Some people spend a good share of their lives planning for retirement, but the idea has never appealed to me. I guess I’m from the old school. I believe that God expects us to be productive—in some way—all of our days.
It has long been my philosophy that a man will rust out a lot sooner than he will wear out, and that is why today at age 78, I have no intention, no desire, no inclination to sit down and get rusty.
Oh, I’m not as tough as I was a few years ago. My feet and legs bother me sometimes, and my wind isn’t as strong, but I have no complaints. Teddy Roosevelt, I believe it was, said that 90 per cent of the work in this country is done by people who don’t feel well, so I’ve got company.
I had a good chance to retire at 63, but I couldn’t see any percentage in loafing. At the time, I was located in Corbin, Kentucky, where my wife and I had settled in 1929.
We went there from Kentucky’s Bluegrass country and opened a service station after the Depression hit. The station evolved into a restaurant and motel, which by 1954 had grown quite successful. That was about the time a man offerred me $165,000 for the business.
Now, if I’d been planning to spend the rest of my life suntanning, this would have been the time to jump. But my wife and I decided against selling. We liked the restaurant business because it brought us into contact with people—and we love people.
Then the blow fell. The state resurveyed the road that ran in front of our place, Sanders Court and Care; and when the highway was rerouted, we were cut off from the traffic. Business fell off, and by 1956, we were lucky to get out with enough to pay the bills.
Was I finished at age 65? It seemed so. My wife and I were completely discouraged.
When we walked out of our motel-restaurant for the last time, it seemed like a million memories passed through my mind.
I remembered at age five when my father died, leaving my mother with two small children and another on the way. There was the time I had lost my first job (clearing a woods for $2 a month) at age ten.
Then I had dropped out of school in the sixth grade to go to work. A series of jobs followed: house painter, soldier, fireman on the railroad, ferryboat operator, chamber-of-commerce secretary, insurance salesman and acetylene-lamp salesman.
I even practiced for a while as a lawyer after receiving a degree through a correspondence course.
When we started into the restaurant business, I recalled our first try at serving meals. We had just one table and six chairs. (It was to grow to 142 chairs.) There was the struggle for mortgage money, the long hours, hard work, growing friendships.
Little things came back to me, like the road signs I had painted myself on the sides of barns for 150 miles in both directions on Route 25. They advertised our motel and our food, especially our chicken. (I reasoned that hunters were less likely to shoot the hearts out of “o’s” if the signs were on barns instead of billboards.)
All that came to an end in 1956. My wife and I were still talking about our next move when my first Social Security check arrived. It was for $105.
“That won’t go very far,” I remember telling her. Then I had a wild idea. The restaurant business was my line, and fried chicken our specialty. Many people who had passed through Corbin had wished that we had a restaurant in their town in Florida or in Illinois or in Texas.
Why couldn’t I take our recipe for fried chicken on the road and try to franchise it?
As always when on strange footing, I said a prayer in which I asked God to direct my steps and bless this new idea if it was right. All my life I have given Him 10 percent of everything I made in my work.
Cashing the $105 check, I loaded into my 1946 Ford the following items: a pressure cooker, a 50-pound tin of flour (containing a mixture made from 11 herbs and spices) and a blanket to sleep under.
My offer to restaurateurs was a simple one: I would show them how to fry chicken in exchange for their promise to pay me five cents for every chicken they sold.
It would be on the honor system. I had no intention of auditing anyone’s books, because I figured it would take a rather cheap thief to fudge on that arrangement.
I drove all over the country, sleeping many nights in the car to save money. Quite often I got a free meal from restaurant friends. One of them, Pete Harmon of Salt Lake City, bought the first Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise.
The second sale was made in Indianapolis, and the third in Kokomo, Indiana. After that, business began to boom. A car wasn’t adequate enough to take me from place to place, and I began flying.
By 1964, in just eight years, I had 600 franchises operating on the honor system and more bookkeeping work than I knew what to do with.
When I was offered two million dollars for the business, I sold out, but agreed to continue working in a public-relations capacity.
If I have learned anything in life, it can be summed up this way:
Hard work beats all the tonics and vitamins in the world.
The therapy of work is good for you whatever your age. Will Rogers years ago said life begins at 40. Times have changed. People are living longer, fuller, more creative lives. So I say, “Life can begin again at 65.” It sure did for me.
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