Had I posted this 4 days ago my intro would likely have been different than what's in our brains as I type this Saturday afternoon. We've had another sad few days, our world once again attacked by my current favorite catch-all word, badness. In the meantime I have had the immense pleasure to read Rich's third part of the stories he's written from his great memory bank, a gift he certainly is to be appreciated for sharing with us. This one is funny, it's long and worth every minute of reading, and insightful; but as I was reading it the first time, just as we were learning about yet another hideous attack on an individual by someone who didn't like his target, I didn't realize how meaningful the last part was going to be that day especially.
We should all be thankful to Rich for his memories being openly shared with us, especially as many of our 702 classmates are going to be together soon, including Rich. I doubt there will be a single moment of "I didn't know what to say when I saw so and so..." at this reunion! I suspect that we'll be so busy talking, as we always are, we'll have trouble finding time to fit in the eating! If you won't be at the reunion, DO read Rich's story ~ I hope you'll agree he's right on the money in his thoughts. I rather wish I could publish this essay somewhere that everyone in the civilized world could read it! Oh, perhaps that's a dumb phrase, maybe our civilized world is shrinking and not thinking enough to even catch his message or appreciate his eloquent words. That's a disconcerting thought....
Kentucky
Fried
By
Rich Jones
Part
I: It’s Finger Lickin’ Good
“Hot
pot behind you” I called out.
I
squeezed my way past the worktable where Joe was plunging a cut-up
chicken in a tub of powered eggs and milk before dropping it into a
tub of flour seasoned with Col. Sander’s secret blend of 11 herbs
and spices. I popped the lid off the pressure cooker and dumped 18
pieces of perfectly fried chicken—two whole birds cut up—into a
basket to drain six quarts of hot oil into the filtering vat for
reuse. I laid out the chicken on the wire rack of a sheet pan and
spun around to get it into the drying cupboard as quickly as I could
so the packers could stuff it into boxes and buckets along with the
mashed potatoes and a biscuit. It was Sunday afternoon, the busiest
day of the week, and I wanted to keep the line of waiting customers
moving. But I spun too quickly and watched a crisp thigh slip off
the side of the tray. Without thinking, I thrust out my left foot to
catch it and flipped it up soccer-style back onto the tray.
I
was sixteen and life was good in Kirkwood that summer of 1964. With
a year on the job in one of the first Kentucky Fried Chicken
franchises in the area. I was now a senior crew member earning a full
one dollar an hour. I didn’t mind the work and was proud to be
earning money for college. I had little in common with the other
guys except age. I was an eager college bound student soon to enter
my senior year at a public high school. Raised in a modest home where
education and the arts were valued, I worked hard for my grades, took
advanced placement classes and played in the high school and
all-county orchestras. Other crew members my age attended another
high school and expressed little interest in what came next in their
lives. Older employees may or may not have graduated at all. Imagine
them as grunts in a platoon of almost any war movie you’ve ever
seen, and you will know the kitchen crew at KFC.
The
noise and chaos in the heat of the kitchen, the long hours, and the
shared goal of finishing up and getting home proved to be a powerful
uniter. How you did your job was what counted, not how smart you
were or what ambitions you had. Learning to get along with the guys
who passed through the ever-changing crew taught me to get along with
almost anyone.
Located
along a busy suburban road, the shop might have been a gas station in
an earlier life. The kitchen occupied what would have been the
service bays. Jammed into that space now were two prep tables, a
two-tub industrial sink, a walk-in refrigerator, and a packing table
with a pass-through window to the front counter. And
along one wall sat the heart of the operation, an eight-burner
industrial stove.
Its 30-inch height made it easy to drop the chicken into the hot oil,
twist on the pressure-cooker lid and remove the pot when the steam
valve signaled the chicken was done. On the busiest days good
communication and rehearsed choreography kept the chicken moving from
breading tub to pot to drier to packing table and out the
pass-through window to the waiting customers. It was decades before
fast-food “customers” were promoted to the status of “guests.”
We
made almost everything on the menu fresh daily. Each morning we ran
cabbage and onions through the industrial food processor for
coleslaw, mixed the dressings for the slaw, bean and potato salads,
cooked gravy from the crunchy cracklings rescued from the cooking
oil, and shredded leftover chicken for pulled chicken sandwiches
slathered with barbecue sauce. Fresh cut-up chicken was delivered
several times a week in slatted wooden crates, twelve birds per
ice-filled crate, each in a bag along with the chicken’s innards.
During a busy day we would have all eight gas burners going, each
with a pressure cooker that held 1½ gallons of vegetable oil, enough
to cook the 18 breaded chicken pieces through—exactly eight minutes
from the time the oil reached 350 degrees. In the muggy summer heat
of St. Louis, temperatures in the kitchen soared into the upper 90s.
After
the evening rush ebbed, clean-up took at least an hour. Two of us
worked at a double sink to remove the patina of baked-on cooking oil
from the pressure cookers while others scrubbed down the food prep
surfaces. The guys giving the floor a thorough mopping turned out
the lights and locked up if the owner had already left for the night.
The souvenirs we took home were the tickle of the Colonel’s 11
secret spices in our nostrils, the flour dust caked on our shoes, the
scars from splashes of hot oil on our arms, the stubborn residue of
grease on our hair, the odor of fried chicken steamed into our
clothes, and sometimes even the unforgettable stench from some
uncooked chicken that somehow got left out too long.
Forty-something
Marshall was one of the first franchisees in the St. Louis area. It
was a family affair. His wife ran the books, and his two sons were
at times part of the crew. I remember him as being firm but fair,
an owner whose hard work set an example he expected his employees to
emulate. This was decades before “workers,” “staff,”
“employees” would be dubbed “associates.”
We
took pride in our work. Marshall would regularly let us know when
the kitchen did not live up to his expectations of cleanliness. One
summer morning while we were in full prep mode, the county health
inspector showed up unannounced. We all stopped and watched him
slowly walk around the room station-by-station, looking into corners,
under the burners, taking the temperature of the walk-in
refrigerator, even dipping a spoon into the oil filtering vat to
taste it for freshness. Marshall looked at us proudly as the
inspector gave us all a quick summary—good job, passed.
Then
he strolled over to the industrial sized can opener mounted on a prep
table. He lifted the arm out of its slot, turned it over and
carefully examined the sharp circular cutting edge, picking at it
with the blade of his pen knife. “Aha! Come‘ere, boys. Do you
ever clean this thing? Here, take a look.” Sure enough, we
detected a wad of black gunk wrapped around the cutter. We shrugged,
“Nope, never thought to look there.”
What
we did notice was that when showing us that gunk, a large spittle of
drool trickled from the corner of his mouth onto his shirt. We each
took a quick glance at the others as if to confirm what we were
seeing. We stifled our laughter until he walked out the door,
wondering whether county health regulations had anything to say about
drooling.
During
my two years there, I worked with a cavalcade of characters, most
long forgotten, some distinctive enough to remain in the recesses of
memory. Marshall’s sons were often part of the crew, and a more
different pair of brothers couldn’t be found outside a Steinbeck
novel. Yet they seemed to get along. Adam, the older, was
humorless, with close cropped hair and a stiff demeanor. He spoke
proudly of his ROTC training at the University of Missouri, and
boasted of his membership in the John Birch Society, the foremost
anti-Communist conspiracy-minded organization in the mid-60s. Adam
never seemed at ease working with us back in the kitchen.
Younger
brother Aaron was a happy-go-lucky high school sophomore who fit
right in. He was a diligent worker who did not play on being
Marshall’s son. To the contrary, he seemed to thrive on the
independence of being part of the crew gave him. He loved growling
out Eric Burden’s vocal in The Animals’ hit that summer, 'House
of the Rising Sun', occasionally throwing in his air guitar
improvisation of the wild solo riff.
I
found curly-haired Joe the most likable. Even shorter than I, he was
a diligent worker who kept us amused with his wit, quips and his
dead-on imitations of the crew members. He referred to Marshall as
Mr. Dillon, or sometimes just Sheriff. He called me RJ, which
eventually got transformed into the talk-like-a-pirate Aaargh-jay.
The day after the health inspector left, Joe took a big gulp of water
and began spouting “Now see here boys…” as the mouthful rolled
down his apron. His best was capturing Marshall’s soft southern
drawl. Occasionally the frozen fruit pies we baked on site got left
in the oven too long, transforming the sugary egg wash topping into
an inedible crust of black carbon. Before Marshall’s nose even got
whiff of the crime, Joe would fume in his voice “O Lordy boys, jus’
look at this ungodly mess! How’re we ever gonna sell them now?”
We would all chuckle and look forward to scraping off the burnt
remains and digging into the untarnished fruit with plastic spoons.
Most
of the other high schoolers on the crew attended a parochial high
school in the area. A classmate of theirs who lived in my
neighborhood was how I found out about the KFC job. Other than work,
they mostly talked about cars and girls, two subjects often conjoined
because they shared similar qualities: How do they look? How easy
are they to handle? How fast will they go? How far? Where and when
can they be enjoyed out of range of the prying eyes? One of the guys
advised that the best place to make out was in the lot of a car
dealership because the cops would never look for you there. There
was no agreement on the best place to push a car’s speed to the
limit. All of us wanted to be best friends with Rodney who drove
everyone’s auto lust object—the just released 1964 Ford Mustang.
A convertible. He was reluctant to say how much impact the car had
on his social life. Quiet John, just back from his first year of
college was more of a quiet sage, rarely initiating non-work
conversation, but from time to time inserting a wry observation.
Over
time I managed to get along with almost everyone. Like any newcomer
to a group, I was teased and tested. Get along by going along, laugh
at the prank rather than taking offense. I scored points with my
knack for imitating voices and gestures of the crew members. Sports
was a good way to initiate conversation. We were all ardent Cardinal
fans—they won the pennant and World Series that year. I didn’t
try to compete with their stories of Saturday night escapades and
wouldn’t think of telling them that I had taken my Saturday night
date to a concert of the St. Louis Symphony. My stature rose the
first time I drove to work in my father’s sleek 1964 Buick Electra.
I was bombarded with questions about it. Engine size? Horsepower?
Mileage? Top speed? Unschooled in auto nomenclature, I could answer
them because my dad had boasted about all that stuff. But I refused
when urged to take the guys for a spin to show what it could do on
the road. “Not my car,” I insisted.
Two
characters are hard to forget. Krazy Karl bore all the traits of
what was then called “a hood”—hair swooped back in a ducktail
like Elvis, shirt collar up, a soft pack of unfiltered Camels folded
into the sleeve of his T-shirt. Older than most of us by a couple of
years, it was hard to believe he ever made it through high school.
He bore no outward hostility to any of us but made all of us feel
like being around a stray dog. Be careful, you don’t know where
he’s been. He might snap. He might give you fleas. Or rabies. His
one talent was improvising scatological lyrics to popular songs.
Bobby Darin’s “Dream Lover” became:
Dream
lover, where are you-oo-oo/Upstairs on the tollet stooool
Can’t
hardly move arou-ou-ound/Constipation’s got me down
And
Johnnie Cash’s "Walk the Line":
Ah
keep mah pants up with a piece of twine/I keep my zipper wide open
all the time!
Because
your mine, I think you’re fine
He
liked singing that one to me, commenting on the soft texture of the
beard I was growing as part of Kirkwood’s Centennial Celebration. I
was too naïve to recognize the insinuation, so just ignored it.
Karl
did crazy things, or so he wanted us to believe. Each iced bag of
cut-up chicken included the innards. Breaded and deep-fried, the
heart, liver, and gizzard were a popular side order on the menu. But
there was nothing we could do with the chicken necks—a four-inch
tube of tiny bones encased in a sheath of floppy yellow skin, with a
gullet running the length of the neck. I doubt Karl had ever heard
of Freud, but he did point out to us that the neck bore a strong
resemblance to a part of the male anatomy, especially when paired
with the gizzard, a chicken’s dark purplish-red two-chambered
stomach muscle. “One day Ah’m gonna take one a’ them necks and
gizzards an’ go up to the Manchester Drive-In Theater over by
Ballwin. You know, where the john has this long trough with guys all
lined up. Ah’m gonna stand there with that neck hanging outta my
pants. After a minute, Ah’ll whip out a knife an’ mutter, ‘This
ol’ pecker don’t work no more!’ an’ throw that neck right
down into the trough! And then toss in them gizzards.” We never
found out if he did it, but none of us would bet that he wouldn’t.
And
then there was Darnell. Darnell joined the crew late that summer
after many of us had coalesced into a group. He came from a town
only 10 miles away that had escaped the rapid suburbanizing boom that
Kirkwood experienced after WW II. A large and lumbering guy who
spoke with a casual, “aw shucks” drawl, Darnell didn’t have a
mean bone in his body. But to us he was from the boonies, a hick
with the gullibility of a five-year-old. That made him a frequent
butt of our jokes and left him exposed to the pranks high school boys
play to make themselves feel superior. He never quite understood the
humor of “Darnell, we’re not laughing with
you.” I didn’t think the teasing was malicious so I played along
to be part of the group. I developed a casual liking for Darnell for
his puppy-like innocence. He regarded me as a friend.
Cleaning
up one cold winter night a few months later we all took turns
slipping out and smearing his windshield with leftover mashed
potatoes and gravy. By the time we finished, the mess had frozen
hard. I was one of the few guys remaining when Darnell left. Two
minutes later, he was back in the shop almost in tears, moaning, “RJ,
come see what they done to mah car!” I helped him fill some pots
with hot water to scrape off the congealed mess so he could drive
home safely.
That
night I lay in bed, replaying the scene. He had come back into the
kitchen not in anger, not storming in aggressively toward anyone in
the crew. He came directly to me as a friend, “RJ, look what they
done to mah car!” They. What “they” done. To him, I was not
like the others. Not many weeks later, Darnell stopped showing up.
Why
had I participated? Why had I not spoken up when the teasing crossed
a line from verbal teasing to a cruel prank? That’s not who I was,
or thought I was. But I hadn’t said anything. Not even a simple
“Guys, I don’t think that’s a good idea. He’s got a long
drive home.” Was it because I felt accepted as part of this motley
crew? I didn’t consider any of them real friends, just guys I
needed to get along with to get a job done. We worked hard and kept
our spirits up during long hours of work. Other than work, I had
little in common with other crew members. None of them went to my
high school. I didn’t talk about fast cars or fast girls, didn’t
dance to or sing pop tunes. But I was a good worker who got along
well with everyone, including Karl. I didn’t want to be like them.
I just wanted to be accepted as one of the guys.
During
the school months, I usually worked 20-25 hours a week, mostly Friday
nights and weekends. When I first began working there,
I
felt
self-conscious about the job at school, an iteration of feeling like
an outsider that had dogged me for years. My parents were not
anti-social, just non-social. My mother had a steady job—unusual
for the times—but my father experienced several periods “between
jobs” so money was often tight. They did not attend church. We
lived far from my elementary, middle and high schools so I felt
excluded from the neighborly camaraderie many classmates seemed to
enjoy. Since 7th
grade I worked after school several days a week and put in full days
in summer because I felt the need to earn money for college. If my
peers at school had jobs at all, it was as camp counselors,
lifeguards, or golf caddies. They didn’t work during the school
year in hot, sweaty kitchens.
My
job turned to my advantage in the fall of 1964 when the Pep Club
began planning a big fundraising dinner and bonfire prior to the
annual football game against Kirkwood’s biggest rival, neighboring
Webster Groves. I asked Marshall if he would be interested in
catering the event. He was enthusiastic—the prospect of providing
250 chicken dinners with all the sides was too good to pass up. He
even offered the empty wooden chicken crates for the bonfire. We
called it “The Chicken Chomp.” The bonfire that night was a
roaring success and the Chicken Chomp netted good money for the club.
I
took great pride in helping make it a success for all involved.
I
don’t remember if Marshall gave me a bonus for the business I
brought in, but a few months later he asked me to be part of the crew
to help at a new KFC he opened in Webster Groves. It was to be a
celebratory occasion on a warm spring Saturday, highlighted by the
appearance of the real Colonel Harland Sanders. Then 73 years old,
he was a brand ambassador, having sold the company the year before.
Not long before the 11 a.m. Grand Opening, Marshall escorted him
through the back door of the busy kitchen. The Colonel bit into a
chicken thigh fresh out of the pot, nodded, then thrust a spoon into
the gravy. Knowing the Colonel was very finnicky about his gravy
Marshall had supervised its preparation that morning. The Colonel
paused, smacked his lips, and nodded again with satisfaction. “Keep
that good chicken rollin’ boys,” he croaked. And then walked out
to greet the eager crowd.
March
1965, just three months before high school graduation, I remember
watching dramatic news footage of 3500 US Marines scrambling off
troop carriers onto the sands of Da Nang, Vietnam, the first official
contingent of US forces intended to backstop the beleaguered troops
of the South Vietnamese government. Its choreography invoked the
triumphal images of the Normandy landings we had grown up with.
Instead of hostile gunfire, these troops were welcomed by a
contingent of young Vietnamese women offering floral necklaces. I
don’t think the event generated much discussion in our high school
classes. It had little to do with us. It was far away, we were
young, and our minds were more focused on our summer plans and where
we were headed in the fall. At KFC, one crew member drawled “Veet
Naam? Where the fuck’s that at?” I might have answered
something like “Near China.”
After
college in 1969, I returned to Kirkwood at the request of the local
Selective Service System for a physical exam to assess my fitness for
military service. By then, Americans knew all too well where to find
“Veet Naam” on a map. We now knew the names of villages and
cities—Plei Ku, Khe Sahn, and Hue and Saigon—because our soldiers
had fought and died there. US troops in the country swelled to
550,000, and combat deaths were running at 500 per month. On the
appointed date, I found myself in a long line of guys standing naked
but for our tighty-whiteys and socks exchanging nervous jokes
awaiting the needle and probe; recent high school or college
graduates all. Uncle Sam pointed sternly right at us, “I Want YOU
for the US Army!” I ran into a few former KHS classmates for the
first time in four years. None of us wanted to be there. We could
no longer escape the reality of that increasingly unpopular war. A
war that had once seemed so distant and unimportant had now become
very real, very personal. I didn’t expect my horribly flat feet
would disqualify me. I was right. My 1-A notice arrived in the
mail a few weeks later—two weeks before my wedding. Before I was
called, the first Draft Lottery took place in December. My birth date
of 11/28 placed me in the one-third of the pool who would be
virtually exempted from military service.
Part
II: Fifty Years Later
In
the fall of 2015, I returned to Kirkwood to attend my high school’s
50th
reunion. I had visited briefly only once or twice before my parents
moved away in 1981. The newspaper stand along Old Route 66 where I
sold papers while in middle school was now a parking lot, the first
elementary school I attended across the street now a bank. Another
parking lot replaced “my” KFC at Manchester Rd. and Dickson. I
was pleasantly surprised to see Carl’s Drive-In in Brentwood still
in business. Senior year, I ate lots of his Famous Footlong hotdogs
there with friends.
The
reunion was held at Greenbriar Country Club three miles away from
where I grew up on West Madison. I had never set foot on the club’s
grounds but always wondered what lay behind its well-manicured
entrance. Before entering the clubhouse, as a joke I donned a
Chicago Cubs hat signaling that my allegiance now had shifted from
the local Cardinal team to its long-time, long-floundering but now
successful rival. The doorman asked me to remove that hat. Baseball
caps were not allowed in the building. “Well excyooooze me!” I
wanted to say.
The
gathering was well underway when I arrived. I grabbed a glass of
Chardonnay and set about around looking for friends from long-ago.
The large size of the class of 1965 and the effects of time made it a
challenging task to recognize anyone. I was not alone in quickly
moving my eyes from a face to a name tag. As I circled the room I
exchanged comments like “Greg! I hardly recognized you” or “Jill!
I would recognize that smile anywhere.” People I was friends with
fifty years ago seemed just as likable now. I wished we had time to
chat in a quiet place to discuss about families, careers, and “What
ever happened to…?” During the speeches I joined my classmates
in honoring those who had served in the military. I wondered what
memories they still carried from that experience. We bowed our heads
in a moment of silence to remember two who had made the ultimate
sacrifice.
The
reunion activated long forgotten memories of high school during my
long drive back to Chicago. But I felt something important about that
time of life was missing from my memories—those two years at KFC.
KFC doesn’t hold reunions. What became of the guys in the kitchen?
They were as much a part of my formative high school days as my
fellow students.
As the car sped north across endless fields of soybeans and corn, I
speculated on what might have become of them as they faced the
possibility of being drafted.
I
imagined a movie titled “The Kentucky Fried Crew at War” where
each of us played a role. Marshall’s older son Adam, the ROTC
student, would have started his active military service in 1967 or
’68—a time when the war in Vietnam was not going well. Morale of
the troops in the field had plummeted and public opinion at home lost
confidence in the official promise of “a light at the end of the
tunnel.” I wondered if Adam’s stiff style and indifferent
attitude towards us in the KFC crew might have made him a victim of
fragging by a drugged-up grunt retaliating against an inexperienced
by-the-rules second lieutenant.
His
brother Aaron’s free spirit, and enthusiasm for psychedelic rock
would have pulled him into the orb of Timothy Leary’s
counterculture call to “turn on, tune in and drop out.” He would
have found his niche in Haight-Ashbury or a hippie enclave in
Northern California. Jovial Joe, the great mimic, I thought would be
drafted and become the Radar character in the M*A*S*H TV
series—everybody’s pal, able to find some means of skirting the
military bureaucracy to secure extra days of R&R, or get his
entire unit invited to a Bob Hope USO performance. Rodney, the guy
with the Mustang convertible, probably went to college to avoid the
draft but did not finish. I like to think that John, the quiet
philosopher, became an investigative war correspondent in the waning
days of American military involvement. He would be nominated for a
Pulitzer Prize for his incisive articles uncovering the official
blunders and outright deceptions that led to tens of thousands more
American troops dying as the war dragged on long after the American
public recognized its futility.
I
doubt Krazy Karl ever made it into the military. Unlike others, he
didn’t need to flunk the IQ test on purpose. That, or any minor
convictions he may have been tagged with could have led to a 4-F
classification. And if he somehow managed to get drafted, I could
not imagine his making it through boot camp without accumulating
enough infractions to be dishonorably discharged. But by the early
1970’s, the Army took anybody who could walk, so who knows? In my
war movie, he would be the one to frag Adam.
And
then there was Darnell. He would amble off the road to pet a water
buffalo and step on a Claymore. The first in our unit to go. Later
at the memorial ceremony, we would gather around a battlefield
cross—his helmet atop his rifle thrust bayonet-first into the
ground, boots below—reminiscing about his friendliness and sense of
humor. A real pal who could take a joke.
My
role in the film? I’d be the quiet observer off to the side,
taking notes, wondering how the hell our country got itself into this
mess. We had grown up basking in the glow of victory in the Good War,
a war won by our parents, the youngest members of the Greatest
Generation. What would be the legacy of our generation’s war?
The
film of course was imaginary, but I asked myself why I placed such
significance on those two years frying chicken? Why, after 50 years,
do I remember the guys at KFC in such detail? It was because that is
where I learned to get along with guys who weren’t like me. It
wasn’t as intense as the military, or even a sports team. It was a
cross-cultural experience that brought together guys from different
religions, political beliefs, and cultural backgrounds who had to
learn to work together. I have no idea what paths those guys in the
KFC kitchen crew actually took later in life, or if they even have
specific memories of working there. But I remember them as much as I
do my fellow students at KHS. Thanks, guys.
