Apple Peeler

Some things don't need to be changed. 

The writer PJ O'Rourke once said, “There are three things that don't need improvement. Beer, sex, and radios you tune with a knob.” 

Solid point, but I think there are others as well. 

For instance, the White Mountain Apple Peeler and Corer. 

This year we had another variety of apple tree come online in our orchard, which has led to more apples than we need for a few pies and 5 gallons of hard cider. It's only going to get worse from here on out because I'm a sucker for nursery catalogs and I can't resist trying different varieties. We have six kinds of apple trees and four kinds of pear trees, and even though they're small now, they get bigger every year. And that's just in the primary orchard. The auxiliary orchard at the north end of the slough has five heirloom varieties, and another three ordered for next spring. 

This led me to buying a dehydrator, and that led me to my mom's White Mountain Apple Peeler and Corer. I have no idea how old it is – I know she had it my whole life, and I'm a pretty old guy. The company started making them in 1883 and didn't really change the design until they quit in the 60s. 

Because it works.  

Seriously, it may be the best designed machine I've ever seen. It's been sitting in a drawer in our kitchen for a decade or so, but I dug it out, scrubbed off the rust, and it worked like a charm. The advertising from the 1890s said, “An ordinary girl can do six bushels of apples an hour.”  

I guess I'm about one sixth as hard working as an “ordinary girl,” because I did about a bushel, and I was ready to quit. But it wasn't the fault of the machine. 

You might say, how hard can it be to design an apple peeler? I'm glad you asked. I did a little research and there were over 300 patents filed for apple peelers from 1850 to 1950. With that amount of competition, the fact that our apple peeler to stayed in production for 80 years is a ringing endorsement. I suppose the patent has expired, because if you look for a new apple peeler they look pretty much like mine, although it appears most of them are now made in China. 

There's a lesson here. Some things in this world don't need to be improved. They're fine just the way they are. It's a hard lesson to learn – America has always been about the next new thing, and that tendency only seems to be speeding up. Even when we do hang onto something old, it usually isn't for the right reasons. I've been complimented on my stylish vintage briefcase, but the truth is, my wife bought it for me new a couple decades ago and it's still perfectly functional, so I still use it. No fashion statement of any kind. 

Storage units all over the country are filled with coats that would still keep us warm, games we could still play, and books still perfectly readable. We discard heroes and villains with the snap of a finger. Ethics and belief systems that have been perfectly functional for a couple of thousand years are discarded for being old fashioned. 

It's wonderful when something better comes along, when there's a new way of doing things, a new way of looking at the world. But some things don't need to be changed 

Now I have to go peel some apples. 

Copyright 2024 Brent Olson