Sunday wasn’t ideal for sweeping leaves, but George Ash made it work nonetheless.
He rarely takes a day off.
He had recently lifted a truck tire the size of a dinner table that was blocking the path to a nearby dumpster. He awkwardly balanced it on the dumpster’s edge, then pushed it inside, straining both shoulders in the process.
Not a wise thing to do at age 81, but how else, Ash wondered at the time, would the sanitation department’s truck get close enough to empty the dumpster?
Plus, it rained Sunday. All morning. And that meant the leaves would stick to the pavement. How in the world could Ash perform his daily good deed – sweeping and picking up litter in a pocket of downtown – in such conditions?
“I can still do this,” Ash said. “My shoulders feel better, and the leaves are still pretty good to sweep.”
Ash swept. The swishing of his broom against the asphalt, in front of his home at the Firehouse Block Apartments, has mirrored the characteristics of coffee: always there, always a boost.
His neighbors know what he’s doing outside, sometimes as early as 4 a.m. They know he’s sweeping everything in his path, on Warren Street in front of his building and a few surrounding streets.
They know he’ll pick up trash as well, and they know he’ll take what he collects to the set of seven dumpsters, just down the street from his building.
“Something to do to avoid the emergency room,” Ash joked.
Then he got serious. “If I can’t take time to help out a fellow human being, to have this place be a little better place to live for somebody else, then something is wrong.”
He’s a smash hit at the Firehouse Block, a senior low-income housing apartment subsidized by the federal government’s HUD division.
We had met two days earlier, a splendid blue-sky, no-cloud New England afternoon. The smoking club was out in full force on the driveway leading into the apartments. Before Ash came out, the residents had wheeled themselves to the driveway facing Warren Street, leaning on their walkers and, like a Transformer car, changing it into a wheelchair.
They said they had begun seeing his outline, illuminated by streetlamps, through their windows four years ago, after Ash had moved from Harris Hill Center senior home to the Firehouse Block.
They’d hear his broom, and all was well in this tiny orbit.
“Some people have a medical issue or simply don’t want to do anything, but he needs a sense of purpose,” said Shane Fletcher, who lives in the building. “He’s one of those guys who wants to make a difference.”
Lisa Wheeler was wrapped in a blanket. She went to her high school prom with Ash’s son. She knows the father well.
“A sweetheart,” Wheeler said. “Does not put nobody down.”
They liked talking about Ash. Of course they did. He was an energizing, dependable start to the morning, Ash and coffee. That’s what he does now for a living. A living of his soul.
He’s a Concord native. He started working by age 10. His father was hurt in a fall, so Ash dropped out of high school – earning his GED later – and worked as a lumberjack and on a poultry farm on Airport Road.
He played guitar in small gigs, some Chet Atkins stuff, and said his wife-to-be, Donna, followed the band around. Asked if she was attracted to the music or the handsome guitarist, Ash said, “both.”
He retired from the oil-burner business. Donna died 14 years ago, after 45 years of marriage. He said that he’s not interested in dating again, that he’s married to his volunteer effort.
“Everyone tries to fix me up with women and I tell them this is all I want to do,” Ash said. “I would rather leave this world doing this, because I hope I’m doing some good.”
He does it year-round, slogging through snow. He begins on Warren Street with the sun down and few people up. He sweeps leaves this time of year, picks up trash all year and focuses on the seven dumpsters near his home.
“Everyone from the city goes there,” Ash said, “and a lot of times they throw things on the ground.”
Runners, walkers and bikers routinely stop to chat with Ash, or toss out a few words as they pass by. He covers Warren, Capital, School and North State Streets, and some nooks and crannies in between. Trash beware.
Ash is committed. Sometimes too much. He insisted on lifting that huge tire blocking the dumpster. Two others, younger than Ash, advised against it.
Asked if he thought he was Hercules, Ash said, “Well, I did it.”
He also hurt himself lifting an air conditioner. He does Tai Chi to keep strong and flexible.
Ash has been at this a long time. A few residents had seen him. They contacted the Monitor and said he’d make a great story.
Sherry Gamble has seen Ash while dropping off her kids at school. She has a great view from her home. She wrote us a letter.
“I did not see him this winter, but this morning as I drank my coffee I looked out and there he was,” Gamble wrote. “Right now, at 7:40 (a.m.), he is out in front of the Y, collecting the curbside trash.”
He never made it that far on Sunday. The rain was simply coming down too hard. And his shoulders weren’t perfect.
But he swept the immediate area in front of his home, walking from the building’s entrance with his tools of the trade: A plastic trash can sitting atop his walker, broom handles sticking out.
He wore a standard yellow raincoat with a standard yellow hood. A baseball cap peeked from underneath, dripping water. His glasses dripped, too.
“Everybody loved it, so I kept going,” Ash said. “People try to give me money, but I don’t take it. I don’t want money for it. I want to do it because I want to do it.”