THE JOHN O'HARA SOCIETY

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                                                         A Social Sleuth

March 22, 1930, publication of "On His Hands." The New Yorker. The Doctor's Son.

Tod Sloane, a rich, spoiled, trust-fund college kid, goes to Dayton, Ohio to check out the family of a girl who wants to marry him.

"Well, she met me at the station, in a old Pierce limousine. That was a pretty good start, because no damn nouveau-riche family has a old Pierce limousine. They'd have a brand-new shiny wagon, all brass. So that old Pierce was a good sign. But still there was that unfortunate name. You couldn't tell if she was one of the real old German families or just a pork-packer's daughter."
"... So when I went in the library her father was there....I couldn't dope this guy...(he) went to M.I.T., which might make him a Cabot or an iron-worker, and I didn't have the nerve to ask where he went to prep school...
"...The party didn't prove anything either...The right kind of people were nice to the kid and she was cut in on all the time, but that only proved something I know, namely, that she is a damned attractive babe. Why else would I bother with her?
...I stayed in dear old Dayton, Ohio, two days, and if you must know, didn't learn a god-damn thing."

                                                   Another Class of Person

On March 22, 1947, publication of "Someone to Trust." The New Yorker. Hellbox.

Tommy,a petty crook on the run from gangsters, persuades his former girl friend Maida to let him hide out in her New York apartment.