“What’s the 58 for?”

“You don’t know? It’s all over the internet. It’s supposed to repel flies. Two weeks ago I had flies all over the place before I hung that up. Now I just have a couple of flies. I heard about it at the café across the street. When the new owners moved in, they found a ’58’ and asked around to find out what it was for. It’s an ancient oriental trick.”

When I went into the little corner market and deli a few days ago, I had seen the 58 hanging on the wall, wondered, but said nothing. Yesterday, the place was empty of customers, so I asked my friend, Enza who owns the store with her husband. She gave me the explanation, and wondered why ’58’ didn’t work for the two remaining flies.

(It may be “all over the internet”, but this is the only post I could find about it.”