What We're Reading: Underpopulation and Familiar Food

DerekJohnson

What We're Reading: Underpopulation and Familiar Food
By: George Friedman




Appetite for America
By Stephen Fried

When I was in my 20s, I frequently had to make overnight runs to get somewhere by early morning. Often these were places I had never been before, and during several points I needed to slam down some calories and have two cups of coffee. Local restaurants were closed and those open after midnight were dicey, plus I had no time for a knife fight. What was known to me, what was open, and what was likely safe was Waffle House (most of my trips were in the South). There, surly elderly women fed me. Years later, my now wife and I would, when we got the urge to eat, go to an IHOP, whose Swedish Pancakes with (I believe) boysenberry jam were a sensual delight — alas abandoned by them today.

All of this began with a man named Fred Harvey. Harvey did two remarkable things in the 19th century. First, he created a vast chain of restaurants to serve the American West. Second, he staffed them with young women. In the U.S., and many parts of Europe in those days, a waitress was said to be available for rent or lease. Harvey, desperate for staff in the underpopulated West, transformed the image of such women by creating a hyper-pure staff of women, and thereby began crushing the image of the female waitress. The waitresses at other restaurants were mostly not available for other services, but the Harvey Girls, as they were called, were the first systematic step at dispelling the myth.

Harvey was not a feminist. He simply needed reliable labor. He also wanted uniformity in his restaurants. He understood something about American geography. It had few roads and a growing number of travelers. Some went by train, many went by horse. They needed to eat on multiday trips, and being strangers in a strange land, identifying places that served food that would nourish rather than kill was difficult. Harvey gave these people a safe haven. As railroads surged, Harvey’s restaurants were built near stations. As this was in a town, the locals began the first tentative steps to eating out. During World War II, troops being transferred from coast to coast ate at Harvey’s, many of these restaurants closed to civilians. Harvey’s dominated the landscape and then stopped dominating it. Creative destruction is a fine concept but a painful reality. The details of the downfall are in the book, but I prefer to think of its glory days.

The restaurant chain has become a foundation of American society. Harvey begat Howard Johnsons, of the orange roof, and along with them came McDonald’s and the rest. These are criticized today for serving their poor food and their exploitation of workers. Perhaps, although I find Popeye’s as near to heaven as I will get. But what is missed is that in a vast country that is constantly on the move, and where all things are strange and uncertain, chains provide an instance of familiarity, and with it, comfort. You know what you will get and don’t have to think, and when you’re far from the familiar, that’s a comfort.

George Friedman, chairman