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Ronald Reagan. “My whole philosophy is — never give up,” Carl told me. “The word ‘can’t’ should not exist… Have a great attitude… Watch the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves… Life is beautiful, life is fantastic, and that is how I feel about every day of my life.” Despite CKE’s expansion, Carl remained millions of dollars in debt. He’d secured new loans to pay off the old ones. During the worst of his financial troubles, advisers pleaded with him to declare bankruptcy. Carl refused; he’d borrowed more than $8 million from family members and friends, and he would not walk away from his obligations. Every weekday he was attending Mass at six o’clock in the morning and getting to the office by seven. “My goal in the next two years,” he said, “is to pay off all my debts.”

I looked out the window and asked how he felt driving through Anaheim today, with its fast food restaurants, subdivisions, and strip malls. “Well, to be frank about it,” he said, “I couldn’t be happier.” Thinking that he’d misunderstood the question, I rephrased it, asking if he ever missed the old Anaheim, the ranches and citrus groves.

“No,” he answered. “I believe in Progress.”

Carl grew up on a farm without running water or electricity. He’d escaped a hard rural life. The view outside his office window was not disturbing to him, I realized. It was a mark of success.

“When I first met my wife,” Carl said, “this road here was gravel and now it’s blacktop.”

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BEFORE ENTERING the Ray A. Kroc Museum, you have to walk through McStore. Both sit on the ground floor of McDonald’s corporate headquarters, located at One McDonald’s Plaza in Oak Brook, Illinois. The headquarters building has oval windows and a gray concrete façade — a look that must have seemed space-age when the building opened three decades ago. Now it seems stolid and drab, an architectural relic of the Nixon era. It resembles the American embassy compounds that always used to attract antiwar protesters, student demonstrators, flag burners. The eighty-acre campus of Hamburger University, McDonald’s managerial training center, is a short drive from headquarters. Shuttle buses constantly go back and forth between the campus and McDonald’s Plaza, ferrying clean-cut young men and women in khakis who’ve come to study for their “Degree in Hamburgerology.” The course lasts two weeks and trains a few thousand managers, executives, and franchisees each year. Students from out of town stay at the Hyatt on the McDonald’s campus. Most of the classes are devoted to personnel issues, teaching lessons in teamwork and employee motivation, promoting “a common McDonald’s language” and “a common McDonald’s culture.” Three flagpoles stand in front of McDonald’s Plaza, the heart of the hamburger empire. One flies the Stars and Stripes, another flies the Illinois state flag, and the third flies a bright red flag with golden arches.

You can buy bean-bag McBurglar dolls at McStore, telephones shaped like french fries, ties, clocks, key chains, golf bags and duffel bags, jewelry, baby clothes, lunch boxes, mouse pads, leather jackets, postcards, toy trucks, and much more, all of it bearing the stamp of McDonald’s. You can buy T-shirts decorated with a new version of the American flag. The fifty white stars have been replaced by a pair of golden arches.

At the back of McStore, past the footsteps of Ronald McDonald stenciled on the floor, past the shelves of dishes and glassware, a bronze bust of Ray Kroc marks the entrance to his museum. Kroc was the founder of the McDonald’s Corporation, and his philosophy of QSC and V — Quality, Service, Cleanliness, and Value — still guide it. The man immortalized in bronze is balding and middle-aged, with smooth cheeks and an intense look in his eyes. A glass display case nearby holds plaques, awards, and letters of praise. “One of the highlights of my sixty-first birthday celebration,” President Richard Nixon wrote in 1974, “was when Tricia suggested we needed a ‘break’ on our drive to Palm Springs, and we turned in at McDonald’s.