The Grasshopper Trap by Patrick McManus

 Source of book: Audiobook from the library

 

Ah, yes, Patrick McManus, the late great humorist of Field and Stream (which my dad subscribed to when I was a kid). McManus wrote very much in the “tall tale” tradition of American humor, with an outdoorsman bent. Although I think my in-laws may have played an audiobook to my older kids years ago, for the younger ones, this was their introduction to the outrageous humor and lunacy of this American original. 

The Grasshopper Trap had the advantage of being both (1) checked in to our local library at the time and (2) one that I hadn’t yet read, so I went with it. Written in 1986, it shows its age (and its author’s age) a bit in the way it stereotypes men and women, but it probably wasn’t far off from how McManus’ generation acted. With that one dated bit, though, it was every bit as hilarious as it was nearly 25 years ago, and my kids laughed throughout it. 

 

The usual cast of characters is in this book: Patrick’s longsuffering wife, Bun; loony mountain man Rancid Crabtree; Patrick’s childhood friends, Crazy Eddie Muldoon and Retch Sweeney; and an assortment of neighbors and friends. 

 

The topics range from the title story, in which the kids and Rancid create a means of capturing grasshoppers using an old truck and a bunch of junk, to a hilarious round of too many parties and too little fishing in Brazil. In between are a mix of “adult” stories about hunting and fishing and “childhood” stories about Patrick and his friends. Some highlights included advice on how to collect guns without your wife catching on, a series of “letters” from a man relating his hunting trip with McManus, and a musing on the nature of the “hunker.”

 

The hunker is often mistaken for a squat, which is something entirely different. The squat has its uses but it is an ugly posture, lacking in both grace and dignity.

 

McManus isn’t just humor, though. He uses humor to illuminate some tough subjects, from bullying to childhood fears. A couple of stories in this book are about his own fear of the dark as a child, and the bizarre lengths he went to in order to conceal this from even his best friends. You have to laugh, because it is hilarious the way he tells the story. But it is also obvious that he is laughing to hide the very real pain. 

 

McManus brings out an interesting truth about the experience of being a man in 20th Century America. There was and is tremendous pressure to be “tough,” to never admit “feminine” emotions, to never show weakness, and to avoid intimacy. For McManus and many of his generation, hunting and fishing were ways around this toxic masculinity, a way of making emotional bonds without breaking the masculine code. In a way, they provided him with a means of expressing those deeper emotions in a socially acceptable way. 

 

Full disclosure here: I have never hunted, and I am a terrible fisherman. I just don’t have the patience, and I feel bad about killing. (Other than members of the insect order Diptera…) Don’t mistake that for an opposition to hunting. I believe hunting can be a morally acceptable activity, and I gladly accept the meat offered by hunter friends. If you are using what you kill for food, that’s fine with me, and in the case of deer, culling is actually a necessary activity to prevent death by starvation. So, I will cook what you kill or catch - and make it taste darn good. 

 

I was struck by the difference between the rural hunting culture McManus embodies and the modern “gun culture” that manifests in obsession with military-style weapons and macho posturing. The two are completely different. Which is why when someone tells me they are a big gun guy, and how many AR-15s they have, I back away. While I feel quite comfortable hearing hunting stories from guys like my father-in-law. I’d probably even risk taking a trip with a McManus sort, although it would probably break tradition to cook legitimately edible stew. 

 

We really enjoyed this set of stories - and they worked for both the younger kids and the teens, which isn’t always the case with the audiobooks we listen to. McManus’ writing is always good natured and fun, hilarious, and only slightly exaggerated…

And don't forget, someone has to be the "bad company."