So much style

But even with the nearly four decades she’s logged at the San Mateo salon, Payne has double those years in experience, having started styling hair at her mother’s salon in Pennsylvania when she was a teen.

Payne, who turned 90 Monday, has honed her craft in more than 75 years since she received her first cosmetology license. Though she’s worked many long days, learned how to do countless hairstyles and worked in several states, the years seemed to haven’t caught up with Payne, who said she didn’t feel much different as a nonagenarian.

“To me, it’s just a number,” she said. “At 40, I thought I was over the hill.”

Payne said she worked at her mother’s beauty salon in Pennsylvania after school when she was in grammar school. She said she was 12 when she inquired with her mother about getting paid, and her mother told her she needed to have a cosmetology license and go to beauty school to be paid in her salon, thinking the requirements might deter her from going through with her plan.

But Payne attended beauty school at night for some two years and completed the required hours of work by the time she was 14, at which point she took and passed the state board exam.

She said she had to take another exam in California, where she moved with her family and met and married her first husband at 17, and again in Massachusetts, where she supported her growing family as a hairstylist while her husband went to law school to become an attorney after his military service.

“I did everything a little early, but in those days they did,” she said. “After the war, the boys would come home and they wanted to settle down … that was common.”

Payne said in all her years as a stylist, she has never tired of her job because she enjoys the company of her customers and co-workers. She said she tries to bring in treats for her clients every day and doesn’t mind picking one of her customers up on her way into the salon.

“I think it’s the people,” she said. “That makes me happy, when they’re happy.”

Though she makes sure she goes to the gym four times a week, Payne said her large family, which includes five great-grandchildren, the youngest of whom is 18, is central to her life. Though they live across the United States and in two other countries, her five children planned a surprise party for her Sunday in San Mateo, a gathering of 37 people from Payne’s life. She has been cherishing a scrapbook they gave her with photos from their childhoods and messages from her loved ones.

“I’ve had a good life, I really have,” she said. “I’m lucky.”

Because many of Payne’s customers are older, she said she doesn’t get too many unusual requests for hairstyles, but she looks forward to learning new techniques and styles whenever she can. And it doesn’t seem like she’s ready to put down her curling iron anytime soon — Payne believes seeing her customers at work is a key part of what has kept her healthy and motivated.

“I don’t have a retirement date yet,” she said. “I’m going until either I don’t have any customers left or I’m gone.”

anna@smdailyjournal.com

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