I “Mustache” You A History Question

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• March 3, 2025

Recently, I was doing a gig in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and since I was coming from another place in Pennsylvania, I was without a hotel and had ample time to kill. Much of Pennsylvania is rather boring, and sometimes even feels like you went through a time portal and are no longer in the 2020s. And not in cool way, like you traveled far back enough to discover what it was like when your parents were kids, only to creepily have your mother fall in love with you. It’s more like you traveled to the recession of 2008.

The people of Pennsylvania have always been pleasant, but my god, I don’t know how they live there. Pennsylvania is so void of vibrancy, I think if ICE started deporting migrants to the middle of the state, they would just go back to where they came from on their own. You cannot tell me Venezuela is worse than Grantville, Pennsylvania.

Anyway, Harrisburg is sort of legitimate city with good restaurants and a killer bookstore cafe, making it one of the better places in Pennsylvania I’ve been to. Though Gettysburg is supposed to have the best Civil War historical experience, Harrisburg is home to the National Civil War Museum. These are the type of things (nerd things) I absolutely love to visit when I’m on the road.

Admittedly, I’m somewhat a museum snob. Growing up and living in New York where some of the best museums and exhibits are, I’ve been going to top-tier displays of history, art, and science since I was a kid. Like one time, I was on the road in the middle of nowhere (I can’t remember where, but again, it might have been somewhere in Pennsylvania?), and there was a nearby “Houdini Museum.” I was so excited. I love Houdini! Magic! Fun! I went to find it was just one room with some pictures and newspaper clippings. They didn’t even have an outfit he wore or anything on display. I think it was free though.

The National Civil War museum in Harrisburg, however, was not at all a disappointment. In fact, I’d highly recommend it to anyone in the area or passing through. It was filled with tons of Civil War weapons, uniforms, life sized mannequins with “voice overs” that recounted war time life, and pretty much anything you can think of that a solid museum would have. Like a great gift shop!

I learned a lot of things that I once already knew when I was in seventh grade and forgot. War is, truly, hell.

While I was re-learning about our first Civil War, and hopefully but not likely our last, I paid quiet tribute to those heroes who have made our country great. Liberty forever! But then, something got to me… and it was the mustaches of the Civil War. There are rare moments in my life where I think a country can be too free. Seeing the wide variety of mostly hideous mustache’s I would think were only appropriate on a Dr. Suess character, I thought, maybe liberty forever should have limitations on facial hair?

Women, of course, weren’t really free in these days or maybe they would have spoken up more about theses mustache atrocities. Or maybe people just didn’t really make out that much back then. Fun fact! Before he was all about conserving the trees, the Lorax fought in the Civil War.

Brooklyn hipsters who use pro-nouns in their dating profile who I swipe “no” to love this look. One could only hope that as this guy was lighting his tobacco pipe, some embers would light his little beard on fire and go for a more tame goatee.

This guy actually looks like he’s pretty good looking, in a Tim Burton character sort of a way, if only his mustache didn’t hide his god sculpted jawline. Perhaps, though, he was hiding bad teeth. I imagine most people probably didn’t have great teeth back then.

The only person in history who has pulled off mutton chops is Wolverine. And maybe Quint from Jaws.

Sure, I get it, they had real, larger-than-life-future-of-human-history things at stake so they didn’t have much time to think about their facial hair. Even though it seems like they did think about their facial a lot, probably more than I did when I was wandering the National Civil War Museum, finding myself distracted by mustache after mustache.

It is a free country, thanks to too many veterans who put their lives on the line, and the too many who lost their lives in various wars, so gents, you are free to do what you please with your facial hair. Just know that most women find it a giant turn off. When I see a dude with too much and/or ridiculous facial hair, I make the same face as the mannequin in the Civil War hospital replica who was about to get his leg chopped off makes. A face that screams, “why oh why is this happening.”