The Food of a Younger Land (41 page)

After greasing and flouring a loaf cake tin, she spread the batter in the pan. And closing her eyes, prayed fervently as she closed the oven door. Spices—no odor from the old world ever smelled more delicious. The cake—for by all the Gods it was a cake—had risen, round, light, brown, shrinking away from the pan, proclaiming to the world that it was sufficiently baked.

No modern chef ever carried a brainchild more carefully or more proudly than Ethel when she placed the cake to cool. Her creation appeared beautiful, but how would it taste?

When the men came in weary and hungry from work, they were greeted at the door with the odor of that cake, which held the place of honor in the center of the table.

“How?” asked the man of the house, well aware of the lack of provisions.

“Eat it first,” answered Ethel. “I’m afraid to talk.”

After the cake had been eaten to the last crumb, the brother inquired cautiously, “Gosh, Ethel. Do you reckon you can do it again?”

Ethel nodded assent. The Fourth of July celebration was a success, and that’s how “Depression Cake” came into being.

ANDREW SHERBERT

E
ven before 1844—and Oregon did not become a state until 1859—Oregonians were game to test the ability of their stomachs to handle alcoholic drinks of strange and ferocious character. In 1844 one James Conner, with the help of one Dick McCrary and one Hi Straight, set up a makeshift distillery consisting of a large kettle with a metal horn condenser. The finished liquor was drawn off through a wooden spigot and was guaranteed lethal by its enterprising makers who called it “blue ruin.” The stuff was made from shorts, wheat, and black-strap molasses and the first snifter was said to glaze the eye, palsy the hand, and confuse the feet of the intrepid drinker.

In Portland, Oregon, prototypes of the early take-a-chance drinker have persisted ever since, coming to full flower during the prohibition era, when sterling citizens drank bath-tub gin, and many of the not so sterling citizens courted the blind staggers imbibing potations founded on wood alcohol, or redistilled radiator anti-freeze. A type of drinker evolved from the “noble experiment” was the “canned heat” addict. These drinkers were many—usually a tatterdemalion lot who “cooked” the alcohol from the soapy vehicle in which it came, at “jungle” fires on the river’s edge beneath Portland’s Burnside, Morrison, Madison, or “Steel” bridges. To lend variety and vary the monotony of their drinking bouts, the “canned heaters” frequently swung to denatured alcohol for a jolt. Denatured alcohol (industrial alcohol) was ethyl, or grain alcohol tinctured with a poisonous ingredient rendering it unfit for beverage purposes, or so it was intended, but this deterred the canned heater not at all. He gulped it down with a “here’s how” and thumbed his nose at the sinister skull and cross-bones on the bottle. In the waning days of prohibition an unethical Portland druggist dispensed one day a particularly poisonous mess of alcohol to his “skid-road” clientele and, tough as they were, they couldn’t take it. That day, and the day or two following, some thirty sorry victims found release from mortal agony on cool marble slabs at the city morgue; and the druggist went to the penitentiary for manslaughter.

Coming up to the present, a new genus of drinker takes a bow. He is known as the “wine-o,” the appellation arising from the fact that he keeps in a continual state of inebriation through imbibing “fortified” wine. Fortified wine, if properly used, is a grateful and salutary beverage. The vintners intend, and sane usage demands, that these types of wine be drunk in moderation. They are heavy wines to be served sparingly with meat or dessert courses, and are termed “fortified” because they are “natural” wines whose low alcohol content has been elevated eight or ten percent by the addition of brandy, cognac, or rectified spirits. Abundance of wine fruits and berries, competition, and relatively low tax rates combine to place these wines on the retail market at extremely low prices, two-bits being the current price asked for a pint of the sort of wine the wine-o goes for.

The wine-o doubtless would prefer whiskey to wine, but the state of Oregon controls the price and sale of hard liquors and a pint bottle of even the poorest whiskey stocked by the state liquor stores is far beyond reach of the wine-o, who toils not, neither does he spin, nor does he clutter any industrial pay-roll. Beer joints are not more than a spit and jump apart in Portland, but beer—considering the amount necessary to give the wine-o the alcoholic shock required to bring him to a state of physical and mental numbness—is expensive even at ten cents a glass.

Fortified wine addicts are gregarious sots who run in cliques or packs. Members of the clan comb Portland streets between Third Street and the river at all hours of the day and night, “mooching” nickels from soft passersby with a plaintive “spare a nickel for a cuppa cawfee?” It disturbs a mooching wine-o not at all to be told that he has a breath like the dreggy bottom of a wine vat and that you just KNOW he intends to apply your nickel on a mickey of wine. He doesn’t bother to deny the accusation but, giving you a bleary grin, repeats his request, “just a measly nickel for a cuppa cawfee.” When he gets hold of a nickel he quickly rejoins his mooching comrades and their nickels are pooled and a bottle purchased, whereupon the group shambles up the street to drink furtively in a shadowy doorway.

Promising to make the wine-o and “blue ruin” drinker look like a sissy, a new type of tippler now tops all predecessors in drinking bravado, according to Portland police. His drink is a mixture of gasoline and evaporated milk, and he gets just as “high” on this automotive high-ball as does the wealthy nabob on Portland Heights with tall, cool, horses necks made of Haig and Haig. Theory is that the evaporated milk forms a temporary protective lining for the stomach while the gasoline, which after all is a chemical step-brother to the potent though highly respectable grain alcohol, volatilizes and permeates the tissues bringing on the same sensory reaction one gets from drinking Four (or more) Roses. It would seem that to smoke while on a milk and gasoline bender would be fraught with more or less danger. And might not an addict explode of spontaneous combustion as did a gin-soaked character in Dickens’
Bleak House
? The drink is too new to have gathered a name like the “blue ruin” of early Oregon, or the “Jick” of a decade ago. A name suggested, and here given gratis, is “Milkoline”—and may its drinkers get more miles to the gallon.

ARIZONA—
responsible for the region
NEW MEXICO
OKLAHOMA
TEXAS
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

T
his is the region that has changed the most. At the time of
America Eats
Arizona had been a state for less than thirty years and there were still many people in the Southwest who remembered the frontier days. Migration to the Southwest, without air conditioning, was on a small scale, except for Los Angeles. There were only two decades between 1870 and 1940 when the population of Los Angeles did not increase by at least 25 percent and some decades as much as 50 percent. According to the 1940 census 1,496,792 people lived in Los Angeles, and the speed limit in both business and residential areas was 25 miles per hour. The overwhelming majority of the population was not born there and the majority of the transplants came from the Midwest. The WPA Guide Book to Los Angeles said, “People who have lived here a dozen years are likely to regard themselves as old timers.” But the first two essays show a Los Angeles not that different from today. Not surprising for a city of people reinventing themselves, Los Angeles had an obsession for what is new and what is hip. Today both geographically and demographically much larger, it is still that way.

At the time of
America Eats
the Southwest had its own cuisine. It was the only place in America with Mexican food, but it was a uniquely American Chicano variation of the food known in Mexico as Norteño, the food of the northern Mexican states. At the time of
America Eats
such food was not widespread because tortillas were made at home by women through a laborious process that began with hand-grinding corn on stones. In the 1940s and ’50s, one of the first widespread uses of small gas engines and electric motors was to power wet grain grinders for making the corn dough for tortillas. Even then the tortilla was patted into shape by hand or fashioned on a hand press. Tortilla-making machines were not developed until the 1960s, with the result of inferior tortillas. But because of these machines food such as tacos became well known first among the non-Spanish population of the Southwest and then across the country.

JOHN MOSTE

B
ack in his native state, the average Iowan takes his picnics in stride. But once he has moved to the shores of the Pacific, he falls easy victim to that greatest of all western lures—the southern California picnic. For although most state societies in southern California hold one annual picnic, the Iowans hold two—a summer and a winter picnic. In addition to these festivities, they also hold a dinner on December 28 (unless it falls on a Sunday) to commemorate their native state’s admission to the Union. This dinner takes place at some Los Angeles hotel.

The Iowa winter picnic, which occurs on the last Saturday in February, is staged at Lincoln Park, Mission Road and Alhambra Avenue, in the eastern part of Los Angeles. About fifteen of the park’s forty-six acres—a thickly carpeted greensward lying between the lake and the conservatory—are used as the picnic grounds.

Here a considerable number of benches and tables are set up for the purpose, but as a rule these are insufficient in number to accommodate the usually heavy attendance, with the result that countless picnickers serve their lunches on robes and blankets spread upon the lawn. Attendance at this seasonal outing, according to C. H. Parsons, secretary of the Iowa State Association, has amounted to no less than 150,000 on occasions before the depression cut down the hegira of Iowans to the Golden State.

The Iowa summer picnic is held in the 10.12-acre Bixby Park, Long Beach. This park faces Ocean Boulevard at Cherry Street, and its spreading cypresses and stately eucalyptus trees are so huge and its lawns so inviting that it is considered one of the most beautiful parks in southern California. An all-time high of 100,000 attendants was claimed for the Iowa summer picnic in 1929.

Both picnics, following a practice established long ago within the borders of the state “where the tall corn grows,” are much alike in their general characteristics. And lest old acquaintances be forgot—or fail to be renewed—stakes topped with placards, naming the various Iowa counties, are placed here and there about the picnic grounds to indicate where the respective groups from “back home” are forgathering. This enables many individuals and families to quickly find or relocate friends and relatives.

Bright and early on either day of these gala occasions, there is an unwonted stir in all Iowa households—an eager lift and buoyancy that is not altogether due to California’s clear-blue skies and sun-kissed landscapes. There is cheerfulness, expectancy—perhaps it’s the bright and radiant countenances of all—that bespeak an event out of the ordinary. For reflected in this spirit of eager anticipation there are to be found old and fond memories of other delightful occasions—of friendly intercourse, of sweetness in the cup, of gustatory delights shared together over savory viands done to a brown turn, the likes of which only “mother used to make.”

Well before the sun reaches the zenith, thousands of Iowa picnickers filter into the park. By auto, streetcar, bicycle, and on foot, they come from city, town, and hamlet. Waving banners, blaring bands, ballyhoo—this is the scene; everyone is gaily bedecked and hospitable. A picnic indeed: It’s more than that, really—it’s an Iowa picnic; and the moment you enter the park you begin to feel something of that infectious spirit of goodfellowship which is but one of the many delightful characteristics of this gay and colorful occasion.

There are greetings and the resounding laughter and the shouts of carefree youngsters; then yarns—those famous tall tales—are swapped by the oldsters. But the climax is reached when countless baskets, boxes, and hampers disclose their sundry dishes. Chicken fried, baked, and stewed; hams boiled and baked; great roasts of beef; breads and buns and biscuits in large variety; deep bowls of salad—potato salad especially made from recipes handed down from past generations—together with pickles galore: mustard, sweet, dill, and homemade bread-and-butter pickles that lend color and add zest to the appetite. No, sir, one can’t go wrong—dietetically speaking—in attending an Iowa picnic feast.

Each item of food, to be sure, has been carefully prepared and seasoned, for Iowa cooks are highly competitive when it comes to displaying their skill in picnic cookery. Most of the recipes are time-tested by generations of these Midwestern folk, but occasionally some one more adventurous than the others will experiment with spices and condiments alien to Iowa.