Marines Don't Have Curlers: Forty Years Behind a Styling Chair

Merriam Press Personal Chronicle No. 8

First Edition, 2015

This is the story of a U.S. Marine after being discharged from the Marines in 1972 as the Vietnam War was winding down. An expert with the M16 service rifle and qualified with the M60 machine gun, he had no particular skills for a job in the States.

His cousin, a hairstylist, coaxed him off of the couch and took him to Wilfred Academy of Beauty Culture. He enrolled but was eventually told by the school's director that he was in the wrong business and was asked leave school before his course was completed.

He managed to pass his state board exam and eventually go on to become an award winning Master Stylist, a career that would take him from the corner beauty salon to the runway during Fashion Week at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, New York.

This work is not the story of the author's life as a hairstylist. Instead it is a series of over 200 vignettes covering 40-plus years of experiences behind a styling chair. These personal stories about his clients are humorous, interesting, sad, historical, inappropriate, sometimes even sexist and, overall, entertaining.

The stories are not meant to be a book of memoirs but rather a testimony to the experiences with clients, other hairstylists and salon situations. Each story is recalled as if it has just happened, all being true and contributing to a career that as a young man Robert never remotely envisioned.

Everyone has their own story to write, bits and pieces of which may not seem significant to the reader but overall, are important.

With 48 photos.