The Lincoln Star from Lincoln, Nebraska • Page 70

I I ill I I I 4 I os Ol L-) 4 rs iJ5 I Unsightly Hair Or Beautiful Brush? Well By DONALD ZOCHERT (c) 1972, Chicago Daily News Burt Reynolds has one, Dick Butkus has one, Mark Spitz has one. What is it? a mustache! Twisted, twirled, trimmed, waxed or wild the mustache has had its ups and downs. Once, if you wore a mustache, you were a car salesman, a pimp, a French diplomat or an unsuccessful Republican presidential candidate. Today the mustache Is a badge of manhood, a swagger of liberated follicles marking its bearer as a man of action. The mustache has a long and curious history.

Maligned as a mere and downgraded as facial the mustache nevertheless has continued to grow longer, fuller and more popular. Facial hair has taken many forms. Thoreau grew one of the strangest crops on record he shaved his chin, his cheeks and his upper lip, but let his whiskers grow elsewhere. This left him with a very hairy neck. First Siclelmriis Gen.

Ambrose Burnside he fought for the union in the civil war shaved his chin but allowed his whiskers to grow on the sides of his face and under his nose. People called the growth W'hen Abraham Lincoln grew his famous beard, he skipped mustache, thus giving Ulysses S. Grant the honor of being the first U.S. president to sport a mustache. Grant was followed in this noble experiment by Rutherford B.

Hayes, wbo combined tbe mustache with a beard. James A. Garfield, seeing a good thing, did likewise. This left it to the innovative Chester A. Arthur to become our first strictly- mustache president.

Politics certainly has its fashions, for Grover Cleveland who succeeded Arthur also restricted himself to a mustache. Benjamin Harrison, the next president, threw caution to the winds and the razor out the window. He let both his beard and mustache grow. It was a sort of twilight of the gods. From there it was downhill.

Ilig (iasp William McKinley shaved, lip and chin. Teddy Roosevelt brought the brush back briefly. William Howard Taft nursed the renaissance with a beautiful mustache, twirling the ends. But Woodrow Wilson was clean. Since then our last 10 presidents have refused to grow either a beard or a mustache, although President Richard M.

Nixon has been known in the past to have had a 5 (EST) shadow. The mustache, however, is not the prerogative solely of presidents and kings. The mustache of the common man has often made its way into the newspaper, although rarely into the history book. The late Francesco Mastrostefano, then a 70-year-old Rhode Island mustache grower, once filed a suit against his barber for trespass, assault and battery. When the old man came in for a shave and a haircut, the barber conscientiously cropped off the luxuriant mustache he has grown and undipped for more than 47 Thus the perils of the mustache.

But there are honors as well. Waleli It Grow The longest mustache in the world today, according to the Book of hangs beneath the proud nose of Masuriya Din, a Brahmin of the Partabarh District in Uttar Pradesh, India. It measures 102 inches from tip to tip, which is more than Masuriya Din measures from head to toe. It costs $30 a year just to take care of it. Maj.

Geoffrey Peberdy, a British army psychiatrist with nothing better to do, some years ago analyzed 400 mustaches and the men behind them. He found that men with bushy mustaches were agressive and effective and made the best officers. Those with closely trimmed mustaches, however, were touchy, lacked im- Ambrose Burnside agination and made lousy officers. disciplined others ruthlessly and themselves to Maj. Peberdy found.

He recommended that they hold no rank higher than a sergeant. serving in Vietnam are credited with bringing back the mustache. It was in 1966 that Americans were once again allowed to wear mustaches the war zone. They were hairs whose time had come. Stern Warning Not so long ago, football coach Frank Navarro of Columbia University had issued a stern warning against hair on the face.

hair and beards lead to other Navarro philosophized, lying under trees and singing I-ed by Joe Namath of the New York Jets and Ben Davidson of the Oakland Raiders, professional and nonprofessional athletes have nce turned the coach on his ear. The entire Oakland baseball team looks like a collective tintype of Frank Chance. Even swimmers like Olympic champion Mark Spitz once warned to shave all their hair off their bodies, like little fishies have grown mustaches. It seem to slow them down. As long as the girls are interested, the mustache is sure to grow.

Spitz Chester Arthur Theodore Roosevelt William H. Taft Dick Butkus.