Potato postcard “Look at your computer mouse. That’s how big a baked potato should be,” proclaims a syndicated story in today’s Seattle Times. “The supersizing of American portions has been going on for years.” … the Old Oaken Bucket. Sheet music Just how many years? Well, it’s easy to go back more than a century:…
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Last fall we whizzed through the northern edge of Davenport, Washington, the county seat of Lincoln County since 1896 (though only after more than a decade of squabbling about it). I need to go back for a better look at this isolated wheat country town. And I need to find out more about grape nip. The 1950 edition…
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In 1969, I turned in my BA thesis at Reed College: “‘ … and so made town and country one’: the Streetcar and the Building of Portland, Oregon, 1872-1920.” A few years later (1973?), Steve Dotterer and I did a streetcar photo exhibit, “Along the Car Lines,” for the local chapter of the American Institute…
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The Green Hut was a landmark cafe, souvenir stand, and vista point at the base of Grand Coulee Dam. The cafe was opened in 1938 by Clarence D. Newland, who had previously operated Green Huts at two earlier federal dam projects, at Fort Peck on the Missouri, and at Boulder on the Colorado. The prime…
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A recent acquisition: one of the oldest regional cookbooks in my collection. It’s The Monday Club Cook Book, “compiled by the Ladies of the Every Monday Club, First Presbyterian Church, Astoria, Oregon.” The Astorian Job Printing Company did the work in 1899, and my copy is inscribed, “Mrs. F. P. Kendall, December 12th 1899.”…
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“A Northwest Language of Contact, Diplomacy, and Identity: Chinook Wawa / Chinook Jargon,” by Henry Zenk and Tony A. Johnson, appears in the new Winter 2010 issue of the Oregon Historical Quarterly. Although the article focuses on the use of the language in the treaty negotiations of the 1850s, it touches on its long-continued currency among some…
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Menu, Dec. 1913. RHE Let’s say it’s 97 years ago, Wednesday, December 31, 1913. I am catching the 11:00 PM train from Union Station in Portland, bound for Minneapolis via the Oregon-Washington Railroad and Navigation Company’s express, grandly named the Soo Spokane-Portland Train de Luxe. This train, for a few brief years (1909-1914), sped to…
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C. R. Cook came to Seattle about 1919, and with his wife Genevieve he soon opened Cook’s Tamale Grotto. Mr. Cook was born in Missiouri, and learned to cook in a chili parlor; later he traveled to Mexico. In the 1920s and 1930s his Seattle enterprise was a popular downtown lunch and dinner spot, with…
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Richard “Dick” Engeman at his printing press On the night of November 24, 2010, Sunnymead burned to the ground. My most memorable childhood home, it was also the historic farmhouse of Dr. Bethenia Owens-Adair (1840-1926), Oregon’s first woman medical doctor. Longtime owner and resident Dick Mattson and one of his two dogs escaped; the house is…
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Amateurs carving, ca. 1940 ‘Tis the season of the turkey. For several decades, Oregon was a noted producer of turkeys for the table, and a notable place for the developing of meatier birds. At one point 30% of the West Coast’s turkeys were grown in Oregon, and they were prized for their high quality. Large…
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