Col. Sanders' secret recipe is safe with me

One of my first jobs as a teenager was frying chicken for Colonel Sanders.

Back then, KFC was referred to by its full name, Kentucky Fried Chicken. On the first day of work, female employees were issued a hideous red polyester uniform and an imposing pile of paperwork. One of the forms was an agreement on condition of employment that employees could not disclose Kentucky Fried Chicken's "secret recipes."

The "non-disclosure" form was a curiosity to me. I mean, did headquarters truly believe that corporate spies would travel to the hinterlands of Colorado to put the squeeze on a 14-year-old girl to divulge the secret blend of herbs and spices in the Colonel's Original Recipe chicken?

For that matter, it was virtually impossible to know the contents of the recipe because bags of the flour, spice and herb concoction were delivered premixed. There were no labels, so it's anyone's guess what's in there. My palate could discern salt, pepper and sage, but that's only three of 11 herbs and spices. A food scientist could likely dissect the ingredients, but so far, to my knowledge, that hasn't happened, either.

In fact, a recent Associated Press report says the recipe has been kept secret for 65 years. This is remarkable considering that Kentucky Fried Chicken has changed hands a number of times. You would have thought that someone along the way would have slipped a bag of the secret recipe out the door for someone's analysis. Not so.

That, in itself, is amazing to me. In this world, everything is for sale. If you have any doubts, log on to eBay sometime. People will buy a baseball player's chewing gum, potato chips that resemble presidents and even toast bearing the image of the Virgin Mary. Seemingly, the Colonel's Secret Recipe would fetch a pretty penny.

Could it be that KFC employees feel as if they must honor those "non-disclosure" agreements? If they were like me, they were far more interested in the sealed white envelope that held their paycheck for the previous two weeks..

But this secret has been held twice as long as the Washington Post's Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein concealed the identity of "Deep Throat." It's pretty remarkable some disgruntled executive along the away hasn't squealed.