Hats off to the Hair Hut

Update Tuesday afternoon: The Story of the Smiling Hair Follicles

Never have I been quite so happy to announce a "non-story." After writing the posting below, I set out to do my interviewing about the Hair Hut. My first call was to Margie. Her daughter Val took the phone because Margie's hands were deep into the goop on somebody's head.

Turns out the Hair Hut will shut its doors at it present location, but some of the gals will still operate under the same name at a facility less than two blocks away. It's next to Mr. Sam's in front of Foster's Crossing. Joyce and Margie will team up, each taking a few days a week. I've heard Karen may open up a shop in her home.

Anyway, go ahead and read my tribute to my beauticians and their establishment with this update in mind. My hair follicles are smiling from ear to ear after learning this news. All in the name of journalism!


Morning posting: I've got a long list of items to complete and folks to call over the next few days. In fact, the list is sitting next to my keyboard on an ASVAB tablet. Anyone remember ASVAB? It was a military aptitude test they used to administer every year to high school students in hopes of using the results to help direct their career exploration. I picked up this tablet last January at an Idaho School Administrators annual meeting in Boise, which featured a room full of booths, filled with goodies and manned or womanned by representatives from educational products companies.

My ASVAB tablet list has "pay bills" at the top. Then, there's a note to call Mike Wolcott. I need to ask him where I can track down Jodi Greve, now that she and her family are back in Sandpoint with their new car, compliments of Wendle Motors in Spokane. There's a wonderful story there, and I'll be writing it for The River Journal.

Another note says to "send more questions to Leslie." Leslie Wood Lippert is a young farm wife. She's a U of I graduate who married Harvey Lippert; he does my mother's farming. I taught both Leslie and Harvey in my journalism classes. The couple recently won a regional award from the Idaho Farm Bureau Federation, so I'm hoping to do their story in an upcoming column.

Finally, my list reminds me to "call, Margie, call Claire Lewis and call JoAnn VanStone." All these women should know something about the Hair Hut where I get my hair zapped every two months. First and foremost, Margie has already informed me that the Hair Hut will close its doors forever by Feb. 14. Last time I went there, she'd just gotten "the letter," asking her to vacate the premises by Valentine's Day.

This is to make room for the new Panhandle State Bank complex, which will occupy the block where Harold's Super Foods, the Hair Hut, the Spic n' Span Laundra Center and the Cinema 4 West movie theater have operated for years. Harold's closed down last April; the rest will shut down by Valentine's Day. I've been told that work will begin fairly quickly after that to prepare for the bank construction.

I plan to chronicle the Hair Hut's story in an upcoming River Journal piece. I also plan to find out where Margie and Joyce will be hanging out to cut, zap and curl in the future. Claire Lewis should be able to tell me some tidbits about the longtime Sandpoint salon's beginnings because I understand her mother Nita owned it back in the early years. JoAnn Sedar Van Stone also owned it before moving her business out to Hope.

Probably the most colorful anecdotes will come while sitting through a few Hair Hut beauty sessions this week and listening to the longtime customers who've depended on Margie, Joyce, Karen, Janie, Bobbie, et. al. to keep 'em looking good for years. A lot of information concerning the local scene has flowed through that quaint little place since it first opened at least four decades ago. It's a setting where Sandpoint's longtimers have always felt comfortable and welcome while the gals work on their heads and the resident squirrels beg for more peanuts at the door.

I know that Margie's sick about the whole situation. "It's the last of the old-time places to go," she sadly told me during my last visit while coercing locks of hair with that sharp crochet needle through that plastic bag on my head.

We agreed that the Tam o' Shanter aka "Tervan," "Tavern" somehow found a way to stay alive when the wise and sensitive folks, building the motel complex, just decided to build around the legendary Sandpoint bar. The Hair Hut staff has always maintained a close connection with the Tam folks, particularly through some generous, often unheralded humanitarian efforts for locals in need.

There's surely a lot more to tell about the Hair Hut as it disappears into history as yet another of Sandpoint's longtime bastions where "everybody knows your name and your business and genuinely cares what happens to you." I'm looking forward to learning it and writing the story. This is important work, I believe, because it appears that our only way of preserving local history these days is through the written word.

The visual evidence of our heritage is crumbling all too quickly, it seems. And, I wonder who will feed the squirrels when the Hair Hut doors close for the last time.