Remembering the real Colonel Sanders

[Robin Garr]

Fun story. I was just a kid when the real Colonel was around, rolling up to the St. Matthews Mall's Blue Boar restaurant on Sundays in his Rolls Royce with his smiling face painted on the doors.

This article gets him about right, as best I can recall. Who's got Col. Sanders stories? Let's hear 'em!

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/food/20 ... l-sanders/

Great article. My favorite line (in the context of why KFC ultimately "dumbed-down" the Colonel's recipes):

A company executive says, “Let’s face it the Colonel’s gravy was fantastic but you had to be a Rhodes Scholar to cook it."

One of our consultants worked for KFC in the Colonel era. He says the Colonel was a bawdy fellow quick with the off-color southern-fried witticism. Also, due to his advanced age, when they traveled with him they had a protocol for "what to do if the Colonel dies while you are traveling with him." It was much like you might imagine the PR spin and procedures if the same were to happen to the president.

All in all, though, this article sounds like it captures his irascible character, if perhaps a with a glossier view.

I didn't work at KFC when the Colonel did but there were stories.
His chauffeur still worked there when I did. He went to Japan once and pulled up to where the Colonel had an event. He asked if he could drive around Tokyo while he was busy. Colonel told him he paid him to chauffeur not be a tourist. But he did give the man a house. I understand he was generous.
He had a condo in Hikes Point across from a KFC that has since moved. The then manager went on to work at Corporate (Tech Support). The Colonel was known to walk in and throw out the gravy and make his own. They cringed everytime they saw him come in
Winston, the man who made possible the restaurant at Sullivan, worked at GE and developed the fryers and holding cabinets that KFC and other restaurants used. My uncle and another man road together with Winston to work back then. He did that in his garage.
Apparently when I was little, my family took the back route to Smokey Mts. (no 75 then). They forgot my sister's stroller but when we returned, it was there waiting for us.
Stopped in there a few years ago. A top franchisee had owned it. Fun spot. It's only a couple miles from 75 but of course anything over 1/4 mile is too far today.
Years ago, my last trip to CA at KFC, I rode around with a franchisee. Turned out he had played basketball with Denny Crum and was good friends with John Wooden. Called him up while we were driving! Would come to Louisville and visit during stock holder meetings.
Not all the KFCs were the fast food look. I can almost remember the one at Richmond that featured the Colonel's chicken but was a full service restaurant.
Restaurant history is fun whether it's a chain or not.

My Mom tells me of the time our family was on the way to visit her sister in San Diego, CA in 1963. I was a year old and that was a very long trip for the time on the prop planes that cruised low and slow. On one of the flights back I grew very fussy. A gentleman sitting next to my Mom offered to take me for a spell to give her a break. Mom reports that I settled right down in the mans lap and the flight became much more pleasant for all onboard. The man was Col. Harland Sanders, chicken magnate and baby whisperer.

The man was Col. Harland Sanders, chicken magnate and baby whisperer.

And the inspiration for your 'stache?

He stopped by my elementary school once and spent 20 minutes patting kids on the head.

The Colonel and his wife used to come to our church in Jeffersontown on occasion, especially for "pot-lucks" - this was in the very early 70s. He was always in the white suit. I believe that he lived out off Hurstbourne Lane at the time. He was always pleasant and grandfatherly.

My mom used to tell the story about my dad my older brother and my mom driving back from Florida. This would have been in the early 1950s. Dad was sure he could make better time driving than what he actually did. They found themselves in front of Col. Sanders restaurant (the original one) late at night with a very tired, very fussy, very hungry little boy. Dad tapped on the house part of the restaurant and Col. Sanders came to the door. Dad said he realized the restaurant was closed but did Mr. (then) Sanders know of anyplace open where he could get a meal for his family? "
"Why sure. Right here!" And he proceeded to open up the restaurant and kitchen and cooked them a meal himself.

This isn't a Col. Sanders story per se, but I've always wondered how true it was. I'm hoping one of the experts here might know something about it. In high school I was a major KFC junkie -- this despite the fact that I had worked at one for a while and saw how the food was prepared. When I went to IU in Bloomington in 1978, they had two restaurants in town called Boxman's Kentucky Fried Chicken. Imagine my horror when I discovered that the chicken in these "Kentucky Fried Chickens" didn't taste anything like Kentucky Fried Chicken. The story going around was that Mr. Boxman was a local man who had owned the restaurants for a long time and was a friend of Col. Sanders. Sanders worked out a deal with Boxman where he could use the KFC name but he didn't have to use the recipe. There were weven pictures of the two them on the walls of the restaurants. And supposedly when Sanders sold the chain, he insisted on a clause where Boxman could continue his stores with his own recipe. The restaurants eventually disappeared and the "real" KFCs took their place. At the time I was happy but now I'd love to go back in time and see if the Boxman recipe to see if it was any good.

I was a little boy in Rockford IL (we moved a lot) and my dad was running a fancy restaurant with one of the first KFC franchises in the back. One Sat. a huge black car pulled up and a man got out who looked exactly like the man on the tubs of chicken. He bent down, put me on the counter and put a Kentucky Colonel's tie on me.
No one really knew who he was then but I had a picture I proudly displayed for years.