BRING HOME THE BACON; MEAT CUTTER CARRIES ON TRADITION OF PREPARING MEET OLD-FASHIONED WAY.

CAPE GIRARDEAU -- For 53 years, Richard Esicar has been bringing home the bacon. As a youngster, Esicar worked in his father's Cape Girardeau meat market. Today, the family business continues to thrive as Esicar's Old Hickory Smokehouse on North Kingshighway, operated by Richard and his brother, Ed.

Their father, the late Edgar Esicar, started the business in 1934, buying the old Mueller Market at 411 Broadway.

"There was actually a packing house behind it," recalled Richard Esicar, noting the place had a "killing floor," smokehouse, and a hay loft. "I went to work (at the family business) when I was 10 years old," said Esicar. "My job was to clean up the wood shavings every night."

Wood shavings were put on the floor to help keep it free of grease.

"I was 10 years old when I killed my first calf," said Esicar, remembering he had to hit the calf three times between the eyes to kill it.

During those years, a number of hogs were killed at the business.

Esicar is actually a made-up name. The family's roots are in Czechoslovakia and the family's surname was Rericha. Richard Esicar said the name was unpronounceable.

Esicar doesn't consider himself a butcher, but a meat cutter. "My dad always said, `Anybody can be a butcher, but if you really know what you are doing, you are a meat cutter.'"

Farmers used to get together with neighbors and butcher hogs. But that's no longer the case. These days, all the butchering is done at giant packing houses, and then the meat is shipped to supermarkets and meat markets. Esicar's quit butchering animals in the early 1940s.

In 1943, Esicar's moved to 313 Broadway, where the firm operated both a meat market and grocery store. In 1951, the business moved to a new building on North Kingshighway, where it operates today.

Edgar Esicar died in 1977, but his sons continue to operate the business in the same way, producing country hams, bacon and sausage. "Basically we cure the meat the way the farmers used to have to cure it," explained Richard Esicar.

In the days before refrigeration, farmers, by necessity, would pack the meat in salt to preserve it. Since Esicar's cures its meat, it doesn't need refrigeration. "We can ship our bacon any place in the United States any day of the year," said Esicar.

The sign in front of Esicar's says, "We ship everywhere." And it does. Esicar said the firm has shipped its meats all over the world. "We've even shipped them to Russia."

He explained that country hams were shipped to a big-game hunter who was on a hunting trip in Russia years ago. Also, a couple of ex-servicemen from Carbondale, Ill., ordered some hams while working as pilots for the fledgling Iranian and Saudi Arabian airlines in the 1950s. The hams were shipped to them in boxes marked machine parts because pork is taboo in those countries, said Esicar.

A lot of the meat produced by Esicar's is shipped to customers in Florida. "We sell more meat in Florida than we do in the state of Missouri," he said.

The Christmas season is Esicar's busiest time of year, when as many as 600 to 700 packages of meat a day are shipped out.

Esicar's is so well known that over the years letters have found their way to the business even though the senders badly misspelled the company's name. One letter, mailed in 1974, simply was addressed to: "Bacon, Cape Girardeau, Mo."

Meat from Esicar's has been sent to presidents Reagan, Nixon, Eisenhower and Truman. NBC Television anchorman Tom Brokaw has an unusual trophy, a hog's head from Esicar's.

The 63-year-old Esicar said a lot has changed over the years in the meat business, but the process of producing country hams and bacon remains the same. Bacon is still stacked and cured. Hams are packed in salt for two months in a curing cooler. The salt is then scrubbed off, and the hams are hung to continue curing for another three to six months.

"We can salt down 1,800 hams at a time and 4,000 slabs of bacon," said Esicar. It takes six or eight months in all to produce a good country ham, said Esicar.

The hams and bacon are both smoked in a hickory-fueled smokehouse. "From July to mid-January, the fire never goes out," said Esicar.

The salt-cured, smokehouse process draws moisture out of the meat. An 18-pound ham will shrink by 2-to-three pounds, he said.

Today, most hams bought in grocery stores are 33 percent water. "None of this is water; this is all ham," Esicar said of his country hams.

Not surprisingly, Esicar is particular about his ham and bacon. He doesn't like the store-bought variety. "It's just like eating Kleenex," he said. "To me, it has no taste."

Esicar said his family loves bacon. "There's nobody that eats any more bacon than this family. You could eat bacon every day for some kind of a meal and never tire of it."

Esicar still chuckles about the publicity that surfaced in the "Case of the Purloined Porker" in 1988. A concrete sow, weighing more than 300 pounds, was stolen from in front of the store by members of a college fraternity and was held "hostage" for 32 days. The concrete pig was returned, only a little worse for the wear.

"We got sympathy cards," Esicar recalled with a smile.

Esicar officially retired several weeks ago due to ill health. But he can't stay away from the smokehouse; he still comes into work several days a week.

Although he has been battling cancer and has undergone operations because of it, Esicar remains spry. He is fond of joking around. He jokes, for example, of the alternating layers of fat and lean in bacon: "You know how they do it? They feed the hog every other day," he quipped.

But beneath all the kidding, Esicar takes great pride in turning out tasty hams, bacon and sausage. He said he enjoys it when people tell him "how good it is."