Thursday, November 2, 2017
Page 29
The Old Fogey
D
Ah, those good old Cape May days... by Jackson D’Catur
id you know that our fair city was once the Mustache Capital of the World? To be accurate, it was the “Moustache” capital, as that trend was brand new from England, and we in the colonies had not yet come up with the notion that in order to show our superiority we needed to spell things in such a way that Wildwooders might understand. Back in the day, every man, woman and child in Cape May wore as splendid a mustache as their genes allowed. I recall the late Ma’ D’Catur sporting a needle-tipped creation six feet across, styled and waxed like a steer’s horns. This gave the old monster the excuse and subsequent legal protection to spear anyone that annoyed her as she swept along the sidewalks like Boudica’s spikewheeled chariot decimating Romans. I, using a cocktail of gum arabic, soap and a hint of sandalwood, opted for a more stylish creation that blended mustache and beard hair into a little dancing bear that appeared to float just in front of my face. Of course, not everyone was quite as
stylish: Ernie Hemingway, for no reason that made sense, styled his bushy beard and mustache into a scarily convincing mirkin. He oved the attention, the fool. In time, Friday night became the time for people to strut their staches along the boardwalk. Applause, ridicule, prizes, modeling contracts in Europe: all were up for grabs. What went wrong, in the end, was when dogs and cats were allowed to take part. Cats tended to opt for toothbrush mustaches, which is no surprise, but the town’s dogs were four-footed works of art. The Young
Albert of the day had cultivated the Yorkshire Terrier’s natural mustaches into a work of some sophistication, but given his poor reading skills, he misread the instructions for the homemade pomade. Instead of petroleum jelly, he used petroleum AND jelly. Well, who knew that the hound had devised a perfect forerunner of napalm? No one, had he not walked too close to Ernie and his mirkin face, during his victorious ‘stache walk. Ernie’s mirkin was smoking a fat cigar (don’t ask) and as he applauded Albert’s extravagant display, a spark landed on the tip of a perfect hairy point. The result was not so much a fire as a “whoosh” that tore the length of the boardwalk, igniting a hundred pomades, gels, waxes and polishes. The amazing thing was that such was the swiftness and ferocity, not a life was lost. But neither did a single hair survive. The smell was, I assure you, horrid. By the time any person or animal in town could manage to grow hair again, all enthusiasm for the mustache craze was gone. It’s why everyone over 40 in this city wears a wig, too.
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