Retro Road Trip: West Houston Holiday Inn, 1972

One of my favorite retro cookbooks is the 1972 edition of The Holiday Inn Cookbook, featuring descriptions of every Holiday Inn in the US and a featured recipe from each one, too. I’ve written about a few of the Inns here, but it’s been a long time since the last one. So it’s time for a retro road trip!

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And the best part is that traveling via The Holiday Inn Cookbook is that we won’t need an oil change or a brake job – so let’s get into the virtual Acura TL and go stay at the 1972 era Holiday Inn in west Houston! We will dine on Chestnut Shrimp in the Capri Dining Room. Note: there are no chestnuts in the Chestnut Shrimp, they are actually regular breaded and fried shrimp with – well, sliced almonds.* And with the shrimp we will have some Tart Orange Salad (yes, this is a day full of gelatin recipes here at Kitchen Retro).

Then we can frolic the night away in the Roman Club (I sense an Italian theme going on here, don’t you?). We will be only 9 miles from the Astrodome and the Port of Houston, so maybe tomorrow we can go check those out. And if we need a little Houston auto repair – well, that will be right around there too. I’m not sure whether the Houston Holiday Inn in the wonderful postcard is the one we’ll be at (there were four in Houston in 1972) but maybe we can go over there another time. It’s a bit cold for outdoor swimming pools now, anyway. 

Tart Orange Salad

Dissolve one 6-ounce package orange Jello [sic: Jell-O] in 1 cup boiling water. Sprinkle 1/4 cup sugar over 2 cups diced oranges and let sit for 10 minutes. Drain 1 cup crushed pineapple, but save juice. Add enough water to pineapple juice to make 1 cup and add to Jello. When Jello begins to set, add fruit and chill. Serve on crisp salad greens. Serves 6 to 8.

*No, I do not know why they are not called Sliced Almond Shrimp. And it’s Jell-O because that’s the commercial name, you have to have the dash! Yes, I care about this sort of thing. It’s all part of the glamorous life I lead. Makes me a little nutty (please pass the sliced almonds).

A Long Ago Mountain Sunset

Sunset near Tucson, Arizona (Wikipedia)

In 1891 an anonymous pioneer woman wrote a letter from Arizona that was published both in the Chicago Tribune and then in the New York Times:
 
If you could see me now!…Here we are in a little mud hut, the floor of earth and the walls of mud bricks. The roof is of shingles, but spaces between permit the wind to enter and play round the cabin in gusts. A rough bed of wood stands in one corner with a wire mattress; over that are spread a buffalo robe and some blankets…There is a rude fireplace whereon burn brightly mesquite logs. Two desks and some campstools complete the list of furniture. The washstand is unique – a piece of cactus-stump with a broad shingle for the top, on which rests a tin basin. Boxes with shelves nailed in ornament the walls and serve for dressing-tables, closets, etc.

Wagon at Old Tucson Studios (Wikipedia)

…This is a wild, picturesque spot, on a high plateau, surrounded by mountain peaks, looking down upon either side into deep gulches…During the day I tramp over the hills, and at night watch for the beautiful sunset which floods the sky and mountains with purple and red. Nowhere on earth are more startling effects produced by cloud and atmosphere than here in the wilds of Arizona. ["Life in an Arizona Mining Camp," New York Times, May 5, 1883]

Wouldn’t you love to go for a sunset walk with this brave, pioneering, unknown woman – and ask her some questions? I know I would. One thing I’d like to have known is how did they get any of their belongings up so high? I suppose there would have been a wagon, with a donkey or horse to pull it. Those wagons were the pioneer equivalent of modern Tucson movers or a good Phoenix moving company  – or indeed of any moving company at all. Truly, in the 1880s out West you were on your own. Certainly, a Victorian version of Billy.com movers would have given this lady the option of bringing so much more with her. Yet don’t you get the sense that, despite the hardships and the cactus dressing stool and boxes with shelves, that there was this great compensation for all that in the incredible beauty of the Arizona mountain landscape? I think so.

A De Luxe Mo-Tel Room

The word motel (or mo-tel, as it was originally written) is short for Motor Hotel, as you probably know – the motel was designed around the idea of car travel and the concept of being able to park your car right outside your room. The first one, the Milestone Mo-Tel, dates from 1925; you can read about it over here at Beach California, too.

This wonderful postcard is from the Park Mo-Tel in San Antonio, Texas. I am guessing that this dates from somewhere in the 1940s. Although I did have a night table and single bed with fake gold curlicues on them, not quite so De Luxe as these, though – and that was in the 60s. So it could be the 50s or 60s. Somewhere in there, anyway.

And speaking of De Luxe – check out that Bed De Luxe, as noted in the postcard caption. It may seem like an ordinary double bed – albeit with some curlicue trim that matches the bureau, the mirror and the wastebasket (very fancy!) – but it is, in fact, De Luxe. But why it is so, no one can say.

It just….is.

Other De Luxe elements of this mo-tel room include the swirly table legs (on your left), the pedestal sink and the snappy radiator in the corner. We had radiators just like that once in Boston and I enraged the landlord (who lived downstairs) when the Radiator Guy came to check them, because I hadn’t – done something, let the hot water out, or had not let it out, or something. Didn’t learn a thing from the Radiator Guy, did I?* I’d be avoiding the radiator in this room, anyway. Think I’ll just sit in the chair (just visible, a bit, in the right foreground) – and drink in the incredible De Luxe atmosphere.

*I may have told this hilarious anecdote before – have creeping sense of deja-blab. If so, please disregard, just like I seem to have disregarded the lecture I got on the Care and Feeding of Radiators way back when.

[The postcard image is from SA_Steve at Flickr.]

Not Just Delicious Meals

Greetings from the Jordan Inn in Monetta, South Carolina! According to Wikipedia, Monetta had a population of 220 according to the 2000 census. The Inn was on Highway 1, west of Monetta, and was run by John Jordan in the 1930s. According to a quick internet search, the postcard appears to date from 1939.

This looks like it was a lovely place to stay, but my favorite part of this old postcard is the charmingly boastful text on the back: the Jordan Inn not only has “Delicious Meals” but also has “Heat” and “Parking.” There is something quite charming about Heat and Parking being considered exciting attractions. As far as I could tell, the Inn no longer exists (at least, not as an inn) – which is too bad.

Apologies for the blurry text image – it was the best my scanner could manage (this one is from my collection, so my scanner was pressed into service).

How Jaws’ Grandma Spent Her Vacation

This is, of course, Jaws’ grandma summering on Nantucket in the summer of 1937, accepting the accolades of the crowd. She looks a little cranky. She might need a snack or a cup of tea. This is always good when that cranky feeling hits around the middle of the afternoon!

Would you believe that this was part of an elaborate hoax? How could it have possibly fooled anyone? That thing looks like it was part of a carnival midway. See here at Cabinet of Wonders and over at the Nantucket Historical Society’s Flickr page for more.

Postcard from the same, the NHA’s collection at Flickr.

Coffee and Banquettes

This place is a restaurant and just to make sure you realize this, the sign outside says “Restaurant Restaurant.” It’s twice as good as anywhere else in Dallas in the 1950s. In town or in the country!

And I especially love the banquette seating that wraps around that central pillar. I’ll have my cocktails there, please.

I’ll be having a Country Club, which according to my Jimmy of Ciro’s cocktail recipe book – from the 1930s – is made with 1 part French vermouth, 1 part Bacardi Rum and a teeny dash of Orange Curacao.

The Cowboy cocktail, which is also appropriate here at the Restaurant Restaurant, is made of 2 parts whisky to 1 part cream. That might be nice mixed with coffee, later on, since it is National Coffee Day. (Thank you so much to Louise at Months of Edible Celebrations for this info, otherwise I would have been swigging coffee all day not realizing that I was actually celebrating something as well as dosing myself with caffeine. I always like this kind of multi-tasking.)

So – scratch the Country Clubs and let’s have Irish Cowboy Coffees instead.

And thanks to coltera at Flickr for the fabulous postcard!