Richland could easily support two barbers. With a population slightly north of 1200, that meant there were approximately 600 men and boys who were potential customers.
A little arithmetic will make the point. Assume each barber works a 40 hour week and can handle about 4 heads per hour, that comes to 160 heads per week or 480 in three weeks. Back in the 1950s I think most guys got haircuts every two to three weeks, so two barbers could easily handle the population of Richland with plenty of room to spare.
But one beautician was clearly not enough.
Even a simple wash and set requires an hour or more in a beauty shop. And a perm or even a simple hair dye could take hours.
I lived with a beautician for a mother for several years, so I couldn’t help but absorb some of the terms. Whenever I carelessly mentioned that someone had dyed their hair blonde, my mother was quick to correct me: “No, you bleach hair blonde, you don’t dye it!!!!”
(If you’ve ever wondered why I’m so quick to correct others’ mistakes, I also learned that from my mother!)
So it wasn’t surprising that Arlene’s Beauty Shop was successful practically from day one. Richland needed more beauticians.
Most of my mother’s customers walked to her shop, so I think they were delighted that there was another beautician in town.
I remember a story about a woman whose name I’ve long since forgotten, who had been going to Sallie Bowers for years. Her husband apparently was not satisfied with the hairdos that Sallie was giving his wife, so he had urged her to go to Arlene’s Beauty Shop. A few days after her appointment she came back. She said her husband was happy with her new hair style. “Now you look like something,” he said. But she had decided to continue to go to Sallie because Sallie was an old friend, and she hoped my mother would understand.
In fairness to Sallie, I suspect that what her husband was reacting to was not any lack of competence on Sallie’s part, but Sallie had been in business for years, decades even, and she may not have been keeping up with the latest hair styles. It’s possible that Sallie was still styling hair the way she had done it in the 40s.
By the way, that’s one thing that I remember my mother was very careful about. She was always keeping up with the latest fashions in hairstyles via magazines and posters that she would hang up in her shop. She may not have had to deal with The Rachel in her time, but if she had, she would have been prepared.
The success of Arlene’s Beauty Shop did not go unnoticed. While two barbers were more than enough to satisfy the demand for men’s haircuts in Richland, even with two beauticians there was still untapped demand for more.
Pretty soon other beauty parlors began to spring up, well, not quite like mushrooms, but within a couple of years there were at least five and perhaps six beauty shops doing a good business in town.
First there was the other Arlene: Skeet’s mom, Arlene Seldomridge opened her own beauty shop just up around the corner from us. As the name Arlene’s was already taken, she called hers Seldomridge’s Beauty Salon.
(By the way, her days as a cub scout den mother didn’t last very long. Come to think of it, none of my den mothers lasted very long.)
In the apartment building on Main Street right next to the Post Office, Barbara Schwalm opened her shop. I remember peeking in there when I went to get the mail; it was very brightly lighted and painted very white. After a couple years, George and Polly Gass bought that apartment building, and they converted the space where Barbara had her shop to an apartment and moved in. Barbara moved her shop to Church Street, near Carl and Helen Barry’s house (Pam’s parents).
Janet Delp had a shop on the corner of North Race and Main.
And I also vaguely recall a beauty shop across the street from Kruger’s grocery store.
Not all of these are from my memory; I solicited beauty shop remembrances from a couple people a little while back. Also, I’m not sure if these shops were all open simultaneously.
The point is that even with all these other beauty shops in town, my mother continued to do a thriving business. According to at least one person that I contacted, the two shops that were the busiest were Arlene’s and Seldomridge’s. Maybe it had something to do with the name Arlene.
I don’t know whose hair my mother is styling in this photo. It looks vaguely like Betts Fortna, but I don’t remember my mother ever doing her hair.
I found an obituary for Barbara Schwalm from January 2022 at the Lebanon Daily News.
Here is Arlene Seldomridge’s grave. She’s buried in the Richland Cemetery along with her husband Samuel. And sadly her children Deborah and Skeet didn’t outlive her by very much.