A Meditation on Tex

By Rachel Katz

Today I’m missing the man who sat on a milk crate in the middle of Union Square, New York City, selling vegetable peelers.

He was, it’s important to note, always dressed in a tailored suit. 

He’d sit on a milk crate with what I always saw as a very lucky assortment of vegetables. He’d have a cutting board balanced on another crate to catch all the peels. Sitting knee high, he’d go to town. He wasn’t borrowing from vaudeville, nodding to vaudeville, evoking but a shadow -- he was vaudeville itself, a perfect showman. 

He had enthusiasm, wit, commitment -- all in. It was a joy to behold. 

The actual vegetable peeler was basic: a metal hand-held “Y”,  with a blade fastened between the arms of the “Y”. It was not elegant, not telling any lies, just showing up to get the job done. It was a great equalizer. Anyone with places to go and people to see would choose it regardless of their socioeconomic background — if they had their head screwed on right. “Swiss steel - you’ll never have to sharpen it,” all-in, $5.

You were by extension, when using this peeler, a straight shooter, an intelligent, focused person with a simple yet elegant solution, casting cares away like the skin off a knobby potato. If everything could be this way. If I could dress this way, talk this way. Inhabit space this way. Still talking about the vegetable peeler. There was fire, and then the wheel, and then this vegetable peeler.

Ribbons of green cucumber, yellow squash, orange carrots and oranges’ peels, piled in layers, falling over each other like ballerina’s tule. Bestowing unusual magic to the unassuming dinner or midday snack, start your morning breakfast with me and we will fly. “You’ll make designs with your vegetables that will make your children beg you to eat them.”

And isn't life really a gorgeous luxury with the dazzle of colorful flight?

I’m talking about vegetable ribbons and I’m talking about this man that sat on this crate talking at the speed of Yosemite Sam’s pistol. He must have had endless material, effortlessly weaving in kitchen table wisdom to his auctioneer’s gate. I imagine he’d end up touching on all things, politics, the life cycle, gender roles. Women and men alike could not resist this vegetable peeler - the whole family couldn’t resist it. “When you use this peeler, doesn’t matter if you use your right hand, left hand or like a politician — under hand…”

I remember when I first moved to New York City as a teenager, my older friend Sharon introduced me to parties with hand rolled joints in candy dishes on every surface, Bi Bim Bop, and this peeler. It was like, in New York we have things that are brilliant and make sense, so unadorned it was cool and cheap and the most efficient kitchen tool you’d find — plus, it came from a total character. 

He looked like Mark Twain and was just as captivating. “And like the French, if you cook these potatoes cut for french fries, and don’t use transfat, — you wash them down with red wine — you’ll live forever,” he could be heard saying to no one and everyone who walked by.

The vegetable peeler man -- Tex? Was his name Tex? or Hank? Mr. Something? One name like “Madonna,” or a title, like “The Kid”?

The vegetable peeler man worked so quickly he made vegetable peeling look like an activity you were crazy not to try. Had you truly lived before you used a vegetable peeler with this design, finesse, precision — totality? “If anyone thinks this is a special one, they can have this one — this isn’t TV— this is live,” he’d bring you back to the present when you were dazed from his dream.

Finally, here, on this Saturday, strolling through the park, happening upon Tex, you get to catch a fucking break. It was something dangling right in front of you: this new life of ease and fun. You could go to Tex’s world, dancing like Fred Astaire tapping and twirling. Something to aspire to, but really an easy start - no one seeing you in the beginning stages of using this peeler would know where this is headed — if you wanted it — carving flowers out of carrots and cucumbers, reimagining “vegetable garden.” 

What had your life been like before you came upon this peeler? It will be different now. Now that you were taking it home, life will change, all because you met Tex, and he will show you a portal to another universe. He's asking you to crawl through. 

And for a bargain!

And if this -- what else? If this vegetable peeler was just like that, a simple invention that elevates -- what else? What’s next?

What other permutations of this sort of things can you bring to your life?

This type of dance could be other stuff, could perhaps be converted into this type of simplicity?

I look back on Tex, and I wonder if his whole bravado, his “welcome to the greatest show on earth” vegetable peeler dance, kept him happy. Day in and day out with the vegetable peeler. 

Did he do this other places? 

I mean with other things in his life?

Was he holy? Incarnated so many times -- making lemonade from otherwise sour fruit -- was he able to do that everywhere? Of course not. But I’d like to think he could. I’ve held myself to this standard so many times.

I could sure use a friend right now like Tex. Someone to tell me that there are ways of peeling vegetables that will make your heart sing and your eyes dance. Someone to remind me that an attitude will far outlast any act. You can be ecstatic peeling vegetables or whatever. 

P.S. In writing this I found out his name is Joseph Ades.