That Went By Fast

Ex-logger and gas station owner Frank White says living to the age of one hundred is not all it’s cracked up to be but it has some plusses. When he trundles down to the local shopping centre in Pender Harbour pretty girls hug him and everybody in town seems to be glad he’s lived another day. But celebrity has its drawbacks—when he was only fifty and still had most of his marbles, people only wanted to know what was wrong with their car. But “Now that everything is starting to get hazy, they’re not satisfied unless I can tell them the meaning of life.”

In this second memoir in two years, centenarian White sifts through his lengthy adventures trying to live up to those expectations of wisdom before deciding “Life just is.” But what a wild ride he takes us on! Born at the start of the First World War and maturing during the Great Depression, he worked variously as a pioneer freight hauler, pioneer truck logger, camp owner, garment presser, boat builder, home builder, excavating contractor, garage mechanic and waterworks operator, among other things. Then in later life he married the sophisticated and well-connected New Yorker writer Edith Iglauer and started a totally different way of life consisting of opera, celebrity dinners and world travel. His ironic observations on the differences between the two worlds make for fascinating and frequently hilarious reading.