In Alva, OK I met a professor at NWOSU–where I spoke–who had an intriguing Harvey collectible about which he wanted to know more. It appears to be an inkwell–at least that’s what we thought–but more interesting is the pricetag on the bottom, which says “Fred Harvey Drug Department” but does not use the famed “Fred Harvey” script logo which is usually found on old Harvey items. This led us to wonder if the item predates the logo–which we believe came into use in the late 1920s, either just before or just after Ford’s death in 1928–or if some stores used non-logo pricetags much later.

Does anyone know anything more about this price tag, or about the item itself (which, of course, might not be an inkwell at all)?

Any insight would be appreciated.

Check out this kind review in the Emporia Gazette. It’s especially touching because the paper, and its famed editor William Allen White (below), played a crucial role in the west and in the popularization of Fred Harvey. The Whites and the Harveys were close friends, and the Pulitzer Prize-winner eulogized both Fred and Ford.

What’s the matter with Kansas? Nothing.

Spent a glorious weekend in Austin at my first Texas Book Festival. I was there to do a panel with historian Walter Borneman, whose book Rival Rails tells the trainiac drama of the battle between the Santa Fe and the other major roads fighting to be the dominant route to Southern California (luckily for Fred, and me, the Santa Fe won).

It was great meeting Walter and his wife and the panel was great fun–thanks to Kip Stratton for moderating, and the entire food-writing staff from the Austin Chronicle for moral support and good audience participation. (I suspect Walter and I will be empaneled again–we’re very exciteable on issues of rail and Harvey history.) But the weekend was also a social-literary whirl, and a bit of a food orgy.

Much of this is the fault of Randall Lane from the Daily Beast, a pal of mine from Penn (whose first book The Zeroes, is a terrific birds-eye view of the guys who sucked the life out of our economy). He and I bunked together at the lovely La Quinta, and he let me tag along as he urged a bunch of his Beast writers further, ever further, in search of the most indulgent local cuisine. We did a pilgrimage through the barbecue belt in Taylor, etc, ending up in a dance hall in Coupland on Friday night eating our third round of sausages.  (Thanks to Richard Rushfield for the magical meat tour photos) Sunday morning Randall and I also discovered the many joys of Migas at Cisco’s (on the kind recommendation of MM Pack at the chronicle, yum.)

Saturday night after the gala author cocktail party, went to Jeffrey’s with my Santa Fe friends Hampton and Anne Sides, and a group they knew, including Douglas Brinkley and his wife, Jonathan Alter and James Swanson. Great conversation and great food (although we didn’t sit down to dinner until 11, probably the latest I ever started dinner–but the fried oysters they sent to the table for starters made us immediately forget the hour.) Also got a chance to reconnect during the weekend with Jon Eig from Chicago and Glenn Frankel, a former editor of mine at the Post now running the UT Journalism school. (If you get a chance, watch the CSpan Book TV broadcasts of the back-to-back panels on sunday morning: Hampton, Jon and James talking about manhunts, and then Jonathan and two other writers doing a great analysis of Obama’s first year.)

Met a lot of Fredheads in Austin, and hopefully created some new ones. As the festival winded down sunday afternoon, I drove back to Dallas to fly to Oklahoma City, to begin my journey to the fabled Harvey museum in Waynoka. Stay tuned…

Temple is, in many ways, the center of the Fred Harvey universe in Texas.  From the late 1890s through the 1930s–which is when the Harvey House here was open–Temple also was the home of the sprawling Harvey farm, which produced all the milk, ice cream, eggs and poultry for the dining cars, eating houses and hotels for this part of the Harvey system, which extended all the way to Galveston.

I had visited Temple several years ago on a research trip (I was actually in the area covering Iraw War widows at nearby Fort Hood for Glamour) and at the time wondered if the Fred book would ever get done.  So it was wonderful to return finished book in hand, and so warmly welcomed by the energetic director of the Railroad & Heritage Museum at the Temple depot, Judy Covington, who has big plans for the wonderfully preserved building and the city’s Harvey heritage.  And there is no reason why she and her colleagues can’t, in the next couple years, really put Temple on the Harvey map, and make it a more regular stop on the Tour de Fred (you can also get there by passenger rail, which isn’t true any longer for a lot of Harvey locations.) It’s a great central location from which to tell especially the Texas Harvey story, but they also have all the photos and blueprints of the farm (and some members, who I met, who remember the farm) which gives them a chance to really explore how the Harvey company changed the way people ate and prepared food. (The other major Harvey farms were in Emporia, KS and Del Rio, AZ.) And there appears to be a lot of local support for what they are doing at the museum, which is great to see.

We had a terrific luncheon event there, followed by a signing and then a visit to the building nearby that houses their model trains–where I saw the model one volunteer (pictured) had done of the old Harvey House building (which, sadly, is no more; it’s the green structure right in front of him.) Thanks again to Judy and her staff, who have already invited me back in May for a Harvey event there featuring the fabulous Winslow Harvey Girls, and much more. Stay tuned for more info!

The first night of my Texas/Oklahoma mini-tour was an event in the booming Dallas suburb of Frisco, bringing together two area rail museums. The event was held in the brand-new Frisco Heritage Museum, a little gem of a rail museum, but sponsored by the Museum of the American Railroad, which is planning to move its great collection of rolling stock from its Fair Park location to the Frisco site soon–according to its director, and my gracious host, Bob LaPrelle. This would be great because Dallas/Fort Worth has a lot of trainiacs, and is also the HQ of the BNSF.

We had a really nice, diverse and engaged crowd for the event, some of whom came to see my fellow author Don Alderman, who went on first talking about his resonant memoir of trains and dads and missed connections, Letters to Jud I also got a chance to finally meet Fredhead extraordinaire Michael McMillan (pictured below), who runs the Fred Harvey yahoo discussion group and a fine Harvey House site that combines his amazing Santa Fe postcard collection with photos of what various Harvey locations look like now. (Another highlight of the visit was being babysat by my old summer camp pal Jim Rosenthal, who put me up and put up with me for the day. Thanks, Jimmy.)

Being at the Frisco reminded me of the debate I’ve been having with a couple of trainiacs about the details of the Fred Harvey/Frisco relationship (which an academic reviewer recently chided me for not writing enough about.) There is, I will admit, a bit of squishiness in certain parts of the Harvey/Frisco story, and no underlying documents I’ve ever seen. If any railfans have documents or source material in their collections, please feel free to post on the site or contact me.

And now, off to Temple, TX!

In an only slightly Fred-related piece of Americana reporting, here’s a link to my cover story in Parade on the stunning new bridge over the Hoover Dam.

What is the Fred link, you may ask? Well, Fred’s close friend E.P. Ripley, president of the Santa Fe, was closely involved in some of the earliest efforts to dam the Colorado and provide water and power for the major Santa Fe states of Arizona and California.

When you write a book, you often work very closely with people you’ve never met–and one of the great pleasures of my book touring has been getting the chance to meet some of them. As I sit here in my hotel room in Temple, TX and catch up with my email and google searching (the obsession of all authors, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise), I see I can now introduce you to two such people, without whose hard work the visual aspects of the book would never have come together.

One is Michael McMillan, who runs the Fred Harvey yahoo discussion group, and has such an amazing collection of Harvey postcards–which he allowed me to use for the book–that he now has his own Harvey site that allows you to compare old postcards to what is there now. And, last night at the Frisco Heritage Museum–at a wonderful event co-sponsored by the Museum of the American Railroad–I finally got to meet Michael, a terrific guy and a wonderful Fredhead. Here’s the blog-post he just wrote about our meeting. Great to be able to attach a face to those hundreds of emails and jpg downloads, Michael, and thanks again for all your help.

I also came across a sweet local newspaper piece in the Peabody, KS Gazette-Bulletin about a woman from Florence who helped me track down some of the most arresting images in the book of Harvey Girls, which were in the Florence Harvey House collection but had mostly been available as copies of copies. Jackie Sigwing helped me track down the original photos and had wonderful scans made so we could use them in the book.

Here are two images that got into the book because of Michael and Jackie

New review from a top historian at Clemson, in Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains

“Rich … important … the best overall study to date of the Fred Harvey Company … moreover, Fried traces this history in a pleasing literary style.”

— H. Roger Grant, Kathryn and Calhoun Lemon Professor of History, Clemson University

I get a lot of inquiries from people interested in finding out if their ancestors or living relatives were Harvey Girls or Fred Harvey employees. I also hear from journalist looking to track down Harvey Girls or their families. Some day there will be a brilliant database of all this information, cross-referenced with published stories and obituaries. Until then, there is one resource that should be better known than it is.

The “Harvey Girl Lists” are well-hidden in the website of the nascent Fred Harvey Museum in Leavenworth. While Fred’s old house on Olive Street is still being fixed up as a full-service museum, the web work that was done a couple of years ago–to at least create a rudimentary spreadsheet style resource bringing together some published sources–is still useful. Follow this link to the Harvey Girl Lists and you’ll see information on many Harvey Girls and their families, including some emails for descendants. They also have a list of Other Harvey Employees which, while limited, is at least a place to start.

Keep in mind that some of the information the Harvey Girls list comes from older published sources, including the appendix from Lesley Poling-Kempes’s The Harvey Girls. While that lively academic book is still widely available, it was primarily based on an oral history project done in 1983, and has not been updated since its publication in 1989. So a number of the people she makes come alive are, sadly, no longer alive.

If any local Harvey Girl group is keeping a registry and wants to send me a link, I’d be happy to post it. In general, a lot of the local groups are not aware there are people in other Harvey cities doing the same thing. Ideally, One Nation Under Fred should be a place where all Harvey-fascinated people can find each other.

Since readers in Oklahoma have been particularly supportive of Appetite for America—and do dearly love their Fred Harvey heritage—I’m pleased to announce an Oklahoma micro-tour, October 18 and 19, coming to the Waynoka Harvey House and then the NWOSU Library in Alva.

10/18 at the Waynoka Harvey House, 1386 Cleveland Street, Waynoka, OK I’ll be giving a talk and doing a book signing, from 7:00-8:30. This is a special event because the Waynoka Harvey House and its contagiously enthusiastic leader, Sandie Olson, were deeply involved in the process of putting together this first, full-length biography of Fred Harvey (for which I am endlessly grateful). Most of the new Harvey Girl photos featured in the book, including the one on the back cover (which has been used in reviews across the country), came from the amazing collection at the Waynoka Historical Society, and the Waynoka Harvey House is sponsoring my Oklahoma visit. For further details, contact Sandie at 580-824-5871 or waynokahs@hotmail.com.

10/19, at the Northwest Oklahoma State University Library in Alva, I’ll be giving a talk starting at 6:30, following by a book signing.

In honor of this Oklahoma mini-tour, a little known fact from page 383 of Appetite for America: the main reason that the Judy Garland movie “The Harvey Girls” got made, after a Fred Harvey-related project had been bouncing around Hollywood for years, was because of the surprise success on Broadway of, that’s right, the musical Oklahoma!. Before that, The Harvey Girls was supposed to be a Western with Clark Gable. Then it was rewritten and retrofitted so it could be described, in promotional material, as “an original Broadway music for the screen.”

Waynoka Harvey Girls from book cover

Just wanted to let Texas readers know that I’ll be doing a mini-tour there starting October 13 in Dallas at the Frisco Heritage Museum, then October 15 in Temple at the Railroad and Heritage Museum, and finishing on October 16 at the Texas Book Festival in Austin–where fellow Random House author Walter Borneman and I will be doing a panel at noon in the Lone Star Tent called “Welcome to the West.” We’ll be talking about Fred Harvey, the Santa Fe, and the other railroads that competed with them for domination between Chicago and the Pacific, basically created the West as we know it today.

Here’s the Texas schedule with links:
10/13: Dallas, Frisco Heritage Museum (co-sponsored by the Museum of the American Railroad), 7:00, tickets are $5 in advance, $7 at the door. To reserve seats, phone (214) 428-0101. (Also appearing, Don Alderman, author of Letters to Jud.)
10:15: Temple, Railroad and Heritage Museum, Fred Harvey Lunch, 11:30-1:00
10/16: Austin, Texas Book Festival, noon, Lone Star Tent I’ll be signing books in the Book Signing Tent, Congress between 10th & 11th, starting at 1:15.

FYI, I will be attending the Book Festival author party Saturday night, and will be at the festival all day Sunday, if anyone wants to connect with me that day. Then I’m off to Oklahoma for two great events at the Waynoka Harvey House on 10/18, and at NWOSU on 10/19.

Appetite for America gets a nice double-page feature spread in the new Random House Academic Marketing catalog for Business and Economics. If you teach business, hospitality, entrepreneurship or 19th and 20th century American history, check it out.  With over 50 archival recipes, it’s also perfect for culinary programs looking for an interesting historical project. Here are the pages from the catalog.

On October 3, at 10:00 am, I’ll be doing a Jewish-themed talk on Appetite for America (and The New Rabbi) at Congregation Ohev Shalom in Wallingford, PA, for their annual social action brunch (invited by my pal Edie McFall, wife of my late mentor Ed McFall.) For details: http://www.ohev.net/events/pdf/SABrunch2010.pdf

On October 7, 7:30 pm, Tredyffrin Public Library, Strafford, PA, for details http://www.tredyffrinlibraries.org/events.asp

Businesspeople from all over the country have been requesting copies of a power-point slide I’ve been showing during my talks on Fred Harvey and his hospitality empire. It is the oldest known list of the Fred Harvey company “Fundamentals” which was given to employees as far back as the 1800s. (I discovered it in the personal cookbook of a Harvey dining car chef from Texas in the 1920s.)

What is amazing about this list is how modern it sounds–which is a testimony to just how far ahead of his time Fred was, and also just how timeless the challenges are of running a good business and inspiring both employees and customers.

Besides personalizing the basics of customer service, the list also offers bold, clear statements on everything from stopping discrimination to encouraging environmentalism and locavorism. Pretty amazing for an entrepreneur who died over 100 years ago.

Fred Harvey Fundamentals

1.   Have a Sincere Interest in People
2.   Like all your Daily Contacts with Guests
3.   Radiate Cheer and Make Guest feel at Ease and at Home
4.   Remember “Travel Follows Good Food Routes”
5.   Keep Well Informed and Updated on the Condition, Origin and Season of different Supplies, and the Serving of Same
6.   Be Human and Be Yourself
7.   Courtesy and a Smile Pay Dividends
8.   Real Service is Without Discrimination
9.   Preserve or Create— Never Destroy
10. Tact is an Asset and Honesty is still a Virtue

From Appetite for America: How Visionary Businessman Fred Harvey Built a Railroad Hospitality Empire that Civilized the Wild West by Stephen Fried, p 92

Just found this “review” on a blog called Whiskey Rebel’s Diary from San Marcos, TX. Pretty hilarious, over-the-top and occasionally too true.

08/25/10
I just finished off “Appetite for America” by an author named Stephen Fried. It’s just the sort of social history book I always scoop up at the library. It covers the rise and fall approximately 90 years later of the Fred Harvey food empire that pre-dated Whitecastle, A&W, Howard Johnson’s and other early chain outlets. The founder Fred started his business after enduring a lot of piss poor meals on trains he experienced as a frequent traveling salesman. He hired a workforce of single girls to serve the chow at his depot restaurants in the waning days of the wild west and eventually expanded building hotels, bookstores and serving food on trains. His family continued expanding after his death eventually developing the grand canyon for tourism. Conveniently, Route 66 ran adjacent to the main railroad he service, the Sante Fe, which meant that Fred Harvey was in on the tourist trade that eminated from the “Mother road”. As if this wasn’t enough, the author discusses the huge influence Fred Harvey had on Walt Disney.

Harvey had some interesting ways of doing business that are well explored. He demanded his staffs make fresh coffee every couple hours, a novelty in the late 1800’s. He served superb food cooked often by imported chefs, featuring fresh local goods alongside stuff shipped in, which is the system in vogue with leading chefs of today like Gordon Ramsey and food network superstars. An appendix includes many actual recipes. Fred Harvey himself was known for pulling surprise visits. If he found a sloppy restaurant, he’d get the staffs attention by yanking the linen tablecloth off of a table, sending place settings flying about the room. He had a strict uniform policy for his “Harvey girls” and dormitories they lived in (chaperoned heavily). They worked 6 month shifts and often in spite of what by todays standards seem like tough rules, stayed with the company for many years.

Harvey made a practice of never turning away folks of any race away. He did require that men in his formal dining rooms wear a jacket; if you didn’t want to, you could eat in a less formal lunchroom. The restaurant policy was that if a customer couldn’t afford to eat, they’d be served anyway and treated as well as other guests. During the dustbowl years a lot of Okies were fed when they were obviously broke flatter than a pissant. This sort of generosity led to many people really loving the company.

Hey, I don’t think chains could get away with that sort of program today. They don’t even try to make you love ’em though. I’ve been pissing and moaning around here about the chicken chains all requiring you to buy their crappy string beans, stale rolls and other sides to qualify for the privilege of buying their chicken.

Harvey didn’t serve the slop we know as “fast food.” He served quality food as quickly as possible designed for travelers who had 30 minute stops to eat and shit.

I wish there was an avenging angel of Taco Hell who would pop in and check to see if they were back to serving 1/3rd to 1/2 full taco shells rather than what they advertise.

Colonel Sanders sold chicken; KFC sells sides and discourages you from eating just chicken since the markup is so much higher on their fountain drinks and sides.

I like to think Harvey would have horsewhipped employees with such selfish, greedy perspectives.

and quite a handsome young man, too.