And if you come to see us all … I will tell you where the best BBQ in Boerne is to be found ….
The New Doors to the Den
“You should be very glad,” I told my daughter a couple of weeks ago, “That I used to help my brothers assemble airplane models.” I did, too – JP was quite fond of putting together detailed 1/48 and 1/72 scale model aircraft, which he bought with his allowance money. He paid great attention to detail, fitting the parts together so that only a hairline crack showed – and often filling in those with plastic putty and sanding the piece so it that the join was invisible after being painted. He was just as careful in painting the models and their visible component parts, even to painting a miniscule silver zipper down the front of the pilot’s flight suit. At a later date he went to the extent of fabricating battle damage with fine wire and bits of tin-foil. So that was my introduction to following instructions and identifying the bits and pieces involved. Eventually my brother put away childish things like Airfix models, and moved on to tinkering with real automobiles, to the horror of his first wife, whose family was wealthy and in their world, one just didn’t pop up the hood in the driveway and investigate the mysteries within.
Myself, I moved on to another form of kit-building – that of miniature furniture, and then of full-sized functional furniture. Dad’s facility with, and collection of a wide assortment of hand-tools meant that I had a fair grasp of their various uses, and a tendency to have a bash at fixing whatever might need fixing. And following Dad’s many examples – once I became a home owner, there I was, replacing light fixtures, re-wiring table lamps, applying a finish to unfinished furniture, painting the house (inside and out), putting in new faucets in the kitchen and bathrooms… Piece of cake. Just follow the instructions.
What brought on the recent round of assembly was a jaunt through the Ikea store in Round Rock two weeks ago to collect some shelving units for my daughter’s work area/office. She has a corner of the living room for her computer desk, the various office items and storage for the materials for her origami art. Much of this was previously stored in plastic tubs and a couple of plastic drawer units which had been cheap to begin with and now looked even worse. So – a pair of shelf units, with some cupboard door, drawer and basket options were in order, all of which came packed with fiendish ingenuity in an assortment of flat cartons. I do have to say the assembly instructions were quite logical, and the language hurdle was gotten over by being completely pictorial. Still – all the side and shelving panels had to be sorted out, and the various connectors identified. It wasn’t a patch for thoroughness on the last bit of office furniture I had put together; a pair of wooden filing cabinets from Amazon, which had every single panel and piece identified with a little sticker, and the hardware packed in a blister pack with everything labeled. With Ikea and the usual kind of flat-packed items it’s more often a process of having to sort everything out of a bag, and identify by measuring, counting and matching descriptions.
This weekend’s assembly was a pair of bi-fold closet doors, to sequester the den from the cats. I was able to have some furniture reupholstered; two chairs and an enormous tuffet, and the last thing I wanted after having gone to the trouble and expense was to see the cats sharpening their claws on it all … as they had shredded them before. (The den used to be closed off with a pair of louvered doors, but I repurposed them in the last remodel and used them for my bathroom and closet, and used a long pair of curtains in the opening.) So – I was off to the Home Depot website, to order a pair of wooden bi-fold doors to fit – and with generous free home delivery, instead of having to pick them up in the nearest store, too. The doors were delivered Friday, we stained and finished them on Saturday, and installed them today – again, carefully following every instruction. They fit perfectly, met in the center and matched up exactly – and now I may rest assured that the chairs and tuffet will be safe, once they are delivered on Wednesday. And that’s my weekend …
Yes, I have tweaked my website and blog … just a little. I didn’t want it to get stale, and I had begun to think that the previous template was rather … fussy. So, just as I am redecorating and simplifying the interior of my house in some small ways – like getting some long-owned pieces of furniture reupholstered, contemplating new kitchen cabinets, and trying to keep up with general housekeeping (like putting stuff AWAY) so I am doing with my book website. This template is cleaner-looking, and offers the option of rotating headers, which I will take fuller advantage of, as I tweak it some more. I have so many lovely pictures of Texas scenery and places that I have taken over the last few years, I’d like to give them more exposure, rather than once attached to a post and then buried in the archives forever.
I pointed out to my daughter this morning, as we were talking the doggles – that it is twenty years this spring that I rotated back to the States from my last overseas in Korea, and packed up my then-car, my daughter and Dad, and drove to Texas. I didn’t want to essay the whole two-day drive alone, and I didn’t want to buy a house without Dad’s expert advice – so he came with us, and lurked meaningfully in the background of the mercifully brief house hunt … I mean – this was my DAD, the shade-tree auto mechanic par excellence, who had also maintained every house that Mom and Dad had ever lived in, who had bought two houses and built most of their retirement house himself. So Dad came out to Texas with me, and traveled home as soon as I closed on this house, and his advice and support was worth every cent. Of all the houses I looked at, this was the smallest, but in the best location, and the best quality. (Even with telling the realtor that I didn’t even want to set foot on the mat of those houses which had been built by a certain builder whose bad reputation was a legend, nationally.
So – appreciate the renewed website – and in a couple of days, I will have a new chapter … either of The Golden Road, or Sunset and Steel Rails. Depends on which one I feel motivated to work on first, now that the chore of sorting out my income taxes is done.
Yes – I do my income tax early. My accountant loves me for this.
All righty – everyone still interested? This is the rest of the story, of Fred Harvey and his hospitality empire, which not only is given popular credit for ‘civilizing’ the Wild West, but also for supplying that stretch of the Southwest between the Mississippi-Missouri and the Sacramento with excellent food and drink, splendid service, and a constant stream of wives – for many of the women recruited as waitresses in the track-side station restaurants married right and left; to railroad men, co-workers in the Harvey establishments, and to customers they met in the course of their duties. A comparison between Harvey Girls and stewardesses in the glamorous days of commercial flight has been made now and again; both groups were composed of relatively young, independent and adventurous women, carefully selected and trained, and working in a setting where their attractive qualities were shown at an advantage.
But the restaurants and lunchrooms, as appealing and as well-organized as they were – were only part of the Harvey brand. In many locations along the AT&SF, the trackside restaurants and lunchrooms metamorphosed naturally into hotel to succor the weary traveler. Making the journey substantially more comfortable, and bringing high standards of cookery, service and organization to the trans-Mississippi west was just the first step. Fred Harvey thought big and to the benefit of the ST&SF in attracting a bigger share of the footloose public – by making the West a destination for the pleasure traveler in the last decade of the 19th century and the first two of the next. Come and explore the scenic and fascinating west – now that such an exploration could be done in perfect safety and luxury. Essentially, almost a hundred years before Disneyland and Disney World, Fred Harvey created the destination resort. One of the first was a grand and luxurious edifice in Las Vegas, New Mexico, built to take advantage of scenic mountain landscapes and a cluster of hot springs nearby: the Montezuma Castle. It was the first building in New Mexico to have electric lighting. Guests were pampered with the usual Fred Harvey level of expert service and excellent food, served with a lavish and incredibly valuable silver service. Other in-house amenities featured bowling alleys and billiard tables. The grounds around the hotel were beautifully landscaped and adorned with fountains. Guests of the Montezuma included presidents, kings, war heroes and the merely prominent. The building itself burnt twice – and was rebuilt. (A number of Fred Harvey establishments fell to fire – the Harvey House in Barstow, California burned at least three times. Wood construction and injudicious use of cook-fires in a dry desert area will create that kind of hazard.)
Fred Harvey’s health declined precipitously in the late 1890s – he would die of complications of intestinal cancer in 1901– but he had trained up his sons Ford and Byron in every aspect of the business, and they carried on without any discernible change in focus or standards. The Fred Harvey name was a brand, and a solid one. The company renovated and expanded their existing locations and added new ones. One of their distinctive features was a careful attention to local architectural styles, as well as artistic traditions. The Harvey hotels were a great popularizer of what we now know as ‘Southwest style’ – lots of adobe, rounded arches and arcades, local stone and rough-hewn wood, folk-art tile and pottery, ‘vigas’ ceilings of poles and exposed rafters, Navaho rugs and blankets. The in-house architect and designer was Mary Jane Colter, who was first offered a job to decorate the interior of the Alvarado hotel in Albuquerque in 1901. Over the next thirty years she worked full-out in designing hotels, lodges and concession buildings, including the complex at the El Tovar (for which she had done the interior decorating) and the Bright Angel lodge, located at the very rim of the Grand Canyon. La Posada, in Winslow, Arizona, is considered one of Colter’s finest. She designed everything for that establishment, from the building itself, down through the furniture, fittings and china, the gardens and the staff uniforms.
At least as well-known, and with the good fortune to be in the heart of a town with a centuries-long history, is La Fonda (which means ‘the inn), in Santa Fe. The present spectacular building was put up by the Fred Harvey company in 1922, but the site – at the terminus of the old Santa Fe Trail – had been the location of an inn since the earliest days of Santa Fe, three centuries previous. It is still popular, not least for the number of specialty shops selling local art, pottery and jewelry … for that was another aspect of Fred Harvey’s refinement of the Wild West experience; encouraging the purchase of southwest Indian art and artifacts to tourists – and yes, even to hiring craftsmen and women from the various tribes to demonstrate their arts. A number of the Harvey hotels, starting with the Alvarado in Albuquerque, included a kind of private museum, and a craft demonstration and sales area, where visitors could purchase reproductions. Yes, Fred Harvey (the company) may also have invented the museum shop.
And the company likely inspired the Southwest fashion style for women, with another female-driven inspiration based in the new La Fonda. This was called Southwest Indian Detours – one –two- or three-day bus and automobile tours of significant Indian pueblos and ruins, artist’s studios and spectacular scenic vistas – conducted by young women called ‘couriers’ – or tour guides. They dressed in outfits designed after traditional Navaho women’s dress: full dark cloth skirt over boots, a jewel-colored velveteen blouse ornamented with a concho belt and a silver squash-blossom necklace. The heyday of the Detours was relatively brief, owing to the Depression.
The company had one last fling during WWII, when La Fonda was the chosen hang-out for scientists working on the atom bomb, and the Harvey Girls worked overtime feeding troop-trains passing through. On any number of occasions, there was no time for the soldiers to de-train and eat, the Girls just passed sandwiches in through the windows. The Judy Garland movie, The Harvey Girls brought the awareness of all things Harvey to anyone who just might have escaped knowing about them … but the sixty-year run was already nearly over. Increasingly, people preferred traveling by automobile, or by airplane. The houses that Fred built, all along the tracks of the AT&SF were repurposed, or torn down. Some serve as museums, or city offices, or stand derelict and crumbling. A handful, like La Fonda, El Tovar and El Posada are still hotels, although not operated by Fred Harvey.
Weirdly, I am being inspired by the newest idea for a book – the story of the Fred Harvey hospitality empire, which came about in those years when the Wild West was passing from the real world into legend. I’m posting about half a chapter here, as I write them. As soon as I get a little farther on some other book projects, I’ll write and post some more of The Golden Road. But for now – I’m bubbling over with ideas for character and plot. I’ve always done best, working on two books at a time… Previously posted half-chapters to Sunset and Steel Rails are here, and here…
Chapter 3 – Potions and Portents
It was not – as she half-feared it would be – Richard who came to her room door, and tapped on it, hesitantly requesting admittance. It was Phoebe, tearful and apologetic. Sophia wondered, somewhat cynically, how much of that was due to Phoebe having to take charge of her sons herself, and to bear the brunt of Richard’s cold displeasure at the workings of the household not going quite as smoothly as he had become accustomed in the last few years.
“Richard is quite unhappy,” Fee announced, as she closed the door behind her. She shuffled into the room, the weight of the child within her body rendering her ungainly. She settled her awkward self into the bedside chair, and reached for Sophia’s hand. “He … he is so very fond of you, dear. We all are … and so worried about your condition.” Sophia bit back her initial waspish response – I had no condition until everyone began insisting that I had one! Instead, she answered,
“Fee, I am perfectly fit. It is only that everyone insists that I am not, which puts me out of all good temper. I was fond of Lucius Armitage – I do not think I really loved him to any great degree, although I believe I might have come to love him, in time. Just as you came to love Richard …”
Now, that was a startling thing, the fleeting expression in Fee’s eyes and countenance – was that … could it be stark terror? Again, that cold trickle of fear ran down Sophia’s spine. She looked at Fee – this time with cold analysis. Sophia had been a girl of ten years when Richard married his bride; all white dress and misty veil, on her father’s arm, advancing in stately tread down the aisle of the ancient Christ Church. Sophia had been one of her attendants, and not particularly happy about it, because this was Richard! Fee was, as the ten-year-old Sophia saw it – an interloper: A silly and unwelcome trespasser on a happy family; Mama, Richard and herself, living a contented life in the Brewer mansion. A ten-year-old’s impatience, and a touch of jealousy had given away to … well, still impatience, mixed with exasperation, and to this present day, with a heavier helping of exasperation and even a degree of contempt. Recalling how Richard seemed most cold and even horrible just now, Sophia wondered if she had misjudged Fee all these years. What would Fee have seen, be subjected to, in the privacy of a marital relationship? And what was Richard? Loving husband and brother, responsible head of a family and fortune … or something else? Sophia shook off the thought, although the question continued to haunt.
“Of course – he is a most loving husband and brother,” Fee insisted, breathlessly. “How could I not? Richard, my dear husband, he is unwearied in his care and concern for us all …”
“As he was from the day that Papa fell,” Sophia said. Truly, she wished that she could recall Papa – see him in flesh and life. Instead, all she had was an image from the daguerreotype that was always at Mama’s bedside; a handsome man in a dark Union uniform, one hand thrust into the front of his coat, the other resting on the sword at his side. Fee continued, “I know that you are being brave and very stoic about … Mr. Armitage and everything … but we cannot help but see that you are unhappy, and short of temper. And we think that you might benefit from a period of quiet and rest … in the countryside, under Dr. Cotton’s care…”
“I do not care for Dr. Cotton,” Sophia answered, with an edge in her voice that she didn’t bother to hide. “Nor his potions, or his advice, nor any else of his recommendations. I was perfectly content – a little disappointed in Lucius, for I thought he might have had enough character and spine in him to defy his father … this is the 19th century, Fee – what business do fathers have in absolutely forbidding a marriage when everything to do with those promised to each other has otherwise met with approval? Lucius’ father now finds me an abhorrent connection to his family merely because of those losses sustained in the failure of the Marine Bank! Tell me, Fee – does money now rule all? Over character, affection and long-established connection?”
Phoebe regarded Sophia with bafflement in her eyes – large, cow-like eyes, Sophia thought, viciously – and every bit as stupid as a cow which her sister-in-law resembled. “I suppose it does,” Phoebe admitted, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, and Sophia could not conceal her contempt.
“You had a generous dowry settled upon you when you married Richard … a very enormous dowry, indeed. Was it the dowry which appealed most to my brother, or the charms of your own person and intellect?”
Phoebe colored as red as if she had been slapped, and tears started in her eyes. She sprang up from the chair, crying, “So what if there was! Richard does so love me, and we were happily wed – and you have always been cruel and sarcastic – anything but a true sister, for all that I have tried to be kind and affectionate …”
“Fee, I didn’t mean …” Sophia levered herself from the bed by her elbow, but was struck with a sudden fit of dizziness as she did so, and by the time she had pulled the right words of apology out of her mind, Phoebe had turned around at the doorway and launched her parting remark.
“Lucius Armitage has decided to marry after all – to your friend, Miss Chase! I imagine generous dowries do have some recommendation, after all!” Then Fee slammed the door behind her and it was too late. Sophia lay back down on the coverlet, staring up at the ceiling of her room. This had the effect of a bodily blow – that Lucius would have chosen Emma Chase, and within weeks of breaking their engagement. Truth to tell, she was more disappointed in Emma than she was in Lucius Armitage. Lucius was only a poor silly boy-man, still commanded by his irascible father … but Emma was her bosom-friend. She had not expected anything such as this. Was Emma so desperate for suitors, so eager for marriage at any cost? It appeared so.
The following afternoon was Pheobe’s ‘at home’ – the day when she and Sophia put on their afternoon best and received calls from friends and acquaintances. Sophia had always rather looked forward to their ‘at home’ afternoons; a few brief hours not exhaustingly engaged in housekeeping and errands, when she could sit in the parlor with her needlework and converse with those friends and kin whose company she enjoyed.
Aunt Minnie and Phelpsie appeared almost at once, shown into the parlor by Agnes.
“My dear child – have you heard? Lucius Armitage …”
“I have,” Sophia answered, curt and cold. “Fee told me last night.” She darted a sideways look at her sister-in-law, who appeared to have completely forgotten how bitter their exchange the previous evening had been. “It matters only a little to me, Aunt Minnie. They are both my friends and I wish them well …”
Great-aunt Minnie patted Sophia’s hands, visibly relieved. “None the less … water under the bridge, my dear, water under the bridge. You have been spared what I would say is a disappointment inevitable, given his weak and easily-influenced character. And our holiday in Newport … that will be a welcome change of scenery, my dear. Would you not agree?”
“I would … and with my whole heart,” Sophia answered. “Auntie … would you take it amiss … would it inconvenience you, if I were to come and stay with you and Phelpsie awhile? Even before then? My birthday is in two weeks … and I think that I would like to make some decisions for myself, as I will then be of age.”
“But … what would we do without you?” Fee interjected. “This is your home, Sophie, why would you …”
“No, this house is yours,” Sophia returned, not without a little malice. “And it should be your duty and pleasure to have the ordering and management of it, as my brothers’ wife. Being of age, and a confirmed spinster – why should I not set the direction of my own life and pleasures?”
“But that is … unseemly!” Fee bleated, and Great-Aunt Minnie snorted.
“Unseemly fiddlesticks, my girl. I am not keeping a low boarding-house, and there comes a time when a woman might be expected to know her own mind and desires. Sophia shall come and live with me as she pleases, being of age and there’s an end to all discussion.”
“Richard won’t like that,” Phoebe’s voice quavered. “He will be angry.”
“The venting of splenetic energy will be good for him,” Great-Aunt Minnie retorted, crisply. Sophia marveled at how little the thought of Richard’s anger dismayed Great-Aunt Minnie, even as it cowed Fee. Well, she thought, as she bent to her embroidery – Richard’s anger wouldn’t cow her either. She would go and live in the old Vining mansion, cramped and dark and old-fashioned as it was, and now in a neighborhood definitely decayed, and help Phelpsie look after Minnie, and listen to her great-aunt’s reminiscences about the old days, about Minnie’s brothers, and the various dramatic or mundane adventures of the various ancestors … which surely would prove more amusing than everyone groaning on at her about how badly she must feel about her broken engagement.
These pleasant thoughts were interrupted by Agnes, in the doorway with the silver card tray in her hand.
“Oh, Marm,” she said, her voice barely above a tremulous whisper. “’Tis Mrs. and Miss Chase presenting their cards …”
“The nerve!” Great-Aunt Minnie snapped and Sophia set her embroidery aside.
“I don’t care for what the rest of you do, but I am not at home for Miss Chase at this moment. Tell her,” and Sophie took a little enjoyment in saying so, since it was only what everyone had been telling her for weeks, “That I am indisposed. I shall be upstairs in my room … Agnes, if Mrs. Brewer decides to receive their cards, wait a little, until I have gone up the stairs, before you admit the Chase ladies.”
“Yes, Marm,” Agnes breathed. Sophia had no doubt that Agnes would be vociferously in sympathy with her, when next the two of them were folding laundry. As she reached the second landing, she heard the front door open and close, and Emma’s familiar voice exclaiming,
“Oh, what a shame! We had sworn to be bridesmaids to each other, for the first to marry…”
Sophia bit her tongue and hurried up the next flight of stairs to the refuge of her own room. How long would these humiliations be delivered upon her, as long as she lived in her brother’s household?
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