Duncan Hines
Page 26
After thinking it over, Hines agreed to let one of the magazine’s photographers follow him and his wife around on one of their cross-country tours of America, one that was to take them through 44 states. Hines picked a wide variety of motels for his Look article, “ranging from huge highway hotels to cozy overnight bungalows.” His list was based on several factors, including cost, convenience, and hospitality. His ten best motels included: 1) The El Rancho Grande in Brownsville, Texas, which had such “luxuries as a swimming pool and room service.” Hines also liked the fact that “warm food and cool beverages [were] delivered by bicycle.” 2) The Fort Humboldt Motel in Eureka, California featured “home-like cottages and a folksy hospitality that includes furnishing the guests with radios.” 3) The Guest Ranch in Cheyenne, Wyoming was an attractive, Western-styled motel that offered “private sitting porches where its guests” could “chat and relax.” 4) Then there was The Key in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Hines liked this “million-dollar motor hotel” because it represented “the combined merits of a downtown city hotel and the economical conveniences and atmosphere of a country motel.” 5) The Yankee Traveler in Plymouth, Massachusetts was a “contemporary Cape Cod-style motel” giving motorists in New England an opportunity to experience a chance to relax “in the true traditional hospitality of the early New England inns.” 6) Bacon’s-by-the-Sea in Fort Walton Beach, Florida was a “rustic motor inn” located on the sandy beaches of the Gulf of Mexico; one of its luxuries was a motorboat. 7) Tourinns in Wilmington, Delaware was an “ultramodern motel” that provided “living-room-type bedrooms” and even offered a special quarters for pets. 8) Desert Caravan Inn in Spokane, Washington was a “modern motor hotel…built in the midst of picturesque pines.” 9) The El Rancho motel in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina was an “extensively landscaped motel” which faced 7 miles of beach and provided “women guests with gardenias in season.” 10) The Franciscan Motor Hotel on North Highland Avenue in Hollywood, California had “a Hollywood swimming pool, with service and atmosphere to match.”
Hines reminded his readers of how far the motel industry had come in two short decades. “In less than 20 years, a few scattered roadside cabins have multiplied to more than 40,000 motor courts…. Each year, about 2,000 new ones happily hang out their gleaming ‘no vacancy’ signs.” The reason for their growth and the source of their popularity with tourists, said Hines, was not difficult to understand. “Motels, built on main highways, are easily accessible without the nuisance of city traffic. Cars parked conveniently near lodgings save bothersome trips for extra baggage and forgotten items. With no plush lobbies to dress up for, they stress informality.” Another reason they were popular, particularly with adults traveling with children, was that they were affordable. Hines wrote, “As a rule, motels are less expensive than hotels because there is little or no tipping involved. However, as motel prices edge upward, more and more of them are relying on such sure-fire tourist attractions as swimming pools, air-conditioning, free television, children’s playgrounds and running ice water to lure and lull the weary traveler.”
Hines provided Look’s readers with updated instructions on how to pick a good motel. One tip was that “a neat and tidy outside appearance… [was] the best indication of clean rooms inside.” He asked readers to note if the lawn and shrubbery had been cut, if the driveway was neat, and if the paint was fresh. Before checking in, he advised travelers to look “around to see if it is in a quiet location—far enough from the highway, railroads and noisy night spots—to enable” one to have a quiet rest. If the motel passed this test, there next came another barrier, the motel receptionist. A good indicator of whether a motel was worth staying in could be found in the behavior of the person at the reception desk. First impressions in any situation always the most important, and Hines pointed out how receptionists make or break a motel’s business. “A courteous, pleasant receptionist,” he wrote, “is an important indication that your stay will be a pleasant one. Don’t hesitate to ask to see the room before signing the register. One glance at the room and its furnishings will tell more than the lengthiest assurances from the desk clerk.”
If the receptionist hesitated, Hines’s advice was to drive on. But if the receptionist showed a potential guest the room, Hines advised his readers to put it to the final—and ultimate—test: the inspection. Hines advised readers to check the furniture for dust, to inspect the bed sheets for cleanliness, to see if the bedsprings were adequate, and to make sure there were “plenty of good-sized towels” in the bathroom. He also suggested that one should not walk out of the room before being perfectly satisfied that plenty of hot and cold water was instantly available. He advised readers to check the “heating, ventilation and lighting facilities.” Even windows had to be checked. “A screened window that can be raised and lowered easily,” he wrote, “is always desirable—sometimes even with air conditioning.” Rooms, he said, should also have “good-sized closets, extra hooks in the bathroom, [and] sufficient drawers.” All, he insisted, were “assets of a better room.” Lastly, there was the subject of safety. “Safety measures,” he wrote, “such as inside locks on room doors, night watchmen and lights [that are] kept on all night are important for adequate protection.” Nothing, it seemed, escaped his attention. These were his standards and, he implied, they should be his readers’ as well.
Finally, Hines could not pass up a chance to comment on those motels which had dining facilities. If the food looked and smelled good, he said, proceed further. He informed his readers to “use your eyes for such small details as clean catsup bottles and covered sugar bowls. They often reveal kitchen conditions.” Hines concluded the Look article by instructing his readers in the ways of becoming “a good motel guest.” To do that, Hines wrote, “follow the four rules of the road—courtesy, caution, compliance and common sense.” He had traveled in excess of 2 million miles, he said, and so far those rules had worked for him magnificently.636
Hines accumulated much credibility within the motel industry. Some years earlier, around 1946-1948, he had been approached by a group of highly reputable stockholders who had the idea of opening a chain of Duncan Hines Motels. Hines thought it over for a while but “regretfully declined to join the venture.” He felt that in doing so he would be getting away from his “original purpose of guiding people to the best places that were then already in existence.”637
About this time the public began to learn of his most recent hobby. A few years earlier, in 1948, Hines began developing a new bit of business to entertain the press—and, later, television audiences. He would empty his pockets and show off his large collection of unusual wristwatches. Whenever he and Clara would go anywhere, he would arm himself with at least a dozen timepieces, almost all of which made some sort of noise, and entertain himself and anyone else for long stretches of time. His wrists were usually adorned with his prized timepieces such as his handsome gold watch, which was a duplicate of President Eisenhower’s, or his “regulation pocket watch with a fob made from a $50 gold piece.”638 It was not uncommon for him to carry fourteen wristwatches on his person wherever he went. While most of these devices were of modern design, one was 150 years old and was still in excellent operational condition.639
On his trips throughout the country Hines was constantly purchasing a new toy to play with, always a gadget of some kind, one which he was sure would also delight a friend or relative. He was enchanted by gadgets and acquired plenty of them. Their usual defining characteristic was their usefulness. Roy Park knew of his partner’s watch hobby and made it a practice to give him a new one every year. One year Park sent Hines a watch with an alarm in it. As he tried it on, Hines made everyone laugh when he said that he was going to set its alarm off in church so the preacher would cut the sermon short.640 A few months later, when a reporter from the Louisville Courier-Journal interviewed him, Hines pulled from his pocket the watch with the $50 Mexican gold piece fob and thrust it into the reporter’s face, saying with characteristic humor, “This one
is handy in case my wife takes all my money, so I’d still have the price of a hamburger for two.” Showing off his wrist watches, the alarms of which could sound off not only every hour but every fifteen minutes, he said as he pulled them from his left coat pocket, “These alarm watches sometimes come in handy. I can always set one or the other of them to go off and remind me of an important appointment any time an encyclopedia salesperson gets about ready to pin me down.”641
Still a child at heart, Hines sometimes played practical jokes. He was known to bring home from his travels little gifts for his employees. On one occasion, however, one of these jokes did not particularly amuse them. A few days earlier while he was in Chicago’s Marshall Field department store, he spotted a can of “French-fried Mexican agave worms.” They were expensive, at two dollars per can. He ordered a couple of units and sent them to Bowling Green. Later, when he returned home, he opened the worm-filled containers, nicely arranged the edibles on a silver tray, and offered them to his employees. “They looked like big matches that cowboys use,” he said. “I told the girls in the office that it was a delicacy from France—and they ate them like candy—they loved them. Two days later I showed them the can—and they wanted to kill me. It was just the name. As long as they didn’t know what it was, they liked it.”642
19
DUNCAN HINES GOES TO EUROPE
In the spring of 1954 Hines and Clara went to Europe for the first time, accompanied by their close friend, Nelle Palmer, the operator of the Lowell Inn in Stillwater, Minnesota.643 It was a “just for fun” trip, Hines told reporters as he prepared for his excursion,644 adding that he was not going to spend his time hanging around “crumbling castles or stuffy museums.” Instead, he said, “I want to see everything that is new and modern, including a few watch factories in Switzerland!”645 He and Clara took a train from Bowling Green to New York City, where they were met by Roy Park upon their arrival. Before heading off to Europe, however, Hines, Clara, Park, and a couple of reporters drove 30 miles into the New York countryside to dine in nearby Banksville. Their destination? La Cremaillere a la Campagne, a French restaurant owned and operated by Antoine Gilly in a 100-year-old home. As they headed toward their destination, Hines said with a wistful grin, “I can taste those cheese cigarettes of Antoine’s right now. Heavy cream, egg yolks, grated Parmesan—”
“Duncan!” Clara blurted out, laughing, “Remember, you’re supposed to be saving some space for Europe.”
When the party arrived at La Cremaillere a la Campagne, Hines asked M. Gilly what restaurants in Paris he should investigate, remarking “that he was willing to try anything but snails.” Later, in the middle of their feast, one reporter asked Clara if her husband was a fussy eater. “Not at all!” exclaimed Hines, answering the question for his wife as he reached out to help himself to another cheese cigarette. “Take breakfast,” he said playfully but with a straight face, “One of my favorite breakfasts is ice cream and corn flakes. What could be simpler than that?”646
The Hines and Nelle Palmer set sail upon the French luxury liner Liberte for Paris on 8 April 1954. While on board they were treated to “floor shows, dancing, [an] orchestra, horse races, and bingo games.” While playing bingo, Clara won 72,000 francs, or a little over $200. Later, the chef on the liner “gave the Hines a special dinner in their honor.” The multi-course dinner was served over several hours in a very leisurely manner. The Hines dined on such delicacies as fresh Russian caviar; clear vegetable soup; lobster with an elegant, rich sauce; green asparagus with another rich sauce; broiled Porterhouse steak with the chef’s own version of Hollandaise sauce; potatoes, which, in Hines’s words, were “fixed up real fancy”; green vegetable salad topped with what Hines judged as “a super-duper dressing”; a souffle; assorted fruits; and a wine of a very good year. Hines was most impressed with the size of the asparagus; he recalled later that they were “served as whole spears and these spears were about eight inches around the base. They were either white, green, or green and white, tender from top to bottom and were served with delicious sauces. To eat them you dip an asparagus spear in the sauce and bite off a chunk and repeat until all is eaten, and it’s quite a feat to eat them and not dribble the sauce on your face.”
At Captain Jacques Leveque’s orders, the crew gave their honored guests a grand tour of the ship. They let Hines linger at great length in the ship’s kitchen, or galley, where the master food critic found waiting for his inspection thirty-six “varieties of cheeses, eight kinds of fresh fruits and all kinds of fresh vegetables.” Hines especially appreciated the fact that “when chicken was on the menu, the first-class passengers were served French chickens, which are smaller but plumper than the American variety”; they also had, he said, “a more delicate flavor.” Another observation that pleased Hines was that the ship’s cooks prepared their meals “entirely with butter—no lard or grease.”
The manner in which his meals were served fascinated and delighted Hines. At the traditional ten-course “Captain’s dinner,” he noted that one course of the meal, fois gras or goose liver, was served with truffles from a huge platter, the center of which featured “a unique barnyard scene. The figures of the various animals,” particularly the geese and the barn, “were made from a mixture of bread and lard, chilled and then painted…. The caviar was served from a boat carved from ice, and when time came for dessert, the cakes were served in lighted, colored, spun-sugar baskets.”647
When the Hines and Mrs. Palmer disembarked in France at LeHavre, they almost hated to leave, but there was the whole European continent ahead of them, so they boarded a boat train for Paris. Once inside the city limits of the French capital, the threesome began exploring the French restaurants of the famed metropolis. As they had hoped, no matter where they ate, they found good food. “All of the French food,” said Hines later, “was so wonderfully seasoned by the chefs that I never once reached for the salt or pepper during my stay in France.” However, to his discomfort, he noticed that the French liberally poured more sauce on their food than he cared to witness.648 The most memorable restaurant the threesome discovered during the next few days was the tiny Chez La Mere Michel, which specialized primarily in seafood; Hines swooned over their scallops.649 He later said of the owner, Maud Michel, “I had fun with that old lady that runs that place. She brought out some real old brandy. I kissed her on both cheeks and I got her around the waist and give her a slap and she said, ‘Oh, you’re a nice man.’”650
Next the Hines and Mrs. Palmer dined at the Plaza Athenee, an elegant restaurant where they were the luncheon guests of George Marin. At this meal they savored the culinary joys of “melon with Bayonne ham, (thin, sliced raw ham),651 Turbot souffle, roast chicken with green beans and peas, fresh strawberries and pink champagne.” At the small but intimate Reíais de Porqueralles, “they feasted on the famous bouillabaisse, made of all sorts of fish lobster, crab, mussels and shrimp and served, from a huge platter, with a thin fish soup.” Their greatest meal of the day came later at Laperrouse, where they dined on “duck and chicken, cooked with herb sauces.”
A day or so later Hines was the guest of honor at a nearly five hour luncheon in which he was made a member of the Parisian society of Cercie des Tourists Gastronomes. At this dinner, he and Clara were served large portions of “fresh truffles in pastry shells, broiled sole, roast duck with browned new potatoes and green peas, fresh strawberries on ice cream with spun sugar cookies,” or what the French prefer to call sweet biscuits.652 Hines enthusiastically approved of the manner in which the French consumed their meals. “Eating, to your Frenchman,” said Hines, “is not just a way of appeasing his hunger, but a gustatory experience. Each course—indeed, each mouthful—is savored and thoroughly enjoyed before he passes on to the next.” There was no bolting and beating it here. Hines was also greatly impressed by the attention that French restaurateurs paid to keeping their restaurants clean. “For example,” he observed, “as soon as there is a speck of ash in an ash tray, the tray
is whisked away and replaced by a clean one.”
However, if the indoor restaurants of Paris gladdened Hines’s heart, the ones on the city’s sidewalks did not. “The famous sidewalk cafes were a disappointment to us,” said Hines later.
We’d looked forward eagerly to dining under the gay umbrellas and watching the boulevardiers and demimondes of Paris walking up and down, but alas for romance. A horde of flies, gnats, and other bugs that I couldn’t identify swarmed over us and our table, and our sparkling bon mots were lost in the cacophony of sound the like of which I’d never heard. Every automobile in Paris seemed to have two horns and no muffler. Nell[e] and Clara shouted at me, I shouted at Nell[e] and Clara, and we all shouted at the waiter. We ate inside for the rest of the trip.653