A visit to Nell's Hairstyling & Boutique at 3700 Camp Robinson Road in North Little Rock's Levy neighborhood is a step back in time -- to a kinder, gentler, slower-paced era when ladies took the time to get to know one another by way of friendly chitchat to more meaningful dialogues.
A place where cellphones aren't ringing in every purse or pocket and dinging messages aren't prompting texted replies. The only phone heard ringing around here is salon owner Nell Elliott's white landline. And it does so fairly often, prompting the 82-year-old hairdresser to reach for pen and paper and jot down another appointment.
The dryers -- domes attached to baby blue vinyl chairs -- in her shop are not retro reproductions but instead date from 1968, as do the mirrors in front of each styling station. And Elliott's cosmetology license? It bears no expiration date and is instead marked "Lifetime."
"I hated it, but the hydraulic chairs had to be replaced," laments Elliott, gesturing toward the newer mauve chairs where she cuts and styles.
Nearby, stacks of clear storage boxes are filled with hard plastic curlers in an array of sizes and pastel shades, while plentiful stacks of National Enquirer and Globe tabloids offer reading fodder.
The plain, nondescript beige brick-and-metal building with its faded green awning marks the third geographical location
of Elliott's business and her fourth building.
And now, she's celebrating a half century of owning the salon which she bought 50 years ago this month.
She'll mark the occasion by holding a drop-in reception at the business from 1 to 4 p.m. on Sunday. Her goal? To gather all the hairdressers who used to work for her.
"We're trying to get together as many of the old hairdressers as we can," she says, adding she estimates there have been about 50 through the decades.
"So far, we've found 40 of them," she says. "It's been hard to track a lot of them down since they've married and their names have changed."
BEAUTIFYING BEEHIVES
Elliott, who'll turn 83 later this month, is on her feet for hours five days a week -- Tuesdays through Saturdays -- bringing a touch of glamour to her appreciative clients. And despite her physically demanding profession, she is still spry and full of energy.
At first glance, one might assume she's still working because she's so full of life. But after getting to know Elliott, one suspects it's really the other way around -- she's so full of life because she's still working.
"I was a secretary for years and hated office work and decided I'd be a hairdresser instead," she says.
This "beautifying," as Elliott likes to call it, is more of a calling than a job.
"I never got up in the morning and thought, 'Oh, Lord, I got to go to work,'" she says. "I love my people and appreciate every one of them. If it wouldn't be for them, I wouldn't have any business."
And some of them are as dedicated to her as she is to her profession.
Two of her clients in the salon on a recent Friday morning have been with Elliott for 50 years or more.
Frances Gordon of North Little Rock comes to Elliott for cuts, perms and her weekly set and styling. She used to wear her hair longer in a pageboy style and remembers a time, decades ago, when Elliott crafted her hair into a beehive 'do.
"I knew another lady who was coming down here and I decided I'd try it and I liked it. She's the best beautician in North Little Rock," Gordon says.
Gwen Manning of Sherwood has been one of Elliott's clients for 51 years, beginning with her in 1964 before Elliott bought the business.
"It'll be 51 years in July," Manning says, adding she first came in for a shampoo and set; they didn't blow-dry back then. "She did my hair to please me and I'm not the easiest person to please.
"We have become good friends. I depend on her to keep my hair looking nice all week."
Manning's husband, Jimmy, also gets his hair cut by Elliott. In return, he has done plumbing, heating and air conditioning work for her in her building, often replacing the units.
"All that hairspray they use in here rusts out the equipment," he says.
Elliott also has several generations of clients. In one family, she has styled the hair of five generations of women.
"Ruth Ann Culp began with me and then brought her mother, Anna Place, and then her daughter Linda Calhoun. Linda then brought her daughters Angela and Sarah," Elliott says, adding that Calhoun still travels from Heber Springs to have her hair done. When Angela's daughter Ashley was little, she also got her hair cut there.
Elliott says she has been privy to a lot of client confidences during the decades.
"You hear all kinds of things," she says. "You have to be a psychiatrist and let it go in one ear and out the other. You're their sounding board and sometimes that's all they need. Some just feel the need to unload something that's bothering them. I think they get relief and know that no one's going to form an opinion and know that's as far as it is going to go."
BLEACH AND BLESSINGS
In October 1963, Elliott -- then Nell Harvey -- trained to be a hairdresser at Arthur's on Main Street in North Little Rock and began working in the salon when her husband, Charles', first wife, Nova, owned it.
When Nova was diagnosed with cancer and unable to work anymore, Harvey bought the business on May 5, 1965. Nova passed away that August, and a couple of years later, Harvey married Charles Elliott. He passed away in 1996.
When Elliott first worked in the salon, it was on the corner at 3305 Pike Ave., with three stylists. In 1966, she moved the salon across the street to 3306 Pike Ave., and added a stylist.
In 1968, the salon moved to the Levy Shopping Center and grew to have 13 stylists. In 1980, the salon moved into a house converted into a business at 3700 Camp Robinson Road with nine stylists, where Elliott remained until 1996.
That year, when the highway department made plans to widen Camp Robinson, Elliott saw her salon razed.
"I told them to leave me enough room to build back on the property, that I wasn't ready to retire yet," she says. Instead, she built her current building.
"As far as I know, I'm the oldest owner still around," she says of her working-class neighborhood of Levy. "The Venables [who had a lumber business] are gone and the Stanleys [who had a hardware store] have changed hands and sold out."
But Elliott and the services she provides have remained constant. She has always offered haircuts, weekly shampoos and sets, rinses, and perms, but there have been some changes.
In the early days, she didn't use bleach or permanent color.
"The little old ladies used to get weekly permanent rinses," she says. "For gray hair, we used a colored rinse that used a blue base in a capsule called Nestle. That's why you used to see so many little old ladies with blue hair. And we used to use shredded Castille soap; I'm pretty sure it would clean anything."
The prices for the services have also changed.
"When I started, a shampoo and a set was $3.50, cuts were $1.50, perms were $8.50 and weekly rinses were 25 cents," Elliott says. "Now, a shampoo and a set are $16, a cut is $20, perms are $65 and up, weekly rinses are $3, and colored mousses are $4."
"Back then, we more or less had one formula for perms but now we have colored, bleached, and regular ones and today I use liquid mousses and gels."
And while most of her employees have changed through the years, some have remained constant, like Kathy Knowlton, who began working with Elliott in 1969 when Knowlton was 19.
"So I've about raised her," Elliott says of the younger woman.
Another hairdresser she truly has reared -- Elliott's daughter Cheryl Ripper, who became a stylist 32 years ago and today still works in the salon with her mom where she also does manicures and pedicures.
"She was raised in a beauty shop; she's been here all her life," Elliott says, adding, "I've been well blessed. Hairdressing has been good to me. It's allowed me to make a living and I've raised three kids."
Elliott, who has survived colon cancer and two knee surgeries and has a little arthritis, still begins her workdays at 6 in the morning with clients arriving about 7 . "We have a lot of ladies who come then because they have to go to work," she says. "And we stay as long as we need to."
She's still not ready to retire and doesn't plan to ever do so.
"I tell them I'm going to fall over behind this chair one day," she says with a laugh.
Style on 05/12/2015