February 4, 2009--"I Was Here"

Someone I know on occasion expresses concern about how she will be remembered. “What will they write about me in my obituary?” is the way she puts it.

This, of course, comes from her feeling that she hasn’t accomplished enough. If she had there would be no need to think about this, unless what might ultimately be written about is the result of having done something notorious.

What is clearly on her mind, since whatever she may have done that might qualify for notoriety was not of the scale that would make headlines, is a list of more traditional kinds of achievements. Those kinds of things obit writers normally take note of—accomplishments in the world of work or the arts or noteworthy philanthropic or civic activities. In her own mind her list of such things must be shorter than she would like.

But then there is Joe Ades who the New York Times notes, died on Sunday at 75; and though he seemingly achieved little during his life there was quite a lengthy story about him yesterday. (Linked blow.)

If you visited New York City during spring, summer, or fall you may have run into him on a sunny Saturday in the northwest corner of Union square Park where he was set up on a small stool demonstrating and selling $5 vegetable peelers.

A local myth surrounded him. It was obvious from his expensive European suits and his British diction and the fact that he was frequently spotted dining at fancy uptown restaurants that he wasn’t just your everyday pitchman. There must be quite a story to tell behind what he appeared to do for a living. Rumors swirled that he had a wealthy wife and lived up on Park Avenue and that he came to the park on nice days to keep himself occupied, albeit in an unusual way.

The truth appears to be less exotic. According to his daughter, he had four wives; and it wasn’t that he sold carrot peelers as a sort of rich man’s unorthodox hobby but rather he hawked a variety of things this way during all of his life and during all of his marriages. Originally, when arriving in New York, he sold children’s books, which when they became too heavy to carry around, he abandoned and switched to more portable items, culminating in his legendary peelers.

Earlier in life, off the back of a big truck, after he moved from Manchester, England to Australia, with his daughter’s help he sold linens, textiles, jewelry, clock radios, cassette players, electrical goods, and kitchen items. So it wasn’t that much of a leap to vegetable peelers once he followed her to New York.

He discovered them at a state fair where someone was pitching them and he realized, in the words of his daughter, that they would be “a fantastic item for the street.” And clearly he loved the street and the stage it offered because as he demonstrated the peelers while squatting in a flurry of breeze-borne carrot peels, intoning their virtues in a splendid voice that carried halfway across the park, I can testify from stopping to catch his “act” many times that he put on quite a show.

Enough to get him into the New York Times.

Again from his daughter with whom he lived and where he stashed his peelers and carrots in what had been the maid’s room (yes, he did live on the Upper Eastside), after finishing for the day, and resisting telling even her how many peelers he had sold or how many carrots and potatoes he had peeled, she sometimes went to look for him.

Most times he had already left but she could tell he had been there in his accustomed corner of the park. She reports that though “He cleaned up really well, still there were these little shreds of carrots left on the ground that said, ‘I was here.’”