The colonel may be gone - Harlan Sanders died in 1980 - but the familiar image of the bearded, bespectacled, smiling, white-haired corporate symbol, dressed in a crisp white suit, apron and black string tie, like the pungent odor of his most famous product, lingers on in the hearts of fast-food collectors. One of the few company founders to become the visual representation of his firm, he has from the beginning appeared on all the packaging and promotional material of KFC.
Sanders did not have an easy or straightforward path to success. Born in 1890 just outside Henryville, Ind., he was the oldest in a family of five, the son of a coal miner who died when Harlan was 6. When his mother was forced to go to work, the boy had to take responsibility for his younger brother and sister, which included doing much of the family's cooking. By the time he was 7, taught by his mother, he could prepare a number of regional dishes, including, of course, fried chicken.
He began working on farms by the age of 10, and then held a succession of jobs: At 15 he was a streetcar conductor, and the following year saw him as a 16-year-old soldier serving as a private in Cuba, also studying law via correspondence courses. Other professions included blacksmith's helper, railroad fireman, Ohio River steamboat ferry operator, justice of the peace court worker, insurance and tire salesman and Standard Oil service station operator in Corbin, Ind.
In 1930, at the age of 40, he began offering home-cooked meals - featuring fried chicken, of course - served on his own dining table, surrounded by only six chairs, to hungry travelers who stopped at his service station, calling them "Sunday Dinner, Seven Days a Week."
As the reputation of his specialty spread, Sanders (he was made an honorary Kentucky colonel in 1935) decided to open his first restaurant, at a site across the street, called the Harlan Sanders Court and Cafe in 1932, seven years later discovering a pressure-cooker method of frying the chicken to speed up the process. Then, in 1956, disaster struck when a new Interstate highway bypassed Corbin by several miles, damaging the business to the point that Sanders was living on his social security checks at the age of 65.
Undaunted, he invested his meager savings into building up a franchise chain on the strength of his chicken recipe. He drove across the country (his secret blend of 11 herbs and spices hidden securely in his car), going from restaurant to restaurant, cooking samples of his chicken for the owners and their employees, gradually building up a network of 200 eating establishments, each of which paid him a nickel for each chicken dinner sold.
He registered the Kentucky Fried Chicken trademark in 1954 and soon all the paper goods (buckets, take-out boxes, cups, menus, place mats and table tents), plastic fluorescent roadside signs and poster board (reading "Give Mom a Break! Take Home a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken") and other promos displayed the colonel's image and his registered trademark, "It's finger-lickin' good."
Vintage examples of these form the basis of a KFC collection, as do such items as a square clock with the colonel on its face, a milk-glass-type KFC hanging lamp depicting buckets of chicken, KFC-sponsored 12-inch rulers (that also gave the 1963 local high school football schedule) and a 1954 jigsaw puzzle featuring a bucket of chicken.
Three-dimensional heads and full-body depictions of the colonel were seen as hard white plastic salt and pepper shakers, hard vinyl figural banks, a painted hard plastic figure with spring-mounted bobbing head, and a slightly odd pinkish ceramic portrait mug, with the colonel's cane serving as the handle.
Linda Rosenkrantz has edited Auction magazine and authored 18 books, including "Cool Names for Babies" and "The Baby Name Bible" (St. Martin's Press; www.babynamebible.com). She cannot answer letters personally.
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