Box of Mustaches: The Darkly Funny, True Story of How Twin Brothers Survived Their Mother's Madness

By Stan A. Evans

Box of Mustaches is the powerful, true story of identical twin brothers and how they coped with their mother's descent into madness.

At first, Stanley and Jimmy Evans thought their mother was normal, but they soon discovered that her twisted views and mood swings were a result of her schizophrenia. And the mental illness was making her more dangerous by the moment. Their journey took them from orphanages to the television studio of a televangelist to a front-yard shooting that would liberate them from their nightmare. The fabled Box of Mustaches they pined for was really a fake facial hair kit advertised in comic books, but also their metaphor for the absurdity of adult life thrust upon them at a young age. Interlaced with shocking drama and dark humor, Box of Mustaches is an absorbing tale of survival. It is also a satirical look at the cynical, sex-charged, American culture of the '70s.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 6, 2003
• ISBN: 9781469751719

Stan A. Evans

Stan Evans is an Emmy award-winning television writer/producer whose credits include Talk Soup, Blind Date, Worst Case Scenario and Oblivious. He?s also worked as a cartoonist, advertising copywriter, actor, standup comedian and bartender. He currently lives in Los Angeles, California.

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1     

You’re Innocent When You Dream

Five shots rang out, we found out later, but we slept soundly. My twin brother, Jimmy, and I were fifteen that summer of ‘78 and we could have slept through Armageddon in Sensurround; slumber, our only refuge from the struggle between mom and her mania. I didn’t stir until the door banged open and a flashlight searched our bedroom. It flitted onto a musty stack of Fantastic Four comics (reprints of Kirby classics), a digital clock that read 5:47 a.m., an old black-and-white Motorola television with antennas joined by Reynolds Wrap, sketch pads filled with our homemade funnies, a battered briefcase tattooed with sports decals and overfed with baseball cards, our homemade bunk beds, a New Testament and a poster of Linda Carter as Wonder Woman that I had strategically taped on the ceiling over my bed. Finally, the beam rested on my sleepy face.

What’s going on? I asked, shielding my eyes.

Nothing. You kids go on back to sleep, the police officer said in a somber tone, closing the door.

"What do you think is going on?" I asked Jimmy drowsily.

Aw hell, you know—probably just another fight, he mumbled from the bottom bunk before drifting off again. I rolled over and closed my eyes. In those days, a policeman wandering around the house was no strange occurrence. In a way, they were expected.

That summer I’d been fantasizing about my parents’ tragic demise. The imagined scenario involved my stepdad losing control of the Mercury Cougar and sending it crashing down the side of a hill. The explosion was always a big, Irwin Allen, Technicolor production, blinding fireworks erupting into a mushroom cloud. At their funeral, everyone would feel sorry for us. Jimmy and I would get gobs of attention maybe even matching moto-cross bikes. Things could only get better. Many nights I’d run that movie in my head, from title to credits, over and over. At first I was ashamed to entertain such thoughts. But every time I prayed for it all to end—and those were perhaps my first real prayers to God—the fantasy would pop into my head and play out to its grim conclusion.

Screaming sirens from backup patrol cars snapped me out of my familiar reveries. My body stiffened, I swallowed a mouthful of air. What if the dream had come true? I climbed down the bunk bed ladder.

There were a few members of Fairfield, California’s finest in the living room, whispering mysteriously to one another. I knew they were detectives because they acted just like TV detectives, only they all looked stunned. Judging by the racket, most of the drama was unfolding outside.

I stepped through our front door into daybreak. Policemen were taking pictures, pulling yellow tape and corralling the crowd. Blood dotted the front walkway like spilled paint. There were clumps of...I wasn’t sure what on the grass...pieces of flesh, maybe, with a mustard-yellow glaze. The rose bushes Jimmy and I had helped plant the previous summer were fragrantly in bloom and littered with what they told me was the gore of our stepfather, John Hunt. At that moment, a paramedic in a speeding ambulance was pronouncing him dead. Seconds passed before I was able to blink or breathe, or at least that’s the sense I have when I recall it, the scene’s unreal quality seeming to place me in a kind of suspended animation.

Then I noticed my mom; she was flailing ferociously out in the street while two policemen struggled to contain her. All of the children in the neighborhood were lined up on the sidewalk, captivated by the sight of her flopping around on the pavement. At first, I hadn’t been aware of her cries. Then, as if somebody or something had turned up the volume knob in my brain, her profanity-laced screeching flooded my ears. Get your goddamn hands off me! I didn’t do anything, you bastards! I swear to you, I’ll sue the whole fuckin’ police department! She clawed at the ground, breaking her long fingernails on asphalt. Finally, the policemen cuffed her and forced her inside the backseat, banging her head on the door. The engine snarled to life, the flashing lights adding to the spectacle.

As the driver growled into the radio, We’ve got the suspect, Heidi Eleanora Schanz Evans Hunt, I stepped closer, gazing inside the backseat at my mother. The fight had gone out of her; she was breathing heavily but was now in a trance. Her beautiful face had contorted into a jumble of incongruous expressions: one part dazzling smile, one part scowl, another part frown—all mixed up like some kind of Silly Putty caricature peeled from the Sunday morning comics. Her bleached blond hair had grown out a half inch and the exposed roots lent her a dark aura. Her black turtleneck sweater blended with the shadowy interior of the police car, making her head seem to float.

I tapped on the window. Mom? Mom, it’s me. What.what did you.? The words caught in my throat, threatening to find expression in a sob. The numbness had left me and was replaced with a chilling realization: my mother had done this horrible thing. There was no response from her. She didn’t seem to recognize me.

Her eyes remain in memory, vivid, two unfathomable pools low on chlorine. They were stark against the white canvas of her face. Looking in them felt as if I were poised on the edge of an impossibly high cliff, the darkness below, all consuming. With a kick of dust, the squad car sped out of the court.

The neighbors who had sometimes sided with us in the private war against our mother stood on the periphery, tsk-tsking in turn. She’d threatened all their lives at one time or another, over a letter that was mistakenly sent to the wrong address or a dog that had crapped on our lawn, or a tree limb that dared stray over our fence. Of course, nobody wanted to get involved. When decisive action was needed, doors closed, blinds were drawn, and mom would resume her peculiar parry and thrust with the world. The Turleys, the MacLeods, the Borchers, perhaps out of boredom, maybe out of fear, had let this crazy bird cluck its cuckoo on the odd hour without intervention. Now it seemed as if the problem had finally taken care of itself. Or God had answered my prayer.

I knew something like this would happen.

She’s nuts. I mean, certifiably loony.

I’ve seen her chase the twins out of the house with a Ginsu.

My next emotion wasn’t grief, but relief. I felt as though I’d walked into my own TV movie. Even though fate had rewritten some major plot points, my part remained the same, the role of the young victim, finally released from a living hell. No more plates smashed against the wall. No more puking spells. No more nights hiding in closets or underneath beds. All the madness had seemingly ended.

Jimmy tells me he didn’t experience any of the personal drama I’ve described. All he can remember is the familiar sight of tired policemen going through the house.

Aren’t you upset? the chief investigator asked my twin in the living room. Wasn’t he your father? he followed up dramatically, as if he were acting in a Quinn Martin production.

My stepfather, Jimmy said immediately and attempted a look of concern before the detachment set back in. It was as if he was in a hot air balloon watching the events from high above, wondering if he could get away with spitting on somebody.

Do you know where she hid the gun? another detective asked him. Jimmy shrugged wearily.

We’re having a devil of a time finding it, the cop sighed. Then the chief investigator ordered his men to turn the place upside down. It took them only an hour to trash the house, all without the slightest concern for our possessions. Jimmy and I hollered at them for tossing around Silver Surfer #1 and Fantastic Four #32 (didn’t they know what they were worth?), rifling through our baseball cards and piling all our clean clothes on the carpet (it hadn’t been vacuumed in months). They eyed us suspiciously the whole time. They must have thought it strange that we were more concerned about Jimmy Olsen’s relationship with Perry White than the welfare of our parents.

The weapon wasn’t found for months. Its location was eventually listed in a police report somewhere, but to this day, I don’t know where mom hid it. She won’t say. She doesn’t even acknowledge committing the crime. The flatfoots who messed up the house didn’t have a clue where to look. I heard one cop mutter that mom was crazy as a fox as well as just plain crazy.

Thankfully, my little half-brothers Johnny, seven, and Robbie, two, were in their bedroom sleepily oblivious of the horrifying situation. When they were finally told what happened, I don’t recollect them crying. They just became more withdrawn, like shell-shock victims. Due to some quirk of maternal restraint, mom was never physically violent with her small children, but they had witnessed and feared her primal rage. Since John Hunt was always away on cruises, it was up to Jimmy and me to keep our eye on them, just in case she got careless. Whenever mom did go into one of her fits, we became surrogate parents, feeding them, changing Robbie’s diapers, and making sure they were safe in their beds at night.

Until John Hunt’s parents could catch a flight from Idaho into San Francisco, the police thought it best we kids go to school as if nothing had happened. Pretend it’s a normal day, the detective said with a cheery smile.

So we started getting dressed. While Jimmy, Johnny and I put on our Toughs-kins, Mrs. MacLeod was called over to take care of Robbie. Her son Kenny was the rare friend allowed in the house with any regularity. Because of his slight frame and sweet face, mom referred to him as that little titmouse. A quietly religious lad with pale, freckled flesh, Kenny liked testing his nerve and ventured to go where few in the neighborhood dared. I think that’s why he enjoyed running around with me: the tumult was continuous. Whenever he spent the night, the titmouse always went home with some horror story about how mom had gone nuts on him. Once for spilling Cherry Kool-Aid all over the TV Guide, once for bringing up the story of Noah and the Flood during one of her sinister moods. (She wondered why God even bothered to have humans on the ark. To her way of thinking, only the animals were worth saving). Given the overly protective nature of his parents, it was a wonder we stayed friends. They must’ve thought Kenny’s guardian angel would protect him. Or if mom did anything to him, God would punish her (an extra pitchfork up her ass when she got to Hell). I think they regarded me as a charity case, somebody that would help them chalk up points in the afterlife. Regardless of the motivation, I appreciated their concern.

In her gentle way, Mrs. MacLeod took me aside and attempted her version of a pep talk. You just turned fifteen, Stan. You’ve got to be the anchor for your brothers, etc. I suppose she would have given Jimmy the same speech since he was fifteen too, but Kenny was my friend and for whatever reason, she thought I was the older brother—which technically I am, by five minutes.

As the morning progressed, the detectives kept checking their watches. They reminded Jimmy and me that we’d be late for school if we didn’t hurry. I don’t think they cared if we missed anything, they were just eager to get us out of their hair. So, like any other day in a house full of cops, with all of our belongings in a heap, our mom on her way to jail and our stepfather shot in the back, we wolfed down our Cocoa Puffs, grabbed our books, and walked to school. It was the first week of September, and Jimmy and I were beginning our sophomore year as the reigning mutants of Fairfield High. On that morning, our feelings of freakishness were so intense, we walked like Night of the Living Dead zombies onto campus, all the blood drained from our faces, rigid as corpses, although no one seemed to treat us any differently. As far as what actually happened that school day, I don’t have the slightest idea. I do recall mom’s eyes. In my daydream, her pupils expanded to a monstrous size and then grew teeth, ready to chew me up and swallow me down into her abyss. Fortunately, we didn’t have to stay in class long. The principal pulled us out just after lunch.

When we got back home, our stepfather’s Navy cronies were wandering through the disheveled house, searching for military documents. They explained to us that John Hunt had performed dives for some highly classified missions. As we gathered our things to stay with the MacLeods, they continued poking through our personal effects (including pictures of my mother during her hubba-hubba stripper days). The swabbies also spoke about what a swell guy John Hunt was; how he was the nicest fella on the base; how sad it was that a dedicated diver had to be cut down in his prime by a psychotic shrew. We were confused. This was the same man who liked to watch reruns of The Virginian and occasionally beat us for disobeying mom’s order to stay locked up in our rooms every weekend. He checked in for a few beers and checked out for long cruises.

Shortly after they left, the police returned and began yet another round of questioning. Do you remember where she kept the bullets? Why would she want to shoot your stepfather? How long has your mom been sick? It was tiresome but we took comfort in one fact.

They didn’t consider us suspects.

2     

"And Now, A Word From Our

When Jimmy and I were seven all we wanted in the world was a box of mustaches. It was actually a kit advertised in the back of our favorite comic books, the kind of offer you’d find next to ads for X-ray Spex, Bionic Hand that YOU control, Magnet Power Ring, Jackpot Bank and Realistic Snake Lighter. Besides mustaches, the kit offered Van Dyke beards, furry sideburns, and exotic goatees, and you could mix and match to create sophisticated new looks. The makers of the product were targeting prepubescents who wanted to sport facial hair but whose hormones weren’t up to the task. Fool your friends! Confound your enemies! the ad promised. Plus, whenever we were sick of being kids we could apply the hair and instantly become little men, strolling around in circles, stroking our beards and pondering adult things like term life insurance, unemployment rates, and the crisis in Red China. The major obstacle, of course, was price. The adhesive follicles cost $9.95, payable through a check or money order. No cash please. No pennies stuffed into a manila envelope sealed with masking tape. That left our primary source of revenue, mom. Sometimes we could get her to spring for something we really wanted with synchronized tantrums, timing our fits in tandem for maximum annoyance. This time, however, she was adamant. She wouldn’t have her twins running around in Van Dyke beards, spouting views on Red China.

Instead, even though she abhorred religious worship in any form, mom got us tickets to appear on The Jim and Tammy Show (probably because they were free). That was almost as good. Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker were then small-time evangelists with a children’s show. It appeared on the kind of UHF channel you could only pick up with aluminum foil on an antenna twisted at a tortuous angle. The show consisted of cartoons, Bible stories told with puppets, interaction with a studio audience of Stepford children, and chatter with a talking mailbox. It was the highest rated kids show in the area, probably because they hooked impressionable viewers with the cartoons and then laid on the God stuff. That was Screwy Squirrel, and now, the suffering of Job! Jimmy and I loved any program found on a channel above 35. The more static there was in the picture, the more appealing the show. It was like we were receiving signals from a secret dimension only this forbidden world featured kids our own age. Secretly, we yearned to leap out of our crazy life and into the Bakker’s domestic paradise. Maybe they’d even adopt us. After all, we were card-carrying members of their fan club. The religious aspects of the show were almost incidental to us, although as a child, I always had a deep-seated fear of God and Charlton Heston.

Mom dressed us in matching shirts and pants, which we were, at that age, beginning to despise, but since this was our ticket to TV land, we decided it wasn’t worth pitching a fit over. Moreover, we understood the perks involved in being a twin, the novelty that brings attention and matching outfits only increased the effect. Hair combed and Brylcreemed, we piled into the Cougar and headed to the broadcast studio in Portsmouth, Virginia. Mom wasn’t as frazzled as she might have been by the hour-long drive, mostly because we were on our best behavior, never once demanding to stop for a Fresca or to do Number One.

Once at Channel 46, a guard shuffled us into the crowded green room. There was coffee and tea for the parents, soda pop for the little monsters. About thirty minutes passed before the kids were herded down to the bleacher seats on the studio floor. Parents had to stay behind and watch a rerun of Mr. Ed until the live taping began. I could tell the upright and uptight Christian mothers annoyed mom. Before we were escorted out of the room, I heard a sniff of disdain and turned to see her sneer as a woman smiled sweetly and said, God has certainly blessed you with those twin boys. I suddenly flashed on her version of the finger game, Here is the church, here is the steeple...open the door, and see all the hypocrites. That would lead to a long cackle and a slap on her knee. Get it? she’d ask us. We didn’t.

For novelty’s sake, they sat Jimmy and me in the very front row. Jim Bakker was thrilled to have twins on the show and gave us frisky rubs on our heads. Then the producer offered a brief overview of what was to happen in the studio with special attention given to applause signals. Since we’d been seated at least fifteen minutes before the taping, there was plenty of time to check out the studio. The set was broken into two basic areas: the facade of a large house where presumably Jim and Tammy lived in a facade of marital bliss, and a smaller setup featuring a stage and curtains for the puppets. I recall Tammy being cute and buxom. She was already committing crimes against cosmetology, but

Reviews for Box of Mustaches

[deelailah · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

a great book about the dysfunctional american, military family. The author has made a break through into the effect of the TV culture on the family. He deserves $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$billions, and I hope there is a TV movie script from this brilliantly gifted writer. A la "Mommy Dearest", and the Michael Jackson saga as a child he rescued his family from poverty into billions by being aloud to develop his talent by promotions and publicity. I wish the author fame and fortune for his momentual efforts and heartfelt contributions of his private life.Watch for more!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!