Memoirist’s Zesty Joie de Vivre Remains Undiminished at 98

LIFE IS SO GOOD

by George Dawson and Richard Glaubman

Random House

$23, 262 pages

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Four years ago, a 98-year-old Dallas resident enrolled in a literacy program to realize his long-deferred dream of learning to read. His example has since inspired people of all ages. Born in 1898 in east Texas, the grandson of a slave, George Dawson is now 102 years old. But the length of time he has lived is not the only impressive thing about him.

Sensing there might be much of interest in the first 98 years of this man’s life, Richard Glaubman, a schoolteacher from Washington state, went to Dallas to spend time with Dawson and get him to tell his life story. The result: the engaging memoir “Life Is So Good.”

The book opens with a scene that seems to belie its title. Eleven-year-old George and his father have come to town to sell sugar-cane syrup they’ve made on their farm. George is choosing a candy at the store and his father, proud of what they’ve accomplished, is telling him life is so good, when, outside, a commotion in the street heralds mob violence. A black teenager whom George had come to know and respect is being lynched. Six months after his hanging, the white girl he was falsely accused of having “messed with” gave birth to her white boyfriend’s baby.

Yet, despite the injustice and hardship Dawson has known, he has seldom wavered in his conviction that “life is so good.” And to read his vivid account of his experiences is to come to appreciate how hard-won is his optimistic, yet down-to-earth outlook.

The oldest of five children, Dawson had hoped to attend school, but his help was needed on the family farm. Fortunately, Dawson took pride in hard work. He went on to build levees on the Mississippi, drive spikes into rails and work in a sawmill and a dairy. After retirement, he worked as a gardener. He still enjoys fishing and, in his younger days, broke horses just for the fun of it.

In his youth, Dawson did some traveling before settling down to marry and raise a family. Boarding trains to places he knew almost nothing about, he found work wherever he could, paying his fare whenever he could afford to, riding in boxcars when he couldn’t. His account of his travels is fascinating, both as sheer adventure and as a record of a black man’s encounters with the varying racial attitudes in the South, the North, Mexico, Canada and Los Angeles.

Although Dawson himself does not indulge in analyzing these attitudes, one can’t help noticing the lengths to which many white Southerners went to keep black people down. Lynching, of course, was one way, but there were others. Dawson’s grandmother and great-grandmother used to tell him about the day the Confederacy was defeated and their master told them they were free. No sooner did they try to leave than they were told they owed money for supplies and had to work to pay off their “debt.” Eventually, despite having been cheated, they managed to do so.

Dawson also recounts how he was menaced by a crowd of angry white ranch hands who couldn’t stand the fact that he had managed to subdue a wild horse that had resisted their best efforts. Again and again, he comes up against whites determined to convince themselves that blacks are inferior.

On a lighter note, readers searching for the secret of Dawson’s longevity may be surprised to learn that far from worrying about diet and cholesterol, he’s always just eaten what he calls “the common food.” On a typical day, he has hot chocolate and white bread for breakfast, a barbecued beef sandwich and milk for lunch and for dinner maybe some fresh-caught catfish. He doesn’t drink coffee (he never liked the taste) and doesn’t smoke. Whatever the effects of eating “the common food,” there’s no mistaking that his common sense and common decency have helped Dawson lead an exceptionally good, as well as long, life.