Thursday, July 21, 2011

Hoppe's No. 9 Saved Me


My mother would get together with friends and relatives in order to give each other permanents. The smell would gag me. Worse, the participants would want me to stay and “talk to us.” Horrible thing to inflict on a teenage boy.

My mother hated the smell of Hoppe’s No. 9. When the permanent solutions came out, I would start cleaning all the firearms in the house. This would swiftly bring about a command to take my activity out to the shed. Ah, family values.

In time, my parents gained a degree of affluence. I was happy for them, especially when my mother started using the hair salon in town.

Now the product is available as an air freshener. Perhaps I should order one just for the nostalgia value. Probably not. A drop, from the cleaning kit, on a cotton ball, should work as well.

2 comments:

Old NFO said...

I've gotta get one of those :-)

Anonymous said...

I always loved the smell when you & Dad cleaned guns. I don't really recall the "perms" probably because I was outside playing. Dogs, frogs & horses were more important to me than "girly" things. Still are as a matter of fact.

Sisty