Discount Tuesday draws senior crowd to Dumont, N.J., hairdressers.

Publication: The Record (Hackensack, New Jersey) (via Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News)

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COPYRIGHT 2004 The Record

Byline: Ruth Padawer

Nov. 18--Two 80-year-old women sit under the hooded dryers, their hair in tight curlers, their orthopedic shoes crossed at the ankle. Nearby, white-haired Angela Vala has just finished up her shampoo. And Jean Dollman -- a relative spring chicken at 71 -- is settling into the stylist's chair for a set.

It's Senior Discount Tuesday at Mrs. T's Hair Helpers in Dumont, and the ladies are lining up.

Parlors like Mrs. T's, with its row of aging, hooded dryers, are the dinosaurs of the beauty industry, serving a loyal but ever-shrinking generation of customers. More than three-quarters of Mrs. T's clients, no matter the day, are 65 or older, faithful to hairstyles concocted 50 years ago and to their generation's routine of a weekly "wash-and-set." Some days at Mrs. T's there are so many canes and walkers leaning against the counter that the women joke they should hold races to see who...

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