Queer Places:
Fairview Cemetery
Bowling Green, Warren County, Kentucky, USA
Duncan
Hines (March 26, 1880 – March 15, 1959) was an American pioneer
of restaurant ratings for travelers. He is best known today for the brand of
food products that bears his name. Hines visited and wrote about one of his favorite restaurants, the Pendarvis House,
owned by the gay couple Edgar Hellum and
Robert Neal, many times. He wrote:
"Pendarvis House is one of the few places in this country where real Cornish meals are served, prepared from old authentic recipes, and where scalded cream may be had. Their Cornish pasty, hearty and appetizing, is served for luncheon or dinner with homemade relishes and pickles, and green salads with fresh herbs. Wild plum, citron or gooseberry preserves with the scalded cream, tea and saffron cake, served as dessert, are delights which will thrill the most jaded gourmet's palate."
Hines was also a longtime friend of
Gordon McCormick, who helped in the restoration of the Pendarvis Complex.
Hines was born in Bowling
Green, Kentucky, the
son of a former Confederate soldier. His mother died when he was four and he
was raised by his grandmother.[1] Hines
attended Bowling Green Business University, which later merged with what is
now Western
Kentucky University[2];
and worked in the American
West for Wells Fargo and
other companies before settling in Chicago.[1]
Hines worked as a traveling
salesman for a Chicago printer,
and he had eaten many meals on the road across the United States by 1935 when
he was 55. At this time, there was no American interstate
highway system and only a few chain
restaurants, except in large populated areas. Therefore, travelers
depended on getting a good meal at a local restaurant. Hines and his wife
Florence began assembling a list for friends of several hundred good
restaurants around the country. The book proved so successful that Hines added
another which recommended lodging.[3][4] In
the late 1940s and early 1950s, Hines wrote the newspaper food column Adventures
in Good Eating at Home, which appeared in newspapers across the US three times
a week on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday. The column featured restaurant
recipes adapted for home cooks that he had collected during his nationwide
travels.[5][6]
He is pictured here (l-r): Edgar Hellum, Clara Hines, Duncan Hines, Bob Neal.
In 1952, Duncan Hines introduced Duncan
Hines bread to the world through the Durkee's Bakery Company of Homer, New
York. Principals Michael C. Antil Sr., Albert Durkee, and Lena Durkee were
the bakery proprietors. This was Duncan Hines' first foray into baked goods.
By 1953, Hines sold the right to use his name and the title of his book to Roy
H. Park to form Hines-Park Foods, which licensed the name to a number of
food-related businesses.[7][8] The cake
mix license was sold to Nebraska Consolidated Mills in Omaha, Nebraska,
which developed and sold the first Duncan Hines cake mixes. In 1957, Nebraska
Consolidated Mills sold the cake mix business to the U.S. consumer products
company Procter &
Gamble. The company expanded the business to the national market and added
a series of related products. Also in 1957, Hines appeared as a guest
challenger on the TV panel show To
Tell the Truth. Duncan Hines died of lung
cancer 11 days short of what would have been his 79th birthday.[9] He
was buried in Fairview Cemetery in Bowling Green, Kentucky, in the same series
of Hines family plots as Thomas
Hines.
The Duncan Hines brand is now owned by Conagra
Brands, having been reunited with the company through its acquisition of Pinnacle
Foods in 2018. Hines is widely honored in his hometown of Bowling Green,
and a portion of U.S.
Route 31W north of the city was named the Duncan Hines Highway after his
death.[10] A
museum exhibit at Western Kentucky University's Kentucky Museum in Bowling
Green showcases Duncan Hines.[11]
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