Juicer

My friend Randy Tom Jones died of a heart attack a few years ago. He was an interesting character. He was an artist who was fascinated with toys and trinkets and liked to build mobiles. When I first met him I thought his work was a lot like Alexander Calder but he didn’t like that classification. His work was more a mix of Calder and Duchamp: mobiles and toys made from found objects.

One of the last toys he was working on was a large contraption where a child would put a marble in a hole at the top and the marble would take a path down through chutes and ladders, spinning around until it just popped out at the bottom so they could do it all over again and get another, different adventure. It didn’t DO anything other than that. It didn’t need to.

Randy didn’t call himself an artist. He called himself a librarian. That was due to the fact that he collected objects to use in his art. He had walls and walls of drawers like old card catalogs* filled with stuff. All meticulously cleaned and organized. One drawer might be filled with pewter scoops. Another filled with lenses from magnifying glasses. Whenever I visited his workshop I would just open a random drawer and ask him what he was planning to use that object for. The answer was usually “I don’t know yet.”

At his wake everyone received a paper bag filled with stuff from his workshop. Mine had a scoop, a lemon juicer, a red heart and some other objects that I lost or that are in my very disorganized junk drawer. But that juicer I use all the time.

It’s a tin juicer. The kind that fits perfectly over my Pyrex 1 cup measure. I slice the lemon in half and then press and turn the juice out. All the seeds collect nicely in the holes around the edge. It’s such a simple, effective design.

Over the years, the juicer’s handle has started to bend. I don’t know when it really started. I must have pushed too hard one day. Then when I noticed that it was slightly bent, I bent it back to make it straight.

That never works. That just makes the joint weaker. So much so that now almost every time I use it, I have to be tender and make sure I don’t bend the handle. But it still bends.

One day, probably soon, it will break. It’s already showing that change in color that happens when metal is bent back and forth too many times.

I already know that I’ll miss it when it’s gone. I might even keep it around after it’s broken and try to use it until I get frustrated and pitch it into the garbage.

Maybe after the juicer goes I’ll use the little pewter scoop to scoop out yeast or salt for my bread recipes. I should start doing that now. I wonder where I put that thing? If only I had drawers to hold all of my wonders.

Qq

*A card catalog was a large wooden chest with dozens of drawers making up the face of the chest. Each drawer was filled with cards, the cards having the name of a book or of an author, and the location of the book in the Library stacks.