Charles Kemmons Wilson; America's Innkeeper

Christmas in New York, New Years in Pennsylvania. This driving back and forth from NY to PA will soon be coming to an end, I hope. It may only be around 275 miles, which usually takes me about 5 hours, but sometimes, with the help of immense traffic, it can take much longer. Much longer! I do have some what of a routine. Rise and shine, load up the car (my computer, my faithful companion always with me:) No, I didn't get a laptop for Christmas:( Stop for gas, "jump" on the LIE and away I go! When you make the drive as many times as I have, you begin to come up with ways to amuse yourself. This trip, I decided to stop at the new Mount Airy Lodge Casino in Mt. Pocono. I'm not quite sure when it became a casino. I remember it as a Honeymoon Getaway many moons ago. I figured it was high time I checked it out and check it out I did. Yes, I indulge in the act of gambling every now and again. This time, I even won! There's a rule I follow when I win. I stay. Hey, why not? In this case, I will tell you the why not. $300 dollars that's why not. Okay, I admit, I won $1,000 so $300 dollars of their money shouldn't put any dents in the old budget but, quite frankly, $300 dollars seemed like an awful lot of money for a room at a casino which offered nothing more than a floor filled with slot machines. The restaurants certainly didn't tempt me. I stopped in Betty's Diner for a quick cup of coffee and wound up ordering the Blue Plate Special. Mmmm...Meat loaf, mashed potatoes and corn. How quintessential. Not! Now, I'm no restaurant critic by any means but I know what I like and I know what I don't and the Blue Plate Special was definitely a no no. Salty, dry, hidden objects within...I suppose, the food shouldn't be a reflection of the accommodations but I just couldn't bring myself to get excited about a $300 room when I knew the meat loaf probably came from an un-named source. The menu said it was going to be "Melt in Your Mouth Meatloaf, Wrapped with Bacon, Mashed Potatoes, Gravy, and the Chef’s Selection of Seasonal Vegetables" Nothing like a plate of "comfort food" to remind you to hold back on the falling chips. So bad was the Blue Plate Special that I actually complained to the waitress and told her there was no way I could possibly eat it. At first, I simply told her I thought I was hungry but wasn't. I was trying to be polite and after all, I was eating with their money. But no, the waitress had to make a scene.

"Oh" give yourself a big mouthful and you will come back for more" she said.

"I don't think so" I replied. "I guess my eyes were bigger than my belly. I'm just not hungry right now; as the flood of "there's people starving all over the world flashed through my mind." Oh my, I thought I hope she doesn't find it necessary to remind me of that gruesome fact as I sit in a gambler's paradise with a huge plate of meat loaf and mashed potatoes before my eyes. Did I tell you she forgot the bread and the coffee was cold?

"I will take another cup of coffee" I told her.

"How about a nice piece of lemon meringue pie to go with that coffee" she taunted.

"Just a coffee will be fine" I told her "and the check I added."

"Are you sure you're not ill?" Out Meat Loaf plate is the best selling item on the menu." she continued.

"No, I'm fine, Actually, I just don't like it. I will take another cup of coffee and the check as soon as possible." You know of course there was no way I was eating that meat loaf if my life depending on it and it was almost to the point that her life was depending on me getting my coffee and getting the hell out of Betty's Diner." I will say, the decor in Betty's Diner was quite stimulating. It almost made you feel like you wanted to have a soda pop and darn your new poodle skirt but, I may have been born in the 50's but I'm no "bobby soxer" or is that "bobby socker?"

I finally got my additional cup of coffee and the check. To my surprise, the waitress never charged me the $11.95 for the Blue Plate Special and, the coffee was once again, cold. I left a tip anyway. On my way out of the "diner" I ordered a glass of Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon, the only recognizable name on the limited "wine list" and headed for the check-in desk.

I tend to think of myself as a mild mannered easy going sort of a blogger. Yes, I do have a temper and yes, I have been called stubborn and yes, I mind spending money when it doesn't live up to the desired effects. So, beat me with a wet noodle or in this case a "hot" thick rimmed glass of wine and a $300 dollar estimate for an over night stay...Put down the wine Louise and take the money and run...I did.

About five miles down the road from the New Mount Airy Casino there is a Holiday Inn Express. I've stayed there many a time en-route from PA to NY or visa a versa in the past ten years. (yes, dear visitors I've been making this trip back and forth for more than 10 years so don't get too excited when I tell you "this is the year:) In-climate weather is usually the reason although, about 3 years ago, I found myself an impromptu guest when I came down with an unexpected attack of Lyme disease. That's a whole other story that I will spare you from telling except to say, the staff at the Holiday Inn was exceptional! Next time, if there is a next time, I will return there to rest my gambling head.

Charles Kemmons Wilson

"America's Innkeeper" Charles Kemmons Wilson was the founder of the Holiday Inn chain of hotels opening his first Holiday Inn on August 1, 1952 in Memphis. Today, on the day of his birth in 1913, I would like to share a few recipes from the Holiday Inn International Cook Book (1972 ed,) first published in 1962. The story of Wilson's life is an inspirational story of sheer "rags to riches" glory. He was born in Arkansas, moved to Tennessee with his young widowed mother, quit school to help his mother when she lost her job as a dental assistant during the depression, sold popcorn and soda outside a neighborhood movie theater until the theater owner decided to buy his concession stand...

Wilson was born in Osceola, Arkansas, on January 5, 1913. He was the only child of Kemmons Wilson, an insurance agent, and Ruby Lloyd (Hall) Wilson. Wilson’s father died when he was only nine months old...Wilson demonstrated a knack for business at an early age, even though he never completed his education. After his father died, he moved with his mother to Memphis, Tennessee, where she worked as a bookkeeper and dental assistant. He took his first job at the age of seven, selling the Saturday Evening Post door to door. He soon had 12 other boys working beneath him. When he was 14, Wilson was hit by a car while working as a drugstore delivery boy. The accident fractured his right leg and kept him in a body cast for 11 months. This forced him to miss school for nearly a year. He quit school altogether when, two months before his high school graduation, his mother was hospitalized. He then went to work to support them both.
He began with a popcorn machine which he set up in a movie theater lobby. It proved so lucrative that the theater manager confiscated the machine. "I lost my popcorn machine because it got to where I was making more money than the theater manager," Kemmons once recalled. "I went home that night and told my mother that I was going to build my own theater, and no one was going to take it away." Within a short time he'd purchased the local Wurlitzer jukebox franchise. The income from his pinball machines, a chain of popcorn machines and his jukebox franchise allowed him to move into residential and commercial construction. And yes, he did what he promised his mother, and went on to build a total of 11 of his own movie theaters. His work as a real estate developer laid the groundwork for the lodging revolution he was about to initiate. source

By 1950, Charles Kemmons Wilson was a millionaire.

Wilson married Dorothy Lee and had five children by 1951. In August of that year, at his wife’s insistence, he took the family in their Oldsmobile (without air conditioning) on a vacation to Washington DC. Along their drive, they found accommodations which forced them to choose between expensive downtown hotels and “mom-and-pop” operations such as boarding houses and tourist courts. The accommodations were of varying quality and generally charged for each of his five children. At one lodging, the room was six dollars, and the Wilsons were also charged two dollars for each child. He decided that with more middle-class Americans traveling in the post-war prosperity of the 1950s, families needed clean, comfortable places with air conditioning, the newly popular television, nearby food, and a swimming pool for the children to play in and adults to relax around...
On August 1, 1952, he opened the first of four hotels in the Memphis area. He decided on the name Holiday Inn after the popular 1942 Bing Crosby film, which his draftsman had watched the night before submitting his plans. The very first Holiday Inn was on Memphis’s Summer Avenue, not far from today’s Graceland...Wilson’s mother, who was a company vice president and who had worked with him on the décor for his housing business, decorated the Holiday Inn rooms in bright, friendly, warm colors. There was a Bible in each room. Every property had air conditioning, a swimming pool, a restaurant on the premises, in-room phones, free ice, dog kennels, free parking, and available babysitters. The franchisees who operated Holiday Inns were not called managers but innkeepers. In the early days, innkeepers would phone ahead to make guests’ reservations at the next Holiday Inn on their route. As the number of hotels increased, a computerized reservation system was set up, which Wilson called “the most revolutionary step since the opening of the first inn.” best resource

Since I travel back and forth from New York to PA so often, I thought I would share a recipe from each place from the Holiday Inn International Cook Book by Ruth Moore Malone Vaughan. From the back of the book:

Ruth M. Malone is also food editor of the Holiday Inn Magazine. The "Cook Book Lady" as she is affectionately known from coast to coast (and now in many foreign countries,) is a former magazine and syndicated newspaper writer. Other cook books to her credit are the Dogpatch Cook Book, Swiss Holiday Recipes and Where to Eat in the Ozarks. An authority on the Ozarks, Mrs. Malone was selected by the Smithsonian Institution to contribute an article for the 1970 Festival of American Folklife program book. She is a member of the prestigious Order of the Chevaliers du Tastevin. Her by-line has frequented American Home, Parents and a number of Mid-South newspapers. She appeared as the "real" Ruth on the television show, To Tell the Truth.

Both recipes I have chosen are from what would now be the closest recipes to where I am in New York and Pennsylvania. The first recipe, for Duck Bigarde, is from the Holiday Inn which was on Nesconset Highway in Stony Brook, New York. It seems odd that the recipe included for the Holiday Inn in State College, PA is for Deep Sea Scallops. I know from experience even today, fresh scallops in State College are still difficult to find. I think I will go with the Pennsylvania Dutch Chicken Pot Pie from the Holiday Inn that was in Williamsport which is about 40 minutes from where I live in PA. State College is about 20 minutes away:) Lidian over @ Kitchen Retro has also posted a recipe from this book. The recipe for Cucumber Salad is at her humorous Congealed Weapons post. I can always count on Lidian's posts to brighten up my day. Thanks again, Lidian:) 

In case you missed the post for New Year's Eve, I've decided to include relevant snippets from American Cookery Magazine 1934 editions throughout 2009. As you can see from this ad published in the January edition, 75 years ago, The Hotel Governor Clinton, a prestigious New York Hotel built in 1929 was charging not $300 dollars but $3.00 for a night's stay at one of New York's finest hotels. Huge difference!

On the lite side:) today also happens to be the birth day of Herb Peterson the inventor of the McDonald's Egg McMuffin and National Whipped Cream Day. Tomorrow is Little Christmas. I posted a menu for Little Christmas last year. Here's the link. Enjoy!