Hospitality Southwest Style

Hi folks! Linda Farmer Harris here. Thanks for stopping by.

I’m putting the final touches on my Easter Sunday menu. I’m thinking about Easter eggs – scrambled, not chocolate, served over Portobello mushrooms. That made me wonder how a Fred Harvey chef would prepare that dish.

I discovered the Harvey Girls and their style of Southwest hospitality in the February 1992 issue of Texas Highways. Rosa Walston Latimer wrote about this unique group of women in Southwest history. That began my admiration, no, my downright love affair, with these courageous young women who wanted to be independent and self-sufficient.

From a variety of backgrounds, many of them supported parents and siblings back home on $17.50 in wages plus tips, while they carved out a future for themselves. They also received free room, board, clean uniforms, and a train pass to their training facility. Your family tree may have a Harvey Girl among its branches.

From the late 1800s to the mid-1950s Harvey House restaurants and dining rooms upheld their tradition of quality food, high standards of service, and reasonable prices. The Harvey Girls served weary travelers gourmet meals in thirty minutes. Some served in restaurants, others in lunchrooms. All donned the standard uniform of black or white starched skirt, high-collared blouse, with a bib and apron. They served their patrons with practiced precision and polished etiquette.

Each patron would tell their waitress whether they preferred coffee, hot tea, iced tea or milk. The cup code enabled their choice to be served quickly. If the waitress left the cup right side up in its saucer, that meant coffee. Upside down meant hot tea. Upside down, but tilted against the saucer meant iced tea. Upside down, away from the saucer meant milk. Patrons who changed the positions of their cups risked getting the wrong drink.

The advertisement for “young women 18 to 30 years of age, of good character, attractive and intelligent” as waitresses in Harvey Eating Houses on the Santa Fe Railroad in the West is legendary. Their contribution to the growth of the American West is preserved in poetry, song, and film. The humorist, Will Rogers, observed that the Harvey Houses kept the West in food and wives.

You’ve probably seen the 1946 musical romance movie The Harvey Girls, starring Judy Garland, as a mail order bride. You may have sung “On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe” along with her. Visit http://harvey-house.info/blog-hg/category/fred-harvey/ to watch a 1946 trailer.

When Fred Harvey entered the hospitality arena, Americans were still looking to England and France to define style and substance of an elegant lifestyle. Harvey gave them a look at their own country, encouraged them to explore places like the Grand Canyon, take home Indian artifacts, dine on exquisite regional foods, all the while taking in the Wild West. He’s credited with inventing the “Santa Fe style.”

At a time when the American West had a reputation of being hospitality-challenged, Fred Harvey offered meals that were culinary masterpieces. Cowboys could eat a steak that wasn’t cooked to resemble shoe leather, and cowgirls could toss aside “mountain oysters” and taste fresh Maine oysters. Reading through the recipes in The Harvey House Cookbook by George H. Foster and Peter C. Weiglin and Stephen Fried’s Appetite for America: Fred Harvey and the Business of Civilizing the Wild West--One Meal at a Time will make you hungry and motivate you to try your hand at cooking up some of the recipes.

While you read recipes like Fred Harvey’s Chocolate Custard—yum—you will chuckle at some of the directions and ingredients in other recipes. I still wonder about macaroni that can be coiled around the bottom of a buttered mold or exactly what is loppered milk. I’ve gathered the ingredients for Hungarian Beef Goulash with Potato Dumplings for Sunday dinner.

At its peak, Harvey Girls worked in over sixty-five restaurants and lunch counters, at a dozen large hotels. We often take up the Fred Harvey story when he was at the height of being the “father of the American service industry.” We don’t hear much about him starting at the bottom of the ladder as a dishwasher — a pot walloper. He learned the restaurant business from the ground up. As a government postal worker, he participated in the nation’s first traveling post office. He had first hand experience about the miserable plight of travelers and their meals.

Stephen Fried’s Appetite for America gives a fresh look and some little known facts about Fred and the Harvey Girls. Fried called Fred Harvey “the founding father of the American service industry” and creator of one of the first nationally recognized American brands. Visit http://www.stephenfried.com/blog/ for a wealth of information about Fred Harvey and the Harvey Girls.

Lesley Poling-Kempes wrote The Harvey Girls: Women Who Opened the West (1989). It is one of the first definitive works on the topic. She also produced a two-book historical paper doll fashion series, which is very valuable for writers and researchers in describing outer and inner wear for the women at work and play. View her books at http://www.lesleypoling-kempes.com/mombooks.html.

There have been fictional accounts, created from historically accurate sources, about the Harvey Girls. My co-author, Artie Stockton, and I submitted our first Harvey Girl novel, Three Came by Rail, in May 1994. Tracie Peterson penned her delightful Desert Rose trilogy beginning with Shadows of the Canyon in 2002. Sheila Wood Foard wrote Harvey Girl (2006) for teens. Frances M. Wood wrote When Molly was a Harvey Girl (2010), a fictional account of her great-grandmother’s experience as a Harvey Girl.

During the research trips for Three Came by Rail, I had the opportunity to visit the Castaneda hotel and tour of some of the women’s room. Trips included Lamy, Belen, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Las Vegas. Below, I’m at the Castaneda and below that is an old picture of the whole hotel.

Cynthia Hickey, who writes on the 3rd of each month for this CFHS blog, has an upcoming four book series "Finding Love the Harvey Girl Way" beginning in July, 2013. The first book is Cooking Up Love. Here's a preview-- TABITHA MCCLELLAND seeks employment as onr of "Harvey's Girls", moving to Topeka, Kansas, and a new life out West. Knowing one of the restrictions of her job is to remain single, Tabitha is dismayed when she begins to have feelings for the restaurant's cook. Surely, love can't be God's will for her life. It didn't go along with her plans at all. ADAM FOSTER works as a cook at Fred Harvey's restaurant in Topeka in order to save money to open his own restaurant in California. Although his parents are helping with half of the needed funds, he wants to pull his weight and signs a six-month contract with Fred Harvey. The last thing he wants is to fall in love. Tabitha wants a life of adventure. Adam wants to be an entrepreneur. Can they set aside their separate goals and find what truly matters?

The Harvey House web site at http://www.harveyhouses.net/index.html has a collection of photographs, links, and comments about various Harvey Houses in Arizona, California, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas.

Another site with pictures and information is http://harvey-house.info/.

New information about restored and renovated Harvey Houses is raising awareness and renewing interest in this era in history. The Castaneda Hotel in Las Vegas, New Mexico, considered one of the nation’s most promising and most endangered historical landmark is on the brink of rising from closure. News reports say that it will be restored. That’s great news.

Tom VanWormer, the "unofficial coordinator" for the Harvey Girls in Colorado, especially on the Colorado Midland, was able to document reimbursements from the Fred Harvey Company to the Colorado Midland in a 1893 ledger. Mr. VanWormer confirmed the discovery of three possibly four “new” Harvey locations in Colorado–which the company ran from 1890-1895, the years the Santa Fe owned the Colorado Midland. So it can now be reported there were Harvey Houses and Harvey Girls in: Cascade, Idyllwild, and Leadville.

It's been a pleasure sharing a bit about one of my passions with you.

Oh, the Harvey Chef served his eggs with minced chicken, mushrooms, and garnished with buttered asparagus tips.

Come back on April 27th and see what's going on.

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