Originally published in 1977, Grinding It Out is the personal "rags to riches" story of how Ray Kroc at the age of 52 founded the McDonald's hamburger franchise chain and built it into the "Golden Arches" known in almost every corner of the world. An excerpt from the book.

..I had one close friend who was quite interested in the venture. He had a son-in-law named Ed MacLuckie who was looking for a job and who had expressed a liking for the food service business. Ed was working a wholesale hardware territory over in Michigan at the time and it was not going well. So I talked to him...I hired him as a manager of my first store. Art Bender, the McDonald brothers' manager, came to Des Plaines and helped Ed and me open that store on April 15, 1955. It was a hell of an ordeal, but the experience was to prove invaluable in opening other stores. (pgs. 70-71) I posted about the debut of McDonald's at my blog Tasteful Inventions.