Eat Like Walt: Extra Helpings - The Pancake Race
Editor's note: The following is the second installment of a series from author Marcy Carriker Smothers titled Eat Like Walt: Extra Helpings. Enjoy!
When it comes to Walt’s favorite foods, chili gets all the attention. But we should also turn our attention to breakfast. And pancakes!
Walt’s daughter, Diane Disney Miller, explained how Walt came to prefer pancakes and other simple foods: “Before he married mother, father had eaten in hash houses and lunch wagons for so many years in order to save money that he'd developed a hash house-lunch wagon appetite. He liked fried potatoes, hamburgers, western sandwiches, hotcakes, canned peas, hash, stew, roast beef sandwiches.” According to his family, Walt was a fan of the breakfast mainstay at Biff’s in Los Angeles (now closed). His usual order was “Little Thin Hot Cakes” served with melted butter and hot syrup. Following morning trail rides in the hills surrounding his Smoke Tree Ranch vacation home, he was also known to enjoy scrambled eggs and pancakes cooked outdoors in cast iron skillets. Curious if Walt ever enjoyed an official Mickey Mouse pancake? No. They were not formally invented at Disneyland during his lifetime. However in Frontierland, they were named - and thus lightly themed - “Davy Crockett’s Delight” and “Golden Horseshoe Special” in his day.
During my research for Eat Like Walt, it became evident that just a few years after Disneyland opened, pancakes were a staple at the park. Perhaps with that in mind, and eager for inexpensive entertainment in the era before daily parades, Tommy Walker, director of entertainment, and Eddie Meck, head of public relations, teamed with The Quaker Oats Company. Together, they brought an obscure food related footrace to Main Street, U.S.A. – Pancake Races - modeling their contest after a similar race held annually in Liberal, Kansas.
The Pancake Race tradition dates back to the fifteenth century. According to English legend, on Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday, a woman in the town of Olney was making pancakes using the last of her cooking fats— restricted during Lent. She was so engrossed with her flipping that when the church bells tolled, she ran out of the house with her apron on and skillet in hand. While it may have been an unconventional entrance to the sacred shriving ceremony, the idea caught on: Shrove Tuesday became known as “Pancake Day,” with apron-clad women racing to church with skillets ever since.
Beginning in 1957 on Disneyland’s main thoroughfare, women qualifiers outfitted in long skirts, sensible shoes, and aprons carried a nine-inch skillet containing one pancake. Four times during the sprint, a contestant had to flip—or fling—her pancake over a stretched ribbon eight feet in the air (similar to the height of a standard regulation men’s volleyball net of the era). If a racer didn’t catch her pancake in her skillet on the other side, she was disqualified. The 415-yard course, which required navigating the area’s streetcar tracks, started in Town Square, traveled down Main Street, U.S.A., and then circled the Central Plaza hub before the finish.
At one point, Clarence Nash, the voice of Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse Club television host Jimmie Dodd presided over the event. Prizes included one hundred dollars, a plaque signed by Walt Disney, a Disneyland gift basket, an umbrella, and, oddly, a fish knife in a sheath. Best of all? The trophy: an engraved skillet.
The publicity stunt ended in 1964. Being a life-long fan of Walt’s, I would flip if Disneyland would bring this Walt-era tradition back!