John Patric

John Patric (May 22, 1902 – August 31, 1985) was an American writer. He was a contributing writer for National Geographic during the mid- to late 1930s and early 1940s and was the author of two books. His 1943 book, Yankee Hobo in the Orient, sold twelve million copies domestically and internationally in both hardcover and digest format. In the 1940s, he was one of the best-known Oregon writers.

He wrote a National Geographic feature article, Imperial Rome Reborn, about fascist Italy, and after writing on World War II shipyard labor practices for Reader's Digest, he gave testimony at a United States congressional hearing. Patric or his works are briefly mentioned by other writers on a diverse range of topics, including political history, an artist biography, an author biography, media history, cultural criticism, ship building, fascism, and Korean history.

In later life, Patric was an early influence on portrait artist Chuck Close, and a perennial political activist and satirical political candidate in his home state of Washington. Clayton Fox of The Olympian described Patric using phrases like, "the bearded bard of Snohomish", "gadfly of golliwoggs and gooser of governmental gophers," and "the pricker of political stuffed shirts, scourge of junkmailers, implacable foe of pollution and corruption, aider and abetter of bees, trees and ocean breezes".

Patric was born in Snohomish, Washington, on May 22, 1902. The ground floor of the family home in which he was raised served as the Snohomish public library, surrounding him with books and ideas from an early age. The Patric household consisted of John, his parents, and four siblings. His father, Arthur Noah Patric, originally from Mill City Pennsylvania, was a Snohomish hardware merchant. His mother, Emmeline Eleanor Crueger, originally from Racine Wisconsin, served as the town librarian.

At one point during his childhood, Patric "ran away, and hoboed [his] way from Seattle to Mexico and back, and nearly all railway men [he] met were kind to [him]. They shared their lunches with [him], they helped [him] locate other trains, and sometimes let [him] ride in the cab." Patric returned to Snohomish, and graduated from Snohomish High School as valedictorian and student body President of his senior high school class. He left home shortly thereafter to continue his education, writing, and travels. This period of his life is covered in more detail in his unfinished memoir Hobo Years.

A self-styled "hobo", Patric traveled extensively throughout the Roaring Twenties. He worked sporadically as a journalist, and studied at a number of universities across the United States. By 1920, 18-year-old Patric was listed among the "Who's Who of Washington Journalists" as a staff member of The Snohomish Tribune writing on assignment to travel with a friend named Norman Brown from the state of Washington to New York City. In 1922, Patric was writing for the American Insurance Digest.

Universities he attended during this time included the University of Michigan (1924–1925), the University of Oregon, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and several others in Idaho, Minnesota, and California. Patric proudly pointed to the fact that he had never actually received a degree from any of these institutions, and that he had been expelled from eight schools in the course of his academic career. These and many other experiences are recounted in his nearly complete memoir manuscript Hobo Years.

Nearing the height of the Great Depression, Patric studied writing and journalism at The University of Texas at Austin (1932–33) because it was "the cheapest school in the country, considering its facilities". Patric involved himself in campus politics, and he wrote a number of articles and editorial pieces (often under the pen name Simon Legree) for the University newspaper named The Daily Texan. Following a highly contentious student body election, Patric got into an altercation with the university's student body President Allan Shivers, who was both the primary target of Patric's "vicious" satire and the man who would later become one of the longest serving governors in Texas history: