“Cheese!” he said. “Did you ever see a canned cheese?”
I tried to remember that I had, but I couldn't. I remembered potted cheese, in nice little stone pots, and in pretty little glass pots.
Perkins sneered.
“Yes,” he said, “and how did you open it?”
“The lids unscrewed,” I said.
Perkins waved away the little stone and the little glass pots.
“No good!” he cried. “They don't appeal to the great American person. I see,” he said, screwing up one eye—“I see the great American person. It has a nickel-plated, patent Perkins Can-opener in its hand. It goes into its grocer shop. It asks for cheese. The grocer shows it plain cheese by the slice. No, sir! He shows it potted cheese. No, sir! What the great American person wants is cheese that has to be opened with a can-opener. Good cheese, in patent, germ-proof, air-tight, water-tight, skipper-tight cans, with a label in eight colors. Full cream, full weight, full cans; picture of a nice clean cow and red-cheeked dairymaid in short skirts on front of the label, and eight recipes for Welsh rabbits on the back.” He paused to let this soak into me, and then continued:
“Individual cheese! Why make cheese the size of a dish-pan? Because grandpa did? Why not make them small? Perkins's Reliable Full Cream Cheese, just the right size for family use, twenty-five cents a can, with a nickel-plated Perkins Can-opener, free with each can. At all grocers.”
That was the beginning of the Fifth Street Church, as you shall see.
We bought a tract of land well outside of Chicago, and, to make it sound well on our labels, we named it Cloverdale. This was Perkins's idea. He wanted a name that would harmonize with the clean cow and the rosy milkmaid on our label.