I Once Dated A Harvey Girl

For those of you who do not know what a Harvey Girl is – or was – the
following definition is offered to you, lifted from the pages of
history from the mid-1800’s:

A young woman, aged 18 to 30, white, single, educated, willing to
travel and commit herself to at least one year of work at a Harvey
Hospitality House. Financial compensation of $17.50 per month (about
$450.00 per month in 2016 dollars). Half of pay to be forfeited if you
leave before the end of the twelve month term. Lodging and meals will
be provided at no cost. All travel expenses to be paid by Fred Harvey.

Sounds a little strange, do you think?  Not so! Women responded to the
ads by the hundreds to get away from their boring lives in Eastern
cities and their even more boring lives on mid-western farms, and upon
acceptance into the company they then flocked to the train stations
and headed West to start new lives. Most found happiness and
adventure. Few of them ever returned home in disappointment, for the
rough towns and the open spaces of the west were their new homes.

Fred Harvey, the man who started this vast westward migration of
femininity, was born in Scotland in 1835. At the young age of
seventeen he decided to leave the Highlands behind and hopped on a
ship for New York, where he quickly found a job at a very busy and
somewhat upscale restaurant, and over the next year and a half moved
from dishwasher up to busboy, then waiter, then cook. But even more
importantly, while his body was busy performing these physical tasks,
his mind was also busy learning the most difficult part of the
restaurant business - the importance of providing very good food at
very reasonable prices with impeccable service, and of making the
customer feel as welcome at his restaurant table as if he was in his
own home. After those eighteen months of intense education in the
restaurant business Harvey left for New Orleans and then shortly after
went on to Saint Louis, where he met a lovely young woman named
Barbara, got married, and happily settled into the process of making
the first of their six children.

But Fred missed the restaurant business, and with his new wife’s
cautious yet encouraging blessing he entered into a partnership with a
friend and started a restaurant in Saint Louis. But by this time the
American Civil War was looming up over the horizon, making people
cautious, even afraid, and Fred’s partner suddenly disappeared one
night, taking all their money with him. Financially destitute, Fred
abandoned the restaurant and got a job with the Hannibal & Saint
Joseph Railroad, then with the Chicago, Burlington, & Quincy Railroad.
He did so well at his new line of work that the company promoted him
to a position in Leavenworth, Kansas, which was to become his lifetime
home. Yet Fred Harvey’s influence in the world of food service was to
continue expanding farther west, all the way to the Sierra Nevada
Mountains of California and beyond.

Fred’s employment with the railroad not only let him see the inner
workings of one of the largest and fastest growing industries of that
century, but it also left him feeling appalled at the way the
railroads treated their paying customers when it came to serving food
to the travelers. His first attempt to improve that situation came in
1873 when he opened three restaurants along the train lines of the
Kansas Pacific Railroad to serve hot meals to their passengers. Those
eating establishments soon failed, but they proved to be a valuable
learning experience for Fred. So when, in 1876, Fred met Charles Morse
who was the superintendent of the Atchinson, Topeka & Sante Fe
Railroad, he was ready to make a realistic and promising pitch for
food service that would profit both of them. Morse liked the proposal
he was hearing and, with a simple handshake, the two men sealed an
agreement that was to last for many years.

Harvey soon began opening restaurants along the lines of the
Atchinson, Topeka & Sante Fe in buildings owned by the railroad, and
was given their use rent free by Morse. It was at this time that the
above advertisement for young women began appearing in newspapers back
East and in the mid-west, and this began the mass migration of young
single women to the wilds of the west. The young ladies were housed in
railroad buildings close to the restaurants at which they worked. They
were supervised both on and off work by the Senior Ladies of the
Harvey Houses. There was a strict curfew on their going out at night,
and even more strict rules keeping male visitors at bay. Yet despite
the rules which governed them during the days and guarded them
protectively at night, most of the women seemed generally happy with
their new lives. And despite being watched so closely day and night,
marriage to an exciting young man whom she had met in this new
adventure was the most common reason for a Harvey Girl leaving company
employment. Fred Harvey was not only feeding the intestinal hungers of
western men; he was also satiating their needs in other areas as well.

Soon there were over eighty Harvey restaurants along the Atchinson,
Topeka & Sante Fe train lines, and Fred Harvey suddenly found that he
had successfully established the first American restaurant chain. They
were now known as Harvey Houses, owned by Fred Harvey, run by the Fred
Harvey Company, and staffed by the increasingly famous Harvey Girls,
each of whom was instantly recognizable in her long black skirt, full
white apron, and white bow in her hair. When the railroads decided to
add dining cars to their trains Fred was the first to move into that
area of service as well. Each dining room that Harvey opened, whether
it was in a spacious restaurant or in a rocking railroad car, had to
adhere to the same strict standards which had originally attracted
Morse’s interest in the endeavor – fine food, excellent service,
reasonable prices, and efficiency in feeding passengers quickly at
each stop on the line – sometimes an entire train load of travelers in
just a half hour. Yet such were Harvey’s meticulous standards that not
only was he able to effectively do this but he was often known to ride
the trains himself, traveling incognito, checking to see if each
restaurant was providing food and service up to his standards. And if
they were not he was often seen to descend into a tantrum and send
tables and plates scattering across the floor as he shouted at the
manager and waitresses in anger. It was, after all, his reputation
which was at stake. But the tantrums could get expensive, because each
table in a Harvey House was covered with Irish linen and set with fine
English china.

Harvey would always periodically return home to his beloved wife in
Leavenworth to continue making those six children, but his reputation
for providing good food served by pretty women continued to expand
westward, farther west than Harvey himself would ever go. An example
of the food which he served could be found in a ham sandwich which he
had made famous. It contained three slices of freshly baked bread
filled with several thick slices of ham and cheese. Really two
sandwiches in one, it filled the fist of even the biggest cowboy and
could be purchased for the reasonable price of fifteen cents. This
menu item alone made him so famous that it was rumored he was losing
money by continuing to serve it, but Fred was a man who knew the value
of word of mouth advertising, so he ordered that it continue to be
served at all Harvey Houses. It was said that when Harvey lay on his
deathbed years later knowing that his family would want to maximize
profits when they took over, the last words he uttered to his sons
were words of warning; “Don’t cut the ham too thin, boys.”  Even
though he was dying Harvey chose the moment to send his sons an
important lesson he had learned from years of building the business,
and it was a message which had two levels – don’t tamper with what had
made them famous, and don’t get parsimonious and become like the
competition.

Perhaps the most famous item on the Harvey House menu was the steak; a
steak large enough to hang over the sides of a large platter, cooked
to order, and served with a large potato, pie, and coffee. Price: a
whopping seventy-five cents. The coffee was a bottomless cup, freshly
brewed all day long. And the slice of pie was actually one quarter of
a large pie, baked right there at the Harvey House. In that time it
was customary for restaurants to serve a slice which was one sixth of
a whole pie, and Fred chose to outclass the competition by making his
pieces a full one fourth of a pie. Today it would be a twelfth.

But after eating a steak the size of a stagecoach, who would have room for pie?

Fred Harvey passed away in 1901 and the difficult job of maintaining
his high standards fell first to his sons and then to his
grandchildren. As the era of the railroads passed away in the early
nineteen hundreds the Harvey Company was forced to adapt to the
changing times, catering to travelers who now toured the country by
car and bus in much smaller groups. The Harvey Company opened hotels
to accompany their food service. In a sideline which was perhaps
somewhat questionable they even brought their paying guests out into
the deserts on “Indian Detours”. These would provide “genuine”
performances of Native American dances, all performed by paid actors.
The tour groups were always accompanied by attractive young female
tour guides in clothing which might well have been a little too tight
fitting for desert ware. But sex always sells, as does a properly
formatted presentation of a different culture. Today it would be
called a Living History Presentation, and it would pass equally
unchallenged. But the decision to expand beyond the realm of the
railroad and into that of the automobile was a sound one and business
continued to grow.

In 1946 business got another boost from the MGM musical The Harvey
Girls, in which Judy Garland helped to promote the business model by
helping to Tame the Wild West, Stand Up to Bad Guys, Find True Love;
all the while maintaining her virgin purity until one of the Bad Guys
got reformed and married her. It was at about this time that the Fred
Harvey Company also expanded into the national parks, becoming
licensed concessionaires in parks throughout the west, including Kings
Canyon and Sequoia. Fred Harvey himself never established a restaurant
in California. He never followed the trains here, nor did he open a
single hotel room to a paying guest. But because his family kept close
to his ideals of good service, tasty food, and reasonable prices, the
enterprise which he started with just a handshake continued to grow
after his death and finally reached California. Fred was dead, but his
ideals lived on. So when the Harvey Company took over the job of
welcoming visitors to these national parks high in the Sierra Nevada
they did so with all of the grace and cordiality which had marked the
early decades of the company: good food on a table attractively set;
reasonable prices, and the Harvey Girl in black skirt and white apron
and bow in her hair to serve them. And when people sat down to eat
they felt welcome, as it should be.

The Fred Harvey Company continued to provide fine service to park
visitors here in Kings Canyon and Sequoia through the mid-1960’s. In
1965 the last of Fred’s grandson’s passed away and after the estate
was settled the Fred Harvey Company was sold in 1968 and passed into
the hands of other owners. Fred Harvey died in 1901, but his vision of
fine service; his vision of Hospitality; that vision managed to
survive for another six decades until Time took its toll and killed
it. The Fast Food portion of the business model was now an important
part of American culture (or lack thereof), but the rest was
idealistic and just got in the way. But for a while – for an achingly
brief moment in time – Fred Harvey brought Hospitality to this part of
California; this small area of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. And Fred
Harvey made this place a better place. There are few who remember that
time, but many who should.

Today, when one visits Kings Canyon National Park, the visitor arrives
in either car or bus. The days of train travel are gone. But these
things change, and perhaps that’s how it should be. Today, when that
visitor steps off a bus or out of a car and seeks to satiate his
hunger, he or she is no longer directed to a genteel and classy
restaurant where pretty and polite young women serve them fine food on
an attractive table. Today they are directed to the far end of a
crowded parking lot where, next to a long abandoned gas station, they
stand in line to get to a window in a trailer where they order a plate
of Mystery Meat served on a bun costing ten times the price of Fred
Harvey’s steak on a platter. Then it’s back on the bus, see a Big
Tree, and Get the Hell Out of the Park. And Please Come Again Soon. A
Roach Coach with a microwave oven has replaced Hospitality. Perhaps
that is not how it should be.

Now, if you have reached this point and are still wondering just what
the title of this essay has to do with its content, then let me
satiate your curiosity by affirming that I did indeed once date a
Harvey Girl; that ideal of western American womanhood dressed in a
black skirt, white apron, with white bow in her hair; that paragon of
feminine youthfulness and restrained attractiveness which has been
gone from the Sierra for far too long; too long for most to remember,
or care. And this historical event took place in Kings Canyon in the
1960’s while Fred Harvey still proudly dispensed a refined yet elegant
Hospitality to park visitors. The young lady was a fine waitress and
served the Harvey steak on a platter (by then costing two dollars)
with courtesy and efficiency that bespoke well of the Fred Harvey
legacy. And when she had finished her shift of dispensing happiness
and food to park visitors we would often go off to some remote part of
the park on my motorcycle, her now bowless hair waving in the wind, to
find some grassy spot and drink wine under the stars. Thinking of her
now, I must admit that I miss her.

Yet, if I were to be completely truthful, I must also say that I miss
even more that two dollar steak on a platter, served with Elegant
Hospitality.