Marilyn Hagerty: What does it take to run a beauty shop through the years?

Her name is Mary, but everyone calls her Janie.

She says her late husband, Don Pflaum, started that. He was from the Wales and Hannah, North Dakota, area. And he was attending UND when they first met back in 1964. She grew up on a farm near Lakota, where she graduated from high school in 1962.

Now a resident of Wheatland Terrace in Grand Forks, Janie Pflaum looks back on her life of raising a family of four children and running a beauty shop in Cavalier, North Dakota.

She remembers starting out doing hair in Petersburg, North Dakota, but moving to after she met and married her husband. And it was in her beauty shop in Cavalier that she cut and trimmed and set and curled and gave permanents until she retired.

And now, a daughter, Lisa McCall, is still part of the beauty shop in Cavalier.

Pflaum looks back on a career that started with women wanting permanents instead of the rather straight look of today. She started doing hair in a shop in Grand Forks. She remembers it was in the basement of the former White Drug Store.

When her husband had a chance to teach and later develop a business in Cavalier, Jane moved to her beauty shop work to Cavalier.

“There was never any problem getting a job as a hairdresser,” Pflaum remembers. “You met the nicest ladies."

She decided to become a hairdresser after one of the nice ladies in Lakota did her hair long ago. She attended school at Joseph’s in Fargo for about a year. Then she went back to Petersburg before moving into Grand Forks. When her husband signed a teaching contract in Cavalier in 1965, she moved into the beauty shop she eventually bought.

She ran the beauty shop in Cavalier, which she still calls home. She always used to like saying Cavalier was a town with seven churches and one bar.

“There was never a problem,” she says looking back, “getting a job as a hair dresser.”

She says the nicest ladies came in to have their hair done. “And then the men started coming in as barbers retired.”

“Today,” she says, ”there are haircuts and highlights.”

She says there are three beauty shops in Cavalier. “It’s a county seat,” she will tell you.