Patrick Downey of Seymour holds copies of the two books he has written, “7 Habits of Highly Effective Slackers” and “If You Think That’s Bad…” Zach Spicer | The Tribune
Zach Spicer | The Tribune
Patrick Downey of Seymour points at a map showing where he has driven through 48 states and the Canadian provinces.
Zach Spicer | The Tribune
Patrick Downey sits in the driver’s seat of the 1989 Ford Tempo he used to own.
Submitted photo
Patrick Downey’s 1989 Lincoln Town Car is parked near the Maine border. “Since this was the time before selfies, I would take pictures of my car in front of exotic locations,” he said.
Submitted photo
Patrick Downey’s 1989 Lincoln Town Car sits near the Montana border.
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Patrick Downey’s 1989 Ford Tempo is parked near a camping spot during one of his solo trips in college.
Submitted photo
Submitted photo
Patrick Downey sits in the driver’s seat of a General Lee vehicle from the television show “The Dukes of Hazzard” as Ben Jones, who played the role of Cooter Davenport in the show, stands outside for a photo in West Virginia.
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Patrick Downey, left, gets a photo with Bruce Atkins, who played the role of Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane on the television show “The Dukes of Hazzard,” as they dine at Shoney’s in Johnson City, Tennessee.
Submitted photo
Submitted photo
Patrick Downey followed his parents’ rule of calling to check in once per day whenever he was out exploring while on solo trips in college.
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Downey
By Zach Spicer | The Tribune
You know that Johnny Cash song “I’ve Been Everywhere?”
“I’ve been everywhere, man / Crossed the deserts bare, man / I’ve breathed the mountain air, man / Of travel I’ve had my share, man / I’ve been everywhere” is the chorus.
Patrick Downey could probably write his own version.
When his friends weren’t able to go on a spring break trip during his freshman year in college, he went solo. By his senior year, he had driven through 48 of the 50 states. He also ventured into the Canadian provinces.
The San Jose, California, native also has been everywhere while holding more than 30 jobs over the years. Some of those also have involved other modes of transportation, including a limousine and a school bus.
Stories about the solo trips are among the several shared in his first book, “If You Think That’s Bad…” Stories about his jobs are among those in his second book and newest release, “7 Habits of Highly Effective Slackers.”
“Writing a book for the first time was certainly the biggest new thing I had done in a long time, and it felt really good to do something like publishing it, getting proofreaders, getting people to do artwork and then creating a website,” the 44-year-old Seymour man said. “I had totally no experience doing that, so that was the same sort of thing that it just was really good to do something new.”
Growing up in California but going to a boarding school in Wisconsin and college in Minnesota, Downey said those annual commutes, either by plane, train or automobile, inspired lore that he began writing for the school newspaper.
At the start of his freshman year at Martin Luther College in New Ulm, Minnesota, in 1996, he and his friends committed to taking an epic spring break trip.
“I had an evening job assembling motors for Nordic Track and put $20 per week into my spring break fund,” Downey said. “By March, I had $500, but my friends had saved nothing and all bailed out.”
His friends made arrangements to go home or stay with relatives, so with the college dorm closed, Downey got in his 1989 Ford Tempo with his $500 and just started driving.
“I figured I would drive the biggest circle I could accomplish that would bring me back to Minnesota in one week,” he said.
On the second day, he had breakfast in downtown Chicago and lunch in the Purdue University cafeteria. He even passed through Seymour on Interstate 65 heading down to Louisville, Kentucky, for the night, obviously not knowing at the time he would later wind up living there.
He went on to explore music in Nashville, Tennessee, and Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee, driving as far south as northern Mississippi and as far west as Arkansas before heading back up to Minnesota.
“During that trip and from then on, I kept a AAA roadmap in my glove box and would trace the highways in black marker,” he said. “Any time I went anywhere, I would try to take an unfamiliar route.”
When he was 19, he bought a white 1989 Lincoln Town Car in California after his Tempo died while he was driving through the desert in Nevada on his way home. He then spent the summer charting a two-week Canadian route back to Minnesota by way of Vancouver, Banff, Edmonton and Winnipeg.
His junior year, while studying his atlas during 17th Century British literature, he realized he would be able to visit all 48 states before graduation if he made it a priority.
“Hence my motivation for taking the Vermont route back from a wedding in Detroit, working a summer job at a gas station in Montana or attending the University of Alabama’s homecoming football game in 1998,” Downey said.
He still vividly remembers his senior year when he visited his 48th state, Oklahoma. Surrounded by wide-open ranch land, Downey pulled off of a country road and laid on the hood of his car.
“I pulled over, looking at the stars and thinking, ‘This is it. I’ve made it to all 48 states,’” he said.
Each time he had decided to go on a trip, his parents had a rule for him.
“I was supposed to find a payphone and check in every day,” Downey said. “I just remember feeling like, ‘Well, as long as I do that, I can really just drive anywhere I want to.’ I’m thankful that I grew up when I did so that I could have type of freedom. I don’t know that it would have been as adventurous. It really was like a modern-day explorer type thing.”
After he graduated from college, he flew to Alaska and Hawaii, so that completed all 50 states.
He also has been to Mexico several times, including once as a chaperone for a two-week trip.
“I don’t speak any Spanish, but one of my friends from college was the Spanish teacher at the Lutheran high school I was at in Wisconsin,” Downey said. “Two days before the trip, the male Spanish teacher couldn’t go, so she asked me if I would. It was pretty silly. I’m in charge of students, but I don’t speak any Spanish. They spoke better Spanish than me.”
Before he married when he was 30, he took another trip through Canada.
“I would spend my summer just driving,” Downey said. “I would get in my car and just take off like a month and just go exploring. I wouldn’t say I like camping, but it’s the cheap way to be able to be gone for that long. I like hiking, so that’s a big thing that I’ve always done is I’ve gone to the woods and gone hiking different places.”
Downey said there’s just something special about being behind the wheel.
“I definitely think it’s freedom,” he said. “It’s exciting, and I think I’m really thankful that I was doing all of this before GPS and cellphones, so I really had to sit down with this map and try to figure out where I was. It was really exploring and relying on, figuring out situations, like if your car breaks down or where you’re going to spend the night or where campgrounds are.”
Downey has had a bus driver’s license since he was 21, and he was a limousine driver in the early 2000s. He had a cellphone, but he still used paper maps and telephone books to take people where they needed to go.
In 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic shut down schools, Downey took time to put together a collection of stories, including several from his trips over the years. That resulted in his first book.
“As my wife can attest, I have been talking about writing a book my entire life,” he said. “My previous job had me commuting back and forth to Louisville, so when the pandemic forced me to work from home, I decided to keep my schedule going of getting up at 5 a.m. and use that former commute time to finally get this book done.”
About a year later, he put together his second book, another collection of stories but this time focused on goofy stories from working so many different jobs.
His first job was a paperboy at age 12, and he has had a job every year since, usually more than one at a time. He’s currently on job No. 34 (counselor at Trinity Lutheran High School in Seymour) and No. 35 (substitute bus driver for Seymour Community School Corp.).
“I had written a lot of stories and I was trying to find a common theme, and I had a lot that had to do with just awkward or funny things that had happened at different workplaces, so I realized I had enough of those stories to create one whole book about that,” Downey said.
Now, he has a third book in the works.
“I already have most of the stories actually for the third one. That one’s going to be called ‘Barefoot in Denny’s and Other Poor Choices,’” he said, smiling.
If that title alone makes you want to read it, stay tuned to patdowney.com to see when it’s released.