A Life Wasted

Family

In 1967 my mom and Karl separated. Mom had given birth to my two half brothers and our family seemed perfect and normal. To me their separation seemed to happen without notice or reason. All I know is that one day everything seemed perfect in our family and the next day dad didn't live with us any more.

I know that they divorced in 1968, but it seems there was a year or more between their separation and the actual divorce. During this period mom had two boyfriends. Not at the same time, though. The first was a big rough man named Salvador Despisto. l called him Sal. He was the first person I was ever around who I could call a tough guy. The best example of this was one night when he came to our house drunk. He and mom got into a fight. I heard the noise so I ran into mom's bedroom to help. I will never forget the scene. Sal was sitting on the corner of mom's bed with her standing over him. She had her gun pressed against his temple. He said something to the affect of, "You shouldn't point a gun at someone unless your going to shoot." Mom said she agreed and pulled the trigger.

I will never forget the look on Sal's face when the hammer then clicked against the firing pen. He jumped up screaming, but mom didn't hesitate, she picked up the heavy rotary dial phone from her night stand and hit that big guy on the side of the head with the phone's base. Sal crumpled to the floor unconscious.

Mom calmly sat the phone down and began looking for a number in the phone book. This was long before 911 service so you actually had to call the emergency service. I thought SaI was dead, so I figured she was calling an ambulance, but instead she called the police. I must have said something about this because she told me that Sal couldn't be hurt by a blow to the head. On cue he began to wake up. Mom told me everything was okay and to go back to bed.

I heard lots of arguing and then saw the police car pull up through my bedroom window. The police knocked, mom let them in, and then there was a huge fight in the living room. I never knew what happened out there but it sounded pretty rough. Shortly after that I watched the two police officers walk Sal towards their car with his hands cuffed behind his back. As they reached the car Sal headbutted one of the cops and kicked the other. For several minutes it looked like he was going to beat the two south Georgia Police Officers to death. fully drunk with his hands cuffed behind his back. Sal was a real deal tough guy.

Mom and Sal must have made up, because he was present for Thanksgiving dinner a few weeks later. It was Sal, mom, us three kids, and Mickey and Jack (grandma and grandpa). Before I tell this story you need to know a few things about Jack Ashe. If you met Jack today you would likely consider him effeminate. Meaning, his mannerisms were more feminine than masculine. Jack spent a great deal of time in the kitchen. He liked to cook, wash dishes and clean the kitchen. He also liked to clean and straighten the rest of the house. At least I assume he liked to do these things because he was always doing them. Jack also had a fetish for keeping clean. He would wash his hands constantly and was always telling us kids to wash our hands.

All I knew about Jack's background was that he grew up poor in the mountains of rural western North Carolina, that he managed to go to college and became an English teacher, and that for all my life (until he retired) he worked at the Savannah River Plant, outside of Aiken, South Carolina. Everyone on Whiskey Road in Aiken worked at the Savannah River plant.

So in preparation for Thanksgiving Dinner Jack was in the kitchen with mom and Mickey preparing food while Sal was in the living room watching football on TV. For me this was one of those moments frozen in time. I was sitting at the table doing some menial task while the adults worked on dinner. Jack was slicing vegetables with a small kitchen knife when Sal entered the kitchen and used a curse word. I was so used to Sal's nasty mouth that I didn't notice, but Jack did. Jack moved so fast that I didn't see him move. Neither did Sal. In a flash Jack had Sal pinned against the wall with the vegetable knife laid across his neck. In a soft and controlled voice Jack said, "Don't ever cuss in front of my family again." As soon as he said this, Jack slid the blade across Sal's throat leaving a shallow cut and a thin red line. Jack then turned his back on a very shocked tough guy, washed the knife thoroughly then returned to the vegetables as if Sal didn't exist. Jack wasn't upset or nervous. His voice hadn't shown any sign of stress and his hands didn't shake. SaI left the room and was unnaturally silent during dinner. I never heard him cuss again, but he didn't stay around that long after Thanksgiving.

A few years later while visiting Mickey and Jack I happened to notice that when Jack came home from work he wore a gun on his belt. When I asked him about it he hid the gun and changed the subject. I asked Mickey when he wasn't around and she said I was mistaken, that Jack doesn't like guns. That night when they were sitting on the back porch I searched their bedroom and found his well hidden gun. Typical of the supper careful Jack Ashe, the gun wasn't loaded with the bullets stored in a different area of the room. Later I asked mom about the gun and she explained that Jack was a security guard at the bomb plant.

I didn't think too much about this until years later, as an adult I read an article about Israel's acquisition of the fissionable material for their nuclear bomb. The article said that the Israelis stole uranium 235 in 1967 from the Savannah River Plant in Aiken, South Carolina. It went on to say that through most of the cold war the Savannah River Plant was the only final assembly plant for nuclear weapons in the United States. The article pointed out that it would be impossible for the Israelis to have stolen the U-235 without the U.S. Government's help because the Savannah River Plant had the most elite private security force in the country. Jack cut Sal's throat the same year Israel acquired U-235 from the Savannah River Plant,. At that time Jack was a security supervisor for the high security plant. He retired as its head of security. Jack Ashe may have appeared boring, but he was actually an interesting guy. It is odd that both of my grandfather's were interesting men who had unusual lives, yet neither were a blood relative.



*Thanks for reading! Hope you're enjoying the insight into the man behind Deadly Hack, Hope: The Astral Warrior and Starry Night.