Memorable summer vacations hold their own special lore — the beach vacations of sand, sun and too-close sharks, camp nights sneaking into the cafeteria after curfew (I was a hungry child) and tubing down Ichetucknee’s ice cold springs are a few of mine. Yet, my most iconic summer trip was the time I rode 1,000 miles to meet Mary Kay and rode back with Barbra Streisand.
I owe this memory to Mama, who loved Mary Kay Ash, the larger-than-life Texan cosmetic entrepreneur, almost as much as her husband and four daughters. Maybe out of necessity with a house full of women, Mama became a Mary Kay “beauty consultant” in the early 1970s. She converted our kitchen pantry into a make-up inventory closet lined with shelves of Mary Kay’s iconic bubble-gum pink products.
When it came to direct sales, Mama was a natural. She held make-up parties around our dining room table and recruited other eager women to join the Mary Kay sales force. Soon she was top of the distribution team in Central Florida, earning her an invitation to meet Mary Kay at the annual cosmetic convention in Dallas. She could barely contain herself. She was about to meet her hero.
Except for one minor detail.
Money was tight, our family car — a high-mileaged Oldsmobile — had a temperamental relationship with its air conditioning system and we only had enough money to budget for a quick trip from Florida to Texas. Daddy did the math, put his five girls in the old Olds and got behind the steering wheel.
“We can do this, and it’s gonna be a long drive,” he said determinedly. “But, I brought something for the ride.”
He held up two new eight-track tapes, one of comedian Jerry Clower, the other the “Hello Dolly” movie soundtrack with Walter Matthau and Barbra Streisand. By the time we hit the Texas state line, I knew Clower’s “Coon Huntin’” routine by heart.
Our Dallas visit was brief, but long enough for Mama to meet Mary Kay, who was decked in all white from her hair to her white patent leather shoes, making her candy-apple red lipstick stand out like an exclamation mark. She was stunning with a flawless, porcelain-like complexion. Mary Kay’s extra emollient night cream had clearly paid off.
After taking a few photographs of mom with Queen Mary, we hopped back into the car and headed home. Mama was on Cloud Nine.
“Sherman, did you hear Mary Kay say how pretty our girls are?” Mama asked Daddy as the Dallas skyline blurred behind us. “She was so nice and just as purty as her picture in our sales brochures.”
As a treat on the long drive back, Daddy put the “Hello Dolly” tape into the car stereo player. Dolly Levi, aka Barbra Streisand, sang us straight through to Louisiana before trouble began.
“Uh-oh,” Daddy said scowling at the car dashboard, “The air isn’t working.”
“Oh, no, Daddy!” cried my older sisters whose bouffant hair would surely fall from the heat in spite of prolific use of hair spray. “We can’t last in this car all the way back to Florida!”
“Roll the windows down and I’ll get us home as soon as I can,” he said staring straight ahead, probably wondering if he could survive being in an un-air conditioned car with five women on the hottest day of summer.
When we reached Pensacola, the heat inside the car had warped the eight-track at the most inopportune time — Dolly Levi was just about to be serenaded with the signature “Hello, Dolly” number. Not to be distracted, Dad kept driving. The chorus sang as if they were underwater and in slow motion at the same time.
“Waaaaeeeeeelllllll, Haaaaaaaalllllllooooooo, Daaaaaaawwwwwllly!”;
My sisters, sweaty and tired, begged Daddy to turn off the tape.
“Come on, girls, sing it with me,” Daddy said with a big grin.
“Hallllloooooo, Daaawwwwwwllly! Waaaeelll, haaaaallllooo dawllly!”
Being the youngest and most naïve to parental ways of distraction, I started singing. Then Donna joined. Then Cindy. Then Julie. They began laughing at the absurdity of it all, laughing so hard until they were crying.
And when we finally arrived home in the middle of a summer night, Mama was the last one singing with a smile as big as Mary Kay.
