Jack noticed that cashews bore a striking resemblance to little faces. : Meet the Singing Cashews

You’ve never heard of Jack Peslin? That’s odd.

Peslin wrote the words and music to “My Heart Took a Walk” back in 1939. You know, My heart took a walk and it met your heart strolling by the wayside . . . .

It was the big winner in a contest for unknown songwriters, which seemed a wise and enduring choice by the judges. Forty-eight years later, Jack Peslin is still an unknown songwriter.

“My Heart Took a Walk” was, in fact, his only published tune, although “There’s Rhythm in Soup” came close. Its tempo is the hottest yet, don’t worry none ‘bout et-i-quette . . . . Jack sang “Soup” for me in the living room of his North Hollywood apartment the other day, bouncing and snapping his fingers on a couch near a sculpture composed of Styrofoam packing units held together with duct tape.

I didn’t mention the Styrofoam art?

Well, that’s another thing. Jack creates art out of junk.

He began doing this 15 years ago when he worked for Litton Industries, picking stuff out of trash cans and storing them under his bed. Bits of plastic, spools, cans, boxes, Styrofoam and whatever else he could find.

“Rosie hasn’t been able to vacuum under the bed for years!” Jack said with a chuckle.

Rosie, who is his wife, nodded somberly.

Jack is a man of 79, balding and with a slight mustache. He wears horn-rimmed glasses and is hard of hearing, so that my questions, often repeated, assumed an echoing effect.

“What do you call the Styrofoam art Styrofoam art?”

“I call it Styrafun. “

“Hey, that’s clever clever.”

Our conversation at times threatened to break down completely because I also am slightly hearing-impaired, due to things blowing up in my ears in the Korean War.

I never, however, ask that a statement or question be repeated. I simply assume that what I didn’t hear was probably not worth hearing, and let it go at that.

At the moment, Jack’s “Styrafun” is simply, well, there. Jack isn’t sure whether he is going to paint the individual packing units or just leave them white and unmounted in a kind of neo-primitive form.

“All depends,” he said mysteriously. Artists are a strange lot.

He then showed me a half-dozen pieces of his other works, including a painted fish inside a plastic packing unit that was shaped vaguely like a fish in the first place.

He also painted black and white eyes in 12 tiny recessed circles in a container that once held bottles of something. Sad eyes, happy eyes and eyes that just stare blankly out from their little holes.

“What do you think?” Jack asked.

“I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anything like that before that before,” I said. “Now show me the peanut people peanut people.”

“You mean,” Jack said, “the Cashew People!”

“Of course course.”

If you have never heard of “My Heart Took a Walk,” it is likely that you have also never heard of the Cashew People, for which Jack is similarly famous.

It began because Jack loves nuts. Especially cashews. One day about three years ago, just as he was about to pop one in his mouth, Jack noticed that cashews bore a striking resemblance to little faces.

I never noticed that myself, but then I don’t look too closely at what I eat for fear of seeing something I don’t like.

Jack got himself some dressmaker’s pins with little black heads and used them for eyes.

“You see,” he explained, holding one up to the light, “cashews have natural beaks that look like noses, so that if you put the pins on either side, it creates a face. Then I spray the whole thing with a shellac-type glaze. What do you think?”

“I think they look like shiny fetuses,” I said.

Jack didn’t hear me, but Rosie said, “No they don’t.”

“I have 45 sets of them,” Jack said proudly.

Each set consists of about a dozen shiny cashews with pinhead eyes and paper-clip legs. Because of the way the clips are bent, they look like grasshopper legs. I’ve never seen a grasshopper fetus, but I bet they resemble cashews and paper clips.

“They’re all pretty much the same,” Jack said, “except for one group. I removed the beaks and opened their mouths and made a cashew choir out of them. I gave it to a friend.”

“Show him your games,” Rosie said.

If you do not know Jack by his songs or by his Styrofoam art or by his Cashew People, it is similarly unlikely that you know of him through Jig-a-Do or Squaroo. These are games he has created, but has not yet, alas, managed to sell. He’s still working on the marketing aspects.

I say good for Jack.

At an age when most men are out wandering around with their flies unzippered trying to figure out where they live, Jack is busy painting black and white eyes in plastic packing units. I like that.

Here’s to you to you, Jack. May you and Rosie live long and create a million cashew grasshopper fetuses. I may even try it myself someday myself someday. Soon.