This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people.

Colonel Harlan David Sanders was an American businessman known for founding the

Fast Food Corporation Kentucky Fried Chicken. Colonel Sanders did something that no other restaurant

founder dared to do. He became his company's own mascot and brand ambassador.

He had to share the story of KFC and a little about who Colonel Sanders was is Adam Chandler, the author of

Drive-Thru Dreams. Take it away, Adam.

The story of Colonel Sanders and KFC is one of the best stories there is in fast food.

There's nothing else like it.

This is a guy who was born into poverty, grew up on a rural farm.

He's basically an orphan.

He raises his own family while his mother's working after his father dies at a very young age.

And he works every job imaginable for the first six, seven decades of his life.

He's selling tires. He's working for the Chamber of Commerce. He's building ferries. He's working on trains.

He's trying to become a lawyer.

He does all of these different things.

And he finds success in some of them and he fails in other ones and he just, he keeps trying.

And he ends up in a small gas station that he owns in southeastern Kentucky.

And basically, his entire focus is trying to beat out the other gas stations for customers on the newly built roads that are happening in southeastern Kentucky, the Dixie Highway.

And he ultimately succeeds by having excellent service and excellent food.

And that's the beginning of fried chicken.

He loves it.

He creates an electric pressure cooker, patents it to make fried chicken faster than anyone has ever made fried chicken before.

...