Duncan Hines (10 page)

The roadside restaurants they frequented contained many perils and surprises, and Hines and Florence endured their share. Sometimes the meat they consumed was adequately refrigerated, but sometimes it had lain out too long in the warm air and had spoiled—but was served nonetheless because many restaurant owners believed there was no sense in letting meat, even if it was spoiled, go to waste. Food poisoning in restaurants was quite common. The reason so many people went to their graves after eating in restaurants was because local health inspectors rarely visited them—especially those outside metropolitan areas. Therefore, when someone visited a dining establishment, he could expect the possibility of “undercooked pork chops and decaying salad amidst a decor of greasy walls and flypaper.” A visit to a restaurant was not always a delightful experience. In fact, save a sanitary oasis here and there, the filthy condition of most restaurant kitchens were often sickening when not simply appalling. It was quite common to walk into a restaurant or a railroad depot lunch counter in the early 1920s and—just as had been the case seventy years earlier—be served the usual mealtime fare: “rancid bacon, eggs preserved in lime, bitter coffee made with the local strongly alkaline water, ancient beans, leaden biscuits accurately called ‘sinkers', and ‘antelope steak', so tough you couldn't get your fork in the gravy”—in short, meals often prepared by chefs who had no idea what they were doing but needed a job.
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Restaurants—especially those in rural areas—were usually nothing more than dirty roadhouses with a kitchen tacked on as an afterthought. They were unkempt, unclean, and unsanitary; quite often they served their guests dirty utensils.
Restaurant sanitation meant a great deal to Hines, and his concern increased with every passing year.
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As Hines and Florence traveled more extensively, they discovered others shared their thoughts. Wherever they stopped to eat or rest, they found themselves exchanging comments with many motorists. “Where's the best place to eat?” was almost always Hines's opening comment upon meeting them. This question was usually followed with a lengthy discussion of the subject followed by his dutifully jotting down their suggestions in his notebook. In this way, Hines gained a wealth of knowledge.
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By 1930, many years after he had first begun compiling his first restaurant lists, his memorandum book had swelled to approximately two-hundred listings.
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This keen interest in fine dining establishments soon marked Hines as an expert on the subject. Eventually his interest in good restaurants became well-known. Chicago businessmen asked him for recommendations—and what to eat there. Over the years, in a slow but ever growing procession, hundreds whom he had met in his travels (and sometimes perfect strangers whom he had never met in his life) came to him before heading off on a long journey, asking advice on not only the best places to dine but the best places to sleep as well. On any given day, Hines might receive a call which would start, “I'm off to Nashville—where should I eat?” or “I'm going to Boston—where is the best place in town I can get a steak?” And he supplied his questioner with an answer. He told those who asked his advice of countless superb restaurants of which he was acquainted, such as the “elderly woman of reduced circumstances [who] ran a superb tea room on the road south of Louisville… or a couple who grew all their own vegetables [who] did wonderful things with sauces at an unassuming inn near Syracuse,” New York. Whether it was Fort Worth, Boston, or Indianapolis, he knew where all the good restaurants were, and with every passing year more people came to agree.
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Though he was now firmly ensconced in Chicago, Hines's siblings in Bowling Green never forgot him, nor did he forget them. Hines and Florence tried to visit Bowling Green once or
twice a year—usually for a week in summer and again at Thanksgiving or Christmas. Family members always gave the Chicago couple a warm Southern welcome when they arrived in town. Once they had unpacked their bags, the Hines sometimes spent their whole day at Annie's home. But usually Hines and Florence went their separate ways. Hines spent most of his time with his sister and her family at her Elm Street home, but sometimes he would walk a few blocks downtown to loaf around the courthouse square. Meanwhile the ladies of Bowling Green usually treated Florence to such Southern social customs as noontime luncheons, bridge parties, and teas which were pleasant, serene, social events that usually extended well into the afternoon. Toward evening, Hines and Florence dressed for dinner, which was usually held at Annie's home or one of their many friends. After they had eaten, they gathered in the living room for a long chat, punctuated by a variety of humorous stories, which lasted well into the evening. When Duncan and Florence were not calling on others during their Bowling Green visits, they were being called on by old friends who had heard they were in town. Many evenings were spent entertaining many of Hines's contemporaries in Annie's parlor.
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By late 1928 Hines became dissatisfied with his new employers at the Mead-Grede Company, so he took a similar job as a salesman with the Columbian Colortype Company, another printing firm just a block away.
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He hit the road again, traveling extensively, making calls on industrial and commercial clients who requested to see him. He stayed with this firm for two years. In 1930 he left Columbian Colortype for a similar position with the Gentry Printing Company;
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he stayed with them for four years.
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In 1934 he left Gentry to work as a salesman for another printing concern, E. Raymond Wright, Inc.
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Regardless of which firm he worked for, he continued to sell his printing wares primarily in the American Midwest. His non-train travels outside the Midwestern states usually took him no farther south than the Ohio River, no farther west than the Rocky Mountains and no farther east than Buffalo, New York.
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More often than not, he
traveled a thousand miles a week. Although he had no fixed hours with any firm he worked for, by his own admission he worked quickly and efficiently and was often through with a day's work “before any one else” in his profession. He was a “salesman's salesman,” and would have remained one for the rest of his life had it not been for fate.
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After many years of watching him play supper sleuth, people began to take Hines seriously. Someone with his precision for accuracy in restaurant recommendations could not be kept a secret forever. And, as usually happens when one has specific knowledge about a particular subject, he becomes an expert the newspapers want to write about. In 1934 a Chicago newspaper reporter learned of his repute and asked him for permission to write an article about his unusual hobby. Hines saw no harm in the request and granted an interview.
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After the article appeared, however, his life was never again the same. Soon his apartment phone was ringing all day long, and this time the calls were not just from businessmen. They were also coming from hundreds of seasoned travelers who had found their trips completely ruined or made wholly unenjoyable because they had dined in a badly managed, unsanitary restaurant. He later claimed that “executives bound for conferences, musicians going on the road, honeymooners choosing their destination—perfect strangers all—called for advice.”
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Toward the end of 1935, thanks to the newspaper article, his reputation as the man who knew the best places to eat and sleep throughout the country had grown to such an extent that one day Hines realized he was spending all his time answering telephone queries. While he was dispensing advice one morning, the thought occurred to him to design some literature that would cut down the time he spent answering his mail and talking on the phone. After all, time was money. No one was paying him to answer questions. Therefore, in November 1935 he and Florence compiled a list of the 167 best restaurants they had dined in over the years, covering an area of 30 states. They included only the ones that never failed to leave a highly favorable impression. Hines then ordered 1000 copies printed on a heavy stock of blue paper. The couple included
these lists inside their Christmas cards and mailed them to everyone they could think of, including all his friends, business associates, and just about “anyone who had pestered him for a restaurant recommendation.” He entitled his restaurant list “Adventures in Good Eating.”
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The list was condensed from his original notebook of “superior eating places,” which by this time had grown from between 700 to over 1,000.
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He had hoped widespread use of this list would give him some time to return to making a living. He was not prepared, however, for what happened next. Before too many weeks had transpired, friends began deluging him with requests for still more copies of his restaurant list. And so did their friends—in one wave of requests after another. Hines had created a monster. Everyone, it seemed, wanted his restaurant list. To keep from going broke in printing costs, he began charging a dollar for it. No one seemed to mind. As far as they were concerned, it was a price well worth paying.
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As people across America were tacking up their January 1936 calendars, Hines kept receiving more letters from people who wanted a copy of his restaurant list. “We got hundreds of requests for cards from people we had never heard of,” he later recalled. “It made me realize that we had done something that had never before been tried in this country—because there were no authoritative and unbiased guides to good eating. I felt that I could perform a real service to the public by giving them an appreciation of fine food and telling them where they could get a decent meal.”
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After witnessing favorable public reaction to his Christmas card, Hines resolved to put his restaurant knowledge in a book. He may have toyed with the idea earlier, but now he had seen enough evidence to conclude a sizable number might be willing to pay for his knowledge. He had to do something. By mid-January his hobby had transformed itself into a nightmarish phenomenon he could not control. He could have thrown all the letters and telegrams he received about restaurants in the garbage. Likewise, he could have slammed down the phone every time someone asked him about a restaurant. But he did not. Despite their increasing number and
that it handicapped his ability to make a living, he felt duty-bound to answer every communication. Still, he no longer seemed to have any time of his own. His knowledge of American restaurants had become an albatross that somehow had to be governed. It was under these circumstances that his book,
Adventures in Good Eating
, was born.

Hines rationalized his decision to publish a restaurant guide by later recalling there “were book reviewers to tell us what we should read, art and drama critics to advise us on what to see—but there were no authoritative and unbiased guides to good eating…. And the reaction to my ‘card' indicated that people were eager to have someone perform the service of telling them where to find good food when they were away from home. Why not myself?”
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He therefore resolved to take matters into his own hands. He hand-addressed and sent out multigraphed copies of simple questionnaires to all the notable restaurants that had accumulated in his memorandum book.
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In his questionnaires, he asked restaurant owners the usual questions, such as their address, times and days open, average price for breakfast, lunch and dinner, if they were air-conditioned, and the house specialty. Ninety-percent were answered; half made it into the book's first edition. The responses were sent either to his Cornell Avenue home or to the Wright Printing Company.

After Hines sifted through his 900-plus replies, he realized he had far too much material to produce an inexpensive book. He therefore decided to cut his material down to size. To determine which restaurants to include in his book, he compared the replies he received with his comments in his notebook. When he was unsure of the validity of the information he possessed on a certain restaurant, he relied on newspapers and other literature as well as menus sent to him by friends.
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Even while compiling his book, he was already planning ahead. If response to this volume did well, he wanted to produce an updated edition annually. As many restaurants across the country appeared and disappeared each year, he believed an annual publication of his restaurant guide would prove useful; it would
enable its users to keep up with the latest changes. With this in mind, Hines began to assemble a plan that would ease him out of the printing business and into the publishing world.
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Hines never worked on his book during business hours; it was all done on his own time. He was fortunate, however, in having a very generous employer, E. Raymond Wright, the owner of the Wright Printing Company. Wright was more than willing to let him pursue his publishing objectives so long as he brought in revenue for his firm. In fact, Wright helped him with his experimental venture by letting him use his company's address as the incorporation site for Adventures in Good Eating, Inc. and even became his business partner. In addition to Wright, who served as the corporation's vice-president, another Chicago native, known only as Mr. Hueser, served as the corporation's secretary.
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Both men owned shares in Adventures in Good Eating, Inc. Hines was listed as the company's president and treasurer. The company issued ten shares of stock with each share being worth $100. Hines held six shares while Wright and Hueser each owned two. In 1937 Hines bought out his partners, making him sole owner of the company.
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