Cutting Hair For Generations

by Sheryl Smith-Rodgers

No sign, not even an “Open” card propped in a window, marks the gold-painted portable building with brown trim in Lakeview, Texas (pop. 152). Still, most folks know that’s where Ona Mae Payne cuts hair and gives permanents. For as long as they can remember, the 90-year-old woman has been a beautician.

“When I started 67 years ago, we didn’t even know what a bobby pin was,” recalls the petite, white-haired woman. “I had to carry water from a cistern to do my shampoos. Well ...” she pauses to think a moment, “we did have electricity.”

Her original shop was on Main Street, where she hauled water and worked alongside her husband, Herbert, for more than four decades. In 1983, she moved into the portable building, located behind her red brick house, a block down Main Street. Despite the loss of her husband of 51 years in 1978, Payne kept the shop going.

Not the type to give up easily, she has survived plenty of hard times.

“We got in debt pretty much after we married in ’27,” says Payne, whose first son, Garland, was born the following year (son David arrived in 1943). “When the Depression hit, it hit hard. We owed the grocery store $80 for a year and couldn’t pay it. So I ironed and washed for a bachelor in town to work off our debt.”

Meanwhile, Herbert hung onto his job as a barber. “He used to say he’d rather work on women than men ’cause they were easier to please,” Payne tells. It wasn’t long before she decided she’d like to do hair, too. “I guess I was afraid of him flirtin’,” she adds with a grin.

With her toddler in tow, Payne started working in Herbert’s shop around 1932. “I had lots of women to practice on,” she remembers. “I wouldn’t charge a thing, but sometimes they’d give me a nickel or a dime. I never went to beauty school. We didn’t have to. I learned by watching my husband and going to conventions.”

As her experience increased, she gained more customers. Many drove 10 miles from nearby Memphis, Texas, just to have their hair done at Herbert’s Barber and Beauty Shop. “Back in the ’60s, the school superintendent came from Memphis every morning to have me comb her hair out for 35 cents,” Payne says. “She did that for 12 years.”

Many of Payne’s regular customers have died, but a few, like 80-year-old Darleen Fowler, still have standing appointments.

“Ona Mae started doing my hair in ’36,” Fowler says. “She’s done six generations of my family—my grandmother, mother, daughter, granddaughter, and now my great-grandson.”

Dorothy Miller, 76, waited a long time for a slot on Payne’s appointment calendar. “My mother had an appointment with Ona every week,” Miller says. “When she died in ’92, Ona did her hair for the funeral.”

Nelda Bray has kept her Friday afternoon appointment since she retired from a local telephone company in 1989. “I have an aunt who’s 92, and she comes here every three months for a permanent,” says Bray, 71. “Ona gives the best permanents in the world!”

“We love Ona, and that’s why we keep coming,” Bray says. “We love the way she fixes hair. But she’s not only our beauty operator—she’s a wonderful friend, too.”

Payne gave 99-year-old Artie Martin her first permanent—and each one since. Elizabeth Denny, 101, is another devoted customer.

Payne has considered retiring completely, but her son, David, convinced her to get a license again this year.

“These people here and their visits—they keep me going. I’m not making any money. I’m even going into the hole. But I don’t care. This is my life.”

Sheryl Smith-Rodgers, a freelance writer/photographer, lives in Blanco, Texas.

first appeared: 3/24/2002