My Father's Moustache; A McBone Memorial Salute

This is my father's moustache.  Note the confidence it imparts on its wearer, the way it frames his easy smile.  Calm, prepossessing, here is a man completely in tune with himself and his surroundings.  The picture was most certainly taken in the moments between a long, cool drag on a Pall Mall and a satisfying sip from an 18-year-old Scotch.  The future is bright for the young attorney, and he knows it.

My father took a Gillette to his no. 1 asset sometime in early 1977.  Though he and a generation of men could not have felt it at the time, there was in that instant a change in the wind.  The decline and fall of the moustache was begun.  The 1980s saw tens of millions do the unthinkable.  By the time 1990 rolled around, moustaches were the domain of a persecuted few.

Let this serve as a eulogy, then, to forgotten follicles and lost dreams, and to the devil-may-care days of true American dash.

nwb