
Colonels of Truth - ca98am79
http://www.damninteresting.com/colonels-of-truth/
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ccallebs
Hey! I own my farm in Corbin, KY and my grandfather worked for the Colonel
when he peddled chicken at the service/bus station. The "historic" Sanders'
Cafe that exists there today is actually across the road from where the
original once was.

If you're ever around Simpsonville, KY it's worth stopping by Claudia Sanders'
Diner. It still cooks his original recipe, unlike KFC.

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kbenson
> It still cooks his original recipe, unlike KFC.

How does it compare?

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ccallebs
I think it's much better. However, I also don't enjoy KFC chicken. I find it
slimy and too saturated with grease.

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teslabox
> I find it slimy and too saturated with grease.

McDonald's used to fry their foods in a blend of coconut oil, tallow & lard.
Then the charlatans pressured them into switching their fryers to biodiesel
(aka Soybean oil). Now McDonald's french fries are soggy.

I expect KFC ruined their product in a similar manner.

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lisper
IMHO the decline of western civilization began when KFC added cayenne pepper
to the extra crispy. :-(

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islane
I have been reading Damn Interesting for over a decade now. It is one of the
few unblemished places on the internet when it comes to well-written,
fascinating articles (possibly the only one now that isn't either riddled with
clickbait or beholden to some larger business/media entity).

Granted, updates are generally infrequent, but the consistent (high) quality
of the writing for over 10 years is a pretty amazing feat. Much respect for
all the DI authors/contributors.

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kbenson
> Harland Sanders next found work managing a Standard Oil service station in
> nearby Nicholasville. He made two cents profit per gallon of gasoline

That would be a pretty good deal in the present. Inflation seems to have
increased the value of $0.02 in 1925 to $0.27 in 2016. For a busy station,
during a busy period, if each pump is in actual use 50% of the time, and each
pump is doing 5 gallons per minute (EPA restricts it to a maximum of 10
GPM[1]), that's 150 gallons an hour, and at $0.27 that's $40.50 an hour _per
pump_. Not bad.

Although I'm sure there was much less gas being pumped back then, there were
likely fewer pumps at a station, the pumps were probably slower, and it was
much easier to offer a chunk of the profits because of less competition.

1: [https://www3.epa.gov/otaq/regs/ld-
hwy/evap/spitback.txt](https://www3.epa.gov/otaq/regs/ld-
hwy/evap/spitback.txt)

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matthewowen
Have you ever seen a pump in actual use 50% of the time? Even if there is a
queue of traffic waiting to fill up, by the time people have parked, got out
of the car, paid, pumped, got back in, negotiated their way past other cars
(potentially blocking them in) so that someone else can get to the pump, etc I
find it hard to see much more than 25% utilization even today. This would be
even worse in the 20s, where payment presumably involves handing cash over to
a person who probably isn't stood right by the pump.

Now I really want to go and time this process :).

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kbenson
I think 50% is a fairly good guess for pump usage for people that aren't
buying other stuff. At 5 gallons a minute, that's 2-4 minutes of actual
pumping for most cars/trucks, possibly larger for vehicles with larger gas
tanks (note that a faster pump rate actually increases the overall revenue,
even if it reduces the percentage of time spent pumping per person compared to
other actions). At a busy station, I think 2-4 minutes of time to pull up to
pump, pay with a credit card, and leave isn't out of the question.

It is all highly variable, of course. Let me know if you ever actually test
this. :)

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seanhandley
Sublimely written. Eloquent and fascinating, profound and hilarious.

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michael_h
> The eggs sailed, egg-like, across the expanse...

> ...spent his entire life rallying against liquor (finger lickers
> notwithstanding)

Amazing.

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rukuu001
My favourite:

> like a wizard casting a poultry hex

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erbo
I'm reminded of the description of KFC in China in Neal Stephenson's _The
Diamond Age,_ where the restaurant was referred to as "The House of the
Venerable and Inscrutable Colonel." "Venerable" because of the age of the face
on the bucket, and "inscrutable" because he apparently went to his grave
without ever divulging the Secret of the Eleven Herbs and Spices.

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cat-dev-null
DI is awesome. It has sporadic content updates, but has good writing and
generally sticks to obscure but important stories.

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mark-r
Was anybody ever able to reverse engineer the original original recipe? (not
the KFC "original" recipe)

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zeveb
Great article, but could have used a little editing:

> It was around this time that Sanders met his beloved Josephine King.

> It was around this time that Sanders met his beloved Claudia Price, a young
> divorced woman who lived in Corbin.

> It was around this time that Sanders met his beloved Bertha. Bertha was his
> nickname for his first pressure cooker, a new contraption that rapidly
> cooked vegetables using high temperatures and pressures.

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clock_tower
By the time I came to the third repetition of this, I was pretty sure it was a
running joke. :)

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gatesphere
Precisely. The whole article uses similar callbacks. I think it's a great
piece.

