Food and Drinks 100 Years Ago Looking back during Longview’s Centennial

By Tracy Beard

Longview, Washington, was dedicated in July 1923, and seven months later, in February 1924, the city received a charter from the state, established a municipal government, and was incorporated. World events at the time included the eruption of Mount Etna, the Great Kanto earthquake, the introduction of insulin, the first baseball game (held on April 18 in Yankee Stadium), and the sale of the world’s first domestic refrigerator (in Sweden). Our look back into food and drink during the city’s origination reveals that booze was illegal, and there were no home refrigerators. So who lived in the new city of Longview and greater Washington state, and what did they eat and drink 100 years ago?

Residents of Washington

Prospectors ran to Washington after the discovery of gold in 1855. Soon after, English, Dutch, German, and Scandinavian settlers arrived to claim ownership of the valleys through free land grants. Each of these ethnic pioneers had their culinary traditions, but they soon melded. Salmon was already a staple for the coastal Indians, and more than 30 other fish species, including rockfish, cod, lingcod, sablefish, and smelt, were a regular part of the local diet. Oysters and crabs rounded out the seafood menu.

Near Puget Sound, the New Englanders gathered clams and made clam chowder, a dish they were already familiar with, and they also began substituting beef with chopped clams in other recipes. Women learned how to cook salmon over an open fire from the local Indians. Men hunted for elk, deer, and waterfowl. Washingtonians soon developed a cuisine undefined by a specific culinary style. Instead, they created menus that blended fresh produce, seafood, and locally hunted and raised meats into a lighter form of cooking without the traditional heavy sauces from their homelands.

Residents of Longview

Early pioneers Harry and Rebecca Jane Huntington arrived to file homestead papers and settle along the Cowlitz River in 1849. Along with these early pioneers, others from Washington moved to the area. Later, Robert Alexander Long, the president of Long-Bell Lumber Company, and Mr. S.M. Morris began making decisions in a Kansas City, Missouri boardroom in 1918 to construct a mill town in Cowlitz County. The idea grew, and a planned city was born six years later.

The Kitchen

Before the 1920s, pantry storage was outside the kitchen area, and wood stoves were the norm. However, the Roaring 20s brought new technology. The Hoosier, a free-standing cabinet with builtin bins for staples, came on the scene. Individual homes had access to electricity and natural gas. Putting kitchen essentials together, like proper storage, a small icebox, and a gas range where homemakers simply had to turn a dial and light a match, created a more efficient, modern kitchen, and soon this room became the center of each home.

What are you reading?

Monthly feature

coordinated by Alan Rose

By Jim MacLeod

Techies and crossword fans can name the world’s first electronic computer, but very few know that ENIAC’s programmers were all women. They weren’t introduced to the media nor mentioned during the worldwide announcement on February 15, 1946. All the focus was on the hardware, and many years passed before their contributions were even acknowledged.

Conceived during the darker days of World War II, the thirty-ton behemoth was desperately needed to shrink the time required to calculate ballistic trajectories for U.S. Army artillery. Allied Forces in Europe, North Africa, and Asia depended on the Army’s Research Division at the Aberdeen Proving Ground for this critical support. Heavy weapons were susceptible to variations in wind, precipitation, air temperature, humidity, projectile weight and velocity, demanding unique firing tables to ensure their accuracy.

Manual calculations that had previously taken thirty to forty hours could be completed by ENIAC in a scant twenty seconds. But first, the complex differential equations had to be converted to specific settings of hundreds of dials, switches, and pluggable wires. Men were needed in combat roles, so the U.S. Army recruited scores of young female math majors to perform the exacting calculations. It was the six best and brightest “Computers,” as these women were then known, who were selected to become the first programmers for ENIAC.

Internet Law professor Kathy Kleiman introduces each of them, following their lives from pre-WW II to their eventual induction into the Women in Technology International (WITI) Hall of Fame in 1996. Unappreciated for decades, their talent, imagination, and perseverance was finally recognized by the industry they helped to create.

Miss Manners from page 9

In general, please do not expect the younger generations to act the same way yours does. Some manners are eternal; some change. It’s OK to acknowledge this. I know this will likely fall on many deaf ears, but it’s worth hearing the other perspective.

GENTLE READER: While Miss Manners has always known that etiquette will often change with the times, expressing gratitude is something upon which she will not budge. She is sure that your internal appreciation is brimming, but people who take the time to pick out presents -- or more likely, pay for them from your unsolicited wish list -- deserve the external and explicit kind. Miss Manners’ inbox is full of complaints to that effect and she assures you that they are not just coming from the older generations.

(They also have old-fashioned notions about getting answers to their invitations, but we digress.)

Drink Good Coffee, Read Good Books

Located in the historic Castle Rock Bank Building

20 Cowlitz Street West Mon-Sat • 8:30–5 360-967-2299

As far as discussing pay, as long as this information is freely given and not rudely demanded, Miss Manners has no objection, although she would prefer it be confined to the workplace. Career talk in social situations is rarely titillating.

Treating waitstaff with respect and kindness is certainly obligatory. Doing so and using the correct fork, however, are hardly mutually exclusive.

One of the things that Miss Manners has been most impressed by in emerging generations is a fresh emphasis on being inclusive, promoting kindness and not stereotyping or labeling groups of people -- rather, appreciating differences and the individual.

She would gently encourage you to remember that when speaking on behalf of them. Your words might be construed as louder than your actions. •••

Please send your questions to Miss Manners at her website, www.missmanners.com; to her email, dearmissmanners@gmail.com; or through postal mail to Miss Manners, Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.