Hodgepodgeatorium 02.12.04

Hodgepodgeatorium would like to take a moment to recognize a Black face that was left out of the history books. And what better time than Black History Month?

Many readers take the friendly black faces at the McDonalds around the corner for granted. But it wasn’t always that way.

“Back when I first started with the company only a white face could greet the customers,” recalls Leon Jenkins, a former employee. “We blacks were relegated to the kitchen.”

Jenkins started working at McDonalds in 1956 with a little help from his father. “My father knew someone who already worked there. When my father found out that they needed someone to help out in the back he pressured his friend to get me the job.”

“I was a diligent worker. I tried to pay attention to every aspect of the job,” says Jenkins. “I was always peeking to see how the cooks were doing their job, when they dropped fries, how they dropped fries, how many fries were dropped.”

Then came the day of February 12, 1957, Otis Spofford was late. “Otis was the fry cook. Unfortunately he was in a car accident” Jenkins laments. “You see back in those days we didn’t have the yellow light, only the green and red. Well on account of ol’ Otis we now have yellow lights.”

“Since Otis wasn’t there, Ronald (McDonald) got all flustered, and his temper was as short as his hair was red. Nobody else knew how to drop fries. I was the only one who came close” states Jenkins. Jenkins had observed how Otis performed the task, and mimicked what he had seen. McDonald put him on fries that very day, making Jenkins the first black fry cook in history. “I never did get the 15 cent raise I should have received.”

In his spare time Jenkins was dreaming up potato concoctions that the world had never seen. He spent his free time testing recipes. He also enrolled in his local college.

McDonald was never comfortable with a black man dropping fries, but he couldn’t argue with young Jenkins persistence. “Ronald was always looking for me to mess up so he could demote me, but I wouldn’t budge an inch.”

Unfortunately in McDonald found grounds to fire Jenkins in 1960. “There was some missing inventory, a case of burgers. Ronald was looking for an excuse, and he finally had one. I always suspected the Hamburgler, but you live and you learn.”

Jenkins spent the rest of the sixties in and out of school bouncing from job to job. “I was lost,” he says now. “I was really directionless.” Eventually he returned to his true calling, the potato.

In 1970 armed with a degree in Potatology, and with his many ideas in hand Jenkins went to Ore-Ida and became a Marketing Associate. Once there he single handedly or helped create many potato products. “KFC’s potato wedges are based on my design, and I invented the tater tot,” says Jenkins proudly.

But not all of his ideas were accepted. “They vetoed the idea of potato Jell-O, and a potato drink. When you look at the mineral and nutrients that the body needs, you realize that the potato would make an ideal sports drink.”

Jenkins is perhaps the most bitter about a marketing tie in he proposed in 1975. “The idea of Mr. Potato Head schilling fries was mine,” remembers Jenkins angrily. But the powers that be deemed the idea of Mr. Potato Head eating potatoes “cannibalistic.”

“Lo and behold in 1998 the new Burger King spokesman is Mr. Potato Head. That is just another sign that societies standards are falling.”

In terms of fries on the market today Burger King comes close to Jenkins dream fry. He also likes Wendy’s fries. “That Dave Thomas was a class act,” says Jenkins of yhe Wendy’s founder. McDonalds fries score the lowest in Jenkins book. “They are too salty. Kids nowadays need to realize that that application of salt is an art. Today they just heap it on.”

So remember the next time eat a potato product, chances are it came from a Black man’s brain.