On the Rails, Harvey Girls, and Linda Matchett #Freebie

Howdy y'all! Crystal here, and today I'm chatting with fellow STT author Linda Matchett. She's got a hopping new release that's FREE for a limited time, and she's giving us an interesting peek behind the curtain, plus a few interesting tidbits about her and her writing.

For those of us who don't have the privilege of knowing you, tell us a bit about yourself. 

I was born in Maryland, but my dad worked for IBM, which among employees means "I've Been Moved," so we moved quite a few times during my childhood. My junior year in high school we landed back in Maryland near Washington, DC. I stayed in that area until 2002 when my husband and I moved to NH to open a Bed and Breakfast. We operated that until 2012. I now work for a boarding prep school as the dining hall and catering manager.

Well, even I learned something new about you today. :) And speaking of new... Congratulations on your newest release! What is your story about?

Thank you! On the Rails is set in 1910 and is about a young woman, Katherine Newman, who thinks her boyfriend is going to propose marriage when he arranges for them to go to the town's most elegant restaurant. Instead he breaks up with her. She lives in a small town and the break-up becomes fodder for gossip. Mortified, she decides to leave town to start over. She travels to Arizona to become a Harvey Girl.

Whoa! Now, that's a shocker, and a great motivation to spur your character out of town. Where did you get the inspiration for your story? 

I visited Arizona quite a few years ago and learned about Fred Harvey and "his girls."

Image from Crystal's Arizona trip to the Grand Canyon

Apparently back then you took your life in your hands (literally) when you ate at the restaurants along the railroad. Mr. Harvey had worked in the food service business and decided he could do better. He made an agreement with the Santa Fe Railroad to provide the food at their restaurants. He was very successful, except the employees were all men and would get drunk on payday and not show up for work on the following day(s), so he ran ads in the East Coast newspapers for women. I read a lot of interviews and memoirs of these women, some of whom chose to work for him as an "escape." I started thinking about why women would want to escape their home life, and came up with Katherine's story.

The Harvey Girl Uniform
(Image from Crystal's Arizona trip to the Grand Canyon)

Oh, I love hearing tales about the Harvey Girls. (Even watching movies like the one with Judy Garland.) When I visited the Grand Canyon, I got to see some of the history from the Harvey House restaurant there. Such an interesting history.

Where did you get your love of history? 

My dad is a huge history buff and voracious reader. He would share stories at the dinner table. I also had some very good teachers who made history come alive, we made lots of field trips to some fascinating museums. There are four museums in the small town where I live, and I never get tired of visiting them.

Oh, I love museums too.  Tell us, what do you hope folks will take away from your story? 

Our God is a God of second chances. No mistake is too big for him to forgive.

Do you have a favorite scene in the book? If so, can you tell us a bit about it? 

Katherine is a schoolteacher in a one-room school house. In the opening scene she is daydreaming about her upcoming date while the students are taking a test. She is interrupted by the kids in a most unfortunate way.

"Unfortunate"--Ooo. That sounds scary. LOL. Makes me want to read the book though. :) Speaking of which, where can readers buy your book(s)? Where can readers connect with you? 

My website is www.LindaShentonMatchett.com, and I'm also on Facebook: www.facebook.com/authorlindamatchett and Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/lindasmatchett. My books are available through independent bookstores as well as Amazon.

The eBook version of On the Rails is FREE until Sunday, March 5th: Click here to buy it now!

What do you plan to work on next? 

I was working on a new mystery series, but I just got another contract with Celebrate Lit Publishing (a wonderful company!) to write a Christmas romance, so I'll be starting on that shortly. The book will be part of a collection published in December of this year.

So exiting! Congratulations! Looking forward to hearing more about it. 

Tell us, what does your writing space look like? 

I am very blessed in having a room devoted to my writing, and it is very eclectic. My desk is a six foot butcher block table, so I have room to spread out with papers, books, and computer. There are several bookshelves that hold my research books, magazines, writing craft books, etc. I'm a basket collector so there are a lot of those in the room. I use them to organize my things. I also have a rocker in one corner where I read. The room has two windows that allow lots of sunlight in the room.

Sounds so picturesque. Care to share if you're a plotter or a pantster? 

I'm definitely a plotter, although as I've matured as a writer, I don't fight the characters anymore when they wander off the page! For each book, I create biographies for my characters so I don't make them do anything they wouldn't normally do, then I create a scene-by-scene outline.

Oh, hon, we are on opposite ends of that spectrum. I did a bunch of stuff like once and didn't use half of it. LOL. 

Last but not least, what is the quirkiest thing you've ever done?

Some people might say leaving a lucrative career in the Washington, DC area to operate a Bed & Breakfast, but it was a great change for us, one that we have never regretted. As a result of the move, we have met people we never would have otherwise and had some wonderful experiences.


I think it sounds like fun. Even though I've never stayed in a B&B. Thanks so much for sharing with us today, Linda. 

I just downloaded On the Rails. Y'all go out and snag your copy too while it's still FREE. Then come back and tell us---Have you ever ridden on a train or maybe even a Harvey House restaurant? We'd love to hear about it!

Frontier Food at Its Finest (Fred Harvey and His Girls, Part 2)

Businessman and restauranteur Fred Harvey was willing to try anything once. Despite the success of his Harvey Houses that lined the tracks of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad route in the 1880s, he had major staffing issues. His waiters, who were all men, would more often than not come to work drunk or hung over or perhaps not show up at all. They were known to insult the customers and throw the dishware. Not exactly the ambience Fred was looking for in his establishments.

So after considering a suggestion from his newest manager, Tom Gable, he ran a series of advertisements in the major eastern newspapers and hoped for a response.

WANTED:

Young women, 18 to 30 years of age, of good moral character, 

attractive and intelligent, as waitresses in Harvey Eating Houses on the 

Santa Fe Railroad in the West. Wages $17.50 per month with

room and board. Liberal tips customary. Experience not necessary. 

Write Fred Harvey, Union Depot, Kansas City, Missouri.

He did not have to wait long. Women responded in droves and before long Fred had replaced most of his staff with female employees. 

Each woman signed a contract for six, nine, or twelve months agreeing to learn the "Harvey way," described by some as more difficult than boot camp. An intense orientation period of thirty days was required, and not all new hires made the grade. Pay did not start until training was completed. A Harvey Girl had to follow all instructions, obey employee rules, go wherever she was assigned to work, and remain single during the length of her contract. Uniforms were required and consisted of black dresses with black bow ties under white collars, black shoes and stockings, a white pinafore and white hair ribbon. 

When not serving customers, the girls were expected to clean the dining rooms, shine the chrome-plated coffee urn, silverware, crystal glassware, and pastry cases, and fold napkins. According to Harvey Girl Ruby Douglas Kuntz, in the summer they "fought clouds of dust, and in the winter it was mud that clung to shoes like glue." Each waitress was also responsible for keeping up her station up to standard putting away everything that had been used after the patrons left.

Fred Harvey's vision was for passengers to have identical, exceptional experiences no matter where they stopped along the railroad line. According to on traveler, Fred was a success:

"My first Harvey House meal was in the Chicago Depot, and I especially noticed the attractive uniforms the Harvey Girls were wearing. It never varied the rest of the trip to Los Angeles. At every stop they wore the same uniforms and looked just as neat and tidy as those at the last one. Finally, the third day, I felt like I new those girls even though it was a different restaurant, hundreds of miles from that first one in Chicago. You never thought you were slumming when you ate at Harvey House, they were class establishments, even in the oddest little places, largely, I think, because the girls were so spunky and special. Most of them could have succeeded at anything they tried to do."

High praise indeed.

Harvey Houses continued to operate well after Fred passed away in 1901, but the Great Depression forced the closure of many restaurants. Few people had money to travel, and even the rich were tightening their belts. World War II gave the failing organization a bit of a boost because the railroads were the main troop transport. Many of the girls who had been laid off in the 1930s came back for the duration of the war. 

The last restaurant closed in 1969, signaling the end of an era.

A freelance writer for over ten years, Linda Shenton Matchett is the author of Love's Harvest and Love Found in Sherwood Forest. On the Rails: A Harvey Girls Story is now available! Under Fire, the first book in her trilogy about WWII War Correspondent/amateur sleuth Ruth Brown, will be released on July 25, 2017. Visit Linda at www.LindaShentonMatchett.com

Frontier Food at Its Finest (Fred Harvey and His Girls, Part 1)

Traveling is not for the faint of heart. With today's security concerns, passengers must arrive at the airport or train station hours before departure times and subject themselves to searches, in addition to riding for hours in cramped seating. Then there is the minuscule bag of peanuts or pretzels that is expected to keep travelers nourished during the trip.

However, people literally took their lives in their hands when they traveled by train during the early 1800s. Dangers abounded from train robberies and locomotive breakdowns to buffalo stampedes across the tracks. By all reports, that was nothing compared to the possibility of food poisoning.

As far as the railroads were concerned, their job was to transport passengers from Point A to Point B relatively on time. They had no interest in whether their clients arrived hungry or not. Dotting the route were station cafes, that served "greasy doughnuts and lukewarm, bitter coffee (made once a week), rancid bacon, heavy cold biscuits called 'sinkers,' bowls of gray stew full of strange looking objects, antelope steak so tough you couldn't get your fork into the gravy, and worst of all, the dreaded and notorious 'railroad pie:' two crusts as tasteless as cardboard, held together by a glue of suspicious looking meat and shriveled potatoes." (History of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad by Keith L. Bryant, Jr., page 107)

Yikes!

Fortunately, English immigrant Fred Harvey came to the rescue. Having worked in the restaurant industry upon his arrival in America and being subjected to the station cafes, Fred decided to address the deplorable situation. He knew the railroads were growing by leaps and bounds, giving him a ground-floor opportunity. After being turned down by the Kansas Pacific Railroad, he convinced the Aitchison, Topeka and Santa Fe to partner with him.

The first restaurant opened at the Topeka depot in 1875 and was a resounding success. For only thirty-five cents, diners could get a full English-style breakfast that consisted of steak and eggs, hash browns, a stack of pancakes with butter and pure maple syrup, topped off with apple pie and coffee for dessert. (Yum!) By 1884, there were seventeen Harvey Houses along the Santa Fe route.

There was only one problem...finding good help. The employees, who were all men, would get "liquored up and either not come to work or come to work drunk and bleary eyed or hung over and shaky. They dropped or threw dishes, made rude remarks to customers, and picked fights." (The Harvey Girls: The Women Who Civilized the West by Juddi Morris, page 17)

After one particularly harrowing incident at the Raton, NM restaurant, Fred fired the entire staff and locked the door. What could he do?

Enter Tom Gable, the newest Harvey House manager. "Women were used in eating houses in the east and they provided to be very satisfactory, so I suggested we do the same." The Harvey Girls: The Women Who Civilized the West by Juddi Morris, page 18) It was a risky idea, but the always-willing-to-try-something Fred bought into it.

The bigger question was would young women buy into it and leave their lives behind to come West?

Come back on February 14th to hear the rest of the story.

A freelance writer for over ten years, Linda Shenton Matchett is the author of Love's Harvest and Love Found in Sherwood Forest. On the Rails: A Harvey Girls Story will be available in February, 2017. Under Fire, the first book in her trilogy about WWII War Correspondent/amateur sleuth Ruth Brown, will be released on July 25, 2017. Visit Linda at www.LindaShentonMatchett.com