In the evenings you would meet him eating with his fourth wife in the most luxurious restaurants of the city, always enjoying his favorite French champagne.
And then he would gather at his house, in a spacious four-story apartment on his expensive Park Avenue Manhattan.
And when God dawned the day, he took his box and his tools and set off for work. Few could now understand that his shirts were sewn by hand.
The reason for the legend of New York, the "Peeler" or by the way Joe Ades, a typical street figure that he frequented since the early 1990s in the bar of Pierre, the most posing hotel in Manhattan.
Even for the uplifted world of plutocracy, the elegant gentleman stood out with his well-tailored British suits and expensive ties. He was such a frequent visitor to Café Pierre that a newspaper thought he was its owner.
However, everyone seemed to enjoy his company and his novel stories. Think he was saying he was a street vendor! Because who would have thought that the man who wasted hundreds of dollars a day was very expensive Champagne did he do the job he was saying?
When asked what he was doing, Joe replied, "I sell potato peelers." And everyone burst out laughing. Croesus was very patriotic, they monologued. "Seriously now, what are you doing?", The more persistent ones would return. And then he invited them to his shop, in a busy corner of the city for a number of years, to see with their own eyes…
Outside of his fashionable hangout, Joe looked completely different. With a potato peeler in hand, he peeled vegetables with the skill of a surgeon. Plastic containers with carrots, zucchini and potatoes had no luxury.
And his show was so unbeatable that crowds gathered to see the wonders he did with the peeler in hand. Three or four minutes later, never later, he announced the privileged one price of his marafeti, always with his characteristic British accent.
And then he did not save to collect banknotes. Everyone wanted his "machine", as he consistently predicted it. Always wearing his well-tailored British suits, which of course now did not look expensive, full as they were with carrot and zucchini peels.
Joe was a retailer. And he went out every day of the year, unless it was snowing, to different parts of the city, selling his peeler for $ 5 a piece.
He was a good peeler, "I never heard complaints, never, never," he told the New York Times in 2006, now 72. Three years before he retired. Three years before he died.
Made in Switzerland and made of stainless steel, its peeler has become available in most New York homes. And Joe was the only one who had him. "The company in Switzerland "which makes him available only to those who have the ability to present him correctly", he said on his bench. "And to order it in large quantities", he did not fail to note.
You never knew where you would meet him. "I want to be surprised," he told the Times. "Boredom comes when people are waiting for you." There was of course another reason, clearly more petty. Joe had no license and was often chased by police.
The same cops who all had their peeler at home…
Born in Manchester, England in 1934 to a widow of Jewish descent with seven orphans, he went out to fight at the age of 15, dropping out of school. A child for foreign affairs he worked in a company and one day, going to send a letter, he saw what would become the job of his life.
In some ruins of the city, another fresh souvenir from him World War II, saw retailers chanting their wares at this makeshift flea market. And he saw the people buying and the wanderers pocketing good money.
The next day it was set up in the popular market selling second and third hand comics. There he learned his art, how you recite your treatise to get results. But there he learned something else: "never underestimate a small amount".
When the Times asked him how he could make so much money selling something so cheap, Joe had the answer: "Selling a lot, that's all." In fact, he always talked about his real teacher, a wanderer in his Trafalgar Square London who sold tourists bags of spores to feed the pigeons. "He had apartment buildings on his property!"
But it was also the fact that as a human being he was irresistible. His third wife, with whom he had been married for several years, was an Australian with a doctorate in philosophy. He learned to love reading with her. And to adore Dickens. And always be a gentleman, in the full sense of the word.
But he was also a great salesman eh! The "poem" usually began as follows: "When you peel a potato, it does not matter if you are right-handed, left-handed or, as a politician, a swindler with your hands"…
He did not have to tell you himself. As protested by the patrons and owners of the best restaurants in town, Joe showed up every night to one of the 5-10 most expensive hangouts in town and never had a problem finding a table. He was the best customer. As it was at Café Pierre.
Where he met his fourth wife, Estelle. In which he immediately made a demonstration of his art, on their very first date, to convince her that he was no longer a croissant who frequented the hotel, but the "Peeler", as he was now known in New York.
They married in October 2000 and moved into a very expensive apartment. A room that always housed the boxes that came en masse from Switzerland with the peelers.
At one point they opened their home at the Vanity Fair for the reporter to see his closets with the expensive $ 1.000 Chester Barrie suits coming from London, as well as Turnbull & Asser shirts and ties, also imported from British capital. Joe was not wearing anything.
Things were going very well, you see. In New York, as Joe wandered around a lot in his life. He married his first wife early, in 1956, with whom he had 3 children and they were forced to move to Australia to survive.
There he divorced and remarried. And he had a third marriage there, with the philosophy teacher, who made him read the four-volume "London Labor and the London Poor" by Dickens, a contemporary of Dickens, where he lists the British Victorian peddlers. It was the book that would open his eyes.
The "gentleman wanderer" was born! After he divorced and spent some time in Ireland, after 25 years living in Australia, took his daughter and moved to the New World in 1993.
Before leaving the world in February 2009, one day after learning that he had finally been granted the coveted American citizenship, he managed to testify to the culmination of his life: "Never underestimate a small amount that you collect by hand for 60 years"!
His daughter has since sold his peelers in the magical way of her dad…