The big question for me is, now that Joe is gone how the heck am I going to get a replacement “Swiss” vegetable peeler?

I came across your website accidentally while looking for another David Galbraith.

I used to live in Berkeley, where the streets were full of displaced souls. One man used to stand on a street corner daily spouting a continuous litany of mathematical equations with intermittent interjections of “whooooo…..”. I found out later that he had been a professor and had published books which could be found at the local bookstore.

I believe there is a fine line between genius and insanity and that line is the ability to communicate one thoughts and ideas with others.

“Ades is an old Sephardic name,” she explained. “It’s from the name of the port city Cadiz, in southern Spain. Way back when, the town was called Gades: Take off the silent ‘g,’ and it spells ‘Ades.’ This is where we come from–your peddler guy, too. He may not know it, but what can I say? He may not even be Jewish at this point. My kid sister once met an Ades in England who had been in one of those monk type things.”

http://www.nypress.com/article-11703-searching-for-j-ades.html

Joe worked in the early 1950’s for my father Bert Hale, selling “swag” from a lorry at markets in the North of England. Joe was one of many “grafters” at that time, that enlivened markets either pitching swag or demonstrating household tools. My father having worked on fairs from four-years old, pitched “off a lorry” and later demonstrated on markets or in stores, opened shops and then manufactured for stores and market traders in the UK. Many of these “grafters” had their own line of patter and learnt (or stole) good lines from one another. I remember my father telling me how well Joe spoke as a younger man and how much he could earn, in those days for that time.

These traders were big earners, many had a passion for the “good life”, with a penchant for good clothes, with Brills of Leeds, later popular with TV and sports stars, being a favourite store. Many Americans stars including Floyd Patterson, Billy Eckstine, Billy Daniels, Buddy Greco also shopped here when in the UK.

Many of these traders, mainly of Jewish origin,exceptions being my father (Yorkshire fairground family) and his brother in law George Watson (Jamaican descent), founded retail or wholesale businesses, in time becoming wealthy. Joe was descended from Spanish Jews I recall. My father who retired in the 1980’s, passed away recently aged 89 but he would have been amazed to read of Joe’s New York celebrity status.

As for Joe’s accent, he was raised in Manchester, but later worked in London, Australia and USA, so over 60 years or so it would have changed.

Joe Ades was one of a dying breed, a character popular with onlookers, but never with the “non-spieling” traders; without these characters, our outdoor markets here in the UK appear to have died too. CCTV surveillance and heavy fines (merely for obstruction) means that his type of street trading, away from the markets is gone for ever. RIP Joe.

Billy Mays the TV OxiClean man could take a lesson or two or three from Joe!