"A Man’s Got to Have a Hobby: Long Summers with My Dad," by William McInnes

A Man’s Got to Have a Hobby: Long Summers with My Dad, by William McInnes, Sydney: Hachette Australia, 2005.

Summary: A humorous and touching recollection of growing up in suburban Australia; a book of recalled memories of a son’s love for his father, a love that he didn’t verbally convey to his father when he was alive.

William McInnes’s A Man’s Got to Have a Hobby: Long Summers with My Dad, is not you run-of-the mill memoir. For a start, it doesn’t follow the expected model of a lot of memoirs and autobiographies where the book is a platform for the author to boast of his achievements – “I did this and I did that” – to foster admiration and respect of the author. McInnes is (apparently) an actor of some merit and relatively well known in Australia. He doesn’t tell us this fact, but are able to work it out from the fact that he is a guest of honor at a fundraiser in his home. McInnes, it seems, could have told us how he got to be successful, but chooses not to; that would be “showboating” as his Dad would call it. McInnis’s purposes is to share with us his memories of the joys and delights of growing up in the 1970s and 1980s in Redcliffe, Australia, and, through that re-telling, sharing his wonderful memories and influence of his Dad during his upbringing.

The book’s narrative is also somewhat unusual. The arrangement is not linear or chronological, but subject oriented in three parts: “A Fine Vessel,” “The Night of Nights”, and “Saying Goodbye.” In “A Fine Vessel,” McInnes recalls the past as he looks around his childhood home. While visiting the old family home, McInnes recalls what is was like to grow up in the house on the battle axe block next to the fire station. His search for the telephone in the office sparks a series of haphazard memories of his Dad’s various “renovations” that sometimes appeared unexpectedly overnight, such as a new doorway or wall. We enjoy the humorous and delightful recollections of Dad’s attempt to play tennis with a bent tennis racquet, the family’s celebrations and parties in the backyard, unusual neighbors, curious family rituals and nicknames for people and food. We learn of Dad’s outside construction projects like the incinerator in the backyard to burn household rubbish, and the brick barbeque that belched so much smoke that they called it Bismarck after the battleship of the same name in the movie “Sink the Bismarck.” We learn of McInnes’s fear of cane toads, and his father’s failed attempts of win a seat in Parliament, and the curious dress habits of members of the Labor party. It was a time when any K-Tel product was a prized possession including the glass cutter and record selector. We learn his Dad’s unique expressions, such as “Jesus wept,” “don’t be a banjo player,” and “for Christ’s sake.” His father’s insults were apparently incandescent, but often punctuated will lessons such as the recollection of his Dad’s unexpected response to McInnes’s verbal baiting by saying “if you ever judge somebody by what they are and not by what they do, then you’re a bloody fool.”

Part two, the “Night of Nights” unfolds during his presence at a fundraising dinner as one of the invited guests. Through a string of recollections stimulated by people he sees and meets, McInnes give us a bit if a history and geography lesson about Redcliffe – it’s a peninsula north of Brisbane on Moreton Bay that used to be a tourist destination for Brisbane residents in the 1940s that caught a steamer to visit that was was the site of the first penal settlement in Queensland until it was abandoned for the site o present-day Brisbane. We learn of McInnes attending Humpybong school, his adventures swimming off the pier, when he first kissed a girl, and how meeting his former football coach in the bathroom brings on some sport related memories. We are told of attending football matches with his Dad in support of the local team the Redcliffe Dolphins. McInnes recalls how he went with his father to local games demonstrates how life has changed since he was a child. In those days activities and entertainments were predominantly local. There were no national football competitions and people supported the local district teams. The team members were people from your local area, as were the supporters. Everyone knew each other. We learn of the family’s likes and dislike of certain players, and how the team had a loyal and dedicated fan base that supported them despite time never winning the competition. They did, however, manage to lose in glorious fashion.

The third part of the book, “Saying Goodbye” recalls the author’s confrontation with the death of his aunt, which in turn revives memories of the earlier death of his father. In this moving, honest, emotional and best part of the book, we learn of the importance of family and the son’s admiration and love for his Dad. McInnes recalls how Dad helped Aunt Rita find some land to build a house. Rita’s illness, suffering and death remind McInnes of his Dad’s death from numerous ailments including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and ultimately cancer. For anyone who has witnessed a loved one suffer from such ailments, the story is familiar and moving, particularly the recollections of the original diagnosis, the decline in health, and ultimately peace through passing.

These stories are a joy. They remind us all about growing up, families and their customs, and peculiarities. It’s a warm and emotional book for its reflections of the past, but it is more than this. This also book appears to be the McInnes’s way of saying that he loves his Dad. He never told him in person – even on his death bead – but he does in this book. In a way, this is also a book about love; a son’s recollections of his father, a man who saw so much suffering in war, but still carried on with life, full of energy and belief that love is the most important thing. McInnes’s book reminds us how men like his Dad are not so common any more. We learn that he was a child of the depression, and a paratrooper in the Second World War. He didn’t talk of his war experiences, but we get a glimpse of a few occasions of how deeply it affected him. On the beach on day while watching a storm, he confided to his son how the storm’s thunder and lightning was just like a barrage, just before they send you in. “Poor bastards” he said, and McInnes knew he was thinking of his friends and the war. On another occasion when visiting Dad in hospital, McInnes recalled how Dad used to say “get some milk for the baby.” One of McInnes’s sisters recalled that as something from the war. Dad was part of the army liberating the concentration camp at Belsen. Upon entering, Dad was approached by a lady with a dead baby in her arms asking him to get some milk for it. Knowing that the baby was dead, and had probably been dead for days, and that there was no milk, he cradled the baby in his arms and said to his colleagues to get some milk for the baby. That’s the sort of person he was.

McInnes’s memoir is compelling and thoroughly enjoyable. It’s both a memoir of growing up in the Brisbane suburbs in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as a tribute to his Dad. Its historical, funny and poignant, a thoroughly enjoyable book that mixes comedy and tragedy, humor and suffering, life and death, but is ultimately a joyful and optimistic celebration of life.