A bit of Cape in the Big Apple

There's a little bit of Cape Girardeau in the heart of New York City.

In towns around this region -- Cape Girardeau, Dexter, Sikeston and Cairo, Ill. -- everybody knows how to find the local barbecue spot. Just follow your nose.

Even in metropolitan areas like Memphis, Tenn., you can usually track down the smell of ribs cooking ever-so-slowly. One of the best barbecue spots in Memphis lures tourists from the swanky Peabody Hotel across the street and down an alley with the tantalizing smell of ribs.

But forget your nose in New York. Restaurateurs face the challenge of finding a way to bring smoky barbecue to the Big Apple minus the smell. Strict environmental codes protect the public from the enticing smell of barbecue smoke. Barbecue fans arise! Protect! Really! Thanks to a Cape Girardeau manufacturer, Ole Hickory Pits, New York's Blue Smoke Restaurant is serving up tender, tasty barbecue at 116 E. 27th St.

For their "pit," Danny Meyer, a former St. Louisian, and his partners, David Swinghamer and Michael Romano, bought two custom-built high-tech smokers from Ole Hickory Pits. The huge, metallic pits use gas flames to ignite apple logs, which smolder and smoke meats that rotate through the smoker on metal shelves, explained Ole Hickory Pits owner David Knight. A thermostat monitors the logs, with the gas flame ready to re-ignite them.

Aside from approvals all restaurants need to open, Blue Smoke was required to have its smokers approved by the New York City Building Department's Material and Equipment Acceptance Division.

Ole Hickory Pits spent the better part of a year dealing with the city's bureaucracy.

"We'd never been though anything like that before," said Knight. "We have pits all over the world."

Constructing the smokers was not nearly as difficult as getting rid of the smoke and other barbecue waste.

Smoke rises up twin 15-story chimneys that extend well above the 13-story building housing Blue Smoke. Another system pipes fat from the bottom of the smokers to a cylinder below the sidewalk in front of the restaurant. The fat is then siphoned by hose and carted away.

Another connection to the Blue Smoke is Mike Mills of Murphysboro, Ill., a three-time world grand champion barbecue winner at the annual Memphis in May "World Barbecue Cook-Off."

"Mills is famous as a barbecue chef," said Knight.

Mills once operated the 17th Street Barbecue restaurant in Murphysboro and recently opened a barbecue restaurant in Las Vegas, Nev., and was hired as a consultant to help train chefs at the Blue Smoke.

From wheat comes flour

From the wheat comes the flour

Gary Hurst called it the Bowman Milling Co.

Joe Haupt said it was the old Jackson Milling Co.

Dave Willer said it was the backside of the Cape County Milling Co.

They were all right in the identification of a photo that appeared recently on the Faces & Places page of the Southeast Missourian. The mill has been known by all three names.

John Smith of Jackson shared recollections of working at the old mill over two summers. Ruth Bierschwal worked in the milling company lab for 20 years. Her father, Henry Sailer, also put in a number of years at the mill.

Jack Bishop of Chaffee also worked summers at the mill. "I unloaded boxcars of wheat one summer, and worked in the area where they packed flour the next summer," he said.

Willer's father, Raymond Willer, was weighmaster at the mill. "When they called my dad to weigh a boxcar filled with grain, I'd go along sometimes and ride in the engine," Willer said. Willer also knows the purpose of strings shown hanging over the railroad tracks.

"Workers often had to work on top of the railroad cars," Willer explained. "The strings reminded workers they had better duck low, because the cars barely cleared an elevator running from one building to the next across the tracks. If workers didn't duck, they'd be knocked to the ground."

The mill, opened in 1887, consolidating a number of small mill operations into one giant company.

Organizers were A.R. Byrd, R.M. McCombs, F. Tiedemann, J.L. Hinkle, J.C. Clippard, Charles Tiedemann, Hines Clippard, J.A. Horrell and S.B. Horrell.

The largest mill was at Jackson (in the picture) designated Mill A. Mill B was also located at Jackson, and Mill C was located at Burfordville.

The mill, which could store up to 300,000 bushels of grain, produced about 1,500 barrels a flour a day.

The mills were the first in the United States to adopt the Hungarian or roller system, and the first in the world to adopt the Alsop electrical flour-bleaching process, which revolutionized the milling world and is still used by mills today.

The mill operation employed about 130 people, with many more employed during the busy season, producing flour under the brand names of Capco, Daily Biscuit, White Poppy, Kitchen Queen, Snow Light and Gold Leaf.

The milling company also operated a barrel-manufacturing company.

The company closed its flour-making operations June 29, 1954. The old mill was razed in 1973.