The Man Continued To Take Shit From No One, Right Up To The End
As Kentucky Fried Chicken began to take off, so too did the Colonel. The new owners plastered his distinct face on everything. They would march him out whenever they could, and he was forced to be the mascot for the one thing he truly loved and regretted giving up in the first place. For a while, at least. Then Harland Sanders remembered that his defining characteristic was that he didn't take shit from anybody.
So Sanders opened up his own joint: Claudia Sanders, the Colonel's Lady (which doesn't quite have the same ring to it as "KFC"). He was promptly sued for $120 million over the name. The case got settled around 1975, and Sanders was forced to sell, sadly preventing a Colonel Sanders vs. Some Kentucky Motherfuckers Courtroom Cage Match.
Despite the many disagreements, Sanders continued on with KFC in some capacity, as they needed this white-suited badass more than he needed them. He also continued to find new ways to not give a shit what the new owners thought of him, openly ripping into KFC stores he visited (publicly referring to their gravy as "wallpaper paste" and their mashed potatoes as "sludge"), which eventually got him sued for libel. That's right, when Colonel Sanders was in his late 80s, he was sued by a KFC location for pulling a Kitchen Nightmares on them. They lost the suit. He died shortly thereafter at the age of 90.
Now imagine how different the world would be if that crazy rival gas station owner had better aim. Harland Sanders would have gone down as a nobody with a checkered past who died the way he was probably always destined to -- killed in an argument at a Kentucky gas station. That's how razor thin the line is between the type of crazy that ruins your life and the type that makes you millions.
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