Duncan Hines

by Louis Hatchett

  The Hines’s sixth child, Porter, was born in Bowling Green on 24 March 1878. Porter’s birth came within the walls of the Hines home, in “a house in the 1200 block of College Street.” His given full name was John Porter Hines but he was always referred to by both family and friends as “Porter”.34 Named after a Civil War friend of his father,35 Porter went to the Bowling Green public schools and spent a year at St. Columba Academy, the local Catholic school, followed by a year at the Southern State Normal School. Porter, by his own admission, received inadequate schooling because he so frequently moved between the homes of both relatives and friends.36

  From 1894 onward Porter Hines held a wide variety of jobs over the years, most of them involving river navigation along Kentucky’s Barren, Green, and Ohio rivers. In February 1927 Porter Hines joined the staff of Bowling Green’s Western Kentucky State Teachers College, a school that eventually metamorphosed into Western Kentucky University, where he became the school’s chief mechanical engineer. He must have enjoyed this line of work immensely, because he remained with this job for twenty-eight years, until 1 January 1956, when he retired at age 77.37 In 1958 Porter Hines suffered a heart attack and remained in poor health until he died at age 83 on 18 June 1961.38

  Of all Duncan Hines’s siblings, Porter Hines was the one that he was closest to, probably because of the close proximity in their ages. When they grew to be men, they were quite different in their demeanor. Porter grew to be a soft-spoken Southern gentleman while Duncan became the gregarious urbanite with scarcely a trace of Southern accent. While Porter was the picture of relaxation, Duncan was energetic, outgoing, always able to make everyone with whom he came in contact feel at ease. Like his older brothers, Porter would not use the strong language that Duncan was sometimes wont to blurt out in selected moments of exasperation.39

  The birth of Porter Hines in 1878 was followed by Cornelia giving birth a seventh time, to a daughter, on 5 May 1879. As was the case with the Hines’s second child, the girl died three months later and was not named. While Duncan Hines was Edward and Cornelia’s eighth child, there were two others: a ninth child, another unnamed daughter, born on 18 June 1881 who lived only three days, and a tenth child, another unnamed son who was born on 7 November 1882 in Colorado, and lived only a day.40

  The family that Edward and Cornelia had produced was irreparably upset when at 10:30 P.M. on the Monday evening of 29 December 1884, Cornelia Hines died of pneumonia in Bowling Green at the age of 38.41 Her death caused much unrest among the Hines household; Edward Hines, due to his war wounds, was unable to effectively look after the brood Cornelia had left behind. Being concerned for their health and welfare, he made arrangements for his children to live elsewhere. Some went to live with members of his family; others were ensconced into the homes of friends. Indeed, the Hines household was soon scattered all across the Kentucky landscape. Duncan, then only four years old, was sent to live with his grandparents in nearby Browning, Kentucky, a village in Warren County, and it was here that his love for excellent food and his first adventure in good eating began.42

  Born on 26 March 1880 in the 1200 block of Adams Street43 in Bowling Green, Kentucky, Duncan Hines was the youngest of the six surviving children of Edward Ludlow Hines and Cornelia Duncan Hines.44 Joseph Dillard Duncan (1814-1905) and Jane Covington Duncan (1817-1900) lived on a sizable farm near the Morgantown pike 15 miles from Bowling Green, then an agricultural town with light industry of about 5,000.45 It was in this home that Duncan Hines and his brother Porter spent a large part of their childhood. The two boys usually stayed at their grandparents’ house for the winter, sometimes remaining there a year before they went home for the summer to live a few weeks with their father.46 Joseph and Jane Duncan, who raised the boys as if they were their own, owned plenty of land on which much livestock could always be found grazing. They were both well-educated, well-to-do citizens, who were active in the community’s affairs.47

  According to Hines, until he was four or five years old, he wore a dress and sported long curls, of which he was very proud. As he prepared to enter public school, his grandparents decided that he had to look like a boy. His beloved curls were cut and a little Lord Fauntleroy suit replaced his beloved dress. Seeing that he was trapped into wearing the idiotic garment, he begged them to leave him alone while he put on the raiment himself. Upon entering an adjoining room, he seized the scissors that had so disfigured his precious curls and quickly shred the offensive suit, transforming the prissy costume into a heap of ribbons.48

  It was in his grandparents’ home that Duncan Hines first learned to appreciate and covet the art of good cooking. With generations of long culinary skill behind her, Grandma Duncan, as he called her, created all sorts of wonderful things for him to eat. Unlike modern cooks, her only form of measurement was “a pinch of this and a pinch of that,” and the only timer she ever owned was the one in her head. She knew intuitively when the roast or the cake in the oven was ready to pull out and serve. She used no cookbooks. Her method of acquiring recipes was by exchanging them with other ladies after church on Sunday.49 Before this time “food,” wrote Hines of his early years, “was just something to fill the hollow space under my ribs” three times a day. “Not until after I came to live with Grandma Duncan did I realize just how wonderful good cookery could be.”50 Jane Duncan rang a little bell at mealtime. Hines and his brother never let her ring it twice. They were at the table in an instant, “ready to set our teeth into the latest gastronomic delight.” One of their favorites was fried bacon and creamed gravy with biscuits.51 In the years that followed, Hines insisted one should use real eggs and real butter because they were the ingredients that made his grandmother’s cooking taste so marvelous. The Duncan household consumed its share of beef and pork, as well as fresh vegetables from the garden and fish from a nearby stream. However, the good country fare that Grandmother Duncan prepared made everyone’s mouths salivate. Her cooking did not consist of any special recipes. Rather, her high quality meals were the product of the long hours she put in the kitchen, supplemented with an ample portion of patience and experience that only time can mature. Nevertheless, her kitchen skills were those of such masterful artistry that it made a lasting impression on young Duncan for years to come.52

  These were happy times for the Hines children, but particularly so for Duncan, as he indulged himself daily in what later became his great passion: eating remarkable meals. Said Hines years later, “We ate all the time.” In addition to “apple pie, pecan pie,…country ham, candied yams, turnip greens with fatback [i.e., a slab of uncut bacon], beaten biscuits and cornbread,”53 their meals also consisted of “home-baked bread, wild turkey, venison, fried chicken, [fresh pork] sausage, and jam and molasses for biscuit topping.” Duncan and Porter were also treated to meals of “marvelously prepared stuffed fowl—turkey, chicken, guinea, or geese” as well as healthy portions of hickory-smoked hams.54 One species of Southern cooking Hines did not care for, however, was wild game other than that just mentioned. “There is a point beyond which I will not go,” he admitted.

  I may be oversqueamish…but I have steadfastly declined, in spite of numerous invitations, to sample some of the ‘varmints’ with which our Southland abounds. I have heard of those who, with their pack of hounds, roam the fields and woods with a shotgun many a night in the hope of bringing home a ‘possum or a ‘coon for the table. I’ve seen these creatures prepared to any one of a dozen different recipes, and to me all looked equally unappetizing. This is no indictment of Southerners’ tastes, nor do I mean to say that only Southerners have a tooth for such things, [but]…with all of the wonderful fluffy hot breads and pink, tender hams and Southern fried chicken at hand in my native South, [I am] perfectly willing to leave the ‘possum up a gum tree.55

  Although there was plenty to keep the boys busy on the farm, every now and then grandfather and grandsons hitched a horse to a buggy and drove into Bowling Green to get supplies, farm tools, stationery, or whatever they needed.
Because Grandfather Duncan was a county magistrate, he regularly appeared in court, and on those occasions the boys visited with their father.56 As for their education, Duncan and Porter spent their first few years attending a Bowling Green public school.57 After a few years there, they spent a year at St. Columba, Bowling Green’s Catholic school on Center Street, which was operated by the Sisters of Charity.58 St. Columba, which welcomed children of all faiths, was an elementary and secondary co-educational institution that could accommodate slightly over 150 students. St. Columba offered students an impressive curricula, including English, foreign languages, biology and chemistry as well as needlework and guitar lessons. The $20-$30 tuition depended on what courses one took during the five-month term. At those prices, the school catered to Bowling Green’s middle class, and Edward Hines made sure his two youngest boys attended. As a result of their good education, both boys could compose clear, understandable sentences, had good penmanship, and excelled at mathematics. In that less complicated day, the rudiments of a basic education were considered satisfactory. Nevertheless, the Hines boys were known for their intelligence. Duncan possessed an especially high aptitude for mathematical calculations. In later years he would always have a pen and pad handy, ready to rapidly compute any calculation that came into his head.59

  As boys, Duncan and Porter enjoyed one adventure after another. When they were well into their seventies, they happily recalled all the “bad” things they did. During the years 1884 through around 1892 when, for one reason or another, the boys were not spending time either on their grandparents’ farm or with their father in Bowling Green, they often lived for a few days with the Will Rochester family. The Rochesters and the Hines were great friends, and Duncan and Porter enthusiastically looked forward to those times when they could stay with them, especially because they had five sons to play with, two of whom were almost their age; they also had several daughters to keep their interest.60

  This may still have been the Victorian era, but as far as Duncan and Porter were concerned, it was a joyful time to be alive and growing up in Kentucky. They loved to play pranks. When the Hines and Rochester children got together no one was safe from their mischief and merry-making. The Louisville and Nashville Railroad line ran by the Rochester’ home, and the boys made much mischievous use of it. Said Porter Hines years later, “We knew the time and whistle of every train.” Once, while Duncan and Porter were staying with the Rochesters, they built a snowman on the railroad track and put clothes on him. When the train came down the track, the engineer slammed on the brakes so hard to avoid hitting it that the violent action uncoupled some of the cars. “Another time there was a train of freight cars on [the side of the] track[,] just in front of the house,” said Porter. “We decided to uncouple the cars so that when the engineer came to take them away he would be pulling only one. This provoked the railroad crew terribly.”61 On another occasion the boys applied a greasy substance to the railroad tracks on a steep incline, causing many a train to barely top the crest of the hill. The railroad company knew the identity of the mischief-makers and told Mr. Rochester it was imperative he control those little “eye-devils.” Another time Mrs. Rochester was entertaining some children in her home, telling them a ghost story. Duncan and Porter and Mrs. Rochester’s sons, overhearing the woman’s dramatics in the next room, sneaked outside, climbed on the roof and dropped a dummy down the chimney and into the parlor where the story was being told. One young black boy, whose anxieties had by this time been fearfully heightened by the tale, leaped up and ran out the door, cutting his neck on a clothesline as he fled. The incident did not seriously harm the boy, but the mischief-makers received a good switching.

  As he grew older, some of Duncan Hines’s personal characteristics began to take shape. Duncan, in all his siblings’ eyes, was the extrovert and the family’s natural born entertainer. Unlike Warner or Edward or any of his other siblings, Duncan always had a good yarn to tell. As an adult, on any given summer evening, as he sipped bourbon and water, it was not unusual to find him on his porch or in his living room telling an entranced listener some fantastic tale, usually one from his adventurous childhood.62

  When he was sixteen, Duncan Hines’s primary education was completed. His father encouraged him to further his education, and so he entered Bowling Green Business College in the fall of 1896.63 The school’s curriculum by today’s standards was more on the high school level than that found in a rigorous business university.64 He spent two productive years at this institution, dutifully unearthing the mysteries of business administration. His studies, however, were suddenly and forever interrupted one day in 1898 when he went to the doctor and was given some surprising and unwelcome news.

  2

  OUT WEST

  Late in 1898 Duncan Hines’s health began to fail. He had developed “a slight wheeze” and later discovered he was suffering from asthma. “The cure for all respiratory ailments was, at that time, thought to be a move to a dry, mountainous area.” After a conference with his father it was decided he should move out west immediately, lest his condition worsen.65 Consequently, he left Bowling Green Business College without a diploma. By the standards of the day, however, two years was considered by many to be the near equivalent of a full college education. Although he had to forego the diploma for which he had worked so hard, the sacrifice seemed not to have harmed his chances for employment.66

  Due to his mother’s untimely death and his father’s fragile health, maturity had been forced upon him at an early age. He therefore taught himself to be resourceful and quickly learned he was the only person who could best look after his interests. The result was a young man whose mien was much more mature and resourceful than his eighteen years belied.67 To make his move westward he sought a job with the Wells-Fargo Express Company. Years later he told the press he took a job with the firm because John J. Valentine, then its president, came from his home town.68 There was a little more to the story. Valentine was not only a Bowling Green native, he was also a good friend of Hines’s father who wrote Valentine and requested he find a place for Duncan within the company. Within a few weeks Edward Hines saw his son off at the Bowling Green railway station as the young man headed for a job with Wells Fargo’s Albuquerque branch, located in the wilds of New Mexico territory.69

  Following a three-day train ride, Hines arrived at his destination on the evening of 31 December 1898. He discovered streets crowded with “Indians decked out in calico and cowboys with broad-brimmed hats.” All he remembered of that first night, however, was his distress. When he stepped off the train what he saw made him feel uncomfortable. “This was my first holiday away from home, my first night in a strange place. Feeling as though I had not a friend in the world, I registered at the old Sturgess-European Hotel and crept up to bed.” The next day he almost decided to go home but concluded he did not have enough money for the journey. Despite his homesickness, within a day or so he began his employment with the Wells-Fargo Express firm at $40 per month.70 Over the next few months, he quickly worked his way up the company ladder, first as a clerk, then as a railroad express messenger, then as a freight agent.71 Eventually he was assigned to be a company relief man. In this capacity, he moved from locality to locality in the Albuquerque area when regular Wells-Fargo agents became ill or went on vacation.72

  For recreation he soon discovered a new place in Albuquerque to spend his time and salary: a restaurant. Specifically it was one of a chain of restaurants known officially as Fred Harvey’s House, but to its patrons it was simply another “Harvey House.” Hines, who had never before set foot inside a restaurant—let alone eaten in one, found the experience an exhilarating one. Harvey Houses were a system of food service accommodations originally designed to cater to the public who needed transportation via the railway lines. In its own curious fashion, they helped tame the American West in outposts that heretofore were anything but civilized. Beginning in 1876 and continuing through the early 1960s, when the railroads ceased oper
ating as a major mode of transportation, the Fred Harvey restaurant chain offered its travel weary customers good, elegantly prepared meals in a refined atmosphere at affordable prices. Many of the chain’s outlets were located along the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad, the Albuquerque restaurant being one them.73

  Unlike many restaurants of the day, it did not serve “short-order cooking”—a synonym for fried food. Instead the Harvey chain’s bill of fare offered “steaks, chops, ribs, hams, and bacon…usually served with potatoes, either home-fried, hash-brown, or boiled.”74 A look at an 1888 Harvey House menu reveals what could be found in a typical dining room for a multi-course dinner costing only 75 cents. The patron could choose from “bluepoints on the half shell, filet of whitefish with Madeira sauce, young capon, roast sirloin of beef au jus, pork with applesauce, stuffed turkey, salmi of duck, English-style baked veal pie, prairie chicken with currant jelly, sugar-cured ham and pickled lamb’s tongue, all accompanied by seven vegetables, four salads—including lobster salad au mayonnaise—and a wide variety of pies, cakes and custards, finished off finally with various cheeses and Fred Harvey’s famous coffee.” To its patrons it was a bargain, and it sure beat beef jerky.75

  Hines usually stationed himself at the counter of Albuquerque’s Harvey House, but he made an occasional foray into the dining room when he could afford it. Unlike the larger room’s menu, nothing at the counter cost more than 25 cents. This happy circumstance and the large portions that the Harvey House served, combined with his $40 monthly salary afforded him the pleasure of eating “like a king.” He was especially impressed with how immaculately clean the restaurant appeared; it reminded him of his grandmother’s kitchen, and how she had repeatedly stressed to him the importance of “absolute cleanliness when handling food. She was almost a fanatic on the subject. She kept two buckets of water on her kitchen stove; one for cooking and one for rinsing her hands.” He “never saw her pick up a pot or utensil without first dipping her hands into the rinse water.” And while the Harvey Girls, the chain’s waitresses, may not have had hands as clean as his grandmother’s, he was highly impressed with their neat, pristine appearance, noting their uniforms were “starched and spotless,” and their hair was “smoothly combed.” Small, seemingly insignificant things of this nature made a large difference with him. The attention given to these matters guaranteed his continued patronage. The restaurant chain’s passion for excellence was unsurpassed, and it certainly shaped the expectations he demanded of restaurants in years to come. The Albuquerque Harvey House was also a popular place to congregate with the regulars who frequented it, and he soon became one of their number; it became for him a sort of substitute home when he was not working.76