In 1958 my sister and I, being four and nine years old respectively, were in want of a baby sitter when my parents went out on a Saturday night, and the first sitter we got was also our favorite: Ann Hottenstein.
Ann was 16 years old, blonde, and most important, she was a lot of fun.
And I think neither my sister nor I ever gave her any trouble. Unlike when I was in charge of watching her, Donna didn’t go wandering off to the steers. Possibly because there were no steers in Richland.
I remember that we sometimes had sing-along evenings, either to records or accompanied on the piano.
What’s more, Ann became something of a family friend, because not only was she our baby sitter, but sometimes my parents took her along with us when we went to a Hershey Bears hockey game on a Saturday night.
Her sitting duties only lasted about a year or two before she went off to college.
And then she was replaced by her sister Nancy.
And Nancy, a brunette, was just as much fun as Ann had been, although I don’t recall her ever going along to a hockey game.
But we still had sing-alongs with Nancy.
Then one day word came that all was not well with Ann at college. Apparently she and some of her girl friends had tried to dye their own hair, and Ann’s came out a bright orange color. My mother received a frantic phone call, could she possibly help put Ann’s hair back to its original, slightly dirty blonde color?
Of course she could.
Ann arrived at our house that weekend afternoon with her hair covered in a bandana, but peeking through one could see glimpses of an unholy orange color. How the devil did she manage to do that to herself?
Well, my mother spent most of the afternoon with her, and in the end managed to get Ann’s hair back practically to its originally lustrous blonde. Ann was extremely grateful.
But college students being college students, a few weeks later we received word that once again Ann and her friends had been experimenting, and it had gone haywire. But this time there was no frantic call. I guess Ann had decided to live with it.
This is my father and our dog Candy and that might be my mother in the foreground. They’re sitting on the sofa in our living room and you can see the edge of the piano just at the left. Through door you catch a glimpse of the kitchen and way behind that is Arlene’s Beauty Shop; you can see the vinyl door, which was a dark maroon color, is wide open. I would guess this photo was snapped in 1962 or 63.
