"Moon The Balloon" and the "Big Float Down"

Come on down to Sarnia/Point Edward this weekend, there is lots to do.
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Saturday is "Moon the Balloon" set for a big turn out to protest the recent US effort to spy on/annoy Canadians.
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Here's the news story:
This Saturday's demonstration along Sarnia's waterfront will proceed, even though the spy balloon will be miles away. Developers say the spy balloon is being shipped to Delaware for repairs after being ripped in a weekend storm. Then it will be evaluated by the U-S military in Arizona and won't be back in the Port Huron area until next month at the earliest. Even so, "mooning" co-organizer Eli Martin says their bottom baring will proceed. U.S. Representative Candice Miller has sided with Canadians upset about the balloon, saying it infringes on our privacy for no particular reason. Canada's Minister of Public Safety plans to pursue the matter with the Department of Homeland Security.

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The much talked about American spy balloon over the St Clair River will NOT be in the air for this Saturday's planned "Moon the Balloon" protest. The blimp received a large gash in its fabric Sunday, when some of the mooring lines snapped and it rolled onto a sharp object. Director of Michigan Operations for Sierra Nevada, Bradley Lott says its unknown if repairs will be conducted locally. In any event, Lott says the balloon wasn't scheduled to be in the air during this Saturday's protest in Centennial Park. He says other options are being considered now. Lott says the balloon could be packed up and shipped to Arizona for another scheduled deployment. 14 hundred people have joined a Facebook Group in support of this weekend's mass mooning of the balloon over privacy concerns.

Sunday is the second annual Float Down the America side of the St Clair River. Click here to read about it.

Click here to see last year's Float Down on this blog

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Up On The Roof With John Egan

John Egan is semi-retired and lives at 26 Adare Cres. 519 691-0263. He is a mason from the "old school". How fortunate we were to have him repair our chimney!

He worked hard but made the job look easy, removing stones and replacing them.

John is a master of the trade and does great work.

He also fixed the two knee walls at the front steps and parged the foundation walls - all for about $450. Thanks John. What a guy!

The Next Chicken Magnate?

Wendy and I love going to the Palms Krystal Bar in Port Huron, Michigan. In fact we chose this restaurant to go to on our 37th anniversary last month. The place is like going back in time and their feature food is “Chicken In The Rough”, the oldest existing American fried chicken franchise started back in the 30’s. That was long before the Colonel even thought of franchising his KFC.

We had seen but never met the owner of the Palms Krystal Bar, Russ Schultz until our last visit. But we felt like we knew him since we have been going to his restaurant since before he and his wife Martha took over in January 2003. Several years ago Russ was involved in a very serious car accident and we followed the newspaper accounts with great interest, hoping that the owner of one of our favorite eating spots would be alright. Fortunately he did recover and has long since been visible at Palm’s again although he has developed a slight limp, he is lucky to be alive. The car is usually the big loser when it collides with a large truck at 70 mph.

Jack Carroll, Russ Schultz (owner of the Palms Krystal), Me and I believe Jack's grandson (Rob?)

Thursday was $1.25 Draft Bud Day. We were enjoying our 4 piece chicken dinners when a man who had been talking with Mr. Shultz came by our table and commented: “That’s the best thing on the menu. How do you like it?” We agreed with him that it was great chicken and he introduced himself as Jack Carroll, owner of the “Chicken In The Rough” brand name and franchisor. He explained that his father used to sell the franchises back in the 30’s and that he has fairly recently taken up the cause with a renewed marketing effort to grow the chain. I explained that I too was a Carroll and with that the conversation turned to our Irish heritage and how the Irish have a propensity for story telling and the gift of gab.

I asked if I could get a picture for the blog and everyone was more than accommodating. I never met Colonel Sanders but who knows, this man, my namesake, same name as my late father Jack Carroll, could become the next king of chicken!

Wendy with "the whole family of chicken people". Left to right Martha Shultz, Jack Carroll, Russ Shultz, Wendy, Marian Carroll and Rob. Forgive me if I've mixed up the names.

After the pictures outside, we parted like we were the best of friends and Jack promised to send me some “Chicken In The Rough” coupons so I might try some of the other franchise locations. There is actually one in Canada, right in Sarnia at McCarthy’s Restaurant and we have never even been there yet.

History of the "meal that created food service and fried chicken franchising"™


In 1936 Beverly and Rubye Osborne were driving west from Oklahoma to California. They had no reason to be joyful. They were middle aged and the Depression had wiped out their savings. On this particular afternoon it seemed that everyone in the state was attempting to escape the famine of the Oklahoma dust bowl. With not much more than their meager belongings and a basket of fried chicken, Beverly Osborne coaxed his Ford pickup across the barren prairie. Suddenly, a bump in the rutted road scattered the chicken and basket. Picking it up, Rubye complained "this is really Chicken in the Rough®." With that chance remark, a fortune was born. Beverly turned his truck around and headed back home. A man who, on instinct, had made a modest fortune and lost it - Beverly reasoned that "fingers were made before forks" and that chicken could be a cheap source of food at a time when incomes were sparse. Beverly learned from his previous business experience and failures that every business must provide customer satisfaction by identifying customers' needs and how to satisfy those needs better than anyone else. Soon, with the money he had received from the sale of his wife's wedding ring, he had an operation serving fried chicken with shoestring potatoes, hot biscuits and honey. That was the delectable meal that started "Fast Food - Fried Chicken Franchising" - long before McDonald's or Kentucky Fried Chicken .

By 1950, when Time magazine ran a feature article on the Chicken in the Rough® operation, Beverly and Rubye Osborne were grossing almost two million dollars per year, had sold 335 million orders of Chicken in the Rough® and had created 250 franchised outlets including some as far as Johannesburg, South Africa. Throughout his lifetime, Beverly Osborne held onto his strong belief that "in business, the product is the vehicle that is used to implement a strategy for creating a good idea."

Beverly Osborne realized that every entrepreneur needs a product or service that makes his/her business better by being different or unique. Due to his strong ideals, his belief in himself, and a "bump in the road," Beverly reasoned that fried chicken could be a great marketing and merchandising item for all types of food service operations. Thus, he created Chicken in the Rough® and the rest became history.

Beverly Osborne created attractive and colorful point of purchase items that are currently used to develop "Fried Chicken Brand Interest"™ in Chicken in the Rough®. He understood the importance of developing customer interest and recall through the use of colorful logos and trademarks, while creating a unique food product carefully prepared. The primary goal and purpose of Chicken in the Rough® was to increase an independent's business and value through a specialized franchise marketing plan that could be leased to an independent food service operator, while retaining his/her independence. The only agreement is a mutual commitment to market fried chicken the "Chicken in the Rough®" way.

In memory of the role that Raymond Carroll (the first and most successful person to sell and market the franchise) had played in the growth of the fried chicken concept, sons Ray and Jack Carroll, and Jack's wife Marian purchased the Chicken in the Rough® rights from Beverly Osborne, its founder. Beverly was a reluctant seller, but he did desire to see the name "Chicken in the Rough®" continue.


Check out this article about the history of “Chicken In The Rough”:

http://www.franchisetimes.com/content/story.php?article=00710

And visit the Palm’s Krystal web page too
http://www.palmskrystal.com/

Another blog on the subject:
http://bloatedbelly.typepad.com/the_bloated_belly/2006/02/palms_krystal_b.html

Trip to Orillia

Friday morning we loaded the dinghy on the trailer and headed towards Orillia with our Garmin GPS set to “shortest” route instead of quickest. We prefer the back country route as opposed to the big freeways, especially on a long weekend. When we called David as we neared Barrie, our wisdom of staying off the big highways was confirmed. “The 400 highway is a parking lot!”. We arrived at our destination only about 15 minutes late. That’s pretty good on a 4½ hour trip. David was 2 hours late on a 1½ hour trip from Toronto.

Bill and Judy had already been up here for the past week, so they appeared entirely relaxed as we found them down by the lake on lawn chairs at their b&b, Pumpkin Bay Hideaway where, by their kind invitation, we were to join them and take a bedroom in the private suite that miraculously became available for the long weekend. They moved from the studio apartment just for us.

Later in the afternoon, Bill and I went by dinghy over to the municipal marina at Port of Orillia to find David, who had brought his 25 foot Four Winns boat and planned to sleep on board here. David was on his own since Reenie drove up to Sault Ste. Marie with her sister Barb to visit their mother.

David

Bill

Wendy
Me

Judy, Bill and Wendy

The five of us went to on the main drag for an enjoyable dinner before retiring for the evening.




Wendy with Bill's wife Judy

Saturday morning Bill and Judy were planning a bicycle ride so Wendy and I took the dinghy for a ride over to “the Atherley Narrows”.

We were hoping to meet Cheryl and John and the gang around 1:30 but Holly and Barry reported that the Toronto traffic was extreme so we decided to go with David for an hour or two. We towed the dinghy to explore.

David's daughter Tanya and her boyfriend (and two other beautiful girls) caught up with us.




I have seen other places where boats congregate for a water party but never anything like the number of boats at Big Chief Island, about 2 miles out in Lake Couchiching. We anchored off shore and estimated a couple hundred boats were anchored closer in. Upon exploring the scene with the dinghy, we could see that there was layer upon layer of boats stretching nearly to shore an a mile or so long. There was more like 500 boats here. The island itself is part of the Indian reserve, an off limits sacred burial ground and home to only dense vegetation with plenty of poison ivy and snakes. This meant that all the activity was in the shallow water surrounding the island.


All kinds of music boomed from boat loudspeakers, and even a live band and a pontoon boat with a BBQ selling hamburgers added to the party atmosphere. Not a cop was in sight as hundreds of people, young and old, openly carried their beer and drinks in the knee deep water. I navigated the dinghy at idle speed through the boats until the maze of anchor ropes and people made it unsafe to use the engine. At this point David jumped in the water and began dragging the dinghy and me through the crowd as I snapped pictures.

Pete calls the place 'Pee Bay'

Returning to the marina, we met up with the rest of the gang who had survived the horrendous traffic jam as thousands of people tried to escape from Toronto for the long weekend.. It was great to see everyone as we look forward to dinner at Theo’s Eatery, a local favorite. Donna, who had to work this weekend will join us there.







Always great to see Donna!



With our table for 14 it was somewhat like the dining experiences we shared on the cruise ships during the winter months past. The food was excellent and the conversation lively as we enjoyed gabbing with all our friends. After dinner we all made our way to Cheryl’s condo a mile or so away. This place was purchased as rental investment and provides accommodation to their daughter as she attends school here. The party continued until after midnight as we planned to meet Sunday for breakfast at “Hasty Tasty” and then shop the quaint and independent stores along Orillia’s main drag.

That's me kabitzing with Heather. We missed the spring cruise this year so Heather and her friend took our place with the gang.









Next morning, we met at Tasty Hasty and then went to the main drag for some shopping in the tourist traps. As we said our goodbyes and parted, we were still unresolved about where to go on our next cruise, but Holly was suggesting a Panama transit on Celebrity in late November.
Cheryl tries on some winter garb.

That afternoon/evening, Bill drove us over to the “Casino Rama” since neither Wendy nor I had ever been there. This huge complex is native Canadian owned and is a destination for millions of people each year. There is a luxury hotel, a casino, and a huge entertainment venue featuring Las Vegas style shows and acts. All this is managed by Caesar’s Palace of Las Vegas.


We thoroughly enjoyed seeing everybody and thank Bill and Judy for sharing their B&B suite with us for the three nights.


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