Max Yoho has a streak of self-deprecation.
“I don’t mind being a liar,” he said Saturday afternoon during a visit to promote his latest book, “Me and Aunt Izzy,” at Iola Public Library.
“But,” added Yoho, who lives in Topeka, “it’s hard to maintain your reputation as a liar when the Legislature is in session.”
It’s doubtful if Yoho has a mean bone in his 77-year-old body. He can be good-naturedly abrasive, though, in writing and storytelling to make a point or capture attention.
YOHO GREW to age 10 in Colony and much of what he writes — six books to date — is influenced by his time there. Except for a book of poetry, the stories mainly are told through observations of a 10- to 12-year-old boy.
A coy smile is the answer to whether the stories are autobiographical.
Among Yoho’s fondest memories of Colony are when neighbors gathered to listen to his grandfather play the fiddle, talk and sip lemonade — a Norman Rockwell childhood.
His father worked for the Santa Fe Railroad, which led the family to Atchison in 1944. Yoho then took on a Huck Finn existence, exploring the banks of the Missouri River, looking for arrowheads and collecting Civil War artifacts.
Another move had Yoho being graduated from Topeka High School in 1949. While attending classes at Washburn University, he wrote feature stories for the school newspaper. He also developed an appetite for books.
His work-a-day life was in a machine shop. Writing never surfaced more than in a cursory way until his first wife died in 1988 and Yoho found himself home alone and caregiver to the family cat.
That prompted a battery of poems, several directed at the cat, which eventually were published in “Felicia, These Fish Are Delicious.” The title, Yoho allowed Saturday, really had nothing to do with the poems, but rather “a title I thought I’d like to use if I ever published a book.”
AFTER RETIRING in 1992 Yoho realized he was becoming a housewife, “learning to cook, do laundry, and even pick up after myself.”
Yoho then wrote, “The Revival,” which won the 2002 J. Donald Coffin Memorial Award from the Kansas Authors Club. Next out was his collection of poems, selected as one of the “Ten Best Reads” of 2004 by book reviewer Nancy Mehl of the Wichita Eagle.
He departed from a preteen boy as storyteller in “With the Wisdom of Owls” in 2010 — used a toddler instead — but was back in step with “Me and Aunt Izzy” last year.
Yoho’s books are published through a company he and second wife Coral started, Dancing Goat Press of Topeka.
“The Revival” had been accepted by a publisher, but bankruptcy stopped the process and the Yohos were able to retrieve all rights.
