Patrick McManus

[KillerMuffin]

So we bought this book of his.

I am spending so much time giggling over it.

I love this guy.

 

[Problem Child]

So we bought this book of his.

I am spending so much time giggling over it.

I love this guy.

Is he the outdoors humorist?

 

[KillerMuffin]

Yup.

 

[Problem Child]

Yeah, he's good. I'm off to find quotes and funny passages.

 

[KillerMuffin]

The campfire was of two basic kinds: the Smudge and the Inferno. The Smudge was what you used when you were desperately in need of heat. By hovering over the Smudge the camper coul usually managed to thaw the ice from his hands before being kippered to death. Even if the Smudge did burst into a decent blaze, there was no such thing as warming up gradually. One moment the ice on your pants would who slight signs of melting and the next the hair on your legs was going up in smoke. May's the time I've seen a blue and shivering man hunched over a crackling blaze suddenly eject from his boots and pants with a loud yell and go bounding about in the show, the front half of him the color of a boiled lobster, the back half still blue.

The Inferno was what you always used for cooking. Experts on camp cooking claimed you were supposed to cook over something called "a bed of glowing coals." But what everyone cooked over was the Inferno. The "bed of glowing coals" was a fiction created by experts on camp cooking. Nevertheless the camp cook was frequently pictured, by artists who should have known better, as a tranquil man hunkered down by a bed of glowing coals, turning a plump trout in the frying pan with the blade of his hunting knife. In reality the camp cook was a wildly distraught individual who charged through waves of heat and speared savagely with a long sharp stick at a burning hunk of meat he had tossed on the grill from a distance of twenty feet.

The rollicking old fireside songs originated in the efforts of other campers to drown out the language of the cook and prevent it from reaching the ears of little children. Meat roasted over a camfire was either raw or extra well done, but the cook usually came out medium rare.

 

[KillerMuffin]

One to which PC can relate.

I once launched my family on a program designed to toughen them up, on the assumption that they more misery they could endure the more they would enjoy hunting, fishing, and camping. Whenever anyone skinned a knee or thumped his "crazy bone," he was to reply in answer to inquiries about the extent of his pain: "A mere detail." Thus my children were expected to ignore the minor miseries encountered in the acquisition of outdoor knowledge and experience, and to make little of mosquito bites, burned fingers, and the vast assortment of natural projectiles known as "stickers."

As it turned out, though, I had to abandon the program. On day on a family camping trip, I picked up a large branch for firewood and discovered an outlaw band of yellow jackets waiting in ambush. A running battle ensued. I finally outdistanced the little devils, as I called them, but not before several of them had inflicted some terrible wounds on various parts of my person. My family watched as I flitted like a nymph through the woods, careening off of boulders and leaping mammoth moss-covered logs. Fortunately, as my wife said later, most of my shouts were inaudible and the children were saved from traumas that might have wrought pyschological havoc. When I finally lunged back into camp, still sweating and snarling, my littlest girl consoled me with the words, "Details, Daddy, mere details."

Well I decided right then and there if a kid can't distinguish between real pain and a little old skinned knee, then I had better call of the whole program, and that is what I did. I mean you don't want your children to grow up to be totally insensitive.

 

[curious2c]

McManus if very funny. I have several of his books. I love his stories of his pal Crazie Eddie. Him and ol' Rancid. He is a good writer, brings it to life in my mind.

One other writer I love is Scott Adams and his Dilbert stuff.

 

[phrodeau]

I used to work in an office where the only magazines allowed in the breakroom were the ones the boss brought in, mostly "Field and Stream". Patrick McManus was the only relief from those barren walls.

 

[SkyBluAngelEyes]

I remember reading one of his books in bed late one night... I was laughing so hard, my husband thought I was crying.

He is great. Good memories.

 

[RudeNastyAssBitch]

I Think I Might Go Grab That Book!

Very Funny Stuff

So Was It A Vast Fortune Of Gold And Silver, Like Most Books Nowadays, Or Was It A Decent Price?

 

[JohnOne]

Well, Killermuffin, now you've got me in the mood to go back and re-read all the good Patrick McMannus stuff that I haven't read for something like 9 or 10 years. Tomorrow I'm going to the library and maybe to the bookstore (the books I read were my brother's). I remember the first book of his I read -- my sister was actually reading it to the rest of the family at a family gathering. I don't remember all the particulars --just something about his first ATV (All Terrain Vehicle), a magical ability he had to make anything electrical or mechanical breakdown, and a neighborhood wolf -- but we were all laughing so hard...

Hey, I just thought of something: Thanksgiving is coming up and putting together a collection of some of the funniest Patrick McManus selections would be a real kick to do with the family. I think I have a new project. Thanks.

(I can't believe I'm at this site, with my clothes on, NOT talking about sex. Go figure.)