Former officer turns lifelong passion into demolition book for children.
Cabot Dodge never outgrew his childhood fascination with knocking things over, and now he’s turned that passion into his first children’s book.
The retired cop asaid the idea for the book, “Building Wrecking for Kids: With Steve and the Razing Gang,” came from a hobby of photographing old North Shore buildings that were being torn down.
“I always had a passion for old architecture and construction when I was a kid,” Dodge said. “When they started taking down Danvers State Hospital, I thought it’d be a neat photograph.”
Dodge continued to take photos of other landmarks in the area, like an old mill in Lowell and the old Moose Lodge on Highland Avenue in Salem, now a gas station. He created a website, www.wreckedphotography.com, to document the demolition of old buildings, if only for himself.
While photographing the demolition at the General Electric gear plant in Lynn last year, Dodge met Steve Guerette from RSG Contracting Corporation, who had dreamed of owning his own demolition business since he was 16 and built his first crane in his backyard in Lynn.
“I thought it might be a good theme for a book … a book about if you want to be something you can be it. Just work hard,” he said. “Building Wrecking for Kids: With Steve and the Razing Gang” follows Guerette and his RSG wrecking crew while they take down the gear plant. The 40-page book features Dodge’s photographs on every page, with descriptions of each part of the wrecking process and the tools used.
Read more here.
