Every autumn, pumpkins seem to take over the world. They perch on porches, fill our pies, scent our candles, and lately, they’ve even taken to the water. Yes, the water. Thank you to Shanna Hatfield for posting some pics from her excursion to the Tualatan Pumpkin Regatta on FB. Shanna was in the Portland area last week for a book signing and got to go see this spectacle. I had no idea such a thing even existed! And I don’t live that far away!

So, it’s called the West Coast Giant Pumpkin Regatta where folks climb into hollowed-out pumpkins the size of rowboats and paddle across a lake. Costumes, cheering crowds, and a few wobbly mishaps included. When I first saw pictures, I thought wow! How fun! And this has been going on for over twenty years?  Turns out, people will race just about anything that floats.

And that got me thinking…

What would a Victorian Pumpkin Regatta have looked like? Or a western one? Ha! Can you picture cowboys climbing into giant hollowed out pumpkins to race? Oh. My. Goodness! After all, Victorians and cowboys alike  loved a good party.

In the late 1800s, Halloween was shifting away from fright and toward fun and community. Parlors and barns were decked out for games, laughter, and just a touch of mischief. So, if you happen to be near a lake…

Imagine a genteel Victorian regatta on some fog-kissed lake. Ladies in long gowns and gentlemen in top hats politely stepping into their floating gourds while someone on the shore shouts, “Mind your crinoline, Miss Penelope!” The brass band strikes up a tune as the racers paddle madly for the prize. Probably a lace handkerchief and eternal bragging rights.

Meanwhile, the spectators sip mulled cider and play their own party games: Bobbing for Apples in porcelain washbasins, lace sleeves rolled just high enough to scandalize. Halloween Pudding, a cake baked with hidden charms in it like a thimble, a button, a ring, each foretelling one’s romantic or financial fate.

Now imagine if a few cowboys from the Old West had a pumpkin regatta! You can bet they wouldn’t be content to simply paddle their pumpkins across the water, no, siree. They’d line up their hollowed-out gourds like canoes, tip their hats to the crowd, and shout “Yee-haw!” as they raced for them with one  hand on a paddle, the other keeping a hold of their hat. The race would probably turn it into a full-blown rodeo on water. I can just see the sheriff trying to keep order while the town’s blacksmith bets his week’s wages on the fastest pumpkin, and a fiddler on the dock strikes up Turkey in the Straw to spur them on. By the end of it, someone’s pumpkin would’ve sprung a leak, someone else would be fishing their boots out of the drink, and the whole town would be laughing so hard they’d forget who won.

Yeah, I’m going to have to put that in a book! Oh, sure, back in the day they had lots of games they played for Halloween and harvest time too. The mirror game, where a brave young woman peers by candlelight to see if her true love—or a skull!—appears behind her. (Personally, I’d rather take my chances in the pumpkin boat.) And then there was a parlor game played in the dark where guests were told a room was haunted, then sent in folks one by one to reach into drawers and pull out mysterious boxes. Some contained party favors; others, well, the unexpected. (Cold oatmeal makes a fine imitation of something ghostly and unpleasant, trust me.

Folks back in the day knew how to have fun around this time of  year and they certainly had imagination. Whether it was a fruitcake prophecy or a pumpkin pie eating contest, it all came down to the same thing. Celebrating the harvest, sharing laughter, and finding joy in the turning of the season.

So tell me, what were some of your favorite games to play at harvest festivals or Halloween parties? I bet none of them included racing around in giant pumpkins on a lake!

Barbara, you’re Kit Morgan’s winner!
You’ve won a free ebook copy of Wilbert, The Snows of Clear Creek, Book 6
Contact Kit at authorkitmorgan@gmail.com

Writing western romance isn’t about just the romance. I love building a strong sense of community into my books, be they historical or contemporary.  I’ve  created entire towns that now have third and fourth generation characters living in them. Each town has its own traditions, and you’d think putting on a play would be harmless enough. Not in my fictional town of Clear Creek!

In my latest release, Wilbert, (which has not one, but two romances in it) the whole town is buzzing over a performance of Romeo and Juliet. But the preachers in town have plans to turn it into a little something else by having characters from a ridiculous pirate play performed the year before, play the parts in Romeo and Juliet. It’s a big secret, and folks are dying to figure out what it is! Rehearsals bring out the worst in Clear Creek’s busybodies. Seems everyone wants to peek through windows, eavesdrop through the walls, or sneak inside the church to see what’s going on.

Well, Preacher Wiley and Preacher Jo had enough of it. They tacked notices right to the church walls — threats and all! But do the townspeople believe their beloved preachers will go through with their threats? Here’s an excerpt:

Yes, you read that right,” Fanny said. “Arrested for snooping at play practice!”

***

Of course, Clear Creek being Clear Creek, some folks ignored the warnings. Let’s just say the jailhouse got a little extra traffic. And sometimes, jail time came with perks. Here’s another little excerpt:

Life in Clear Creek is never dull, and in Wilbert the antics only get wilder. Between play rehearsals, cattle rustlers, and a crab costume (don’t ask), there’s plenty of laughter, romance, and small-town mayhem.

So tell me — would you have risked a peek at rehearsals, or played it safe and waited for opening night? Me, I’d have definitely peeked! And probably landed in jail. But I’d have gotten dinner out of the deal, just like Wilbert’s friend Cal did. I’m giving away one free ebook copy of Wilbert to one lucky commenter!

Congratulations, Teresa F.!

You’ve won one ebook of Kit’s of your choice!

Contact Kit at authorkitmorgan@gmail.com

Petticoats and Pistols turned eighteen on 8/13/2025. Each of us said a few words about what we did when we turned eighteen. I decided it would be fun to elaborate.
As I said in our birthday post, when I turned eighteen, I didn’t throw a party or head off for some big adventure with friends. I didn’t even stick around for a traditional senior year. I graduated early and took a job working the backside of a racetrack.

Why? Because college wasn’t going to pay for itself. And because, deep down, I’ve always had a streak of independence (some might call it stubbornness, but let’s be generous).

My days started with feeding horses, then mucking out stalls. The trainer I was working for had about twenty to twenty-four horses as I recall, and two grooms, myself and another girl. From there, it was grooming and rubbing down the horses, and putting them on the hot walker for either exercise or to cool down after galloping. Seven. Days. A week. No breaks. No holidays. Just the kind of work that builds grit, muscle, and a real appreciation for a hot shower, if you were lucky enough to get one.

I slept on a cot in a 7-by-7 tack room, wedged between saddles, grain buckets, and the smell of horses so strong I probably carried it around in my pores. And honestly? I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Because at eighteen, I learned what it meant to earn something. Not just money, but pride. Not to mention confidence and discipline. I wasn’t reading about a heroine in a western book back then, not by a long shot. But I see her in that version of me now. The one who did hard things to make her dreams happen. The one who didn’t wait around for life to give her a story. Instead, she went out and wrote one.
From 1962 to 1983, Portland Meadows was owned by William “Bill” Wineberg. In the 1960s, Wineberg gave Rick Stroud—already a familiar face in the horse racing community—his first official job at the track. Stroud had grown up in the business; his father, Len Stroud, was a jockey credited with organizing both the Canadian and American Jockey Guilds.
On April 25, 1970, disaster struck when a fire destroyed the grandstand. Thankfully, no lives—human or equine—were lost, though the blaze ended the meet early. By 1971, the facilities had been rebuilt, and the reopening drew a record crowd of 12,635.
Portland Meadows made headlines again in 1981 when Gary Stevens began a two-season run as the track’s leading rider. In 1987, the Coors Portland Meadows Mile became Oregon’s first $100,000 stakes race, won by Present Value under Hall of Fame jockey William Shoemaker. Then, in 1994, a two-year-old named Jumron captured the attention of racing fans across the Pacific Northwest. He became the first horse to launch his career at Portland Meadows and go on to compete in the Kentucky Derby. My sister trained with Gary Stevens and the two are friends to this day.

I worked as a groom for three months and then—because life never stops turning the page—we packed up the racehorses and left Oregon for California. I started working the fair circuit, traveling from county fair to county fair where horse races were held right alongside Ferris wheels and fried food.

My “room” was still a tack room, only now it was on the backside of a racetrack nestled somewhere behind the Tilt-A-Whirl and the cotton candy booth. It wasn’t glamorous. It wasn’t easy. And it definitely wasn’t boring. At that particular race track, Portland Meadows, my dad was chief of security at the time for the racing commission, so no one dared mess with me or my sister, who was galloping horses at the time and starting her career as a jockey.

There were always interesting characters skulking around the fairgrounds, some more curious than others. I remember one racehorse trainer in particular who made it his mission to chase off any lurkers. He had the bark of a drill sergeant and the instincts of a sheepdog. His name was R.J. and he was great! While at Portland Meadows, this wasn’t as much of a problem as my dad was chief of security of the racing commission at the time, (he had to have something to do after he retired from being a homicide detective) and so no one really messed with my sister or me while there.

Working the fairs was dusty, noisy, chaotic, and full of personalities. But it was also a life lived full-on. I look back on that summer now and realize it shaped me far more than I knew at the time. I learned to work hard, stay sharp, trust my instincts, and keep going, even when the hours were long and the cot was lumpy.

What was one of your first jobs? Was it waitressing, berry picking, babysitting? And what did you do with the money you earned? I’m giving away one ebook of mine of choice to one lucky commenter.

You’ve heard the saying. We all have.
“It’s the greatest thing since sliced bread!”

But have you ever stopped mid-toast and wondered when exactly did sliced bread become the yardstick by which we measure all genius innovation? I did. And let me tell you, the rabbit hole was crusty, fascinating, and even involved a wartime ban. Yep. Sliced bread was once illegal!

Let’s head to the golden days of ingenuity and carb-loading: It all began with a fella named Otto Frederick Rohwedder from Davenport, Iowa. In 1912, he built a prototype for a bread-slicing machine only to have it destroyed in a fire. (Bummer, I know. That alone deserves a moment of silence.) It wasn’t until 1928 that Otto got the gears turning again, quite literally, with a machine that sliced loaves neatly and efficiently.

The very first loaf of pre-sliced bread was sold on July 7, 1928, at the Chillicothe Baking Company in Chillicothe, Missouri. They called their newfangled product Kleen Maid Sliced Bread and advertised it as “the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped.” Yeah, not so subtle, but effective. Needless to say it caught on fast.

By 1930, Wonder Bread—already a household name—began marketing pre-sliced bread nationwide. And by 1933, over eighty percent of bread sold in the U.S. came pre-sliced. In other words, folks were hooked. It was easy, tidy, and just made life better. (And if you’ve ever tried to slice a loaf evenly before coffee, you understand.)

On a side note, we used to pass by a Wonder Bread Bakery when our dad would take us to Lloyd Center, one of the first malls ever built in the United States. He would purposely slow down so we could roll down our windows and smell the wonderful scent of bread baking!

Any hoo, good ideas tend to snowball. A St. Louis baker named Gustav Papendick bought Otto’s second slicer but ran into a snag: the slices would fall apart before he could get them wrapped. He tried rubber bands. Metal pins. Probably even prayer.

Eventually, he hit on the idea of using a cardboard tray to hold the slices together long enough to wrap them. Voila! Bread didn’t just slice, it stayed sliced.

But the story doesn’t stop there. Enter stage left: W.E. Long, a marketing genius behind the Holsum Bread brand. He championed sliced bread like it was his personal mission, and thanks to him, sliced bread got packaged, promoted, and plunked onto grocery store shelves across America.

Now here’s where things get… well, a little weird. In 1943, during World War II, the U.S. government imposed a ban on sliced bread! Yes, you read that right. The Secretary of Agriculture, Claude R. Wickard, thought the extra wax paper required to package sliced loaves was wasteful. So, on January 18, 1943, sliced bread was pulled from shelves. 

Cue the domestic rebellion. One distraught housewife wrote a letter to The New York Times, pleading her case:
“Without ready-sliced bread I must do the slicing for toast—two pieces for each one—that’s ten. For their lunches I must cut by hand at least twenty slices, for two sandwiches apiece. Afterward I make my own toast. Twenty-two slices of bread to be cut in a hurry!” Egads, that’s a lot of slicing! Fortunately, the backlash was swift and loud. By March 8, just 49 days later, the ban was rescinded. Turns out, the conservation benefit wasn’t nearly as significant as the inconvenience caused. Apparently, the greatest thing since sliced bread really was sliced bread.

Then, slicing went global. Britain got its first slicing and wrapping machine in 1937, at the Wonderloaf Bakery in London. By the 1950s, eighty percent of the bread in the UK was pre-sliced. Ireland calls it “sliced pan,” and the loaves are wrapped in waxed paper like a proper gift.

And if you want to start an international debate, ask folks what the proper thickness of a bread slice should be. In Japan, they label loaves by how many slices they’re cut into: 4, 6, 8, or 10. (The higher the number, the thinner the slice.) In Canada and the U.S., Texas Toast laughs in thick-sliced superiority. And in Australia, you’ve got “toast,” “sandwich,” and the occasional “café” thickness to choose from.

So the next time you hear someone say, “It’s the best thing since sliced bread,” tip your hat to Otto Rohwedder. The man took a simple concept—cutting bread—and turned it into a revolution of convenience, consumption, and marketing magic.
Not bad for a guy from Iowa with a fire-singed dream. Now, if you’ll excuse me, all this talk of bread has me eyeing the toaster. And maybe a little jam. Or butter. Or both. Definitely both. No wait! Where’s my peanut butter? 

How many of you bake your own bread? And if you don’t bake your own, could you imagine if all bread was sold unsliced? I think of the poor woman having to slice 22 slices of bread every morning and cringe.

When we think of the Old West, our minds usually jump to dusty trails, saloon brawls, and heroes riding off into the sunset. But sooner or later, even the toughest cowboy had to eat, and he didn’t always want to cook over a campfire.
The truth is, eating out was a regular part of Western life, and the options might surprise you. From smoky saloons to tented cafés, and even elegant dining rooms with imported oysters, the Western frontier had its own version of food culture, and it’s a lot more colorful than you might expect.

If war and, um, other career choices are among the world’s oldest professions, the saloon business was definitely right behind them. On the frontier, just about anyone could become a saloonkeeper. Startup costs were low. Heck, all you had to do was pitch yourself a tent, set up a plank of wood as your bar, serve up some truly questionable whiskey and voila! You’re in business. The best part was, no marketing was necessary. The product sold itself.
Saloons sprang up faster than churches, and in many towns would outnumber them. While researching this, someone said saloons were the 19th-century version of fast-food joints: you could never have too many.

Saloons came in three basic flavors:
1. The Premier Saloon
These were the fancy places, with chilled beer, quality whiskey, gambling rooms, live entertainment, and sometimes even indoor plumbing (a luxury back then). Establishments like the White Elephant and Vaudeville often had a restaurant tucked inside or attached. You might find a menu, a wine list, and actual furniture that hadn’t been nailed together that morning. Ladies—usually of a specific profession—had their own wine rooms with private entrances.
2. The Blue-Collar Saloon
Much simpler, these one-room joints had a bar, a few rickety tables, maybe a piano, and a “free lunch” counter. The catch? You had to buy at least two drinks to get at the food. It was an honor system, but saloonkeepers knew exactly what they were doing. That salty spread of meats, pickles, and pretzels kept customers reaching for another beer. Glassware was optional, clean glassware even more so.
3. The Dive
This was the bottom of the barrel, literally. No fresh air, no light, and no cleaning schedule. The smell of old beer, smoke, and body odor hung in the air. Gambling here wasn’t official, just a few regulars playing cards if someone brought a deck. If you had any sense (or sense of smell), you didn’t linger.

For folks passing through or staying longer, boarding houses were a lifesaver. Usually run by single women or widows, these homes-turned-businesses offered rooms for rent and at least one hearty meal a day, usually breakfast and dinner.
Meals were served family-style at big tables, with everyone passing bowls and plates. There were no menus, but the food was hot, plentiful, and comforting. It was the closest thing to a home-cooked meal many travelers would get.
As towns grew, so did their culinary ambitions. Western restaurants started off modest, often just a tent or lean-to with a stove and a determined cook. But as business boomed, owners built permanent structures and began offering more elaborate menus.

Meals often featured:
• Beef (lots of it)
• Eggs, breads, and potatoes
• Coffee and fruit pies
• Seasonal vegetables, if you were lucky

Some places went above and beyond. By the 1880s, French cuisine was all the rage, and yes, even in the middle of nowhere. Fancy sauces, seafood, milk, cheese, and delicate desserts made their way to menus. And if the budget allowed, you might even find oysters shipped in from the coast.

While most restaurants out West were hit-or-miss in terms of quality, cleanliness, and service, one man saw the mess and decided to turn it into an opportunity. Fred Harvey, whom a lot of us have written about before, was a visionary entrepreneur, opened his first Harvey House in 1878 in Florence, Kansas, right along the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad. He set out to bring dignity, speed, and reliability to the railroad dining experience.

And his secret weapon? Women.

Fred’s partner, Tom Gable, had suggested that restaurants might run more smoothly if they weren’t staffed entirely by rowdy men. So Harvey hired women between the ages of 18 and 30 who were bright, well-mannered, respectable young ladies who became known as Harvey Girls. They wore crisp uniforms, followed strict codes of conduct, and were often required to sign year-long contracts that included curfews and chaperoned housing. The impact was immediate.

Harvey Houses became known for:
• Consistent, high-quality meals
• Spotless dining rooms
• Efficient service that could feed a train’s worth of people in 30 minutes flat
• Menus featuring steaks, fresh vegetables, homemade pies, and excellent coffee

Over the years, more than 80 Harvey Houses dotted the Western landscape, bringing a touch of elegance and order to otherwise wild frontiers. The Harvey Girls themselves became legends—many later married local men and settled in the towns they served, helping to civilize the West in more ways than one.

Fun Fact: Harvey Girls were trained to set tables exactly the same way in every location, from Arizona to Kansas. Napkin folds, silver placement, even the way pies were cut was all standardized long before “chain restaurants” were a thing.

Whether you were swigging whiskey in a smoky dive, passing potatoes around a boarding house table, or sipping coffee at a Harvey House counter, eating out in the Old West had its own unique flavor. Meals weren’t just about sustenance. They were about community, status, survival, and the occasional surprise, like French sauces in Arizona.
So, the next time you’re at a restaurant, caught between ordering the fries or the fancy entrée, just remember, you could be elbow-deep in salted herring, breathing in cigar smoke, and hoping the outhouse out back isn’t already full.

If you were a weary traveler making your way across the west, which place would you hope your train or stagecoach stop had? Harvey House, premier saloon, or a simple café? Me, I’d want to check out a Harvey House! It’s one of those things that if you got to time travel and go back and see what things were really like, I wouldn’t mind doing.

Back in the days when “airmail” meant handing a note to the stagecoach driver and hoping for the best, love often took the form of ink on paper and patience by the bucketful.

Nowadays, with email and so much being done online, handwritten letters are slowly becoming a thing of the past. Some even call them an art form! But there’s something timeless about a handwritten letter—the way the paper softens from being read too many times, the little smudges where someone’s fingers lingered, and the unmistakable swoop of their handwriting. Every loop and curve a quiet whisper from the one who wrote it. Sure, sometimes the handwriting was hard to read. But when it’s from someone close to your heart? You don’t mind squinting a little.

In the frontier world of my books, I have a lot of mail-order brides. Letters are sent, but not many before the bride shows up in town and the courting begins—or they get married right away! But in some stories, the letters go deeper. They’re more than communication. They’re lifelines. With miles (and sometimes mountains) between folks, it wasn’t unusual for courtship to happen entirely on paper before a couple ever laid eyes on one another.

Can you imagine falling in love by letter?

History’s full of famous couples who did just that—Napoleon and Joséphine, Alexander Hamilton and Eliza, Balzac and Ewelina, even Beethoven and his mysterious ‘Immortal Beloved.’

No profile pictures. No swiping right. Just pen, paper, and the hope that the words you’re reading are true. That they belong to someone worth waiting for.

And waiting was the key word! Back in the 1800s, love letters didn’t arrive with the tap of a finger. Depending on the distance, weather, and method of transport, a single letter could take weeks—or even months—to reach its destination. Before the Pony Express, cross-country correspondence might take up to three months, especially if it had to travel by wagon train, riverboat, or stagecoach. Add in a snowstorm, a broken wheel, or a delay at a waystation, and you could tack on extra weeks with no warning.

When the Pony Express galloped onto the scene in 1860, it changed everything—for a little while. Daring young riders braved weather, robbers, and rough terrain to carry mail faster than ever before. But the Express only lasted a year before the telegraph—and later, the Transcontinental Railroad—took over, shortening mail times to just days instead of weeks.

Still, even within the same state—or just a few towns apart—letters could take several days to arrive. And yet, lovers waited. They checked the post with fluttering hearts. Some re-read old letters until they almost wore out the paper. Back then, courtships were built on patience, ink, and hope.

It might be old-fashioned… but isn’t that kind of slow-burn, heart-tugging, soul-baring romance exactly what we’re all craving?

Do you still send or receive handwritten letters? Have you written many in your life? Do you have a stack of old ones tucked away—waiting to be read again and again?
Let me know in the comments below!