One of my Xmas presents Harry & David’s Fruit-of-the-Month Club, delivering Oregon pears and other fruits, began in 1938, but the idea of sending a gift of local products predates that innovation. This small brochure from Portland’s Seely Dresser Company, grocers, bakers, and caterers, dates from the late 1920s. Featured items include Oregon Franquette walnuts,…
Read more
Ocean Spray leaflet The Thanksgiving Day meal pushes many seldom-eaten foods briefly into the limelight: brussels sprouts, stuffing, pumpkin pie, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, even the roast turkey itself. And cranberries. I like cranberries. I hailed the development of cranberry juice and cranapple juice. I grew up on the Oregon coast, where cranberries were grown;…
Read more
The furor at Penn State adds another dimension to the discussion of the purpose of intercollegiate athletics. A few months ago I acquired an offprint of an article by the first president of Reed College, William Trufant Foster, entitled “An Indictment of Intercollegiate Athletics.” I have uploaded a .pdf file of this essay to Internet Archive. It…
Read more
Last year I commented on a nearly-vanished Oregon regional food product: the turkey (“The Rise and Fall of an Oregon Fowl,” November 23, 2010 posting). Sixty years ago, Oregon tom turkeys had cachet, and the term appeared on restaurant menus as a proudly local offering. I went to my neighborhood New Seasons Market yesterday to…
Read more
An unused (though slightly stained) canning label Wow! Canned, evaporated, granulated soup vegetables! There are said to be seven varieties of vegetables in each 8-ounce can, although they are not specified. And what’s the story of the Gold Nugget brand, and the Dayton Evaporating and Packing Company? Fortuitously, a splendidly clarifying article appeared on July…
Read more
Sunset Limited ad in Sunset, 1899 For several years we have contemplated a trip to the remote town of Fort Davis, Texas, enticed by the presence of friends who have convincingly extolled the natural and historical sights to be found there. In my historico-romantic mind’s eye, we would go there by train, stepping…
Read more
After a pleasant Sunday afternoon of historical excursioning a few years ago, two colleagues and I came to a dinner stop at Tad’s Chicken ‘n Dumplins [sic], scenically situated on a bank of the Sandy River near Troutdale. With a history going back to the 1920s, Tad’s was a living reminder of the Sunday-drive-and-a-chicken-dinner…
Read more
University of California Libraries Not until the early twentieth century did crab become a popular food along the West Coast. The particular crab that rose to fame was the Dungeness variety; the name comes from Dungeness, England, and has been applied to a bay, a spit, and a small town on the Olympic…
Read more
New Market Theater, Portland It was certainly one of the more unusual and intriguing projects that Oregon Rediviva LLC has undertaken. Various aspects of it were complicated, changeable, daunting, appealing, frustrating, exciting, and gratifying. I now know what “logistics” are, and how unlogical they can be; now, I can engage in logistics with the…
Read more
Dr. Dorothy Johansen (1904-1999), longtime professor of history and humanities at Reed College, in 1952 penned a pamphlet for the Standard Insurance Company of Portland, titled “Western Foods and Recipes 100 Years Ago.” It is described in this Sunset Magazine (November 1952) advertisement, but finding a copy involved a major search effort. It’s not listed…
Read more