A recipe for success leads to great sausage

By Jim Waters

As a kid, I sang along with the "Bob Evans, down on the farm" television commercial jingle while the company's namesake wore his famous Stetson and string tie.

Evans, an American Icon, died last week. He epitomized the can-do spirit that makes America a great country.

Evans was Ohio's version of Colonel Harland Sanders, Kentucky's master of fried chicken. While the process of making sausage or chicken might temper the appetite, few argue with the end results.

But Evans' life wasn't just about the sausage, a point obviously lost on the smart aleck who asked on a message board about Evans: "Who cares about some sausage guy?"

Rather, Evans recognized what made America great.

It's not just the things we produce that make ours a great country. But it's about the producers. It''s about the freedom to dream and then work hard to make those dreams a reality.

Evans and Sanders could have made it big selling widgets. Their ingenuity, perseverance and willingness to take risks resulted in vision that spawned mind-boggling prosperity. Anyone, for example, who bought 1,000 shares of Bob Evans Farms Inc. at $9 a share when the company went public in 1963 would have enough to buy the farm today – more than $2 million.

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