Interesting Fact

I was reading Bill Bryson’s excellent “Made in America” again this morning. All of Bill Bryson’s writing is excellent = I used to use extracts from Notes a Small Country when I was teaching English to demonstrate how to construct beautiful prose. Now, I have read this before, but I was struck by a fact he mentions that I just had not noticed before. Namely, that Colonel Harlan “Kentucky Fried Chicken” Sanders was not originally from Kentucky. He was from Indiana. Which is interesting in itself since (fictional) Indiana Jones (probably ) wasn’t from Indiana. Indiana is a nickname he took from the family dog. For that matter, Tennessee Williams wasn’t born in Tennessee. He was born in Mississippi.

Now with respect to the Colonel, if challenged on this I guess he would have said, “Ah say boy, ah never said ah was from Kentucky, ah say, ah say. Ah said that the chickens was!” I mean, I guess this because he passed away in 1980 so I can’t ask him. Well, only through a medium, anyway. I always imagine him having a Foghorn Leghorn voice like that, probably because of the image he adopted which was used so successfully in the branding of his company and its products. I guess that he took off the white suit when he went to bed, but he certainly seemed to be wearing it every time he was photographed.

Interestingly he was a genuine Kentucky Colonel. Being made a Kentucky Colonel doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the military. Essentially it is one of the highest honours that can be bestowed on an individual by the state of Kentucky. So while there are military colonels in Kentucky, Colonel Sanders did not hold that rank in the army. He was briefly a member of the other ranks in his teens in Cuba. Amazingly he lied about his age, served as a waggoner for a few months between he was found out and given an honourable discharge. There you go.So I guess, whatever else you might have said about him, you have to admit that he certainly wasn’t chicken.

I’m here all week, ladies and gents.