Curl up and Dye, Tulia, Texas
Curl Up and Dye. Every beauty operator that ever used this phrase maybe thinks its the first time the pun was ever used. Well, maybe not.
We stopped at an Estate Sale in Tulia, Texas, population about 5 thousand. A long-time hair stylist had kept a very successful beauty shop in a converted garage at his home. He had just died. The items of the home and the business were all for sale. My wife found a lovely blue bottle. I found a single photograph lying on a counter. A nice lady, a beauty operator herself, was presiding over the sale. She sold us the bottle but wouldn’t charge us for the photograph. She even added bit of free information about it. The picture is from about 1960. The man in the red jacket standing on the parade float, is the shop owner when he was about 40. He is pictured here working on a hair style for his wife who died some years ago. The rest of the riders on the parade float were all employees at the time. The occasion for the parade is unknown but it must have been a major holiday. There is a Ferris wheel in the background in what was probably an empty field at the time, just off the town square. It could be a county fair. County Fairs are important events in small southwestern towns. We left the estate sale and went to the center of the town. It was just a couple blocks away. We wanted to see if we could locate where the parade took place. We wanted to see if we could tell how much the buildings have changed in the past 40 plus years. As is typical of so many southwestern towns, it is built in a square around the county or city courthouse or municipal building. We found the pictured buildings quickly. They had changed very little. The float is shown on the street along the north side of the square. The town seemed too sleepy and benign to have had an event like the notorious “huge drug bust”. It was an event eventually revealed to be an obnoxious hoax and travesty. It is a tale of bigotry and graft, lies and innuendo. Was it a tale of the lawless old west? No. It happened only seven years ago. |
Things ain't what they used to be. (In fact, they never was.) |
Labels: Beauty Salon, Drug Scene, Texas, towns, Tulia
4 Comments:
At Friday, April 06, 2007 7:51:00 PM, mist1 said…
I have been napping on my couch for three hours. Judging from the messages on my phone my friends and family think that I have curled up and died. They were close.
At Monday, September 17, 2007 7:17:00 PM, Jen said…
Hi. We did not get a picture yet. We will be back in the area though and I will get one next time I'm there. If you leave me your contact information, I will send you a copy once we get the picture.
Thanks!
At Wednesday, September 26, 2007 9:07:00 PM, Jen said…
You can find the picture at http://bp0.blogger.com/_PR7uRny3MZk/RverNR7mUfI/AAAAAAAAAxE/jkKi2Vis43w/s1600-h/ATT00027.jpg
At Thursday, September 27, 2007 11:04:00 AM, anyjazz said…
Thanks for the contribution Jen! I added it to the top of the page with links back to your blog commentary.
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