Laura Goff gets a Marcel Wave

“Omaha, Nebr.    Mar. 14, 1940

“Dear Folks, [Laura Goff to Clabe and Leora at Minburn]

“How are you? We are all well and ready for 3 square meals a day. Do you cook in the basement and did the landlord put the sink in the kitchen? [The house at the Minburn farm didn’t have running water in the house.] We had another big snow 6 in. Tues., all day snow, and snowed some yesterday. Bernadine [Jennings Goff’s wife], baby [Ronnie], and Maxine were here Tues. and J.B. [Jennings] came for dinner. Maxine stayed till this eve and she gave me a Marcel yesterday and trimmed my air also, so it looks quite nice today.”

What a sweet connection between Maxine Goff and her grandmother. After their own mother died when they were children, Maxine and Merrill (along with their father Jennings) lived with their grandparents, first at the Victorian house in Guthrie Center, then the house along White Pole Road in Dexter.

After Laura was widowed and they lost the house in Dexter during the Depression, they all moved in with Clarence Goff in Omaha, where Merrill and Maxine attended high school. Then Maxine decided to become a beautician. Her grandmother became her model for practice and for taking the practical tests in Lincoln.

Marcel waves were the rage during the 1920s, but evidently they were still popular years later and beautician needed to know how to do it properly.