Remembering Rancid Crabtree

Could Rancid Crabtree have been right about avoiding baths in order to build up "the protective crust?"

Is Patrick F. McManus the most influential American author in the last 50 years? Well! Maybe not the most influential within the academic world, but he certainly is in the world I live in where people get the work done.

We're talking about driving trucks, sawing lumber, fixing cars, plowin' the fields, cookin' and cleanin', building houses, selling stuff, and raising kids. We're talking about people who hunt and fish.

Wherever we common people gather you will always find those who know and understand McManus philosophy.

That is why I brought up the matter of Rancid Crabtree's theory of "protective crust" at our Over the Hill Gang meeting last Friday.

We discussed the facts, as we know them. Rancid Crabtree was one of the greatest influences on the young McManus, growing up in rural Idaho with his mother, sister (the Troll), and stepfather. While Rancid had no high social standing among the neighbors, he was a beacon of knowledge to Pat and his select circle of friends such as Retch Sweeney, Erfil, Vermin, Olga Bonemarrow, and Crazy Eddy Muldoon.

There were even those who thought the greatly feared game warden, Snead, might have learned crafty things by observing the wild and free life of Rancid Crabtree.

Most students of McManus will recall he, Sweeney, and Crabtree were carrying out a deer at night in a snowstorm.

Sweeney suddenly spoke up saying, "Hey, I thought there were supposed to be only three of us carrying this deer."

That's when the fourth person spoke up, "There aren't supposed to be any carrying this deer, because it was poached." The voice was Snead's.

I digress. Rancid went to great extremes to avoid baths, showers, or anything, which might harm his protective crust.

After acquiring a good crust he knew that being out in a day of high humidity, or even a little rain wouldn't do harm, but soap and water were out of the question.

This subject recently came up nationally because some nut wrote to Dear Abby saying he had retired from his job after being married for 35 years and discovered his wife "didn't take a bath every day."

He said this disgusting discovery has ruined his like, he's contemplating divorce, has no love life, and is sleeping in a separate bedroom.

Without calling him a complete ding-a-ling, Abby tried to point out that he should readjust his attitude and she wondered why if he thought his wife was unclean, it took him 35 years to figure it out.

More interesting have been letters from both doctors and nurses pointing out the scrubbing one's body too much is not a good idea.

A typical response: "I'm a nurse, but you don't have to be a nurse to know that a few dead skin cells aren't harmful. For someone with dry skin, a daily bath can do more harm than good."

Another one: "We Americans are so obsessed with cleanliness that we may be endangering our health. Exposure to bacteria helps us to develop antibodies to fight disease. Studies are under way to see if the autoimmune disease may be at least partly due to so mush cleanliness that our immune systems have nothing to do but attack healthy tissue."

This person also notes that Europeans bathe less than Americans, and our ancestors got by just fine with one bath a week.

One noteworthy letter to Dear Abby on this issue was from a man in Cincinnati who said, "Dear Abby: If that jackass figured out a way to make a lady work up a sweat, maybe they could shower together."

Haven't been in touch with my old friend Pat McManus for several years, but now I'm anxious to talk to him again.

Want to find out if Rancid Crabtree is still alive so I can congratulate him for figuring out years ago what many of us have suspected all along. His discovery is especially meaningful now that the soaring prices have made bathing more wasteful.