So this summer, I was browsing in a railroad museum shop (as you do) and I couldn’t resist picking up what, for me, is a bit of fan merch: 

Ever since reading about the Harvey Girls and seeing the Judy Garland musical, I’ve felt kind of a kinship with these gals! They were women who came West between the 1880’s and 1950’s to work as waitresses in the chain of restaurants and hotels built along the Santa Fe Railway.

The once vast Harvey House franchise was the brainchild of Frederick Henry Harvey who thought train passengers moving across what was still largely frontier needed a more comfortable hotel and dining experience along the way. So he hired women from all over the country to work under a rigid set of rules known as the “Harvey Standard” which, if you believe the t-shirt, helped “civilize” the Old West!

I did time as a waitress, myself, and I’ve wondered whether I could have measured up to that Harvey Standard. Since Harvey Houses are now just a page in Western history, I can’t know for sure – but looking back, I think there’s evidence enough that it could easily have gone either way…

While studying at UC Berkeley, I needed a job to get myself some spending money (late-night Armadillo Pizza deliveries to the dorms didn’t come free!), and I found an opening for a waitress at a place right on campus! I’d never waited tables but, experience/shmeerience, it sounded perfect to me!

The application process for becoming a Harvey Girl back in the day would have been more involved but, at least initially, I think I could have gotten by. I was between 18 and 30, single, educated enough (high school preferred, but 8th grade might do) – and white which, in a sad sign of those times, was pretty much a requirement. I’d have done my best in the interview to be well-spoken and well-mannered, and would hopefully have finessed them into believing that despite my lack of ironing skills, I could tick off the Harvey Girl box of being “neat in appearance”. The next step would have been to leave home behind for some serious boot camp-y training, and then to venture onto a locomotive bound across the continent for a restaurant or hotel somewhere along the line:

In college, I only had to travel a few blocks! But my journey to becoming a proper waitress? That took a wee bit longer. As I said, I had no experience – even so, they took a chance, handed me a dark blue apron and turned me loose in the refined-like dining room of the Women’s Faculty Club. (FYI: The Faculty Club is the older Cal campus establishment which – no longer, but for what now seems a ridiculous period of time – didn’t offer full membership or access to academic women. Hence, the now bygone need for a separate club.) My initiation was bussing tables which seems like a pretty straightforward and foolproof task for a beginner – 

Unless it’s me. 

By trial and error, I picked up skills like balancing multiple dishes along an arm so I could deftly clear a table all at once. Over in the “error” column though, I do recall in early days letting a butter-smothered knife fall off a plate and torpedo straight into the purse at a customer’s feet. Also, I was so keen to do a thorough job that I did rush up behind a customer and take away his empty plate – not noticing the sandwich in his hands that he was just diving into.

Yes, while learning my way around this new line of work, I banked an awful lot of “notes to self”…

WFC clientele were mostly genial Cal professors (including dear Dad, once!), staff and visiting scholars. For Harvey Girls, the goal would have been to please railroad passengers in the midst of long and exhausting journeys who maybe had a 30-minute window in which to eat. To keep the women up to this high-stress – and high-profile – task, the Harvey Standard governed just about every aspect of their lives. It was a means of promoting efficiency but also respectability at a time when the character of a working woman could be suspect. 

Per the Standard, an image of propriety was maintained through the wearing of starched black and white skirts, bibs and aprons, high collared shirts and hair nets. Make-up wearing and gum chewing were not allowed. Dating men who worked on the railroad was acceptable (with permission from a girl’s house manager, and if she returned before curfew!), but being escorted by fellow Harvey House staff was a no-no. And if a girl did find Mr. Right, she had to wait to marry until her initial contract of as much as a year was completed.

Turns out I never had to worry about that last requirement of the Standard; however (gasp!), I did date in college without anyone’s approval – although in some cases a second opinion would have been helpful. Don’t know how I’d have handled a curfew: my usual shift was lunchtime, but I worked breakfasts too, and afraid I do recall blearily stumbling into the dining room at 5:30am to set out the jam and the butter and the coffee cups and the butter – oh wait, I did the butter – and all the rest, sometimes with very little sleep or (on at least one occasion) no sleep at all…

While climbing the waitress learning curve, I had to pick up other skills like carrying full serving trays among guests at award ceremonies without spilling champagne down the front of the guest of honor. (Been there.) And while it might be common sense to some (okay, to most…), I did have to be pulled aside and counseled that if I had trouble twisting the wine cork out of a customer’s vintage of choice, it was not acceptable to put the bottle between my knees for leverage. (Yup. Did that. It works though, I’m telling you.)

Eventually – and maybe surprisingly – I did manage to become a decent waitress. It could be grueling, but I got addicted to feeling that sense of accomplishment when no one in my section had to ask for anything twice, or when I could tell just by the set of a customer’s shoulders that there was something else they required. In the end, our grand (and exceedingly understanding) hostess Mrs. Townes would tell people that, although it was ideal to have three or four waitresses on the floor, just my colleague Phyllis and I could be counted on to manage the job on our own without any trouble at all.

Thinking of my Harvey Girl sisters in serving, I do have to remember not to romanticize their lives too much. They’re depicted onscreen singing and dancing about “The Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe”, but in real life they toiled through 12-hour shifts, six or seven days a week. Waitressing was a side hustle for me while I got to explore all kinds of youthful interests and options – but for these women, working was often an absolute necessity in an era when options could be very few and very bleak, indeed.

Still, I like imagining the kind of woman who took the Harvey Girl option. I admire her sense of curiosity about what the world held beyond the next cornfield or the borders of her town – and the courage she must have had to answer the famous call to “Go West” when, as a young woman, her name hadn’t long been on the invitation. 

I can’t help wanting to believe that if our circumstances were the same – and if I caught on with a little less dropping and spilling – I’d have had the “gumption” to be a Harvey Girl too! Or if fate had afforded me the means to be their customer, then for the impeccable service I would no doubt have received, as well as to reward the adventurous spirit that led them to choose this road less traveled – this railroad, to be exact – I’d sure have wanted to tip them well.

Cheers – and Happy New Year!