Say no to Farrah hair comeback

Just got back from Rigby, Idaho, where (among other things) I visited the Jefferson County Historical Society Farnsworth TV Pioneer Museum ("located only 90 minutes from Yellowstone Park and Jackson Hole, Wyo.!"), which houses a wide variety of antiques that give you a sense of what life used to be like before TV was invented.

One exhibit, for example, shows an old wooden stove and the utensils used for baking bread. Another shows what the well-dressed Shoshone woman was wearing. Another features mannequins modeling old-fashioned hats, which made them resemble the British Royal Family at Ascot on opening day, only livelier.

My favorite display, however, was of a beauty salon contraption designed to give the ladies of Rigby their permanent waves. It consisted of metal hair clips attached to electrodes attached to a telephone pole attached to the salon chair. Seriously, it was completely dangerous and scary looking, and I began to truly appreciate all the brave American women who have given their lives over the years so that they could have curly hair.

Like my Aunt Nanny, for instance. Not that my Aunt Nanny gave her life (technically speaking) to have curly hair. Hello. She lived in Big Piney, Wyo., where she kept house and fished until she was practically 100 years old! But she always had these amazing industrial-strength permanents, which makes me wonder if she wasn't secretly crossing the state line and getting her hair done in Rigby.

Anyway, looking at the display (along with watching a recent documentary on the 1980s) made me wonder if big permed Dallas cheerleader-type hair will ever make a comeback. Maybe it already has and nobody told me. That could be totally possible. I don't get out much anymore, if you don't count trips to the Jefferson County Historical Society Farnsworth TV Pioneer Museum in Rigby, Idaho.

So if Dallas cheerleader hair becomes the style du jour again, the question looms: Will I personally get another perm?

The answer, hopefully, is "No, partner," which is how you say "no" in Dallas. I've already done Dallas hair, and I have the pictures to prove it — like the one of me and my girlfriend, Becky, taken back in 1982 when I visited her and her husband, Dave, when they lived in D.C. There Becky and I are, smiling at the camera, and ALL you can see are sunglasses and hair, set against a small backdrop of blue Virginia sky.

There are two major reasons why I hope I never say "yes" to perms again. First, the maintenance on hair like that is extensive for a girl like me whose natural hair is straight as string.