I'm surprised that I apparently haven't posted anything about this book (Doubleday, 1982) at the HP, and maybe I have. But I'm getting ready to give it away, so I want to make sure I've recorded at least these two sections, which are my favorites.
Harland Sanders in 1937 opened restaurants in Cumberland and Richmond (in addition to the one he already operated in Corbin), and here are two paragraphs about that from Page 71:
Neither of his new restaurants proved successful, and he soon sold both of them. The failures were none too surprising. Harlan County, where Cumberland sat at the end of a long, bad road, twenty-five miles from the county seat, had been shattered by the Depression. The coal market was going from bad to worse, coal prices were down, and as coal operators continued to lay off men and cut wages, the miners went out on a series of bitter strikes that sparked a decade of labor-management warfare. Hungry miners looted stores and begged food for their families. The Red Cross and church organizations shipped in carloads of food that only touched the spreading need. There were not enough people in Cumberland who could afford to eat in a first-class restaurant.
Harland had made another miscalculation in choosing Richmond as the site of his other venture. His location was not on the main traffic route, and he thus missed the trade that kept his Corbin cafe booming. People who could afford to eat out were in the habit of driving to nearby Lexington. And the students at Richmond’s Eastern State Teachers College (now Eastern Kentucky University) could barely afford to eat in the dormitories. Harland had to hire too many people for too little trade. More important, he could not be there all the time to ride herd on the help.
And then there's this from some years later, and from Page 105, which is what you get when a writer as talented as John Ed Pearce sits down and really takes a good stab at capturing a character as rich as Harland Sanders:
He could have quit if he had wanted to. Despite all of his talk about being "broke at sixty-five," he had quite a cushion to fall back on—a home, a car, some saving, insurances, Social Security, and a trickle of income from the franchises he had given out. These thoughts occurred to him at the end of a long day, when his joints ached and when some restaurant owner was too busy to listen to his proposition.He was, after all, at an age when most men are beginning to spend their days in the sun, dangling a line off the pier. He had led a hard, strenuous life, and the fights and disappointments and long hours of labor were starting to tell. He had to wear his glasses all the time now, and the arthritis that would plague him the rest of his life was hurting, and he had only aspirin for relief, aspirin and pep talks, as he drove along the dreary Midwestern roads, looking for restaurants where the owners would have enough gumption to see the golden future in Kentucky Fried Chicken.Put yourself in his place for a moment, driving those rain-wet roads, trying to keep accounts in the car seat, worrying about money. It’s hard, toward the end of the day, to convince yourself that you’re not old, that you’re not getting tired. And it’s cold at night when you sleep in the backseat of the car in some deserted parking lot to save the cost of a motel, making yourself think of something else than home and a warm bed. You feel a little sick and your muscles ache when you wake up in the morning, wondering for a moment where you are, with rusty eyes and a dry stubble and the old ache in your hands and your white suit all rumpled.So you wait for a filling station to open and go into the restroom and shave, and throw cold water on your face and comb your hair. And you stand in front of the mirror and give yourself a silent pep talk, and maybe pray a little, and take a deep breath and get ready to go out there and sell this guy, trying not to notice when he looks at you as if to say: What the hell is this, anyway?
What a great read.
ReplyDeleteIn 1964, when Colonel Sanders was 73 years old, and KFC was in more than 600 locations, he sold the company for $2 million ($20.3 million in today's money) to a collection of Kentucky business people led by John Y. Brown, Jr. Sanders became a salaried brand ambassador. He also kept the Canadian operations.
ReplyDeleteYes, this turned out about as badly as it typically turns out when the former pastor of decades keeps membership in the same congregation and takes a spot on the front pew the Sunday after the retirement dinner in the fellowship hall.
DeleteIn 1965, he moved to Ontario to oversee his Canadian franchises and lived there until he died in 1980.
ReplyDeleteSo all that hard work paid off.
ReplyDeleteIt absolutely did, but he regretted selling. The Canadian move reads like an exile situation. He would visit restaurants and cause a ruckus. He would be quoted about how the chicken and, in particular, the gravy was no longer as good as when he was in charge. He opened that Claudia Sanders Dinner House restaurant in Shelbyville and advertised as it being the true home of his original KFC recipes. The franchisers got hacked that this national spokesperson was trashing and actively competing with the company, so John Y. and his board came up with the Canadian deal.
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