When Molly Was A

Harvey Girl

 

...she absolutely did not want to move to New Mexico. The wild west was where the creatively dangerous went to remake themselves. Molly hadn’t a suspicion that she was going to fit right in.

 

To be published in September 2010 by Kane/Miller Books.

Frances M. Wood, author

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A note about me, my family, and Molly

In 1887 my great-grandmother, Jennie, answered a recruiting ad for ‘young women of good moral character’ and left her home in Streator, Illinois. She rode an Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe train all the way out to Raton, New Mexico, to work in a Harvey House restaurant. Jennie became a Harvey Girl.

But she didn’t become Molly. My novel, When Molly Was A Harvey Girl, is entirely fiction because I know so little about who Jennie really was—her thoughts, her feelings. Jennie left her family no letters or diaries. Instead, she left us things: a painted fan; mended silk stockings; a gorgeous green dress; a gold watch. 

Things can start a story. Things can put an imagination to work.

So, with lots of apologies to the ghosts of my ancestors, here they are, cast as the fictional characters in When Molly Was A Harvey Girl.

Jeannette Davey as ‘Molly’

Frances Davey as ‘Colleen’

Wilson Wood as ‘Mr. Latterly’

Three Davey sisters and a friend as ‘The Girls’

Evelyn Davey as ‘Miss Lambert’

Rafaela Moreno as ‘Susana’

Fletcher Doan and his brother, Frank, as ‘The Gang of Brains’

You must imagine Grandfather Wilson as wearing spectacles, and the Doan brothers as being no better than they appear.

A note or more about Harvey Girls

 

“In this day and age girls don't leave home
But if you get a hankerin', you wanna roam
Our advice to you is run away
On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe “

                Judy Garland sang this song in the 1946 film The Harvey Girls. She portrays a mail-order bride who takes one look at her husband-to-be, decides against marriage on the spot, and goes to work in a Harvey House. It’s a fun watch, but you’ll find more realistic, truly historical material in Lesley Poling-Kempes wonderful book, The Harvey Girls: Women Who Opened the West. If you’re trolling the internet, you might want to start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_girl

                And if you ever find the story ‘Our Very Best People’, by Edna Ferber, do read it. Edna Ferber wrote my favorite quote: “My father used to say that those Western railroad brakemen and Harvey lunchroom waitresses were the future aristocracy of the West. Fine stock.”   

                Just so that you know: my great-grandmother, Jennie, married a railroad brakeman. His name was George.

Lyrics to "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe," by Johnny Mercer