THE JOHN O'HARA SOCIETY

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                                                            Pottsville

One visit should do it. You drive on Route 78 into Pennsylvania, past Eaton and Allentown, then take Route 61 north. Here are some of the sights:

On the right is the Country Club, where Pat Collins and Whit Hofman sat in the locker room in their underwear drinking gin and ginger ale and swapping family secrets ("Pat Collins") and where Julian English, in that crowded smoking room on Christmas Eve 1930, threw the drink in Harry Reilly's face (Appointment in Samarra).

You then reach Pottsville itself. On the left is the Episcopal church, the scene of Joe Chapin's funeral in 1945 (Ten North Frederick).

Then turn left onto Mahantongo (Lantenengo) Street. On the left is the Necho Allen Hotel (John Gibb Hotel), the Pottsville Republican newpaper building (Bob Hooker's The Strandard), and the house where John O'Hara (Jimmy Malloy) was born and where Dr. O'Hara (Dr. Malloy) had his medical office. A little further up is a parking lot, site of the Pottsville (Gibbsville) Club, where Julian had the fight with Froggy Ogden. Then there's St. Patrick's (SS. Peter and Paul) Roman Catholic church, where John O'Hara was an altar boy.

Two blocks up on the right is #606, John O'Hara's boyhood home from 1916 to 1928. Further up Mahantongo Street are (or what used to be) the old mansions. Continue for several miles and you get to Frackville (Mountain City), where in 1927 Alfred Eaton met Natalie Benziger (From the Terrace).

There's a self-guided walking tour available from the Visitors Center.
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Pamela C. Mac Arthur has contributed to the Pottsville experience in ther two excellent books. experience.

John O'Hara's Anthracite Region (Arcadia Publishing 1999). Out of print but can be found somewhere on ther web. Old photographs and postcards of the area from the 1880's to 1945. At the bottom of each picture the author gives her own short description (Example: "In 1911 this tranquil scene of the lake at Eagles Mere could give a feeling of peace to an aristocratic family such as the Chapins"). I recognized the department store where the young Julian English did his shoplifting, as well as the freight train he hopped to escape the police who chased him.

The Genteel John O'Hara (Peter Lang AG 2009). The author lived several years in Pottsville. She did extensive research and interviews. She succeeded in her " ... attempt to portray a loving, polished gentleman and family man who suffered from neglect by the literary world yet became not only a literary artist  but a gentleman ... who recreated 'The Anthracite Region' and its people so well that he recorded the late Ninteenth Century and the first half of the Twentieth Century in novelistic form."