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Little Boys Big Dreams and the Hobo Wars
Published by Bookside Press
by Joseph Kinnebrew
ABOUT
1948, age 6, 7, and nearly 8. Little boys growing, growing, growing and another older/young man who has an unexpected profound influence on them all. Little boys becoming big boys then men at perhaps the most tender and charming time in their lives. Learning lessons about life, inventing, and building to go forward with courage, purpose, and honor. These are ways that admirable men become admirable. Their adventures are funny and yet looking further, they are profound and after the years of innocence have faded, have much to say about the behavior of us later in life.
Little boys are charmers in these early years, the values they will live with are developed in just these short early times. How they will act, behave, lead, or follow in large part comes early. In many ways little boys, in their hearts, are always little boys and some better for it.
This book will make you smile, laugh, surely remind, and stir emotions. Tears for the poignant, the joy and tenderness of youth. Making you wonder how, when we grew older, it is that we have become who we are. This is a story of sweet remembrance.
REVIEW
Joseph Kinnebrew’s memoir, Little Boys Big Dreams and the Hobo Wars, is an immersion in a nostalgic time and place, when the delivery of the neighborhood’s first television is a monumental milestone.
It’s 1948 in Tacoma, Washington, and 8-year-old Joe and his best friend Freddie have a lot going on. Each day is filled with thrilling adventures — like keeping the younger kids out of Fort Blackberry, avoiding all girls, and planning gruesome punishments for people who are mean to dogs.
Joseph Kinnebrew’s memoir, Little Boys Big Dreams and the Hobo Wars, is an immersion in a nostalgic time and place, when the delivery of the neighborhood’s first television is a monumental milestone.
Joe, like his cohorts, is loved and cared for. His father owns a furniture factory, his grandfather is a respected retired chemist, and his mother, the main adult in his life, has gone to “Mom School” where she’s learned how to make cakes, pies and cookies, how to cut peanut butter and jelly sandwiches into four equal squares, and some basic doctoring skills.
Joe has a little brother he barely tolerates. “About the only use for a brother or sister who is younger is you can blame stuff on them,” he explains.
Had Holden Caulfield been 8 when he told his story, it may have read something like this book.
The World War is over, but on Alder Street, the war with the hobos simmers. Homeless men, refugees of the Depression or the war, live in rough shelters at the bottom of a gulley. Although mothers might give hobos food when they knock on back doors, says Joe, all mothers tell their children that hobos “kidnapped young boys, and sold them. That’s right, that is what they did and when they did no kid had ever returned to tell about it. How our moms learned this we didn’t know or question”
IMMERSION IN A NOSTALGIC TIME AND PLACE
The boys make battle plans but before mud is launched, a more immediate threat develops. Almost as scary as the tramps is the boy in a wheelchair, Bobby. Joe and friends report sightings as Bobby ventures out on the neighborhood sidewalks, always staying close to his home, a residence Joe’s mom calls “run down.”
Because Bobby is all twisted up and unable to “talk right,” Joe and the boys think of him as a “creature” or “the hulk” and suspect that his rolling contraption is armed with machine guns. As they come to know him, though, Joe recognizes, “We didn’t know it at the time, but Bobby was an important lesson in life for many reasons.”
Male readers may chuckle as they recognize the universal constants of boyhood: “All kids have to dig a China Hole before they can move on.”
Female readers may be surprised to learn that little boys view girls with suspicion, and consider them dangerous. “…(N)ever get too close to girls because at some point they will put a spell on you. That spell will be the end of your life and there will be no more forts, wars against injustice, you can’t have a dog, and for sure no great meals of fire-roasted potatoes and bacon on a stick.”
Joseph Kinnebrew is a prolific sculptor, painter, multimedia artist, lecturer, inventor and author who’s been described as an “eccentric creative genius.” New York Times critic William Zimmer calls his work “the 800-pound gorilla, impossible to ignore.”
In his latest book’s introduction, Kinnebrew writes, “Little boys are charmers in these early years. How they will act, behave, lead, or follow in large part comes early. In many ways little boys, in their hearts, are always little boys and some better for it.”
With this boyhood memoir, he’s given insight into how it all began. We hope there will be more memoirs to come.
About the Author:
Joseph Kinnebrew is a sculptor, painter, lecturer, inventor and author. He has been described by several in the art world as an eccentric creative genius. This archive portion of the Kinnebrew site provides an in depth view his fine art, music composition, design, lecturing and writing. The art shown here is for sale, sold work is archived elsewhere.
Kinnebrew’s is represented in the collections of major museums as well as many well established private collections. His work has been exhibited internationally including the Biennale in Florence Italy, Palm Beach Biennale, Israel, Germany, Canada, Japan and formally the Walter Wickiser Gallery in New York, Art Miami, Art Chicago and Art Toronto.
Kinnebrew’s digital collages represent his continuing commitment to work that reflects the thoughts and observations of an important, mature, contemporary artist working across a wide range of media. He remains focused on post-modernism and the Singularity.
New York Times critic William Zimmer has written, “His work is the 800-pound gorilla, impossible to ignore”.
As a minimalist his sculpture is monumental and in his bronzes one senses a powerful sensuality that is again expressed in his surreal and botanical paintings.
At 80 he continues to produce work with energy that those half his age can only envy. With his unrelenting pace and output of of creativity, Kinnebrew rushes forward often leaving others with only a glimpse of what their futures may be. He races on already having seen it.
Buy this Book!
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Use these links to view individual books
Fiction
little boys, big dreams & the hobo wars
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Nonfiction
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Art Books
Kinnebrew Retrospective Catalogue
EXCERPT
- Gold
We struck gold. That day is imprinted on my mind like it was yesterday. There on the hillside of the gully where a little spring trickled out of the ground, we discovered the makings of a fortune. Flecks of gold sparkled in sunlight flickering through tree leaves far above. It was the real thing, right there in front of us. Real gold.
Girls would have gone crazy, but we didn’t. We stood there, our feet lower down the hill from our vantage point looking at the spring now at eye level. The hill was very steep. Only boys like us (my grandfather called us “good fellows”) were adept at climbing, conquering such steep terrain. We were better than the mountain goats at the Tacoma Point Defiance Park Zoo. Actually, we had never seen those goats climb a hill, but our mothers had read the sign in front of the cage and there was a small illustration of their natural habitat. But we were better than Billy Goat Gruff, that we knew for sure.
This is a very fine story but first I need to draw you a picture of time and place. It was 1948 and I only knew three people whose families had more than one car. My cousins in Longview Washington because my other grandfather aka Grandad owned the Studebaker agency there, Mikie Manion’s mother who lived across the street from Freddie, and Charlie’s father who was a doctor. Mrs. Mikie Manion, I don’t know why because her husband died, and Charlie, our sorta friend because his dad had to work on dead people. We knew this about Charlie’s dad because he had an office also at home and there was a real human skull on his desk. That first Halloween he told us about it, and nobody slept for a week. Sometimes our doctor came to our house, but I can tell you, you surely did not want Charlie’s dad coming to your house. Oh, and he had his own car because nobody would ever want to ride in his car alone, by themselves with Charlie’s dad.
My best friend Freddie had lived there on our Alder Street forever. Freddie and I bonded as friends just after my family moved to Alder Street from Portland. We were the same age and interested in the same things. We loved almost everything in the world except girls, dinnertime and, in time, claim jumpers. But I want to describe our world more fully, so you’ll understand the importance of what we found, what we did and the reasons for them. Give you some context. It was a very intense time of discovery and development for us and the world in general. 1948.
- Where we lived
I actually have little memory of how we got to Alder Street. My most favorite grandparents lived a long way away across town. We went there often, and it took at least 15 minutes. On a more recent visit to Tacoma (actually 65 years later) I would discover it was really only a couple of miles. It seemed longer because I loved my Grandfather and when my mother took me there it took forever to get to his house.
My history with Fred has no dramatic beginning. As much as I can recollect it just was, as many things were for kids our age. In spite of what parents say, we did not question virtually everything with a “why.” Generally, it was because things were just the way life was supposed to be. My house was straight up, one short block away on the hill above Fred’s who other kids (but not his mother aka Mrs. Fred) really usually (but not always) called him Freddie. Separated only by Eileen’s house and one other, then a dusty alley road that led to Charlie Larsen’s house, down a steep hill (more on this later). Ours was far more modest than Fred’s (who only I also called Freddie), but then the thought of real estate comparison didn’t occur to either one of us. What was significant however was “Fred’s” house, while bigger and had a big basement to play in, had a separate building that was his father’s workshop. In that workshop there were many large tools like saws, jointers, and sanding equipment. Fred’s father pursued his hobby in there. He was very serious about this. His dad-built HO Gauge model trains. He did the trains but also the buildings and everything that a train person could do if they were the best model train builder on earth and he was one of them. Fred said his dad was the best train builder on earth and I believed him. My dad did not build anything that I knew of then, but he did have a furniture factory.
Another thing that should have been obvious but was taken for granted is Fred’s house had a huge yard and a very large patio with a brick outdoor grill that would remain fashionable all the way into the late fifty’s when the “Weber” appeared. I had never seen such a thing and did take note of that amazing brick outdoor grill. My parents never cooked outdoors but attended parties there. The patio was important because the workshop was on a grade up the hill and underneath it and behind lattice Fred’s dad stored all kinds of things like lumber and sawhorses. Important supplies for us that was just pure fort building material. This is where we trained and sharpened our skills. I do remember, when asked how I knew so much about building…, I responded I trained at Freddie’s patio.
There were many forts built on that patio. Erected and dismantled without remorse since we knew soon there would be another opportunity. Just as soon as Fred’s parents had their party we could reclaim the ground that really was ours. What I remember most about those adult outdoor parties, and we attended some, was the smell of my mother’s Shalimar perfume.
Finally, and I guess this really sort of clears up the quality or real estate matter, Fred’s house was on about a quarter of a city block, ours was probably on one twentieth. The primary asset of my house was location, location, location. I lived more or less at the center of our universe. All the real action, or that which took place in “civilization” as we knew it took place in and around the neighborhood corner I lived on. Thus, activities at Fred’s place were generally limited to Fred and me with, on occasion, another friend or two and, of course, always Skipper and Chipper our dogs.
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