Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
John Cordes of Roberts, accompanied by his award-winning mustache.
Early in 2013, when he started growing a mustache, John Cordes had no particular plans for the facial extension.
“The first of February, I don’t know why, I just decided to see how long I could grow one,” he said. “And then my wife said, ‘It’s going to be gray.’ So I had even more incentive to grow it.”
For the record, all these months later, it is not gray, but it is a dandy. Dandy enough for Cordes to win first place in the Natural Moustache (the British spelling) division of the World Beard and Moustache Championships in Portland, Ore., last weekend. They got back to their home in Roberts Sunday night.
“There were a lot of prestigious mustaches there,” Cordes said. “I was pretty surprised.”
The road to Portland started in Billings, where Cordes won the second annual Billings Mustache Achievement Award in March, 13 months after he started cultivating his ’stache. Even after that, he said, his wife, Kate, “still was not a proponent” of his wearing a mustache. For one thing, he never trimmed it.
“That’s what drives my wife nuts,” he said. “The worst part is trying to eat in public.”
After thinking for a moment, he corrected himself. The worst part was trying to drink a pint of beer, he said, which is why he now uses a straw, despite what others may say.
Kate started to warm to the mustache in July, when they attended the Red Ants Pants Music Festival in White Sulphur Springs and John took second place in another mustache contest. That got them thinking. They have friends in Portland, where the 2014 beard and mustache contest was to be held, and they wanted to go.
It wasn’t easy. Cordes won a full liquor license in a state lottery a couple of years ago and remodeled his feed store, Roberts Ranch Outfitters, into the Heavy Horse Bar, which he opened 11 months ago. But he left the bar in the hands of his employees and took five days off to go to Portland with Kate.
After that, it was time to shop. According to a press release from the folks at the championship, “the judges were asked which contestant’s facial hair best enhanced his overall appearance, style and personality.”
Contestants were advised to accessorize. Fortunately, Cordes said, Portland is full of secondhand stores, where he was outfitted, at relatively little cost, in a wool coat, a vest, a silk neckerchief and a “Mad Hatter top hat.” When he arrived at the Keller Auditorium for the contest, he was afraid he’d gone too far and would “look like a boob.”
He needn’t have worried.
“Man, I didn’t like look a boob at all,” he said. “That’s what great about Portland. Everybody goes all out there.”
Cordes was fully accessorized when he competed in the World Beard and Moustache Championships in Portland.
Inside the auditorium, with thousands of spectators and 300 contestants, it was not like your standard convention, Cordes said. There was lots of good beer, for one thing, and because it was Portland, “every third guy was stoned.”
There were 12 competitors in the Natural Moustache division. After each was introduced, Cordes said, “you do your little gallivant” in front of the judges, and you try to get the crowd on your side, since their reaction is included in the judges’ decision.
He admits his outfit might have pushed him over the top. For his division, you couldn’t use spray or wax, no accessories could be attached to the mustache, and its ends could extend no more than 1.5 centimeters past the corner of your mouth.
His prize was a gift bag from Remington, filled mostly with products he couldn’t use, but it wasn’t about the prize. It was just “really, really neat” to win, he said, and his wife was “pretty thrilled.”
Cordes had thought of shaving off his mustache after the contest, but now everybody’s been urging him to keep growing it and enter the contest next year. The 2015 championships will be in Austria and he and Kate would love to go, but they’ll have to see.
The good news, he said, is that his bartenders and other employees did a great job while he and Kate were in Portland. In fact, the bar hosted a huge birthday bash in their absence.
“It was the biggest party we ever had and I wasn’t there,” he said.
Editor’s Note: For a good collection of photos from the 2014 championships, go here.
