Lawrence – My HometownFazio’s Beauty SchoolBy Richard E. NobleI don’t know how the beauty school bubble got inflated in the 50’s and 60’s but it was big. In Lawrence there was Fazio’s Beauty School. My mother is a past graduate of Fazio’s beauty school. This fact is really more amazing than any of you realize. My mother had serious difficulty in certain areas - reading, learning and school for example. She always claimed that my father never graduated from high school but she did. Whenever she made this claim I demanded to see her diploma. She would run off to her bedroom and start foraging in an attempt to add fire to this obvious exaggeration. She was never able to produce that high school diploma but threatened that one day it would turn up and then she would have the last laugh.
It took my mother 11 years to pass her driver’s license test. My older sister gave mom driving lessons for several years, then I took over and my older brother actually gave it a try for a year or two. It had become a sort of family tradition. I anticipated that my oldest son would take up the burden when he came along.
My sister’s reaction to the experience was one of frustration. I became seriously frightened. I had nightmares that by some fluke of fate, my mother would actually have a good day and the guy at the driver’s license bureau would pass her. It didn’t happen while she was under my tutelage.
My brother was a saint. He had the best reaction of any of us. After every driving lesson he gave my mother, he would walk in the kitchen door, take one look and me or my sister and burst out laughing. My sister and I would both nod our heads knowingly.
But my mother did have her areas – knitting, sewing and doing hair. She was the daughter in her large family who did everyone’s hair.
I had the same attitude to Fazio’s Beauty School as my mother did to the first Kentucky Fried Chicken joint that opened up in our neighborhood. As I remember it was on Broadway on the next corner just past the Star Theater heading towards Essex St (Daisy St.) My mother said, “Why in the world would anybody buy something as simple to cook as fried chicken from a store? That joint will be out of business in a week.” And as you all know, she was right again. It moved to a bigger location leaving that corner to become a Syrian sandwich shop, specializing in homemade kibbi salad sandwiches which, of course, were served on fresh Syrian bread and topped with a fantastic secret Syrian dressing.
When all the girls, including my mother in her mid-life crisis, started signing up at Fazio’s beauty school, I said, “Why would anybody go to beauty school when everybody has a sister who will do it for nothing.” And, of course, I was right as usual. I also predicted the early demise of McDonald’s and gave the Carol Burnett show no more than a month on the air.
Frankie Avalon actually recorded a song admonishing young girls for dropping out of high school and going to beauty school. I bet he thought he was pretty cleaver too. [Press control and click on link below to see and hear Frankie give warning to a “Beauty School Drop Out” in this classic Grease presentation. The lyrics are below if you would like to memorize them and sing along. Man this is just like going to the RATS (STAR Theater)]
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