I had popcorn all over the place, so I decided I might as well be in the Processing Business.
Orville Redenbacher
Every once in a while, someone will mail me a single popcorn kernel that didn't pop. I'll get out a fresh kernel, tape it to a piece of paper and mail it back to them.
I moved to Princeton, Indiana, and became a professional Farm Manager for that Princeton Farms.
We got to know the competition very well. In the '50s popcorn made a big growth in sales. Our main push was to produce the best quality and sell in quality retail outlets.
It proved easier to buy the farm to get the mineral rights than to buy the coal rights alone.
We dried continuously day and night. We had no efficient way to do it, so we built this new popcorn plant.
In the Depression we had to divert corn acreage.
I opened an office in Terre Haute, established eight of them, and became one of the eight county agents.
Most of the competition was into bulk popcorn because of the major increases in the Drive-In Theatre Outlets.
It was necessary to have an even depth of corn on the top compared to the sides, so the air would not take the easiest route and not evenly dry the stored corn.
The cobs were delivered to a big pile. We were one of the first to feed corn cobs to cattle.
We made more money feeding molasses, urea, and corn cobs to cattle than we ever did feeding dent corn.
