The One Lunger and other stories -- volume 1

by David Dawson, reviewed by Jeff Green

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Dave Dawson has done a lot of things in his 73 years. He has tried his hand at all kinds of farm and mechanical work, and he worked for the North Frontenac Telephone Company until his retirement several years ago.

He has also had a lifelong affinity for the arts, from his early days in Quebec to his time in North Frontenac over the past 30 or so years. He has completed many paintings, which have been sold throughout North America, has recorded several CDs, both of his own compositions and the music of Jimmie Rodgers, and has self-published three books of poetry in the style of Robert Service.

Over the years he also tried his hand at prose writing, and has now published his first book of short stories.

Most of the stories are based on Dave’s own experiences, starting with his recollections about fixing a “one lunger”, an engine used for sawing in the days before chainsaws and modern stationary and portable sawmills, and progressing to his memories of being a collector of gramophones and working model trains, to his days with RCA Victor working on military conflicts and beyond.

The “One Lunger and other stories” does not read like a memoir, however. Each story reads as a piece of fiction would, although most of them are based on events from Dawson ’s life experience. The narration varies in tone from tale to tale. They are written from the point of view of someone who lived the stories and his recalling them in their later years, but it is not necessarily the same narrator in each story.

What emerges is a picture of the kind of world people lived in the mid and latter part of the 20^th century. We think of stories about Ontario’s and Canada’s past as being about Canada before the 2^nd World War, but this book belongs to a category of historical writing about the years after the WW2, until the late 1980’s. It is a world of social and economic change, but one that was not yet run by computers. Machinery was still based on moving parts, not computer chips, and people like Dave Dawson’s narrator, who knew how to make things work, were in more demand than they are these days.

The One Lunger and other Stories is a harbinger to that relatively recent past that is being pushed further to the back of our consciousness as micro-chip based technology completes its inevitable takeover of all things mechanical.

The book also contains tales of the supernatural, folk tales, and other kinds of yarns.

It is available at Stedman’s in Sharbot Lake , the Tay Valley Bookstore in Perth , and Tay Art Gallery in Perth .