Early on in my teaching career, I was shocked by a colleague who dismissed Walter Prescott Webb’s theories as simply too “agrarian.” It is true that Webb often illustrated his global observations with tactile descriptions of the development and application of, say, the lasso, barbed wire or the wind turbine. But to focus solely on the props of Webb’s detailed demonstrations is to lose perspective on important social issues of grave concern to him.

A former Texas Ranger, U.T. Professor Webb had a recent and active working memory of the varied tools of survival needed on the prairie, a moody and unreliable environment. In his laudatory introduction to Webb’s visionary The Great Frontier, Arnold J. Toynbee summarized one of Webb’s basic themes: the significance of appropriate and adequate tools employed as essentially forest-dwelling Europeans struggled to make homes in the “great ocean of grass” that was the prairie.

“Ever since the fifteenth century, at latest, the Western people’s winning card has been their technological precocity.” Toynbee, like Webb, saw broader, futuristic, implications of a thoughtful inventory of seemingly pedestrian tools. Indeed, Webb’s The Great Frontier defines a most contemporary, confounding dilemma. Using Webb’s language of the fifties and sixties, he clarified the immense difficulty of the transition from “one man, one tool, one job” into the modern employee’s efforts toward corporate objectives and team responsibilities.

Thankfully, one space in which we prairie dwellers still have autonomy, if we choose to exercise the right, is in our own kitchens and gardens.
 
Dub Motley was a fiend for Ruby Red grapefruit. One of the first tools I learned to use was a grapefruit knife. The duty of grapefruit preparation passed on to me when I was about five. I guess Dad figured that small fingers were perfectly designed for mining those little red wedges of delight. Dub would sit at the kitchen table, laughing at the funnies in the morning paper, while I prepped the grapefruit. It remains my favorite citrus: simultaneously sweet and tart, appealing to the eye, and so refreshingly cool in the mouth.  At about the same age, Dad also taught me how to throw his famous left-handed curve ball, and that grapefruit and watermelon always demand a bit of salt.

The double-sided, serrated grapefruit knife is a remarkable invention. It’s my understanding, however, that a British High Court Judge has decided that it is a dangerous weapon, certainly not one to be employed by children. Sir Anthony May, President of the Queen's Bench Division, ruled in 2010 that the tool is indeed a knife, “not a gadget,” and therefore may not be sold to anyone under 18.

Could it be that similar European/UK legal concerns are the cause of the redesign of another essential kitchen tool, the potato peeler? Recently, my wife was perplexed to find that locating a replacement for my old stainless potato peeler was an unexpectedly difficult quest. (Finally, the thing had disintegrated in my hand, after years of abusive service). What a technological wonder it was. It provided a simple, figure-eight shaped handle, and a stainless channel open down the length of it with a double-sided blade, ending at the tip with a perfect tiny spade for scooping out the eyes of any recalcitrant potato. Becca returned with several Brancusi-looking molded artworks in really cool colors, like ‘egg-plant’ or ‘celery.’ The designers of these “objets d’art” have clearly forgotten Louis Sullivan’s adage that “form follows function.”

The failure to function of the new, unimproved potato peeler is two-fold: the artsy molded body rides too close to the back of the blade, resulting in the potato peel itself jamming up in the narrow opening, and of course there’s no longer an “eye-popper” on the end of the thing.  Becca eventally found a traditional peeler for me at the local thrift store.

As an avid fan of kitchen gadgets, though, I celebrate new technology as much as anyone. I just like things that work. For example, I was recently given a modern utensil that has to be one of the best inventions of the last thirty years or so. Bacon lovers go through mesh splatter-screens with some frequency. My old one had become so warped with age that using it was more symbolic than practical. I was delighted to receive a new splatter-screen whose designer eliminated the cumbersome, long handle of most models. My new one has a small, cleverly pivoting ring-handle welded to the center of the circular screen. Storage is a breeze and there’s no longer a decision to be made as to which direction of the stove-top to point an intrusive handle.

As Walter Prescott Webb understood, revolution in agriculture and society at large occurs with just such invention and application of a new tool.

Tom Motley
Letter from the Prairie
Dec. 9, 2011