This menu — one that I’ve hypothesized but hadn’t known about for certain until this year — features the Oregon State College (now Oregon State University) student union on the cover. I spent three years at OSU and don’t have many good memories, but most of the ones I do have were spent in or near the student union: attending concerts, listening to public speakers, playing frisbee on the large lawn shown in this photo, and attending the founding meeting of the OSU Railroad Club (of which I was elected treasurer, a meaningless position as we didn’t have any money).
Click image to download a 1.2-MB PDF of this menu.
This may be the kind of nostalgic feeling that UP probably meant to evoke in its series of college menus. Unfortunately, many of this series feature the college’s administration building on the cover. My memories of college administration buildings were of standing in line to sign up for classes, standing in line to pay fees, and standing in line to deal with officious bureaucrats who don’t know how to add — not memories that generate feelings of nostalgia. Maybe if UP had pictured more student unions, its college series would have been more popular.
Inside is a lunch menu for the “John C. Boyle Kiwanis International Tour.” I don’t know for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this were the John C. Boyle who was the chief engineer for the California Oregon Power Company (now part of Pacific Power & Light) from 1916 to 1963. Boyle built a lot of dams that were technological marvels and important contributors to the Pacific Coast economy, but that also helped reduce Pacific salmon runs.