Salon celebrates 20 years

In 1978, Becki Neal and her sister Judy moved from the Willamette Valley to Sisters to start a beauty salon.

After 20 years, Neal can relate with amusement the unusual conditions they had to overcome after the salon opened in the Wakefield house on Cedar Street.

"The front door of the house was on ground level, but the business was in the basement, which had no water. We had to go up two flights of steps to the top level to shampoo and come back down to work in the basement.

"But, it was the only space available in Sisters, and we made do with what we had. I had much healthier legs when we were in that building." The disadvantages of that location were mere trifles compared to those Becki, Judy and her two teenage sons faced when they first moved to Sisters and settled on their 20 acres near Indian Ford.

"The first nine weeks we were there, we lived in two tents - and it was a wet fall!" Neal said. "Financing the salon was our first priority, and we didn't have the money to build a house. Eventually, each of us wanted a horse, so we decided to build the barn first. We finished half of it for living quarters and moved in.

"After nine weeks in a tent, I wouldn't have cared if the barn had had a dirt floor," Neal said. "It didn't leak, the kitchen was inside instead of outside, and we had running water and a wood stove for heat."

Over the years, among the biggest salon industry changes Neal has experienced are in types of rinses and from setting in rollers to blow drying.

"When I started permanent waving, we had a product that was probably the strongest creme rinse ever," Neal said. "But, it saved our bacon if we got a permanent too tight. We could comb that rinse through the hair, and it would relax the curl to the desired level."

Neal said color rinses have probably changed the most. Rather than mixing color a little darker because it would automatically fade, rinses now take the color about to the desired level that will stay there.

During the late '70s, Carter was president, and Neal's customers discussed the hostage situation in Iraq; Sisters sewers, the need for a high school, and the local economy. Black Butte, started in the early '70s, was doing well, Sisters was beginning to grow and several new businesses had moved in.

During the early '80s discussion gradually turned to fear of a deepening recession.

In 1982, the salon had been moved to the Hoyt's Hardware building, then on Hood Street where everything was on one level. But in 1982, with salon space larger than they needed, and the rent too high, Neal and her sister moved the salon to its present Cascade Avenue location.

Twenty years after B-J and Friends opened, Neal's customers are discussing the sewer, sheriff's levy, fire danger, the stock market, Clinton, their sympathy for his daughter and the effect the situation is having on the nation's children.

"The B-J in the shop's name refers to Becki and Judy, which I left unchanged after Judy moved to Canada." Neal said. "The latter part of the name 'and Friends' refers to our customers, which has never changed, either."