Preparing for the 100-year anniversary of the first Chicken Day in Glendale, Arizona


It's April of 2021, and that means on the 20th of next month it will be Chicken Day in Glendale, Arizona (a suburb of Phoenix). And before I do the usual cautions about "celebrate in moderation", I'd like to tell you what I know about Chicken Day, which ain't much.

I found a few articles, and ads, about Chicken Day at the Library of Congress site. It starts with the first issue of the Arizona Republican (later shorted to just Republic) in 1890 and ends when I guess the LOC got tired of scanning it in, in 1921. And since I, and my history adventuring friends, have looked carefully through all of the years, I've come to the conclusion that 1921 was the first year for Chicken Day. Whether it lasted even beyond that year I have no idea, but I know a lot of people who grew up in Glendale, as did their parents, and their grandparents, and no one I've ever talked to has even heard it mentioned. If you have, please let me know!


I'm an old marketing guy, and I know that sometimes promotions just, if you'll excuse the expression, lay an egg. It looks like the idea sold a lot of advertising space in the paper, and it's possible it sold a lot of chicken stuff, too. You know, like egg incubators, chicken feed, that sort of thing. I really don't know. It looks like they got a great turnout in 1921!


As for me, I have plans for Chicken Day, which I've been doing every Chicken Day since I discovered it, many years ago - I'm going to eat some chicken. Traditionally, I go to KFC, but I may get fancy and do El Pollo Loco. This may not be what the original creators of Chicken Day had in mind, but it's what works for me.

I wonder if it's too early to start greeting people with "Happy Chicken Day!" here in Glendale?
If you like pictures of old-time Phoenix, please become a member of History Adventuring on Patreon. I share a LOT of cool old photos there, copyright-free, with no advertising. Your support makes it happen! Thank you!

Click here to become a Patron!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is ...
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the...
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me...
Read more