Most folks who’ve seen Woody Allen’s latest movie have raved about the cleverness of the time travel and the scintillating conversations between the protagonist, an aspiring 21st century novelist, and literary luminaries like Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein.
“It truly WAS a Golden Age,” sighed a friend enraptured by Midnight in Paris, and rambled on about the romance of returning to a better, more stimulating time.
“You are so right!” I told her. “Some things from the past cannot be improved upon.”
She nodded while I went on.
“Take my food processor, for example.”
She seemed shocked that we would so quickly detour from the Eiffel Tower and Paris in the rain, to chopped carrots. But I know Woody Allen would be cheered to know that his theme – the pleasures and perils of romanticizing the past – was so universal that it was also being worked out in my kitchen.
“Whew!” he would probably say, after hearing my story. “Why did I even bother to film this abroad?”
Mon histoire began innocently enough when I dropped the lid of my 25-year-old machine (French-made, by the way), which Sunbeam had dubbed The Big Oskar, and broke off the pivotal little lip that tells the motor to GO. Little did I know that my slip of a finger could usher in the end of an era.
Casually, I cast away Big Oskar and his parts, confident that I could find another. Au contraire. It seems they are now made and sold only in Australia. And what looked like a clone in my (very low) price range – a Black and Decker – well, let’s just say I prefer my drill.
With Woody at my side, I could have hopped into a cab and returned to the Golden Age of processors, where I could have popped into a Gold Circle (remember those?) and picked up the familiar box that read: “Perfect for people who think other processors are too hard to clean, too complicated, take up too much space and are too expensive.”
I sighed, remembering the first time I read them and thought, “Yes! At last!” Reclaiming the Big Oskar became such a quest you’d have thought I was charged with finding the last cache of Walnettos for the Vermont Country Store.
Driven by nostalgia and without the assistance of a magical cab, I persevered for months, in search of a Big Oskar.
I test-drove a Little Oskar, more plentiful on eBay, but found it too little.
I discovered a NIB (new in box!) Big Oskar, on eBay, offered by a seller who reportedly found it under the rafters, but the motor was dead, so returned it.
I found another Big Oskar, also NIB, on eBay, with a perfectly working motor, but sans manual or shredding bowl lid (my mistake – missed the disclaimer).
I desperately e-mailed Seller #1 (broken motor), begging him never to sell the shredding bowl lid to another but ship it back to me, which he did, along with various unneeded pieces and – tadah! – the manual.
Let me announce that nostalgia finally came through, and I probably own the newest working Big Oskar in the country.
As Georges-Louis Leclerc once said, “Patience is genius.” He was, of course, French.
Copyright 2011 Pat Snyder
