For a brief moment, the Concord man known simply as Ash turned into a kid. A really excited kid.
The driver’s license he handed me could have been a baseball card. The information on it could have been the statistics for Red Sox star Mookie Betts.
The front said the license had been renewed. “Now look at the back,” Clarence Ashlin said. “Look at what it says there.”
Betts’s 2018 numbers weren’t there, but the information revealed that Ash has the eyesight of a batting champ. He doesn’t need glasses to drive, saying his vision is 20/20. He can drive at night. He can drive on the highway. He can drive here, there, everywhere, “with no restrictions,” Ash told me.
And he’ll be 97 on Jan. 14.
“I use common sense,” Ash said. “I don’t drive at night unless it’s dry. The rain on the windshield and the lights cause it to be dazzling. It confuses what you’re looking at.”
Okay, we’ll cut him some slack there, but Ash is fine, proud and happy. Who wouldn’t be? Healthy enough to live on your own, independently, and drive at 97? I’ll take healthy enough to breathe at 97, wouldn’t you?
“I live above him and he does a lot of the driving when we go to the store,” said Jan Davis, Ash’s 79-year-old friend and neighbor. “I could drive, but he’s a very good driver.”
Ash and Davis have known each other for three years, since she moved into the apartment complex behind Salisbury Green, up on the Heights. They made sure I knew their relationship was merely platonic. Either would certainly be a great catch.
Davis is old-school Concord, a former employee at Howard Johnson’s and the Econo Lodge, before retiring so she could devote more time to salmon fishing on Moosehead Lake.
But I can only go so far into her past, because Davis is the one who tipped us off about Ash and the long road he’s traveled when it comes to driving. She told me more than once to leave her out of my column.
Ash should be the focus.
And there is, indeed, a lot to this man. He served as a warrant officer on the hospital ship USS Hope during World War II. He met his wife, a nurse and Concord native named Evangeline, on that ship, and together they pulled casualties off the beaches of islands like Okinawa. They saw death up close, but found each other at the same time. Ash retired as a full colonel.
Evangeline, a Concord native, died in 1990, after 46 years of marriage.
Ash and Davis have evolved into goodwill ambassadors at the building. Davis takes friends to hair salon appointments. Ash makes sure widows of veterans receive the full benefits they deserve.
His daughter, Leslie West of Chester, joked that her father has lots of lady friends in his apartment complex.
“My husband says that he has a girlfriend in every apartment,” West said by phone. “He’s always telling me that I’d better call him first before going over so he would know I was on my way.”
That’s a good idea anyway, because Ash might not be home. He loves driving.
“I drive to my daughter’s in Chester on weekends,” Ash said. “I take (interstate) 93 to 101, Route 3 then Hooksett. I love to drive in the country. I go up to the mountains. I’ve taken my sister to the White Mountains, to that hotel in Brentwood with my sister. I drove back through North Conway.
“And I go to the grocery store nearly every day. I like being out, just to be moving around.”
He rarely slows down, although he’s had pneumonia in each of the past four winters and once spent five days in the hospital. Davis brought him his toothbrush and cell phone.
He’s got a laptop and printer in his bedroom, where you’ll find photos of his beloved Evangeline and his medals from the war. He talks to family via something called Google Duo, a video chat mobile app that’s more reliable than Skyping.
His family, in fact, is coming over for Christmas. His daughter will bring the ham, his niece the dessert. Ash is responsible for the veggies and already has squash frozen and ready to go.
He sat on his couch this week, dressed in a blue shirt and dark slacks, with Davis, in a festive red sweater, by his side. He still needed a few things for the Christmas dinner.
We cut through the icy wind and climbed into his Buick Encore SUV. I asked him if he might give up his license soon.
“No way, Jose,” Ash said.
How’s your driving record?
“Clean.”
Ash took a left out of his apartment complex onto Loudon Road – one of the toughest left turns to make east of the Mississippi. He drove to nearby Shaw’s. He used the cane Davis had given him, the one that once belonged to her father, to walk through the parking lot.
Davis grabbed the shopping cart and Ash bought two bags of carrots, a bag of grapes, a few bananas and a small package of cream cheese.
Celery was needed as well, but Davis didn’t like the way it looked.
“Not green enough,” she said.
“That’s okay,” Ash said. “I can go someplace else later on.”