 |
EVERY HAIR IN PLACE: In her
student days, Haffner found a way to afford the
salon.
Courtesy
Emily Howard Haffner |
In 1894, when it came time
to apply for college, my father applied only to that
new school out West. His father was furious. “I
will send you to any school in the East, but I will
not give you a penny to go to that cow college.”
My father borrowed $100 from his grandmother, and left
Baldwinsville, N.Y., behind.
Stanford did not charge tuition then, but there was
still room and board. My father got a job as the cook
in the DKE house. He had never made a meal before, but
with the aid of a quickly purchased cookbook he held
onto the job. The next fall he moved to the Fire House,
which provided room, board and a small stipend for being
on call to any campus fires. By 1896, his father reversed
his opposition to Stanford. Despite his improved finances,
my father remained at the Fire House: it garnered much
prestige among the ladies. (One girl whom he greatly
admired was Lou Henry, Class of 1898, but to his disappointment
she fell for Herbert Hoover, Class of 1895.)
When it came time for me to enter Stanford in 1940,
my father put all I required into a checking account
in my name, but I supplemented that allowance in several
ways. At winter break, classmates Beenie Naffziger and
Martha Reed and I were hired as “Christmas help”
at the Rincon Annex of the San Francisco Post Office:
eight hours a day, minimum wage, for the 10 days before
the holiday. The first day we found that we were expected
to work between 11 and 12 hours with a half hour off
for lunch and dinner. We fell into bed each night and
then sorted letters in our dreams. To break the monotony,
all the sorters read the postcards and passed the funny
ones around.
I had been going to the most expensive beauty salon
in Palo Alto and decided that spring that I was spending
too much on my hair. I asked the manager if I could
be the salon’s campus representative—and
was amazed when she agreed. They took my picture and,
with my endorsement, displayed it around campus. They
did my hair each week for the next three years for free.
My next effort arose from a summer trip to Bennington,
Vt., to visit my aunt and uncle. The town’s large
paper mill had come up with a new product: paper drapes.
Bells went off in my head. We changed rooms every quarter
in the Gamma Phi house, and with inexpensive, disposable
curtains we could change our color scheme with every
move.
That fall I went to all the sorority houses and Lagunita,
showing my samples and taking orders that were quickly
filled. Only later—when the radiators came on
for chilly fall nights—did the overpowering, what-died-in-here
stench of lightly steamed wood pulp fill the rooms.
My best friends resumed speaking to me after a few weeks.
|
