This is a photo of me in 1962 or 1963. I was 10 or 11 years old. Notice the tightly curled hair. Every school year I could remember, my mother sat me down the night before picture day, and rolled my hair with rags. Yes. Rags. She would tear strips of cloth, tie them around sections of my wet hair, roll them up, then tie again. I looked really silly with them all tied on my head. And being the only girl (well, I did have a sister, but she was 8 years younger than me) with four brothers, I had to survive a LOT of teasing.
Those rags with their knots were hard to sleep on. The torture continued in the morning, when Mama took all the rags out and brushed out my hair into the "DO" you see above. She sprayed it liberally with White Rain aerosol hairspray until I thought my lungs would bust, then sent me off to school. There was a lot of giggling and finger pointing going on from my classmates, because picture day was the only day I came to school with my hair "fixed".
