John Steinbeck claimed to write fiction but what made his novel “Cannery Row” so powerful is that most of the characters were based on real people who lived and worked around the canneries during the 1930s and 1940s. This life-size mural by John Cerney is based on a black and white photo of Gabe Bicknell who was the character “Mack” and his homeless friends that he called “the boys.”
