Golden Holiday Memories from Ferrari Bubba! Colonel Sanders, Rehab and Gatecrashing the USC Rose Bowl

If I had a dollar for every event I bull-shitted my way into without actually being on the invitee list (at least once a week for most of my working life) I sure as hell wouldn’t be sitting here in East Jesus, Arkansas staring out the window at the rain now, would I?

Everything from hotel luaus in Hawaii, rock concerts, football and baseball games, sports and Indy car races, grand openings, to rodeos. You name it. And most with with a free buffet and hosted bar. No wonder I wound up in rehab! The most amazing thing about it was, in all the years that I did this, not once was I ever turned away at the gate or door. It just shows you what a little chutzpah can do for ya.

My crowning achievement was the time that I smuggled all my son’s neighborhood friends into the Long Beach Grand Prix, hidden in my motorhome on a counterfeit RV pass that I made at the Herald-Examiner. But wouldn’t you know it, my son Willi Dieter pulled the ‘party crash’ for the ages…

In the mid 1970′s, Bud Furillo, (the Steamer) sports editor of the Her-Ex owed me a few favors. I talked my way into one (1) pressbox pass for the Rose Bowl Game. My son Willi, who was about 11 or 12 at the time had been ragging me about going to his first Rose Bowl game for weeks, but since it was a USC-Ohio State match-up, the game was a sell-out.

So out of desperation, I brought this old trick out of mothballs. I had used it in the past with some success.

I told him, “OK, here’s the plan. We’ll wait until a few minutes before kickoff, then go up to the gate together. I’ll use my pressbox pass (which will impress the ticket taker) I’ll go through first, turn and wait for you. You will frantically search your pockets for your ‘ticket,’ and when you can’t find it, say to me, ‘Dad, I can’t find my ticket. I must have lost it!’ ”

Having pulled this scam before, I knew what the gate-keeper would say. “Since you’re a member of the working press, your son can go through, but he’ll have to stand to watch the game.” No sweat. One ticket, two people in to watch the Rose Bowl. (And not one thin dime did either of us spend.)

All was going well up in the pressbox with me sitting next to none other than Col. Harlan Sanders” [Kentucky Fried Chicken magnate], complete with white suit and string tie until the middle of the 1st quarter.

That’s when I felt a tap on my shoulder and a voice behind me saying, “Sir?”

Suddenly wishing that I had worn my Depends that day, I turned, only to see my son standing there with a security person standing behind him, hand on Willi’s shoulder.

GULP!

“Is this your son,” the guard asked?

I could only stammer weakly, “ye-s-e-ss, sir.” (I’m pretty good at that.)

The security person said that Willi had come up to him crying that a big kid had taken his ticket from him while he was in line to buy a hot hog and couldn’t remember where he was sitting. But he could remember that his dad worked for the Herald-Examiner and was sitting up in the pressbox.

The security guy, (ever PR conscious) didn’t know what to do, so he brought Willi up to the presssbox and asked me (of all people) if it was all right if he sat up here to watch the game with me.

Shocked as I was at that moment, I managed an OK, so we pulled up a spare chair between me and the Colonel, watched the rest of the game, and all was good. The Trojans won, 18-17.

Yer pal, Ferrari Bubba

**The “Colonel,” (a distinction Mr. Sanders acquired not through military service but via a special culinary honor bestowed upon him by the Governor of Kentucky), discovered what is widely believed to be the holy grail of all poultry — the perfect fried chicken.

In the 1930′s, Colonel Sanders owned and operated a small filling station in Corbin, Kentucky. Cooking out of his home kitchen in the back of the station, the Colonel would offer up plates of good ‘ole Southern fried chicken prepared in the traditional manner using pork lard for the cooking fat and a cast-iron skillet.

Yet cooking fried chicken the old-fashioned way took time, up to 45 minutes to fry a whole bird using two skillets.

The truth behind Colonel Sander’s discovery is not in what has been marketed as “a blend of 11 secret herbs and spices” — a recipe that to this day is guarded under lock and key. No, although the herbs and spices are an important element in KFC, the real truth behind the Colonel’s perfect fried chicken lay in the cooking process. A process that at the time was dubbed “Broasting” — a combination of deep-frying and pressure steam cooking.

The Colonel came upon a new cookery pot named the “pressure cooker.” The pressure cooker is a deep pot made of heavy gauge steel and finished with chrome. The lid of the pot holds a metal arm used for tightening the lid down onto the pot, creating an inescapable vacuum seal between pot and lid. A small hole in the lid allows for the release of a small gasp of steam during the cooking process.

The Colonel found that the pressure cooker was the perfect vessel for his fried chicken recipe. The result was an incredibly juicy chicken covered with a savory and crisp golden brown skin, all served up in a fraction of the time it took to cook chicken using the cast-iron skillet method.

Over the course of the next decade, the Colonel amassed a loyal following of local customers who came just for the fried chicken.

In the early 1950′s, the Colonel, now a man of 65 years, hit the road, literally, going door to door frying up chickens in his pressure cooker at Mom and Pop roadside restaurants. Legend has it that the Colonel made a deal that he would only take a nickel for every chicken sold using his special recipe and cooking technique. Thus, the birth of what we now know in the world of fast food as the “franchise.” Kentucky Fried Chicken shops soon dotted the American landscape.

The commercial “Broaster” is found in most supermarkets today.