Patrick and Crazy Eddie Muldoon find the perfect secret place one summer, up in the rafters of the Muldoon’s garage. They find several boxes of empty canning jars and decide to conduct a science experiment throughout the summer’s sweltering heat. Who knows how far it could have gone if Mr. Muldoon didn’t accidentally discover it.

For anyone who had their own secret places as a kid, or even has them now, the story Secret Places is for you.

Cold Fish is one of the stories a lot of people ask me to help them find (it’s in the book They Shoot Canoes, Don’t They?), especially in winter. It highlights the wonderful relationship between Pat and his mentor, the cantankerous old woodsman Rancid Crabtree.

As a rule Rancid tries to avoid work at all costs. But he is also prone to inventing elaborate schemes to help him avoid said work, and in the process expends a lot of energy that, to an outside observer looks an awful lot like the kind of work he is probably trying to avoid.

In this story Pat and Rancid build a fish shack with a sail on it so the wind can help move the shack from one fishing hole to another. Of course it works a little better than anticipated.

Sequences has always been one of my favorite stories. I remember the first time I read it. I couldn’t believe how perfectly he captured what happens in my own mind whenever I set out to do any task, no matter how small it may seem.

For instance, a few days ago I tried to start my morning with a cup of coffee but I was out of coffee creamer. Lucky me I had a new one in the pantry. But when I went to throw the empty one in the garbage I couldn’t because it was full. So I pulled out the full trash bag and took it outside to the trash bin. Standing in the cold, shivering, I looked around confused, wondering why I wasn’t sitting in my chair sipping my morning coffee like usual. The vortex of sequences had snuck up on me again.

Recently I’ve been thinking of ways to give back to all of you wonderful Patrick McManus fans. If we could all get together and sit around the campfire I’m sure it wouldn’t be long before we broke out the books and shared our favorite stories between double portions of whatchagot stew.

So I thought of the next best thing that’s within my ability to do. I’ve started to add some videos to the McManus Index YouTube channel of me reading the most popular Patrick McManus stories. I started with his most famous stories, A Good Deed Goes Wrong and My First Deer and Welcome to It. Every month or so I’ll keep adding more.

If you’ve got about twenty minutes and need a quick laugh, stop on by! Oh, and subscribe to the YouTube channel so you’ll know when new stories are added.

McManus Index YouTube Channel

If you’re anything like me, each day is covered in a blanket of unease and nervousness, feeling like there’s nothing I can do. But of course I am doing something to help the situation. Keeping apart from everyone right now is the best thing any of us can do, but it doesn’t feel like much.

So I did what I usually do when things are stressful—I turned to Patrick McManus. I read a story this morning with my wife. “Secret Places,” about Pat and Crazy Eddie’s science experiment in the rafters of the Muldoon’s garage. It did both of our hearts good to laugh. (It’s found in the books Real Ponies Don’t Go Oink! and Never Cry “Arp!”)

Here are a few stories that should help take your mind off things, at least for a little while:

Mean Tents

Patrick describes the various tents that have tormented him throughout his life. In particular, he tells of shooting arrows through Cousin Buck’s new tent, and the time he and Crazy Eddie were mistaken for a mummy late one night in the Muldoon’s kitchen.

The Grasshopper Trap

 

Camping In

Camping out is a lot better if you can do it in a camper. It keeps you off the cold, hard ground and protects you from assorted wildlife, including Sasquatches.

Real Ponies Don’t Go Oink!

 

Scritch’s Creek

As kids, Patrick and Retch Sweeney discover a fishing hole so wonderful it may never have been fished before. Then they discover the reason it hasn’t been fished—it’s on the property of Ketchum Scritch, the meanest codger anyone’s ever met.

The Night The Bear Ate Goombaw

 

The Grasshopper Trap

Finally, one of Crazy Eddie Muldoon’s ideas for a contraption actually works. With Rancid Crabtree’s help, they build a grasshopper trap that works, in some ways, even better than they imagined. In other ways, not quite.

The Grasshopper Trap

 

The Blue Dress

While Rancid Crabtree was swimming in the creek on a hot summer day, his clothes were stolen by the Skragg boys. Pat and Retch Sweeney are sent to a nearby house to find some clothes, but all they’re able to bring back is a blue dress.

How I Got This Way

 

Cubs

Mr. Tiddle offers to take Mrs. Slocum’s Cub Scouts on an overnight outing. His Boy Scouts, Attila and Lucifer, lead them on a near-death march to the campsite. They get the sweetest revenge when Mr. Tiddle goes skinny-dipping in the icy lake.

The Good Samaritan Strikes Again
and Never Cry “Arp!”

What stories have helped you during these past few weeks?

Stay safe friends,

Lauren

We all have our favorite McManus stories. For me, just off the top of my head, some of mine are Hunting the Wily Avid, The Grasshopper Trap, The Bush Pilots, The Night the Bear Ate Goombaw, Snake, Pigs…hmm, it seems the more I name the more I keep remembering. I don’t know if I could limit all my favorite stories to a top ten kind of list.

But what I can do is tell you the ten most requested stories I’ve been asked to help people find on the McManus Index website. I’ve helped over five hundred people find their favorites.

These are the ten most requested stories from the past seven years. Grab your copy of each one and read along; you’ll have a day of laughter.

10 – Whitewater Fever/Shooting the Chick-a-Nout Narrows (found in the books The Night the Bear Ate Goombaw and A Fine and Pleasant Misery)

I know it’s two stories, but when people ask about riding the rapids and the Chick-a-Nout Narrows the two stories are inseparable.

9 – Silent But Deadly (found in the book Kerplunk!)

This is the one where Pat’s dog, Strange, slurps up the leftover Thanksgiving gravy, bloats up like a ticking gas bomb, and hides in the backseat—ruining his date with Olga Bonemarrow.

8 – Gunrunning (found in the book The Grasshopper Trap)

Evidently a lot of you need this refresher about how to sneak all those guns past your wife.

7 – Poof! No Eyebrows (found in the book Never Sniff a Gift Fish)

As kids Pat and Retch Sweeney work their way up the caliber range with their black-powder experiments until they try to fire a croquet ball from a sewer-pipe canon.

6 – Mean Tents (found in the book The Grasshopper Trap)

Pat and Crazy Eddie try to sleep out in the Muldoon’s backyard. Unable to withstand the onslaught of darkness, and unable to untie their gunnysack tent, they barge into the kitchen, terrifying the dog and Mr. Muldoon, who had been listening to a scary radio program about a mummy.

It’s interesting to see how the details change in people’s minds. Sometimes it was a mud hut in the rain, and the radio show was about aliens.

5 – Secret Places (found in the book Real Ponies Don’t Go Oink!)

All summer long Pat and Crazy Eddie had been conducting a science experiment involving canning jars and urine, only to have it come to an unforgettable end when Mr. Muldoon accidentally discovered their secret hiding place.

4 – Cold Fish (found in the book They Shoot Canoes, Don’t They?)

Always trying to avoid anything resembling work, Rancid Crabtree and Patrick rig a sail to their ice-fishing shack to make it easier to move across the frozen lake. It worked better than they’d hoped, until the wind really picked up.

3 – Sequences (found in the book The Night the Bear Ate Goombaw)

A task or goal may seem simple enough, but unless you’re careful you will be sucked into an endless vortex of sequences. It’s usually best to just go fishing instead.

2 – My First Deer and Welcome To It (found in the book They Shoot Canoes, Don’t They? and also the story titled “The Deer on the Bicycle”, found in the book of the same name)

When hunters get to telling about their first deer, they tend to exaggerate until one can scarcely believe the tale. For instance, one night down at Kelly’s Bar & Grill the stories were becoming so unbelievable that Patrick stepped in to give an unvarnished account of riding his bike to get his first deer.

1 – A Good Deed Goes Wrong (found in the book Real Ponies Don’t Go Oink!)

This story actually contains two that are tied together. Pat and Crazy Eddie build a toboggan run and Rancid Crabtree offers to test it for them. In the aftermath Rancid ends up with a broken leg. To ease their guilty feelings, Pat and Eddie decide to do a good deed by giving Rancid a road-kill bobcat. Of course, their good deed goes wrong.