As a collector of regional historic restaurant menus, I have a particular eye out for examples from Albany, where I now live, and from the Astoria area, where I grew up. Today the mail brought me a breakfast menu from the coffee shop of the John Jacob Astor Hotel in Astoria from June of 1955,…
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At the instigation of Jan Dilg of the Oregon Women’s Consortium, I recently contributed an entry to the National Votes for Women Trail, a project of the National Collaborative for Women’s History Sites during this year marking the centennial of national woman suffrage. (Yes, there were exceptions …) Soon the map that shows…
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The year 1959 marked the centennial of Oregon’s statehood, and the occasion pushed restauranteurs to expect a wave of travelers coming for the doings. The 1950s were a time before Yelp and TripAdvisor, a time when it was not easy for travelers to find information and advice about local restaurants. Seizing the opportunity, John A. Armstrong,…
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My modest collection of postcards includes a number that came to me because they were in the Engeman family house in Silverton. After the death of Uncle Ted in 1994, my sister Laural and I inherited the house, and among the items that we did not put up for auction were an assortment of postcards.…
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The Cabaret Grill was an entertainment palace, apparently a short-lived one that arose in 1913 and sank in 1914. It was located at 2nd and Burnside, an intersection notable at the time as the gateway to the North End, Portland’s boisterous zone of drinking, gambling, and women. Erickson’s famous saloon was there, and the Cabaret…
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The place and position of government with regard to old age and disease—think COVID-19—is a question of long standing. One of the major American milestones in government oversight of public health was the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. The act caused an uproar in the snake oil trade, for it effectively demolished most…
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The Rajneeshee were not the only followers of an Indian guru who opened a restaurant in Oregon. Our other culinary guru was Ciranjavi Roy, who inspired Nelson and April Souza to create a novel upscale restaurant in the sleepy and rather remote seaside resort town of Manzanita, Oregon (1970 population: 261). Opened on June 17,…
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During my high school years Warrenton, we lived in an old farmhouse on a hill overlooking an expanse of former tidelands—now pastures and shopping malls—at the mouth of the Columbia River. We had no near neighbors, and my younger sister Laural and I were often left to our own devices; both our parents had bizarre…
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The United Nations was a huge presence in the 1950s, associated with efforts to establish peace around the world, to feed people, to relocate refugees, to improve health, to advance scientific discoveries. While some Americans viewed the United Nations as a big step toward damaging or destroying their country, for most it was a positive…
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We live in an era of celebrity chefs: colorful characters, often tattooed, who preside over legendary kitchens in food-conscious cities and who concoct startling new recipes involving exotic ingredients and high-tech processes. The men who go BAM! and the women who tout EVOO are household names. It was not always so. Half a century ago,…
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