Kentucky Fried Chicken Arrives in Lorain – April 1971

Fifty years ago this month, Kentucky Fried Chicken opened its first Lorain restaurant on Oberlin Avenue. It’s hard to believe, but before that, the nearest one was on State Route 113 in Elyria. The ad above appeared in the Lorain Journal on April 23, 1971.

I wrote about the chicken chain’s early days in Lorain County back here.

Back then, the Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise rights in our area were held by Kenny King’s, so that was the name on the building. Note that the Oberlin Avenue store was carry out only. 

A few days later on April 27th, the Journal covered the store’s opening with the photo below of employee Diane Schneider of Lorain, displaying a chicken dinner.

Sadly, the store on Oberlin Avenue and the other Lorain KFC outlet on Henderson Drive have been closed for years. Today, when you have a craving for that dee-licious original recipe chicken, you have to head out of town to the store on Leavitt Road in Amherst, or the Sheffield Village store on State Route 254.

Recently, the former Kenny King’s store on Oberlin Avenue has become the new home to two businesses. The building looks pretty nice.

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(You might remember that before Kenny King’s moved in, the building was briefly home to the largely forgotten Taco Kid.)

Wise Potato Chips 100th Anniversary & the Return of Peppy

I was in the Amherst Drug Mart a few days ago, and saw something that I never thought I’d see again: Peppy the Owl on a bag of Wise Potato Chips! 

Of course I had to buy a bag, which turned out to be a Limited Edition retro design in honor of the company’s 100th Anniversary. It’s quite nice. (Strangely, I haven’t seen the retro bag on sale anywhere else in the area.)

Hey, I suggested that the company put the “original" Peppy bag on the bag in time for the anniversary back on this 2019 post. I also devoted a blog post to the 1957 Wise Potato Chip recipe book (featuring various concoctions containing crushed chips).

Anyway, it’s good to see a company celebrate its heritage and impressive 100 year accomplishment in such a wonderful way. Click here to visit the Wise Potato Chip website and read more about its history.

Welcome back (for a little while, at least), Peppy!

Super Reddy Kilowatt Ad – April 2, 1971

Well, it’s the middle of April, so it’s about time I feature our old pal Reddy Kilowatt here on the blog for the first time in 2021.

Since I regularly look at things from a 50-years ago perspective, it’s not too surprising that he hasn’t shown up here yet this year. By 1971, Ohio Edison didn’t have to encourage Journal readers to buy electrical appliances any more, so Reddy was no longer seen in the paper almost every day like he was in the 1950s.

But Reddy did pop up now and then, as he does in the above ad, which ran in the Journal on April 2, 1971.

The ad is certainly evocative of its era. By 1971, the Marvel and DC superhero characters, like the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man and Superman, were enjoying massive popularity thanks to animated TV productions and comic books. Thus it’s not surprising that some advertising copywriter saw Reddy as the ‘original’ all-powerful superhero and created an ad to that effect.

Add to that some modern, dimensional comic book style lettering, and our favorite electrical sprite was suddenly ‘current’ again.

“Babe’ Didrickson Zaharias Tribute Article – April 18, 1971

I drive by the sign post marking the entrance to Didrickson Drive just off W. 21st Street just about every day, and wonder: how many of its younger residents know who the street is named for?

“Babe” Didrickson Zaharias wasn’t from Lorain. But since the streets in that area were named for famous golfers (the land used to be part of the original Lorain Country Club), it’s nice that she was included, along with Ben Hogan and Harry Vardon. It’s refreshing to see her honored, seeing how so many streets in Lorain are named for states, letters of the alphabet or even other cities.

Below is a pretty good article by Jim Murray of the Los Angeles Times about the life of Ms. Didrickson Zaharias that appeared in the Sunday Journal on April 18, 1971. The lively, well-written article made note of her cancer diagnosis eighteen years earlier in April 1953. 

The woman later named ’the best female athlete of the 20th Century by the Associated Press' passed away in September 1956.

Here’s a link to another good article about her on ESPN.com, and here is her Wiki entry.

At a time when much less impressive accomplishments are celebrated on the news and social media, it’s incredible to read about what Ms. Didrickson Zaharias managed to achieve in golf (10 LPGA major championships), basketball, baseball and track & field (2 Olympic gold medals) during her short lifetime. It’s a shame that she is not remembered and celebrated more often.

Firelands Council of Boy Scouts Let Girls Join Explorers – April 1971

Remember a couple of years ago when the Boy Scouts of America decided to let girls join, in an effort to bolster its sagging membership? It was pretty controversial at the time, although I haven’t read anything recently about how it’s been going.

Anyway, I was fairly surprised to see that fifty years ago, the Firelands Council of the Boy Scouts of America allowed seventy-five girls to join and take part in the Explorer Scout program.

Above is the article from the April 22, 1971 Journal. It’s nice to see that U. S. Steel was involved with the program.

It all seems to make sense, seeing as the Explorer concept was focused on vocational opportunities – and getting young people to think about it at an early age is always a good thing.

Note that the cartoon printed with the story is by our pal Gene Patrick, who seems to have been pretty busy back at the Journal in those days. Although he was on hiatus from his Passing Scene comic strip, he was providing a lot of great photographs – and the occasional cartoon – to accompany Journal articles.

U. S. 20 Hitchiker – April 29, 1971

Here’s a great photo that perfectly captures the restless spirit of the youth in this country during the early 1970s.

The Journal photo is by Dick Hendrickson, and it ran in the paper on April 29, 1971. It shows Vince Gentilly of Los Angeles, lazily thumbing a ride along U. S. Federal Route 20 in Wakeman, near the intersection with Ohio State Route 60.

According to the caption, Gentilly had been on the road about three months, visiting relatives and sleeping wherever he could unroll his sleeping bag. He had dropped out of college because he’d “just had enough.”

As you can see by his thumb, he was heading east (to Cleveland, where he had an uncle).

And here’s a Google Maps view of where young Mr. Gentilly was photographed, fifty years ago.

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You don’t see too many hitchhikers these days. 

Over the years, I've given a ride to a few of them. The few people that I picked up were usually from the area, not the down-on-their-luck transcontinental wanderers. I always made them show me some I.D. and prove that they had no weapon, and I did likewise. They were almost always nice, grateful and interesting.

One gal who really needed a ride was still wearing a Halloween costume, trudging along U. S. 6 in the early hours after having crashed in a strange apartment in Lorain the night before. I helped her get to where she wanted to be.

But it’s been years since I did that sort of thing. 

I still see the backpack-wearing, bearded types along Liberty Avenue (U. S. 6) in Vermilion pretty regularly, but no one has stuck a thumb out in a long time. Everyone has cell phones now anyway, and there are just more options available to get somewhere, rather than take a chance with a stranger.

Another Serving of Donald Duck Orange Juice

Remember my post late last year about Donald Duck Orange Juice? 

I mentioned how I used to buy it and pack it in my lunch. I thought it was kind of cool that the product – which dated back to the earliest days of character licensing – was still around. But then the label was redesigned, and I grumbled how Disney now felt the need to slap its corporate name on the product.

Well, since that post, I’ve noticed even more changes, courtesy of the Disney bean counters and suits. 

The canned orange juice product seems to have disappeared; at least I can’t find it at my local grocery. Now it only comes in plastic bottles, which you can buy at Dollar Tree. The Donald Duck product line has also been expanded (although the grapefruit juice has apparently been squeezed out of the lineup).

While in Fligner’s recently, I noticed that Donald Duck Orange Juice now comes in big half-gallon cartons too.

The package is very colorful, with a bio of Donald on the side panel for those kiddies that are too young to have witnessed his animated antics and might be wondering who he is. But note how the orange juice has now been designated “OUTRAGEOUS.” 

Hmmm. Google the word ‘outrageous’ and the first definition that pops up is ‘shockingly bad’ – not the best description for something you’re about to drink.

Anyway, despite how I feel about the over-designed packaging, it is very good orange juice. 

A cashier at the Dollar Tree in Vermilion put it best: “It’s not too sweet and it’s not too tart. It’s just right.”

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Hey, why not watch a really funny Donald Duck cartoon – How to Have An Accident At Work (1959) – while you sip your Donald Duck orange juice?