{"id":19473,"date":"2017-01-28T02:08:13","date_gmt":"2017-01-28T02:08:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=19473"},"modified":"2017-01-28T02:08:52","modified_gmt":"2017-01-28T02:08:52","slug":"big-surprise-we-were-pioneers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=19473","title":{"rendered":"Big surprise: ‘We were pioneers’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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PORTLAND, Ore. — <\/strong>Surprises can reach out and bite you at any moment … which is why they’re called “surprises,” yes?<\/p>\n

I got one today while having lunch with my oldest friend on the planet. It’s not that Dennis is old; it’s that we go back to the seventh grade at Parkrose Heights Junior High School when we first made each other’s acquaintance.<\/p>\n

We were 12 years of age.<\/p>\n

We would hook up time and again as kids and then we went to work at the same McDonald’s restaurant near our northeast Portland home.<\/p>\n

We worked for a gentleman who owned the franchise at that eatery. HIs name was Oliver Lund. He seemed to me — I was 16 when I started working there — to be an old man even then.<\/p>\n

Little did I know …<\/p>\n

Today at lunch, Dennis presented me with a community newspaper article about that very same Ollie Lund, who just retired — at the age of 88<\/em> — from the restaurant business. For 55 years he operated that particular McDonald’s and some others.<\/p>\n

Here’s what I learned upon reading that article. Our restaurant was the 117th such McDonald’s ever built in the United States of America. Think about that. One hundred seventeenth!<\/p>\n

How many of them are there now? Thousands of them!<\/em> In the United States and around the world. Thousands, man!<\/em><\/p>\n

Ollie was among a group of Navy veterans who got together, pooled their money and bought these franchises.<\/p>\n

I started working at the McDonald’s in suburban northeast Portland on the day after my 16th birthday, which was in December 1965. My buddy Dennis started working there shortly after that.<\/p>\n

This was an amazing discovery today at lunch.<\/p>\n

First of all, I was sure that Ollie was 80-something when I worked for him back in the day; then again, when you’re 16 everyone older than, say, 30 looks to be in their 80s.<\/p>\n

What has kept Ollie going all these years? It had to be his positive outlook. He was a mentor who became our friend. I would leave for a couple of years after being inducted into the U.S. Army in 1968. I came back to work there after my two years in the Army and, yep, Ollie was still there. I didn’t work there for very long. I re-enrolled in school in late 1970 and got married the following September.<\/p>\n

Ollie came to our wedding.<\/p>\n

This is a bit timely as well, given that a new movie has just been released about the life and career of Ray Kroc, the founder of what became the McDonald’s chain.<\/p>\n

Dennis and I laughed out loud today while catching up. It was Dennis who then reminded me: “We were pioneers.”<\/p>\n

Who knew?<\/p>\n

I am delighted to know this good man is still among us and is seemingly as vibrant today as he was in the old days.<\/p>\n

Wow!<\/p>\n\n

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PORTLAND, Ore. — Surprises can reach out and bite you at any moment … which is why they’re called “surprises,” yes? I got one today while having lunch with my oldest friend on the planet. It’s not that Dennis is old; it’s that we go back to the seventh grade at Parkrose Heights Junior High … Continue reading Big surprise: ‘We were pioneers’<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5560,6888],"class_list":["post-19473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-news","tag-mcdonalds","tag-ray-kroc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19473"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19476,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19473\/revisions\/19476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}