Books: Ezra Meeker, Veggie Purveyor to the Klondike

If you delight in letters--remember them?-- as well as food, American history, and familial fondness, read this book.  It's called Slick as a Mitten, by Dennis M. Larsen,  it's published by Washington State University Press , and it's about a character named Ezra Meeker.

The book, rich with old photos,  is based on Meeker's letters, mostly to his wife, Eliza Jane. She and Ezra came west on the Oregon Trail in 1852 and settled in Puyallup, Washington.  Meeker, along with his father, became a wealthy hop grower and broker, but at the close of the 19th century, he went bust.  The hops were infested with bugs, controlled only through exceedingly expensive methods. Ezra was also on the board of a bank, though not involved until it began to decline, all the other officers having abandoned it. He personally covered the bank's losses, all its customers, by spending most of his own money.

Unimaginable in this era of Bank of America et al?  The mid to late 1890's were a time of bank closings and financial downturn in the US.

Once gold was discovered in the Klondike area in 1897, the race was on. But, unsurprisingly, so many masses of people arriving in an inhospitable area did not find enough to eat. People suggested that there was more money to be made in supplying miners than in engaging in mining itself. "There are no fresh vegetables of any kind here," said one. 

Meeker took note of this and decided to supply both fresh and dried veg, as well as reconstitutable eggs to the populations springing up in Yukon tent cities. He specialized in granulated and sliced potatoes, dried cabbage, squash, sweet potatoes, turnips, pop corn, and fresh oysters from the east, hauling everything first by steamer, then along icy trails with "teamsters," and floating produce down the Yukon River.

Even lemons.

He was 67 when he started. In three years he had made possible the movement of almost 100 tons of food. And throughout those years, he wrote regularly to Wife, back home in Washington, signing himself Husband. It was Eliza Jane who supervised the dehydration of the eggs, and the preparation and packing of the veggies.

As for the phrase slick as a mitten,  Ezra lost his assets that way, he said, swiftly. I picture a thick leather mitten, coated with ice.

ps  Meeker planned the town of Puyallup, and named it. The name honored the native people there, known as the "generous people," but whether their generosity extended to the deeding of their lands to white settlers for hop growing I do not know. ..

Comments

[Foodie]

Yes---and all told, the Archives at Wash State U apparently have 50,000 letters from Meeker!
Scholars have been kvetching for years that there are almost no "first drafts" in literature anymore, either.

[Rose]

Not about veggies, dried or fresh.
BUT:
You said he wrote letters to his wife, which are interesting to us now, great stuff.

Think of the loss of history to future generations because we used fax, then e-mail, sms, and whatever else next. No record kept. All knowlwdge lost.