SIMPSONVILLE, Ky. — Looking out the window toward her thriving sausage plant, Clara Purnell recalled how she worked alongside her husband in the kitchen to turn a family recipe into a household name.

        She helped grind and season the meat, packing it in hand-sewn cloth bags marked Purnell's “Old Folks” country sausage. As the business grew, she joined employees on the processing line and even appeared on television in folksy commercials that ended with the signature line: “It's gooo-od.”

        “I've been wonderfully blessed,” she said recently.

        Those days are now a distant memory as Mrs. Purnell approaches her 100th birthday on Oct. 22, matriarch to a sausage-making tradition that spans three generations.

        The Purnell's plant in this Kentucky town 20 miles east of Louisville produces more than 100,000 pounds of sausage daily, sold to grocery stores and restaurants in 44 states and Mexico.

        Mrs. Purnell, born in Springfield, Tenn., downplays her role in starting the company with her husband, Fred B. Purnell Sr. But their children say her resolve and work ethic helped it prosper.

        “She had a definite role in the business,” said her son Allen, the company's board chairman and sometime television pitchman. “They were partners. Daddy took the lead, but Momma kept him propped up.”

        The business started almost by accident.

        At first, the sausage was served only at home. The recipe was Fred's mother's, brought from his family's middle Tennessee farm to Nashville, where he worked as a railroad mechanic. The blend of seasonings remains a closely guarded secret.

        Mr. Purnell shared his sausage-and-biscuit lunch with a fellow worker, who liked it so much he wanted to buy some. Word spread, and soon the family was selling sausage in the railyard.

        Known by his railyard nickname, “Old Folks,” Mr. Purnell put the name on his sausage. He gained the nickname as a farm boy because he liked to sit and listen to old folks talk.

        Sausage stayed a side business until 1944, when Mr. Purnell was disabled by a double hernia. His pension wasn't enough to support the family, so he started the sausage business full time.

        “We had to work all the time,” Mrs. Purnell recalled.

        In 1950, the family moved to Louisville, where a salesman said the sausage business was less competitive. Six years later, the Purnells settled in Simpsonville.

        Mr. Purnell was the one who made the sales trips to drum up business, but his wife was there to pitch in with whatever needed doing.

        “You can't start a business from scratch like that without cooperation by the spouses,” said Carl Kramer, a historian who has researched the family's history. “It just takes too much.”

        Mr. Purnell died in 1974.

        The plant has expanded several times over the years and now employs about 300 people.

        Still family owned, the company has carved out a market share in an industry top-heavy with corporate producers.

        According to a trade publication, Purnell's ranked ninth nationally in refrigerated breakfast sausage sales for the year ending April 23, 2000, with sales of $19.9 million.

        John McMillin, food industry analyst with Prudential Securities, said smaller companies like Purnell's must expand distribution to hold on.

        “Like basketball, there are some advantages to size in the food industry because retailers and restaurants want to be supplied on a national basis,” he said.

        Far removed now from the daily grind, Mrs. Purnell said she has been blessed to lead “a very useful life.” She drove a car until her mid-90s, but doesn't get out much anymore.

        “Each day is a good day, and if it's not a good day, we should make it a good day,” she said.

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