40 Fun Facts About Patrick F. McManus

Why does Rancid Crabtree, the old woodsman of Patrick F. McManus's stories, refuse to bathe?

It would let germs in, Rancid reasons: soap and water would wash off his protective 'crust'. He is the foremost character in McManus's tales of an Idaho boyhood.

What nickname does Patrick F. McManus give his older sister Patricia in his childhood stories?

The Troll was his name for big sister Patricia, who helped raise him after their dad died when he was six. Decades later the two wrote a book together.

Patrick F. McManus's 'They Shoot Canoes, Don't They?' spoofs a 1935 novel title naming what animals?

Horses were the original targets in Horace McCoy's grim dance-marathon novel. McManus borrowed the title for his second collection of magazine pieces.

According to Patrick F. McManus's first book, what should a person lost in the woods give way to?

Panic, he insists, is the proper response, and he sorts it into styles such as the Modified Stationary Panic and the Full-Bore Linear Panic.

Which animal does Patrick F. McManus call the fisherman's arch-nemesis, worse than barbed wire?

The cow is the fisherman's arch-nemesis in A Fine and Pleasant Misery, his first book. His later camping guide for children even covers what to do if you meet one.

Patrick F. McManus's anthology 'I Fish; Therefore, I Am' riffs on the dictum of which philosopher?

René Descartes wrote 'I think, therefore I am', and McManus swapped in his favorite pastime. The anthology gathers his first three story collections in one volume.

Whose old-man-and-fish tale does Patrick F. McManus spoof in 'The Good Samaritan Strikes Again'?

Ernest Hemingway gets the treatment in a spoof whose narrator and a 92-year-old angler go fourteen days without a big catch. The collection was McManus's eighth.

What job does Bo Tully hold in Blight County, Idaho, in Patrick F. McManus's mystery novels?

Sheriff Bo Tully keeps order in Blight County across six comic mysteries. McManus began the series in his seventies, fulfilling a long-held ambition to write crime novels.

What mock title did Tim Behrens go by as the performer of Patrick F. McManus's one-man stage comedies?

Indentured actor was the running joke: Behrens had been McManus's writing student, and went on to give about 1,600 performances of the plays.

What kind of book is 'Whatchagot Stew', which Patrick F. McManus wrote with his sister Patricia?

A cookbook with a memoir stirred in: Patricia supplied the old family recipes and Pat wrote the essays, joking that the butter-laden dishes were deadly.

What part does woodsman Rancid Crabtree play in young Pat's life in Patrick F. McManus's stories?

Mentor is how McManus cast him: a loner in the woods who cares only for hunting and fishing, with nobody telling him to go to school.

Which animals does Rancid Crabtree take up trapping in one bestselling Patrick F. McManus collection?

Skunks suit a man who never washes, and the new trade leaves Rancid flushed with the smell of success. The collection became a New York Times bestseller.

In the play 'McManus in Love', the famously unwashed Rancid Crabtree gives young Pat tips on what?

Personal grooming advice from a man who never bathes is the joke, as Pat and his sidekick Crazy Eddie brace for the terrors of a first date.

According to a lifelong friend of Patrick F. McManus, what was the woodsman Rancid Crabtree based on?

A real local man, found in the hills near home when McManus was a boy, inspired Rancid. McManus refused to reveal the man's identity, even to his daughters.

What name did Patrick F. McManus give the rough-and-tumble family mutt of his childhood stories?

Strange was the dog's name, and by McManus's account he earned it: his idea of fine dining was roadkill aged in a ditch.

Which sound completes the title of Patrick F. McManus's bestselling collection 'Real Ponies Don't Go …'?

Oink finishes the title of the 1991 New York Times bestseller. In McManus's tales of a hard-up boyhood, young Pat's 'pony' was really a pig named Trigger.

In Patrick F. McManus's bestseller 'The Night the Bear Ate Goombaw', who or what is Goombaw?

A friend's grandmother, in fact: Goombaw is grandma to Pat's pal Crazy Eddie Muldoon. The 1989 collection was a New York Times bestseller.

Which dim-witted Patrick F. McManus sidekick has a dog named Smarts that loses to a garage door?

Retch Sweeney is the goofy pal of Pat's boyhood and grown-up misadventures alike. His siblings, just as unluckily named, are Erful and Verman.

By what nickname does Darlene, the wife of Patrick F. McManus, appear in his stories?

Bun is how Darlene McManus shows up on the page. Off it, she ran the family's business affairs for more than 57 years and archived her husband's writing.

The performer of Patrick F. McManus's plays ranked him alongside which 19th-century American humorist?

Mark Twain was the yardstick, and a fellow professor went further, calling McManus the Twain of the Northwest. Reviewers reached for the same comparison for decades.

Patrick F. McManus grew up on a farm outside which Idaho town, about 75 miles northeast of Spokane?

Sandpoint was home, and it never left his work: the Blight of his mystery novels is a thinly veiled version of the town.

After Patrick F. McManus's father died when he was six, how did his mother earn the family's living?

Schoolteacher was her trade, often in one-room country schools. Her long days at work left young Pat free to roam the creek and woods that fill his stories.

What career did Patrick F. McManus plan on from boyhood until his first year at university?

An artist was the plan: he drew and painted all through school and started college as an art major. He later said the habit taught him to paint with words.

How did Patrick F. McManus earn the money for his first year of college after high school in Idaho?

Construction work paid his way: he spent summers on dam-building crews, at one point dangling from ropes to clear loose rock off cliffs.

In which Washington college town did Patrick F. McManus earn his degree, after nearly flunking out?

Pullman is home to Washington State, where a run of failed freshman essays turned into a fascination with writing. He went back there for a master's degree.

What newspaper job did Patrick F. McManus hold briefly after college, before turning to teaching?

Police reporter was his first beat, at a daily in Washington's capital. Years later he would startle sleepy journalism students by arriving in character as a detective sergeant.

At which university near Spokane did Patrick F. McManus teach English and journalism for two decades?

Eastern Washington gave him its Distinguished Faculty Award in 2013, three decades after he left the classroom to write full time.

Which magazine launched Patrick F. McManus's humor career by buying his spoof on wildlife tracking?

Field & Stream paid $300 for a nonsense piece he dashed off in the last hour of a nightly writing session. He decided on the spot to become a humorist.

What was the name of the monthly humor column Patrick F. McManus wrote for Outdoor Life magazine?

Last Laugh ran in Outdoor Life until 2009, with McManus also serving as the magazine's editor-at-large. He had moved there when a friend became its editor.

Patrick F. McManus arranged for proceeds of 'The Deer on a Bicycle', his guide for writers, to fund what?

Student scholarships shared the money with the university press that published the book, which sold thousands of copies. The guide explains how comic stories are built.

Which mystery about slain bald eagles was the last book Patrick F. McManus published in his lifetime?

Circles in the Snow finds lawman Bo Tully mulling retirement when a rancher is killed by an arrow fletched with eagle feathers. It appeared in 2014.

In Patrick F. McManus's 'The Double-Jack Murders', two miners vanish just as they strike what?

Gold was the mother lode the pair hit before disappearing, a cold case 75 years old. McManus took the idea from an abandoned mine he came upon while prospecting in his twenties.

In one Patrick F. McManus mystery, three young men are found shot in a patch of which wild berry?

Huckleberry gives the fourth Bo Tully novel its name: the bodies turn up in a berry patch on Scotchman Mountain, and the trail leads into a haunted swamp.

The Patrick F. McManus play 'McManus in Love' builds to young Pat's first date in what kind of place?

A movie theater is where the audience joins Pat and Melba Peachbottom, the prettiest girl in school. By then he has learned that girls frighten him more than anything.

Which childhood fear of his own did Patrick F. McManus make the theme of his first stage play?

The dark ties the stories together as Pat rummages through a trunk of boyhood relics, from a slingshot to a scrap of tent. The 1992 play launched his run of one-man comedies.

Which era of hardship shapes Patrick F. McManus's play 'Poor Again… Dagnabbit!' and its poverty foods?

The Great Depression runs through the play, which recalls Pat's poor childhood and dishes such as blood sausage and head cheese. It was his first new script in over 12 years.

Patrick F. McManus kept a cabin retreat overlooking which large lake in the Idaho Panhandle?

Lake Pend Oreille, Idaho's largest, lay below the cabin where he said he could feel his blood pressure drop. He joked that it held every book he needed back in the city.

In Patrick F. McManus's 'theory of convergence', a hunter always goes the opposite way from which animal?

The elk always heads the other way, a law he sets out with a minimum of mathematics in How I Got This Way, his 1994 collection.

Which audience was Patrick F. McManus's twelve-story collection 'Never Cry "Arp!"' put together for?

Young readers had become his secret following, so twelve tales of boyhood misadventure were gathered just for them, with Crazy Eddie Muldoon and Rancid Crabtree on hand.

After his first book, Patrick F. McManus was dubbed the 'outdoors' version of which Algonquin Round Table wit?

Robert Benchley, the New Yorker essayist, was the comparison that A Fine and Pleasant Misery earned him. His publisher repeated the phrase on his next collection.