By Mary Cristy
A View from the Hills
When our big, genial bear of a neighbor with the guileless look of a Raphael cherub grew a mustache to satisfy his wife’s curiosity as to how it would look, it set off a chain reaction from Los Altos Hills to St. Petersburg, Alaska, where two of their children earn a living off fishing boats.
“I just wanted to see how he’d look,” she explained.
Unlike some men who decide to sport a “cookie crumb duster” or a “soup strainer” on their upper lip, Shawney’s mustache grew apace, and within a week he sported a creditable adornment. As a mustache it was something of a cross between the “Old Bill” and the “Box Car.”
“Her reaction was less than enthusiastic,” he reported.
Almost immediately the question was raised about its fate. Should the mustache stay or go?
Shawney decided to play the waiting game. A colleague thought he looked like Einstein, though no one else agreed. Another commented tongue-in-cheek, “It makes you look younger. You could pass for 80!”
“That hit where it hurt.”
The woman who lives in a house round the corner from Shawney wailed, “Why would a man with such a sexy mouth hide it behind a mustache?”
Pros and cons were offered and the dilemma of the mustache assumed the importance of a summit conference. Still, Shawney, who’d invested time and energy to produce this highly successful soup strainer, vacillated.
Discussions were raised. In bygone years, Romans were cleanshaven and considered mustached and bearded Gauls barbarians. Later, when a comic strip depicted Sweet Vanilla, who was tied to a railroad track by nefarious Gerald Greenback and rescued by Stonewall Jackson, mothers warned nubile daughters to “Beware of a man with a mustache.”
For villainy a mustache was de rigueur. But leading actors with “strip teaser” and “pyramidal mustaches” drove young girls to distraction with their romantic facial hair. Still, mothers saw only Count Vronsky who led the hapless Anna Karenina astray, and they continued to harbor grave misgivings about “the tasche.”
Since all this talk got Shawney no closer to a decision, the pair hit upon a plan. At their up-and-coming family reunion in St. Petersburg, they would let their children decide. One of their sons sports a roving mustache that wanders lushly from his upper lip to chin, while the other is cleanshaven, so they believed this to be fair to both sides.
Reaction to the mustache was as cool as St. Petersburg in December.
“It was thumbs down. The mustache had to go,” Shawney said. “I didn’t mind. It’s time-consuming to maintain, and without mustache cups, which are out of fashion, too much work.”
The mustache returned to the Hills and was dispatched on Shawney’s first morning home. En route to town after the execution Shawney stopped his truck to greet the neighbor who had said his upper lip was sexy.
In a state, and power walking to calm her nerves, she welcomed him briefly and hurried on. Back from his errand Shawney picked up the ringing telephone. “I just realized!” she exulted. “You shaved your mustache!”
Mary Cristy is a longtime contributor to the Town Crier. Her column runs the first week of every month.
