Our RV Adventures

I’m trying get some of my clients out of the way so I can not worry about them until after Christmas, or maybe even the 1st of the year.

So my first stop was to drop off a laptop at a client’s office that I had worked on. They were at lunch, but luckily I know where the spare key is hidden.

Then it was off to the same client’s home office to drop off the computer that I bought at Fry’s yesterday. I’ll come back after Christmas and get it set up and everything moved over from the old one.

Next up was a stop to another client’s office to figure out why their Carbonite online backup wasn’t. As it turned out, they had started to restore a couple of files, but then decided they didn’t need to. The problem was that when you start to do a restore, Carbonite freezes the backup process to be sure they don’t overwrite a file that you’re trying to restore.

What they failed to do was unfreeze the backup process, so one mouse click and the problem was fixed. I love problems like this.

My last stop was the house to pick up some packages that had come, and then it was back to the rig for the afternoon.

About 4pm Jan and I headed over to Dickinson to have dinner at the local KFC, as I was pining for a Double Down Sandwich.

The Double Down is a sandwich made from bacon, two kinds of cheese, and secret sauce, sandwiched between two pieces of Original Recipe chicken fillets. So you’ve got meat and cheese between two pieces of meat. Now that’s a sandwich!

And it’s delicious!

And now for some completely useless personal trivia about Col. Sanders and KFC.

I had the pleasure of meeting Col. Sanders in 1967, when I started working during the summer at a new Kentucky Fried Chicken that was opening in our area. In fact it was the first one in north Alabama.

Although he sold the company in 1964, he still visited every new store that opened, checking up on things, and being sure that we were trained correctly.

He was very particular about the gravy, and in fact said the gravy was his favorite part. He publically boasted that his gravy was "so good you can throw the chicken away and eat the gravy,"

He was so particular about this that when Heublein, Inc., the next company that owned KFC, dropped his secret gravy recipe because they thought it was too much trouble for a fast food chain, he described the new gravy as “wallpaper paste with added sludge”.

In 1973 Heublein unsuccessfully sued him for libel, so I guess he was right about it.

Now, as far as the “11 different herbs and spices”, lab tests done in the 1980’s showed no herbs, and only salt, pepper, and MSG in the breading.

This was probably another thing that got dropped by Heublein, along with the gravy. I know that KFC chicken does not taste as good as I remember it. Maybe this is why.

I do know that in 1967 we mixed up the coating in a 30 gallon plastic trash can using a boat paddle. We started with a 50# bag of flour, a large bag of salt, and a couple of cups of black pepper. The 11 different herbs and spices came in a silver foil packet about the size of the paperback book.

When you tore it open and mixed it into the flour, it smelled like a spice shop had exploded. So there was definitely herbs in there in 1967.

One of those guys that tries to recreate recipes came up with this list.

1 teaspoon ground oregano

1 teaspoon chili powder

1 teaspoon ground sage

1 teaspoon dried basil

1 teaspoon dried marjoram

1 teaspoon pepper

2 teaspoons salt

2 tablespoons paprika

1 teaspoon onion salt

1 teaspoon garlic powder

2 tablespoons Accent (an MSG-based seasoning)

People in the know say this is pretty close.

Now for one last tidbit. At one time, Miss America was one of only 9 people in the world who knew what the 11 different herbs and spices were.

That was Miss America 1971, Phyllis George, who was then married to John Y. Brown, Jr., former Governor of Kentucky. Brown is the one who bought KFC from the Col. Sanders in 1964 for $2 million (He sold it to Heublein seven years later for $287 million. Not a bad deal.)

And knowing that recipe, that Heublein was no longer using, it may only be a fluke that in 1986, she came out with her own line of “By George” chicken fillets. They were apparently so good that two years later she sold the company for a very large sum of money to Hormel Foods.

Coincidence? You decide.

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Finally heading home, I made a Home Depot stop to get some more silicone caulk. I’ve got a small leak about a window that I want to take care of.

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Thought for the Day:

“We mock honor, and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.” C.S. Lewis

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Today ended up being a ‘errand’ day, but started with lunch at Monterey’s Little Mexico for some Chicken Tortilla Soup, and also to catch up with Julie, a waitress there that we’ve known for a long time. She only works the lunch shift Monday thru Friday, so we don’t get to see her when we go there for dinner.

After that, our next stop was Fry’s Electronics so I could pick up a new computer for a client. I was looking for one that still had Windows 7 on it, but they’re getting to be scarce. However I did find a Acer on sale that will fill the bill. Fry’s had it for $800, which is a good deal since Amazon has it for over $1100.

Next up was a stop at Catherine’s so Jan could get a Christmas theme blouse to wear for several upcoming events. We did have to drive through the Baybrook Mall area, but it turned out to be not too bad.

Then after a quick stop at Brandi and Lowell’s to check our mail, our next stop was a client’s to stomp out a couple of problems.

Later, on the way home, I dropped Jan off to get her hair done while I went across the street to the Kemah Post Office to buy Christmas stamps and get our cards in the mail.

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A while back I came across a really neat website for whiling away those late night hours. It’s located here.

http://www.angelfire.com/ak2/intelligencerreport/oldradio.html

It’s a link to pretty much every old time radio show there ever was. As a kid in the early 50’s, I remember listening to Gunsmoke and Dragnet sitting around the radio, and these bring back a lot of memories.

And now for some completely useless Gunsmoke trivia. On the radio version, Matt Dillon was played by William Conrad, later of Cannon, Nero Wolfe, and Jake and the Fatman fame. A fighter pilot during WWII, he was thought to be too portly (fat) for the TV role, which ended up going to James Arness, after a recommendation from John Wayne.

Also on the radio show, Doc Adams was played  by Howard McNear, who went on to fame as Floyd the Barber on The Andy Griffith Show.

See, I told you it was useless.

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Thought for the Day:

The reason that teachers should be armed is so that when the wolf shows up, there will always be at least a few sheepdogs mixed in with the flock of sheep.

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