When Hines thought of the South, New Orleans often came to mind. Perhaps that city’s top rated dish in his estimation was the Oysters a la Carnival. Describing the process by which the dish is prepared, Hines said “the oysters are chopped,…mixed with sauteed onion, garlic and herbs, blended with bread crumbs, heaped into half shells, crumbs over the top, butter dotted on, and baked.” When Oklahoma was mentioned, Hines thought of “black-bottom pie with crumb crust, a chocolate-custard base topped with a gelatin meringue,” topped with whipped cream, and sweet chocolate shaved over it.
When he traveled to Los Angeles, Hines could never stifle the urge to pay a visit to the Melody Lane restaurant and sample their tamale pie. “This,” he said, “has a delectable filling of ground steak and green peppers, of ripe pitted olives with grated cheese and corn meal [and] hot peppers, but not hot enough to make the mouth smoke.” Another dish that brought Hines to California was the crab custard served at the Valley Green Lodge in Orick. He described the dish as “sweet lumps of crab meat…baked in a rich sauce, scented with onion, zested with tabasco, bedded under a blanket of buttered crumbs.”393 He was full of regional culinary knowledge; all anyone had to do to unearth it was ask him a question and he would empty his head.
Although Hines enjoyed foreign food, it was hearty regional American food—victuals prepared over a hot stove all afternoon—that most gained his admiration and affection.394 Escargot did not make him salivate, but sliced hickory-smoked country ham did. His penchant for regional food items occasionally resulted in a preference for oddball food items—such as maple syrup salad dressing, a delicacy he could find nowhere else but in Vermont. As stated earlier, his favorite culinary region was New England; by contrast, his least favorite area was the American South. Good Southern cooking he said, was a myth. Except in private homes, there was not any. “Why, most of the people who hang out [restaurant] signs” there, Hines thundered, “have been raised on side meat and dirty, greasy beans. They’ve never tasted good food.” Speaking his mind about the South’s turnip greens and “pot likker,” Hines remarked that it tasted like “like broiled crow with tobacco dressing. I can eat it, but I don’t hanker for it.” And when he spoke of Maryland’s fried chicken, he informed all who would listen that “it can be good, but too often it conceals a multitude of sins. Instead of fine young chickens, the cook has killed a few old roosters or tired arthritic hens, parboiled them and embalmed them in the icebox. Later they are warmed, covered with hot batter and served up unctuous and sizzling.”
Another subject that raised his ire was the food served in hotel restaurants. Hines’s frequent public denunciations of the hotel industry’s kitchen practices had by 1939 led to his being invited by hotel owners “to appear at their conventions and give them straight-from-the-shoulder advice.” Hines took advantage of these invitations so he could have a forum to address his concerns. His biggest complaint concerned the hotels’ managers, claiming they were foolish to let their guests take their meals a block or two away when all they had to do was institute a few simple reforms. They were insulated from the real world, said Hines, “they never get around except to other hotels like their own. They spend a lot of effort on efficiency and checking little items [for] waste,” but they “never find out what average people are eating.”395
As early as the 1920s, Americans were beginning to forsake hotel food for that served in the roadhouse and highway inn, despite the potential dangers they posed. The main reason for this trend, Hines said, was because big hotels prepared their meals “without imagination.” And he had a villain in mind whom the industry could blame for all its economic woes: the efficiency man. This individual, he griped, was the person who told them how to save money—usually at the diner’s expense. “The efficiency man has discovered,” he said with contempt, “that pork shrinks with proper cooking. Pork should be well done…but in a large enterprise underdone pork will serve a great many more portions than well-done pork. The same thing holds true with turkey. Boiled turkey will provide more portions per pound than roast turkey, but good turkey is roast turkey.”396 And the best way to serve roast turkey, Hines thundered, was when it was basted with wine and butter.397
Exposing the efficiency man’s crimes against hotel food was yet another reason why Hines caught on with the public. They liked what he had to say, and the way he said it. And newspaper and magazine editors did not ignore their readers’ desires. Therefore, in scores of articles, Hines gave the public plenty of tips as to what motorists who wanted to eat well when traveling should look for. In one article he stated that “the highway inn which serves no liquor is likely to be more painstaking about its food than the more exciting place which does.” Hines liked Scotch and soda, and he listed many places in his guidebooks which served liquor, but he noted that while “liquor may attract a crowd,” after a few cocktails or highballs, any restaurant patron would find the food good.398
Good restaurants were not his only concern. Within a few months Hines also came to believe he could help change Americans’ eating habits. His agenda changed as his fame grew. His philosophy in this regard evolved slowly over the next few years in piecemeal fashion. But when he formed an opinion and chanted it incessantly through the many organs of that day’s media, Americans read and listened to what he had to say—and assented their approval. An example can be found in his fellow Americans’ eating habits, which he deplored. Hines believed the remedy for this deficiency lay in education, and he thought himself to be the perfect teacher. As the 1930s gave way to the 1940s, he became more vocal on this subject. He believed the more the public knew about proper diet, the more rapidly they would change their ways. He observed the average American “wants his food in a hurry. He likes it well prepared, but he is unwilling to wait while it’s cooked to order.” To Hines’s mind, the most “sinister” influence “in the modern social order” was the drugstore lunch counter. “In the Middle West, the younger generation is being raised at the lunch counter. How in God’s name can anyone who regularly eats drugstore snacks ever be expected to recognize a good meal when it’s served?”399
The drug store lunch counter fostered two more of his “pet peeves,” one of which was the penchant to overeat, which he scorned and found repulsive, for it contradicted his philosophy that one should eat in moderation. The other irritant was Americans’ tendency to “bolt it and beat it,” believing the consumption of a meal should be undertaken slowly, leisurely. A meal was something to savor—not wolf down. Finally, he did not believe in dining at bargain-basement prices, stating once that “usually the difference between a low-priced meal and one that costs more is the amount you pay the doctor or the undertaker.”400
12
THE WAR YEARS
As Americans adjusted to a war economy a few short months after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Hines published the 1942 edition of Adventures in Good Eating. With the nation in domestic chaos, he was not sure how well the book would do financially. He expected the worst. What happened at first, however, surprised him. All three books sold more copies during April and May 1942 than they had the entire previous year. “No doubt,” Hines observed, this was “brought about by the fact that defense workers and their families are now using my books when they are on the move from one part of the country to the other.” More interestingly, for the first time Adventures in Good Cooking was outselling Lodging for a Night.401
Nevertheless, the Second World War made matters difficult for Hines’s business, but not in the way one might expect. Between 1942 and 1944 America had to cope with gas and tire rationing, a move which curtailed all nonessential automobile driving. However, Americans could accumulate rationed gasoline coupons. If they saved enough of them, they could take a trip to a nearby city or across the continent. While Hines’s business suffered during this time, it did not fare as poorly as he initially feared; people had to travel, and therefore they continued to buy his books. As the nation mobilized for war, millions of Americans were
transported back and forth across the country, usually via train. During the course of their travels many transients found themselves in unfamiliar cities. Because they often found themselves in strange locales and were thus unaware of good places to eat and sleep, many men and women bought his guidebooks to locate them.402 Indeed, for many servicemen a Duncan Hines guidebook was a required possession, particularly when they were on leave. Likewise, Americans not in uniform also found the books useful, particularly on those occasions when they visited their loved ones in the armed services.403
Although gasoline rationing hampered Hines’s ability to investigate potential dining and lodging facilities, which annoyed him, he nevertheless tried to travel as much as he could. But in the early days of the war, most of his time was spent dealing with a restaurant industry thrown into confusion. Confident that America would win the war, even early on, he saw it as his mission to raise the morale of the nation’s restaurateurs until the storm passed. He dealt with all sorts. Some restaurant owners were nervous over the uncertain turmoil that gas and food rationing would have on their businesses. Some restaurants had more business than they could handle; others had virtually no customers at all, particularly if they were located miles from a metropolitan area, where most soldiers tended to be stationed. To boost their confidence and to help them analyze the current state of affairs, Hines held several regional meetings for his “family” members.404
It was during this time that politicians began to seek his advice. Before the Ohio State Health Commissioners’ Conference in September 1942, Hines testified he would grade restaurants, scoring them according to cleanliness. “I’d like to see letters six inches high on the entrance door,” he told them, “and front display windows showing the grade of the restaurant, and if I operated a restaurant, I would add under the grade Our Kitchen Is Open For Inspection By Our Guests. And then I would add another sign: No Pets Allowed In Kitchens Or Dining Rooms Regardless Of Who They Belong To.”
As noted earlier, Hines had no patience with people who had failed in life. If they failed at one career, they would probably fail at another; he told the commission he did not want these individuals to enter the restaurant profession, because they would undoubtedly fail again—and at the customer’s expense:
It seems to me that the American public has suffered enough from food being prepared by people who have failed in previous occupations and possess no knowledge of the proper preparation of food, its cooking or the importance of maintaining cleanliness in all departments. I believe there isn’t any profession that requires more artistry and talent than the careful preparation and cooking of good food. I believe no license or permit for operating a public eating place should be issued unless the owner can pass an examination which would prove his knowledge and ability in the proper preparation and correct cooking of wholesome, appetizing food.
As to his well-known pet peeve, restaurant cleanliness, Hines testified that “it has been found that silverware and dishes become carriers of disease if they are not thoroughly rinsed in 180-degree water after washing….30 percent to 45percent of the deaths in the United States are caused by diseases in this way. So when a place does not look or smell clean in the kitchen and in the back end, all their chromium fronts won’t inveigle me to eat in their dining room.” He added that it “seems that many owners of eating places compete with others to see which can raise the largest and most cockroaches. Many of them apparently look upon roaches as friendly pets.”
Turning to another topic, Hines told the commissioners he did not have much faith in State Boards of Health. While their efforts were welcome, in his view, they were usually ineffectual. Hines said he had recently,
received a letter from a State Board of Health reporting to me on eating places. They thought these places were clean because the State Board of Health inspected them. Once a year might be better than never, but not much. A place may go to the dogs almost overnight. In my opinion, it is first a matter of education to the owners, managers and employees of public eating places…. There should be frequent and adequate inspection. For first violations[,] a written warning; the second violation, [a written warning and] a stiff fine, and for the third violation, a permanent revocation of license.
When the government penalized a restaurant with a fine, he said, horselaughs ensued; what the government did was a joke. He cited one recent government report which detailed over 250 restaurants which had violated the health laws. “A little over 8 percent were fined,” he said, and of that remaining percentage, the transgressors were punished with a hefty fine, usually a whole dollar. “Imagine,” exclaimed Hines, “a fine of only one dollar.”405
At a Rotary Club meeting in Cave City, Kentucky, Hines told his audience of how his publishing operation was coping during the global conflict. “I am very happy to report that my books have found a place in the war effort,” he told them.
Millions…have been transformed from civilian to military life. They are taxing our transportation facilities to the limit, traveling all over the nation. My travel books…are going with many of them—guiding them to the best in unfamiliar places throughout America. I wish you could read the enthusiastic letters I receive from men in the service who are using the books. The government has placed the travel books in the libraries of many camps, also in large deluxe transport planes for the use of navy personnel.406
Despite the limitations the worldwide discord had placed on his ability to conduct business, Hines managed to earn enough profit to avoid a temporary shutdown. One newspaper revealed that his books had “been reprinted [at least] 10 times in one year,” and that the accumulated sales of all three of his volumes now exceeded over a million.407 After a burst of extremely robust sales for the guidebooks during the war’s early days, by 1943 activity had tapered off. In a letter Hines sent to his Duncan Hines Family members, he wrote, “The sale of my travel books naturally has slumped,” but sales for his recipe book, Adventures in Good Cooking, had picked up. “I hope the sale of this book will help meet our office expenses for the duration.”408
Sometime that year Hines established the Duncan Hines Foundation, the purpose of which was to promote restaurant sanitation. The Duncan Hines Foundation was established to provide scholarships to students in hotel and restaurant management schools of both Cornell University and Michigan State University. “He was very proud of that,” his secretary remembered.409 Hines also chose to create a scholarship fund at Cornell University because it was the best hotel management school in the country.410 Hines was one more name in a long line of individuals who contributed to the school’s fortunes.411
A month after the D-Day invasion of 6 June 1944, the pivotal event for the Allied involvement in the Second World War, Duncan Hines published a short piece in Table Topics, a trade publication for wholesale food distributors. The war, he wrote, had kept him quite busy. Since it began, his dining guides had undergone fourteen printings. He knew they would cease being authoritative sources if they remained out of date and the numerous printings were the result of his attempt to remain current with the frequent changes in the restaurant industry. Hines reported that many places either in the country or on the outskirts of cities that were dependent on transients for their business had been forced to close their doors. As many as 500 deletions and additions were made to the guidebook’s pages to keep it as current as possible. Hines said, “If I had foreseen the enormous amount of work it was going to involve to maintain my books on an unbiased basis, perhaps I never would have started it as a hobby.” Still, he reflected, “It has now become a serious business and, although there is hardly enough profit in it to justify the time and work involved, I am rewarded to some extent by hundreds of letters of appreciation from [its] users.”412
The guidebooks underwent so many changes that by 1945 Hines had sent revisions to the Williams Printing Company twenty-eight times. Restaurant and lodging circumstances could change every few months and Hines could not afford to print large quantities of e
ach edition. If he did, he could very easily be stuck with thousands of outdated copies. Therefore, he managed to solve his problem by printing small quantities of corrected editions every few months. This business decision was still not profitable for Hines because, then as now, it cost more to print small quantities than large ones.413 By the time the war came to its cataclysmic close, the task of keeping the guidebooks updated was becoming horribly difficult. So much was happening so fast. Hines said it was as bad as keeping track of railroad timetables. “Divorce, change of ownership, death, fire, and war shortages are the background for most of the listing changes.”414
One day toward the end of 1944, Bowling Green’s newspaper reported that Marion Edwards, a staff writer for Better Homes and Gardens magazine, had recently visited the Duncan Hines home and advised readers to look for an article about him in its upcoming pages.415 The article was published in May 1945. In her article, Edwards revealed that Hines’s restaurant guide was now in its sixteenth printing since Pearl Harbor and the public was buying it at the rate of 3,500 copies per month. In fact, so many were being sold that she noted it was a common sight to find a copy of Adventures in Good Eating peeking “out of the back pocket of dusty G. I. trousers” as well as from “the crowded traveling cases of tagalong brides and wartime businessmen.” Everyone, it seemed, was using it.
Duncan Hines Page 16
