[5] He wrote a National Geographic feature article, Imperial Rome Reborn, about fascist Italy,[6] and after writing on World War II shipyard labor practices for Reader's Digest, he gave testimony at a United States congressional hearing.

[14] 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".

The ground floor of the family home in which he was raised served as the Snohomish public library,[15] surrounding him with books and ideas from an early age.

[17] 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].

[26] Nearing the height of the Great Depression, Patric studied writing and journalism at The University of Texas at Austin (1932–33)[8] because it was "the cheapest school in the country, considering its facilities".

Not to be denied, Patric defied an administration threat of expulsion and printed "The Blunderbuss," a devilish rebel newspaper of ten pages that caustically insulted Shivers and his friends.

Patric distributed "The Blunderbuss" on a Saturday evening (...) of May 13, 1933 (when the) two protagonists met and traded heavy blows; one was the tramp journalist who later wrote for Reader's Digest and National Geographic, the other was the student president who later did all right for himself, too.

At turns light-hearted or biting, these letters addressed a number of aspects American life during the Depression, The final installment announced his arrival in Carmel, California, by October 10, 1933.

Saving nearly $400 during the Great Depression selling rubber-stamp supplies[24] while living in his Lincoln, Patric traveled to Seattle in order to book passage for Japan in 1934 aboard the NYK vessel Heian Maru.

Patric and Wilder Lane's writings[32] from this time expressed similar deep concerns about governmental expansion and "the rise of the state's role in the lives of individuals" as Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal struggled to help the nation recover from the Great Depression.

The edition of June 20, 1943, of The New York Times featured a review of this work, stating that Patric displayed "qualities of good sense and poise and instinct for honest reporting sufficiently to give his excellent account of Japan's 'common man' the favorable reception it deserves.

I can, in a good small town, and in the course of errands that seem perfectly legitimate (and are, except that I extend their numbers by buying a meal in four restaurants-soup and a glass of milk in the first place; hot beef sandwich in the second; piece of cake in the third; 'just coffee, please' in the fourth).

Each Hobo will take about ten hours to read and, because the buyers have met the author and have an inscribed copy, they lend the book more than usual.

[37]Patric's wartime contributions to the Reader's Digest stirred controversy, and in May 1943 he was invited to give testimony before the House of Representatives' Committee on the Merchant Marine and Fisheries executive hearings, in which he contended that labor union rules were having a negative impact on shipyard productivity during World War II, and made controversial recommendations to address them.

[7] During the 1940s and early 1950s, Patric lived frugally on his remote 160-acre backwoods ranch at Frying Pan Creek, near Florence, Oregon.

[39] He made sporadic but regular appearances in the print media of this period, on book tours, commenting on events of the day in letters to the editor, and interviews in Libertarian and conservative publications such as the following excerpts from Faith and Freedom,[37] March 1955: Pat lives a spartan life because he rebels at government compulsion.

Once Pat turned down a lucrative job because "earning that much would have increased my involuntary financing of the further destruction with tax money of American freedom by the government in Washington."

Bidpai reported to the King: "Well, sire, your books on religion, philosophy, morals and ethics, all they say is this: Love nothing but that which is good; and then do everything thou lovest to do.

"After many years of worldwide travel, writing, and life at Frying Pan Creek, Patric retired to his childhood home in Snohomish, Washington.

[9] Under this pseudonym, Patric made regular appearances on Washington state election ballots over a period lasting more than two decades beginning in late 1960.

The jury returned a guilty verdict, Patric's motions for arrest of judgement and new trial were denied, however, and he was sentenced to serve up to 10 years in prison.

He eventually won his release in a subsequent hearing, while "acting as his own attorney, Patric based his defense on the contention that he had always been a screwball",[45] wrote Jack O'Donnell of The Herald (Everett, Washington).

[47] Patric was known to make a point of paying his candidacy filing fee entirely with loose change[14] and to happily supply unwary journalists who failed to check their facts with an untruthful list of his qualifications for public office, such as being an "FBI Special Agent", "mayor", "acting treasurer", "deputy sheriff", or "school board member" and being "married with three children".

"[48] In the same interview, he distributed a written sheet of paper that was stamped at the top, "Patric for governor, temporary headquarters, Snohomish county jail, Everett, WA".

[48] Patric ran in the following elections: From an interview with Northwest historian and Everett Public Library librarian David Dilgard on April 2, 2015: John's lifestyle, including his diet, was highly idiosyncratic and he was a heavy smoker.

Like Diogenes, his lifestyle was austere and he spent a lot of his time looking for honesty and virtue in his fellow man and loudly proclaiming that he had failed to find it.

We've got John's own copies of his Saturday Evening Free Press, unfortunately not a complete run, but we've gradually added to it over the years and we have a pretty extensive collection of that publication.

While still a kid he learned to operate a linotype machine and he took lifelong pride in his skills at cranking out hot metal type, hence the esoteric epitaph on his headstone in the Snohomish GAR Cemetery- "A Little Eccentric, But Justified."