THE JOHN O'HARA SOCIETY

THE JOHN O'HARA SOCIETY

From a June 4, 1934 letter to his brother Thomas:

I leave Thursday for Hollywood, on a contract that calls for my services for at least ten weeks....I'm so excited about the trip, and the prospect of being able to buy a Ford phaeton of my very own, and a new suit, and some razor blades....St. Clair McKelway is a tall, handsome guy with blond hair and a quiet, smooth way of talking....He is taking Gibbs' place, Gibbs having had a nervous breakdown and gone away for a rest cure. Like me.

On June 4, 1966, publication of "Yostie." The Saturday Evening Post. Waiting for Winter. Gibbsville.

Irwin Yost ("Yostie") is the sixty-one year old widowed proprietor of a boating resort on a dam in The Region in the twenties. It's Decoration Day, the old name for Memorial Day, and Yostie expects the usual large crowd to take the trolley our from Gibbsville, but he's short-handed on the help, so he's forced to hire Ed Smith, an unsavory, ex-con drifter.

At the end of a long conversation Yostie, disgusted with Smith, fires him before the day is out. He then has another conversation with Mildred, his poor twenty-seven year-old waitress-cook employee, whom he suspects Smith had been bothering.

Dialogue and descriptions in this lengthy piece are top-notch O'Hara.