I worked as a Cosmetologist from ‘70 thru ‘85, and also worked as a Telephone Operator from mid’76 thru late ‘78, while still doing haircuts and perms at home for my special customers, and then worked for the last 6 mo. of ’79 for Hewlett Packard as a micro electronic assembler, again still doing haircuts at home.

In ‘74 when blow drying was really starting to come in here in Northern California I bought this 1500 watt Pearl Duck blow dryer by Dubl Duck.  In ‘80 I dropped it and cracked the casing on the nozzle, hence the duck tape.  But it didn’t hurt the runnin’ of it none.  

This dryer earned my bread and butter from ‘74 thru ‘85 when I finally left the hair business for good to work full time in the Human Services Dept.  This dryer is still in excellent functioning condition.  Its quiet and very powerful, both attributes that were essential when working professionally cutting and blowdrying hair.  Time is money!

Now I only use it to dry spills on my clothing.  I haven’t blown dry my hair for over 30 years now.  I have cut my own hair since I was 12 and still do.  I seldom even use a comb.  I still have a full head of thick, slightly wavy almost all white hair that I comb with my hands and fingers.

Eddie

Those Gillette Pro Max dryers were sold more as something that was easier to handle than a professional “pistol grip” blow dryer.  They made these both for men and women.  The average consumer could visualize using a dryer that more resembled using a brush or a comb and maintain some control over their hair, keeping it from blowing all over the place.  However, these dryers were slow, and never achieved the same results and volume that a so called effeminate pistol grip dryer did.

So these dryers didn’t stay on the market for long.  I bought one of these in about ‘72 when they first came out for home use.  What a useless piece of junk it was. As blow drying  hair became common place with both men and women we all learned to use the professional type of blow dryers by watching them being used by the professionals that cut our hair and by practicing.

I cut hair professionally from ‘70 to ‘85 for both men and women, straight and gay and I never once had any male customer turn down having his wet, freshly cut hair being blown dry because he feared his masculinity being questioned.

Eddie

If you want your bar soap to last longer let age for at least several weeks before using it.  When you get it home remove the outer plastic wrapping from multiple bar packs and store it in a dry place.  The linen closet is a good place for storing bar soap while it ages and dries out as the scent of the soap will also scent your linens. 

This is especially important with Ivory Soap.  Its so soft when its freshly out of the wrapper that I can almost put my index finger right through the center of a bar.  But after several weeks of allowing it to dry out its hard and solid and doesn't disintegrate right before my eyes when it gets wet.

I age all bar soaps and I get several weeks out of a bar of Zest that is left on a soap holder in the shower.

Eddie

This thread brought me back to Winters in the 1980's as a kid.

Growing up we had a wood burning fireplace in the living room and it was the primary source of heat.... we also had central air heating that ran off propane from one of those big giant tanks in the yard (lived out in the country) but the fireplace heat was free, only cost the manual labor of harvesting firewood, and we did what we could to get by.

So the thing had to stay burning constantly in the cold months, it stayed well stoked during the day and evening but you could only do so much at night. In the early morning, if you were lucky and it had been stoked here and there when someone got up in the night to pee or somthing, there was still a coal bed smoldering.. so out came this ancient hair dryer to blow the coals and bring them back to life to catch the fresh kindling on fire.

It sounds crazy but it did the job nicely, basically an electric bellows to spark up the coals. Dad was a junker and found it who knows where, the fact it was metal and not the more modern plastic kind made it suited to the job and we even had a stand for it... the wooden handle is a hollow dowel so somewhere my Mom dug out this base to an old plant stand or a paper towel holder or something that once the original attachment was removed left this threaded peg on the wooden base that the dryer fit right in so it could stand upright unsupported.

These pictures aren't mine but it's the same model, made in the 1950's I believe, the body is metal, the handle wooden and those toggle switches and the tooled vents on the side make it look like a Ray Gun right out of a 1950's Sci Fi movie.

One of my aunts had a Handy Hannah hairdryer.  She would place it on a table behind her then set in front of it with her hair in pin curls and move her head when it got too hot allowing the hot air to dry all of her pin curls by moving her head like this until all of her hair was dry.  

Later on she got one of the new Lady Sunbeam hairdryers with the plastic hood attached to a hose connected to the hair dryer.

Eddie