Tomball KFC Shuts Down

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When my children were at home, a family friend worked at the Kentucky Chicken on Main Street. On locking up at night, she was often left with a few big barrels of unsold cooked poultry. She dropped it off at our door a number of times.

In those days, we occasionally ate there, and it was a thriving business. But, KFC began changing personel quite frequently and, concurrently, the customer base dropped off. We ate there less frequently, and, when it became apparent from the street that staff were the only persons on site, not at all.

Somehow, they kept open for business another fourteen years. When we drove by a few weeks ago, the sign and trademark items had been either painted over or removed. A realtor's sign proclaimed the property's availability.

It is symptomatic, not of Tomball's decay, but of a thriving town bursting at the seams with fresh growth. Dozens of eating places have sprung out of the ground, as the coming freeway inches toward completion. There are dozens of subdivisions now being built on all sides. Schools being built, two or three at a time.

Anyway, KFC is not out of the picture. Down the road, out of town, but not so far off, an eating place has opened with the logos of A&W Root Beer and KFC. I have a gut feeling they will open one on the other side of town, near the highway construction.

So, the tale of KFC's closing is not about that at all, but about a sleepy town coming alive and attracting thousands of new businesses and residents, for better or worse.

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In the small towns in Oklahoma it's not whether the KFC stays open, it's whether the Tea Cup Cafe or the Wilson's Fine BBQ can keep afloat.

It's always a toss-up whether to be glad that a town is growing. Sometimes we just want things to stay the same.

Even if the Tea Cup had the poorest excuse for biscuits and gravy for three counties around, they were still like family.

Joe

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just serve good food and they will come.
Ive been in Butt-cheek Oklahoma for barbequed beef and hadda wait in line. The damn place is still draggin em in from 3 states over. They know barbeque out there.
and bisquits, the kind thatr so light that you gotta butter em so they dont float away.

They have Mickey D's up here in MAine that try to serve Lobstah Rolls. Only the occasional tourist is dumb enough to try one cause they suck mightily.

I have no idea why I just posted in this forum, perhaps I am hungry for some extra crispy cause Im sick of seafood already.

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Good cooking will attract, I'll agree to that.

If it survives long enough.

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Only in DC are great restaurants treated like "flavors of the month" A really great restaurant will have a run for about 10 years and then , once its no longer "the place to be", it dies. People in DC have spans of attention of hummingbirds, and they all flock around like those brain eating zombies from Shaun of the Dead.

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Growth or stagnation; when a business starts having trouble retaining personnel, the business is probably having internal problems of their own making.

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wow, Im gonna use that sometime Roger. AND , Im gonna tell everyone I got it from a RAT!

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I didn't think about this place earlier -

On the outs of town, tucked in a neighborhood generally more rundown than anywhere else, a family took a sixty year old building and converted it to a restaurant- -Mel's. The weatherbeaten boards are a turnoff, and the interior is not much different than the outside. No signs point to the restaurant; it cannot be seen for a full block up the street. Parking next to nil. Yet, it's full to capacity at lunch time.

They home cook everything, give large portions, and treat everybody like good neighbors. I've been dragged in there dozens of times. Because I don't eat that much fried food, and because I get a bit fastidious looking at the surroundings, I pick at the food, as my friends gobble it like starved hyenas. Mel's is a definite success story.

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Quote:

my friends gobble it like starved hyenas.

Thats how we enjoy lunch up here, cept we dont have much stuff with grease unless you get a burger and , trust me, they dont know how to make burgers, or anything else with cow in it, in MAine.

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Mel's has the Mel burger, featuring a pound or two beef, a pound bacon, and all the goodies. Eat one and you get your name on the wall of honor. I knew a Mormon missionary had his name up there.

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was there a Requiescat in Pacem prior to the names?

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There was a McDonalds that closed in a city near me because the workers were selling crack cocaine to the drive-up customers.

They had some kind of code worked out...

Yes, I will have a quarter pounder with cheese, some rock...er, I mean FRIES..wink..wink... and a large chocolate shake.

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Today, I learned they have chopped down all the trees at Christmas Tree Land, a few miles up the road, and are burning them. Got to make room for them fancy new half a million dollar houses.

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(sigh)

In my home town the silk mill is now a combination condo complex and old folks home. The tobacco fields on the east side are covered with two malls and an access road from the main highway.

My old neighborhood of workingmen's houses looks a little worn, a little lopsided, a little out of square, with some of the duplexes empty, their windows sagging. The ball field on which a thousand world championships were decided every summer has grass grown up through the whole clay infield. You can't even tell where second base was exactly and Lincoln School at the center of town where just walking by reminds one of paper paste and the smell of pencil shavings has now become an annex of some city government offices. You can go in and still see down the hallway the water fountains for the lower grades only eighteen inches high.

On the outskirts the new houses rise up multi-leveled and multi-garaged, all on streets which twist and wind and turn back upon themselves. While Main Street, which the planners tried to save from the malls many times in many ways, has become populated with Dollar Stores and Salvation Army Thrift Shops.

She is an old town, all of her edges are bright, but at her center there is the scent of mold and decay, of neglected lawns and undone shingles, broken windows and good times long gone.

Joe(all the sand will drain through the glass)Nation

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There are three KFC's that I am familiar with, ten years ago they were all decent places to eat...now they are horrible. We avoid them, but every so often one of us will get a craving for KFC..try it, and are once again disappointed...if not actually sick. Personnel is a main factor, as they seem to hire whomever they can drag in for a few hours a day, and that means the managment is lacking as well.

Hardees had a big impact on our KFC's, they had just started selling chicken around the same time the KFC's began to slip. But they have not sold chicken for several years now {might still be, just not around here} so they have had plenty of time to recover from that loss. I've often wondered if that was the main problem...loss of income, then lack of owners incentive to reinvest in the stores...something along those lines...or it could be the fact that Pepsico had bought the franchise in the early 90's, and it took a few years for them to blow it.

Whatever the cause, I sure do miss the old Kentucky Fried Chicken.

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It's wonderful to see gas stations and Walmarts on every corner, and all the woods being replaced by houses. Makes me wonder why I moved out of Houston in the first place.

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There was a fella I heard or read about years ago, edgar, who had moved Westward and Westward again almost every year for twenty years or so, finally ending up in the middle of some patch of the Osage. The nearest town of any habitation was a three hour ride by horse because there were no roads that stayed open all year and somehow either a reporter or a passing novelist, I can't remember, happened upon him while in that little town and asked him why in the heck he lived like that, away out in the boonies.

He answered:

"I've never liked the sight of smoke from another man's chimney, I know not why."

I think you have a little of that in you, I think we all do.

Joe(therearetimeswhenbeinginthecitywilldriveanyonemad.)Nation

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I have a bit of admiration for a Tomball native, whom I've never met. He may or may not be alive today; probably not. When my landlord gave us two weeks' notice to vacate from our country home, the only place we found to afford was a house on Main Street in Tomball. It was widely known as the "Snyder house," because owned for so many years by the namesake.

Built on Commerce Street, catecornered from the original Klien's Grocery, in 1908, the house ended up moved on the edge of town at a location the width of an open field from Snook Lane. The attic was spacious enough that two rooms had been fashioned up there, and corresponding (unsightly) dormers cluttered the roof line. We had to do major surgery on it before it became liveable, mainly sheetrock and plumbing repair, plus get the garbage out. A few window air conditioners made it sufferable. And that is where my children lived through their high school years. It has since been converted to an antique store and "Sammich Shop."

I could be working as far away as Plantersville, west of the Woodlands, and if anyone asked me where I lived, it was sufficient to say, "The old Snyder house, in Tomball." After he sold the house, he drove a pick up truck to Arkansas, where popular legend has it that he went off the road, into the woods, and continued onward, until the truck could go no further. That is where he built his new home. I wonder sometimes if he is ready yet to abandon that one, and if it is available.

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I used to ride my bicycle through all those little towns, somewhere between Paris and Yell, between Eureka Springs and the unnamed town with a terrific place to eat pie, somewhere on those winding roads there's a cut-off waiting.

Joe(Let's go see what over that rise...)Nation

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We have an Englishman staying at the apartments, solely because he likes the bike riding around here.

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Tomball KFC Shuts Down

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