There are a lot of fast-food chicken places around and seems like more are popping up every day. When I was very young, there weren’t any. If you wanted chicken, you went to a regular restaurant and ordered fried chicken from the menu. I don’t remember other kinds of chicken being on the menu. But then again, I grew up in Oklahoma, where beef was king. A lot of people had fried chicken for their Sunday dinner (the noon meal, after church) but other than that, people ate beef.
Well, anyhow, I got to thinking about Kentucky Fried Chicken and Colonel Sanders. I did some extensive research on Colonel Sanders and discovered some interesting things….
Up until age 40, Harland Sanders was running a service station in Kentucky that also served food. He later moved his operation to a restaurant across the street called the Sanders Cafe. His restaurant became popular and was noted for his featured fried chicken.
So where does the “colonel” come in? My extensive research revealed that Sanders’ U.S. Army record shows he never made it past private.
It turns out you can be a colonel without really being a colonel. The rank of colonel has a distinguished history dating back to Roman times, but the precise meaning of the term has varied. Generally, a colonel commands a regiment, which can include as many as 5,000 soldiers. However, early Americans adopted the British tradition of conferring colonelships on members of the upper class who didn’t command soldiers directly, but served as figureheads. In colonial times before the Civil War, a wealthy landowner would often earn the title of colonel by funding a regiment of a local militia. These actions of politeness or respect became linked to the figure of the “Southern gentleman” as a mark of importance in the community.
A number of states expanded this tradition by granting their governors the power to make ordinary citizens honorary colonels in recognition of a special achievement or contribution. In 1935, Kentucky Governor Ruby Laffon commissioned Harland Sanders as a Kentucky Colonel, and Governor Earle C. Clements did it again in 1949. It seems that Sanders had lost the original proclamation paper. At the time, Sanders was operating the small, but well-known Sanders Cafe, and was active in the community.
Sanders liked how the title rolled off the tongue, and when he received his second commission, he embraced it whole-hog, or maybe whole-chicken. He adopted the wardrobe, facial hair, and walking cane that evoked the image of an old-time Southern gentleman. That person was memorable, and it helped him turn his restaurant into a thriving franchise operation. In February, 1964, he sold Kentucky Fried Chicken for $2 million, and he appeared in ads for the company for many years afterward. Colonel Sanders died in Louisville, Kentucky on December 16, 1980.
Sanders is in good — but maybe a little odd — company. Other honorary Kentucky Colonels include Muhammad Ali, Elvis Presley, Ronald Reagan, Tiger Woods, Winston Churchill and Pope John Paul II.
I don’t know how “honored” John Paul II felt with the commission — he never went by Colonel Pope, or sipped mint juleps on the veranda of the Vatican — at least as far as I know.
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