Blow dryers: 1974-84 :)

[robbinsandmyers]

Dr. Squatch....

Great soap but prob the poorest value out there as far as soaps go. The bars are thin and tiny. I put in 4 orders then finally gave up once I added up that their soap would have cost me $300.00+ per year after each bar only lasted 2 weeks tops. My favorite was the Pine Tar. It smelled great and left me feeling fresh. Problem was the bar disintegrated just looking at it. I had my doubts when I left it on the shelf in the shower and the water spray hit it directly and it made a strong black wash of water down the wall. If I left it like that for an hour I bet the bar would have been 100% dissolved. If they either made their bars twice the size or cut prices in half it would be a much better deal. I went with Shea Moisture and also the all natural African soap that comes in a huge block from Ghana I bought off Amazon, both bars are classified as black African natural soap. They moisturize better and smell great as well.

 

[ea56]

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

 

[sarahperdue]

Several things

My husband Bruce makes basic, old fashioned lye soap, and it washes away pretty quickly no matter how long it has aged, but it is wonderful, so mild that I feel fine about washing my face with it.

 

[sudsomatic]

Handy Hannah

 

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.

 

 

 

 

[ea56]

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

 

[mattl]

My mom and Aunt had a beauty shop way back in the early '40s.  I still have one of  the all metal bee hive style dryers tucked in an attic. Used to play with it as a kid.  If I recall I think she told me they used the old electric rod setup to do perms, but that is a hazy memory.

 

[kenwashesmonday]

We had a Vornado that looked very similar to the Handy Hannah.