The Historians with Bob Cudmore, Episode #500 on the way Friday, November 3, 2023

https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-historians-podcast-2022  Or send a check made out to Bob Cudmore to 125 Horstman Drive, Scotia, NY 12302. 

Night lunch wagons were popular a century ago

By Bob Cudmore

   Recorder columnist Hugh Donlon, born in 1896, fondly remembered the end of the era of downtown Amsterdam’s night lunch wagons.

   Two lunch wagons were drawn by horses each afternoon, one to Church and East Main Streets and the other to Market and West Main.  The wagons were owned by the McNally family, who stored them in sheds near what is now the post office on Church Street.

   In his 1980 book “Annals of a Mill Town,” Donlon wrote, “Wafted on the summer zephyr or swirled fiercely by the winter’s gale, the onionized fragrance of a McNally western egg sandwich could be sensed blocks away.”  A western egg sandwich cost a dime; a piece of pie was a nickel. 

   Eat-in or take out lunch wagons, predecessors of today’s food trucks, first appeared in Providence, Rhode Island in the 1870s. 

   According to an article by Joyce K. Schiller of the Norman Rockwell Museum, the temperance movement sometimes sponsored these mobile eateries as a way to keep hungry working people out of saloons at night.

   William McNally from Hudson, Massachusetts, established the first night lunch wagons in Amsterdam during the 1890s.

   “The business thrived from the outset,” according to McNally’s 1944 obituary, “Chiefly because of the industriousness of the originator and the sincere confidence of the public which he quickly gained.”

   Early in the twentieth century William McNally turned the operation over to his relatives, mainly John McNally, who may have been William’s cousin.  William continued as owner and frequently visited Amsterdam. 

   Some restaurant proprietors opposed the mobile eateries.  An attempt to ban the two McNally wagons and a third mobile eatery owned by William Cooper failed to pass the Amsterdam common council in 1904.  Cooper parked his wagon on East Main Street near the local trolley waiting room.

   The newspaper reported that McNally paid twenty-five dollars in local taxes, said to be as much as was paid by businesses with brick and mortar locations.

   William McNally was tapped to co-manage the restaurant at Amsterdam’s Central Hotel in 1906 and the Recorder reported he was picked because his wagons “have come to be known all over the state for the quality of food they put out.”

   On a below zero Valentine’s Day in 1916 this lunch wagon story was reported in the Recorder, “Traffic on the Main and Market Hill divisions of the trolley line was halted for half an hour due to difficulty experienced in getting one of John McNally’s night lunch wagons in its customary station at the corner of Market and West Main Streets.”

   On June 24, 1920 a worker’s lighted cigarette accidentally ignited gasoline being poured into a tank of one of McNally’s wagons in its Church Street shed.  Both wagons, called beaneries in the story, were destroyed in the fire, the shed collapsed and damage was estimated at $6,000.  A kitchen used to prepare food in the building was damaged. 

   But the McNally wagons rolled on.  As automobile traffic increased, the wagons finally disappeared in July 1926 after the death of John McNally.

   For many years Matty Curran was chef at the Church Street wagon.  Curran later operated Matty’s Lunch on West Main Street.  In late 1936 he disappeared from his Amsterdam rooming house and died three months later after being found wandering in Birmingham, Alabama, suffering from pneumonia.  There was speculation he was the victim of amnesia.

   In 1951 another former lunch wagon chef named Charles Munsey died in Amsterdam at age 91.  After the wagons closed, Munsey held other cooking jobs then worked for retailer Montgomery Ward.  His nickname from his cooking days was Charley Beans. 

Monday, July 24, 2023-Story behind the story-Night time food wagons in Amsterdam

Tuesday, July 25, 2023-From the Archives of Focus on History from the Daily Gazette-Amsterdam’s Maldutis Bakery

Wednesday, July 26, 2023-From the Archives- Friday, April 12, 2019-Episode 261-Richard Ratajak, now 87, looks back on his life as a child in Amsterdam, a soldier in the Korean War, and a priest in training who served at Auriesville Shrine.  Ratajak left the priesthood to marry the woman he loved and held jobs in state government as he gradually lost his eyesight.  He served on the board of RISE, WMHT’s radio service for the blind.

Thursday, July 27, 2023-From the Archives of Focus on History from the Daily Gazette-Castler’s Market in  Amsterdam 

Friday, July 28, 2023-Episode 485-On the road to our 500th episode.  Larry Gooley wrote the history of Adirondack serial killer Robert Garrow.  Gooley was interviewed in March 2015 on Episode 49 of The Historians Podcast.

In the summer of 1973, a serial killer's rampage in the Adirondack Mountains of northern New York State changed the region forever. Innocent visitors and campers were brutally knifed to death, terrifying thousands of residents and vacationers. A peaceful part of America was lost, as people armed themselves and locked their doors, living and sleeping in fear. It was a reign of terror the likes of which the mountains had never seen. And it was all the vile handiwork of one very troubled, dangerous man: Robert Francis Garrow. But there is much more to Garrow's story than a series of murders.

The Historians with Bob Cudmore, Episode #500 on the way this November

You may donate online at https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-historians-podcast-2022  Or send a check made out to Bob Cudmore to 125 Horstman Drive, Scotia, NY 12302.  You may give anonymously and no contribution is too big or too small. We’ve now raised 3210 dollars, over 45% of our $7000 goal for the year.

Episode 484-Lorissa Rinehart has written a biography of groundbreaking female photojournalist and war correspondent Dickey Chapelle titled First to the Front.

North Chuctanunda Creek, Amsterdam, NY - Whitewater Kayaking

Posted by Homer D

Mohawk Valley  Weekend Weather, Sunday, July 23, 2023

58 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 6:27AM

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