Thanks to Jenny Kimball, the Chairman of the Board at La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe for her kind words about the book, and my talk there, in a post on her blog. Black Bart and I had a great time there in early September, and are looking forward to returning in April for what sounds like it will be a wonderful weekend of Mary Colter-ana in Santa Fe.

Stay tuned for details and, if you’re in Santa Fe, stop by the hotel, drink in the Harvey-ana of the main lobby, and go eat one of chef Lane Warner’s yummy dishes. (BB was crestfallen that, on our last visit, she didn’t get a chance to have her favorite La Fonda Shrimp Cocktail in Spicy Horseradish-Tomatillo Sauce.)

Here’s a shot of me and Jenny taken at La Fonda’s wonderful old Mary Colter-designed bar.

Our second Western tour for the book ended in Sacramento, CA, where the nation’s top trainiac museum, the California State Railroad Museum, invited us for two days of Harvey events. Our appearance coincided with the city’s annual Gold Rush Days. For this Labor Day weekend event, the streets in Old Sacramento–were the museum is located–are all covered with new/old dirt to simulate frontier life. There are also stagecoaches running up and down the street, people in period costumes and the occasional simulated gunfight. (One night at our hotel bar, we met two scruffy middle-aged guys who were drinking beers and watching football; Black Bart asked what they did for a living and they, literally, said “we’re gunfighters, ma’am.”)

Thanks to museum director Paul Hammond and his staff, we had a terrific time. On Saturday afternoon, they showed The Harvey Girls on a big screen in the auditorium, after which I took questions and told some of the odd saga of how it got to the screen. Then the museum debuted its “Rails and Reels: Hollywood, Trains And the Making of Motion Pictures” exhibit afterwards, and had a family of Harvey Girls (a mother and her lovely daughters, all wearing costumes the mom had made) serving finger foods from the Harvey recipes while I signed books.

The next day there was another showing of the movie, and then I gave a talk, followed by a signing. We met a number of extremely enthused Fredheads–in the bookstore before the talk and in the auditorium after.

Then we got a tour of the rest of the place–which really is extraordinary. Besides all the amazing engines (we loved the Southern Pacific double engine with the cab in the front), they have a fully-restored Pullman sleeping car that actually rocks like a real train, and it’s attached to one of the original Fred Harvey Santa Fe dining cars from the 1930s, The Cochiti, fully restored and also displaying an amazing array of rail china from different dining cars (I especially liked the rather oddly arty design from the Pennsylvania Railroad.)

While we were rail-china giddy, we were taken to the giftshop and shown something they only have there–since the shop sells the wonderful reproductions of Mary Colter’s Mimbreno china, and some of the pieces arrive broken, they send the pieces to this jeweler who makes them into bracelets, earrings and necklaces. We especially oogled a bracelet made out of Mimbreno fish–our favorite of the animal patterns. (We’ll register for it some day when we renew our vows; in fact we may just renew our vows for the china.)

We flew home on an ungodly-early morning nonstop on Labor Day, and the Tour de Fred II was completed. I’m scheduled to hit the road again October 13th, when I’ll start showing up in Texas and Oklahoma. More on that to come.

While visiting the Belen Harvey House Museum, I saw this very cool sculpture of a Harvey Girl, “Roses in the Desert” by Curtis Fort, a bronze artists in Tatum, NM. He doesn’t have the sculpture up on his site yet, but his wife did send me some photos of it, which I pass on to Fredheads everywhere. You can purchase the sculpture from the museum. It’s about 26 inches high and spins.

Most Fredheads know about the fabled Montezuma hotel—the Harvey company’s first major resort, in Las Vegas, NM, which opened in 1882, burned down in 1884, was rebuilt (with a new design by famed Chicago architects Burnham & Root) in 1885 and promptly burned down again the same year (while Fred’s wife and family were staying there), and then was rebuilt again.

While Fred Harvey only ran the hotel for its first few years—a fact newly established in Appetite for America—the building and Las Vegas itself (where the company ran trackside hotels and restaurants for decades) have an incredibly strong Harvey heritage.

So we were thrilled to be invited to lecture there–and even sleep over in one of the handful of private guest rooms. (They also added Harvey-inspired dishes in the dining hall.)

The Montezuma was a shell for years, abandoned by the railroad at the turn of the century, but it was saved by United World College of the American West, which took it over, lovingly (and expensively) restored it, and made it the cornerstone of its remote US campus for 200 international high school students. The building and the campus are absolutely stunning, yet it’s rare that the public gets to see them. But the college not only invited me to give a talk, but offered a public tour of the facility (something I hope they start doing more often, now that interest in Fred is rising.)

It was a really special night, one of the most engaged and feisty crowds we’ve ever had–including kids as young as grade-schoolers who had done school projects on Harvey Girls, and Las Vegas lifers who remembered well when the Montezuma was abandoned and sad. Had more conversations, during and after the Q&A, about delicate political issues in the book than ever before. A fascinating woman named Brown Bear, who works at the local Tome on the Range bookstore (which handled books at the event), pulled me aside after helping with the signing to let me know of one line in the book that really bugged her–and rightly so. On page 67 I list among the citizens of Las Vegas in the 1800s “immigrants from Mexico” which, as she pointed out, is epically politically incorrect (the Mexicans were, of course, there first. Oy. Thank goodness for next editions.)

Also, in line, a kid who couldn’t have been more than 13 or 14 asked me whether the idea of “Civilizing the West” didn’t also have some negative connotations. I agreed that it did, and asked that after he read the book, he get back to me and see if he felt I was even-handed about those issues.

None of this intellectual engagement is surprising, because the UWC is such an ambitious and thought-provoking place. Thanks again to everyone involved in bringing us there, especially our new friend Tim Crofton–the theatre arts instructor who took great care of us and gave an utterly hilarious introduction explaining all the similarities between himself and Fred–and his son Ruaidhri (pronounced “Rory”), who is quickly becoming the Fred Harvey history expert of the Montezuma, and now runs the public tours of the place and is building a little Harvey/Montezuma Castle museum. He is, I believe, the next generation of Fredhead.

There’s nothing quite like talking about Fred in Santa Fe–it feels, in many ways, like a Harvey homecoming. Santa Fe is the first place in the Southwest that Black Bart and I ever visited, nearly twenty years ago, and it was our growing fascination with all the things we saw, ate and hooked in northern New Mexico that originally fueled the whole Appetite for America project. We felt like tourists (or “dudes” as they were always called) here for so long, but have met so many people in the past couple years that we almost feel, dare I say it, like locals. (You know you’re a local when you have a dry cleaner you know not to go back to.)

So we were thrilled to be invited back, courtesy of historic La Fonda hotel and Collected Works bookshop, and spoke to a large and very engaged crowd in La Terrazza, the airy terrace auditorium overlooking the city, followed by a signing and a lovely wine reception. The hotel also put us up in a wonderful room on the Terrace level, which was built on top of the original hotel (the rooms have a connected balcony, ours overlooking Loretto Chapel) and has its own concierge (although we still rely on Steve downstairs, since Fred is with him.)

We met lots of former Harvey employees at the talk, as well as newbie Santa Feans who were using the book as their primer on the Southwest, other locals who couldn’t make it to the talk I gave in April (which we did without slides when the lights went out in town) and one fascinating scientist from China who was attending a fossil fuel convention at the hotel and thought people in China should know the story of Fred Harvey and the American West.

We got a chance to spend some time with our cousin Peggy, who lives in town, as well as our local Fred pals Annadru Lampert from La Fonda and Fran Levine from the New Mexico History Museum (who are already cooking up a return in April for Mary Colter’s birthday, stay posted), and we met dynamic La Fonda Chairman Jenny Kimball (a soon-to-be Fredhead, I predict, who claims that somewhere in the office she inherited from late owner Sam Ballen is a sheaf of old La Fonda recipes I’m dying to see.)

Just came across a great review on the Las Vegas Tour Guides Guild site, which declared “after reading this book, you will never look at … your job as a tour professional the same ever again. This book does not belong on your reading shelf, it belongs in your travel bag!”

We spent a perfect day off up in the mountains outside of Pecos at our friend’s cabin, Black Bart relaxing under the most perfect tree here, and me catching (and releasing) as many trout as possible in 24 hours. Back to lecturing and booksigning tonight at La Fonda in Santa Fe at 6pm.

Just got turned on to a bottled water named, simply, Fred. I have no idea how this product has escaped my six-year search for all things Freddish, but better late than never. A friend brought a bottle to one of our New Mexico lectures and signings, but while I really needed hydration, I didn’t want to break the seal.

Hey, maybe since I drink such absurd amounts of water when I lecture–and so many Harvey locations are in parched parts of the country–the book and I can get a product endorsement. May Fred drink with them.

One of the least-known, and most delightful Harvey outposts is the Harvey House Museum in the old Santa Fe train depot in tiny Belen, NM. While there was never a huge Harvey operation here, the town and its Harvey heritage has become disproportionately significant because the museum here is so ambitious and charming–the folks in Belen clearly adore their Freddist roots–and because the city closest to Belen with a much deeper Harvey history, Albuquerque, did not see fit to preserve its Santa Fe depot building and the grand old Alvarado Hotel (home of the original Harvey Indian Building and native art collection). Maurine McMillan and her Belen crew do an amazing job with their museum and their Harvey proselytizing across the west (we first met them at a Harvey Girl reunion in San Diego).

They showed us a wonderful time. And they also made a really cool cake (see below.)

We arrived, sadly, late for the open house at the museum, because as easterners we had no idea that when you drive from Arizona into New Mexico during daylight savings time, you lose an hour. They have a terrific collection at the museum and a wide variety of Harvey and Santa Fe books–and among their new exhibits is a wonderful bronze sculpture by Curtis Fort. Then we had a reception at the gorgeous new public library–part of an impressive downtown refurbishment which has also been fueled by the new regional rail service between Santa Fe, Albuquerque and Belen.

We had cookies and cupcakes made from recipes from the book, and a great cross-section of guests from far and wide for the lecture and signing–including “Friends of Fred” Brenda Thowe, Harvey Girl maven from BNSF in Fort Worth (who brought as a gift a bottled water called, simply, Fred) and Kimberlee Reid, who came all the way from the National Archive in Kansas City in a convertible (actually, I suspect she rented it in Albuquerque.) After the talk, Brenda had to rush back for BNSF business, but Kimberlee hung around to grab dinner–which is no easy feat in Belen after 9 pm. After several attempts to find open places in town–and a lot of U-turns for which our GPS lady browbeat us–we ended up driving six miles to Los Lunas, where at least the Chili’s was open for beers and fajitas. And then we went back to spend the night at a really charming B&B Inn, La Mirada.

Our Belen adventure complete, we’re off to Santa Fe!

Several people have told me they had trouble figuring out how to join this blog and post on it. What you need to do first is register–and you do that simply by writing a comment on an existing blog post. Before you can actually post your comment, the blog program will have you sign up and get a screen name, etc. after that, you are free to post your own comments.

Please take a moment and register today. We’d very much like to see this blog become more of an active dialogue among Fredheads. Help us Spread the Fred!

We went from the sublime to the more sublime of northern AZ on Sunday, arriving in Flagstaff to lecture at the gorgeous Museum of Northern Arizona (after being fully and completely caffeinated at the well-loved local beanery, Late for the Train). It was a special opportunity to speak there, because the museum holds one of the few known collections of the art and belongings of Fred’s fascinating granddaughter, Katherine “Kitty” Harvey—and I think the well-attended talk got them thinking about maybe doing more with their collection. Thanks to Kathy Farretta and everyone involved in the talk there.

The event ended at four, then we dashed to the Flagstaff airport, picked up a rental car and zoomed to Winslow, to give a talk at 6:30 at La Posada-–the trackside Harvey oasis—followed by dinner at the hotel’s amazing restaurant, The Turquoise Room, with chef/owner John Sharpe.

It was wonderful to see the Winslow Harvey Girls again, and the crowd at the talk included Winslow residents, traveling Fredheads and hotel guests who just happened to wander in, got a dose of Fred and suddenly wanted to read all about him. Our host, as always, was owner Allen Affeldt (although we missed his wife, artist Tina Mion, because she was debuting a big show of her work in Prescott–if you’re in that area, GO, her work is fascinating and provocative.)

John had added some Fred Harvey dishes to the menu in honor of my appearance, so I was able to have his yummy rendition of Chicken Castaneda, and a Harvey-inspired fruit pie. But I must admit the highlight of the meal was not a Harvey dish, but John’s transplendant fried squashblossoms, which I ate very delicately with knife and fork but was amused to see John pick up like a corn dog and just bite. In between courses, we were delighted to meet and talk to people who wandered by our table and wanted to continue the discussion about Fred. La Posada really is, in many ways, the center of the Harvey universe–and it’s more enjoyable and ambitious every time we visit.

Nothing quite like speaking about Fred at the very rim of the Grand Canyon at sunset—and that’s what we did Saturday evening in the Thunderbird room, which has a balcony overlooking the Divine Abyss. Talk was delayed slightly by technical complications—the staff was unable to locate the projector we needed to show the slides. So Jon Streit, the new general manager of the entire South Rim, in a very Freddish gesture, ran down the steps, hopped into his car, and ran to get a project himself.

He saved the day, we finished watching the stunning sunset, and we talked Fred with a diverse group that included guides at the canyon (some of whom have to slightly tweak their standard speeches because of new facts in the book) and an elderhostel group that came up from Flagstaff. It was the highlight of three days in and around the canyon, with a press group visiting for the 100th anniversary of the Grand Canyon Railway depot there. Thanks to everyone from Xanterra that made the visit possible, especially Bruce Brossman, but we’ve now made so many friends at the South Rim that when we walk into El Tovar we feel like Dustin Hoffman in “The Graduate” getting the full “Mr. Gladstone” treatment.

After the lecture, I wandered the rim in the dark as the moon began rising over El Tovar. There were a few clouds just over where it was breaking the horizon, so I found myself—along with a handful of other visitors—standing in the dark outside of Bright Angel Lodge waiting for the moon to creep up over the clouds, like a very slow motion fireworks display. After about four minutes of quiet anticipation, the moon exploded out, lit the sky and the canyon walls, and we all oohed and aahed. Which is pretty much how I always feel when I look at the canyon.

Had several discussions with people about whether Fred himself ever saw the canyon—since the train to the rim was completed several months after his death in 1901. I know he was pretty ill during the late 1890s, when tourism at the rim was slowly rising, but I really hope he got to see it, since his spirit is now so alive there.

Just watched the sun rise over the south rim of the Grand Canyon. It’s partly cloudy, but you see so much sky here that when you look right it’s almost completely overcast–with just a sliver open for the sun to peer through—and when you look left it’s perfectly blue skies with just a wisp of clouds and the last view of the just-past-full moon. So, when the sun finally hit the horizon, it lit up every little fault line in the cloud cover for miles for a few minutes, and then it disappeared back into the cloud bank.

The temperatures can be as dramatically disparate as the sky. It was in the 50s and really windy on the rim this morning, yet the highs at the bottom of the canyon today are predicted well into the 90s.

Basically, at the canyon, the weather forecast is—pretty much everything.

My J-school students would laugh at me that this post starts with a “weather lead”—which I always tell them not to do—but when I get out here I become my weather-obsessed father (who, every morning, discoursed on which direction the wind was blowing and what that portended). I also can’t resist taking pictures of things like the deer grazing in front of the El Tovar dining room at 5:30 am.

Anyway, we had a great visit to the Rt 66 town of Williams where, for over 100 years, people have come to take the Grand Canyon Railway to the south rim. Got a chance to visit the massive machine shop where they work on the antique rail cars used for the GC Railway–trainiac porn–and then Friday morning had a nice signing at the Grand Canyon Railway depot, where at 8 am I was greeted by an excited woman who wanted to tell all about her grandmother, who had been a Harvey Girl in Deming, NM. She said she didn’t want to buy the book until she got to the canyon, so I figured I’d never see her again, but when I got to El Tovar and started signing books in the lobby, she was one of the first in line. Not far behind her was one of the original general managers of the South Rim from the 1960s, and an amazing cross-section of people from all over the world.

This is a funny time of year at the canyon–it’s the tail-end of families visiting together before school starts, as well as the peak time for European trekkers, but the fall onslaught of hikers and retirees hasn’t yet begun in earnest. So you get a little bit of everything. One of our favorites was a couple we met on the observation platform at the back of the train. They had, just the day before, officially become empty-nesters. They dropped their last child off at college and, as the wife recounted—stiffling a smile she knew she shouldn’t have—her mother-in-law who had been living with them had finally passed. The first thing they wanted to do with their new-found freedom was see the Grand Canyon, which I can completely understand.

There are a lot of lifelong Fredheads up here, and every day new tourists learn the Harvey saga and head off to Spread the Fred far and wide. The Xanterra folks, who have now seen us twice in six months, treat us like we live here. And some days, I kinda wish we did.

Here are a couple cellphone pics from this morning All terrible—photographing things here is crazy anyway, you really need to be here (I especially love the early-morn tourists taking flash photos of the sunrise.) And my busted blackberry just makes it even worse. But you get the idea

The Austin Chronicle has a terrific piece about Fred Harvey day-trips in Texas. Check it out! And watch the blog (or my facebook author page) for upcoming news about an Appetite for America tour in Texas and Oklahoma in October!

The Kitchen Conservancy just posted yummy photos of their book group event with Appetite for America. You can see them by clicking here.

If you look closely at the pictures, which are mostly of food you will very much want to eat (or can prepare yourself—they used the recipes from the book) you will see our pal Brenda Thowe, the queen of the Harvey Girls, who came up from Fort Worth for the event.