the chair around so I could face the mirror.
     
    What did I think? I was horrified!
     
    I didn’t look like David Cassidy.
     
    I looked like Danny Bonaduce.
     
    ***
 
    I raced home on my bike and hid in my bedroom the rest of the day, ignoring my sisters’ insistence that I let them help me style my hair.
     
    I finally had to come downstairs when my father called me repeatedly for dinner. I took my seat to his right, praying he wouldn’t notice.
     
    My father never was the most attentive fellow — especially after getting home from a long overtime shift at the phone company, which he worked every chance he could to keep up with our astronomical water and electric bills brought on by my sisters’ Farrah Fawcett hair.
     
    But even he sensed something was off. As he chomped his burger and washed it down with a gulp of Pabst Blue Ribbon, he kept looking over at me. He had the puzzled expression of a dog trying to do calculus.
     
    Then his eyes got bigger.
     
    “What happened to your hair?” he finally said.
     
    “I got it cut.”
     
    “It’s parted down the middle.”
     
    “Yes.”
     
    “Who parts hair down the middle?”
     
    “David Cassidy.”
     
    “David who?”
     
    “David Cassidy, the Partridge Family guy.”
     
    “Who did this to you?”
     
    “The hair salon.”
     
    “You went to a