It’s a well-known fact that I like bacon.

Bacon makes everything better. A BLT is just an LT without bacon. Grilled bacon wrapped shrimp, especially when eaten at Wentzel’s on Dauphine Street in Mobile, Alabama, is without question the best shrimp on the planet. Add some bacon to Mac & Cheese and grown men weep for joy. Take a standing rib roast and lace a layer of bacon over the entire outside before putting it on the smoker and world peace could be resolved over dinner.

Bacon has power. It holds within it the perfect flavor that taste buds long for. I have eaten bacon on sandwiches, crumbled up in scrambled eggs, sprinkled on salads, tossed in a pot of beans, spread on pizza, layered in casseroles, fried with cabbage, pinned to kabobs, swimming in baked beans, and as the main side dish to pancakes. I once had a donut covered with maple icing and bacon bits.

There’s not much I wouldn’t eat as long as bacon is involved. If Marion told me that we were having shoe leather with bacon for supper I believe I’d probably have two helpings.

“How was it?” she would ask.

I’m an honest man.

“The leather was a little tough, but that bacon was sho’ nuff good.”

With that said, last Saturday we were travelling down Dry Fork Road somewhere in the middle of Casey County, Kentucky. We had shopped the World’s Longest Yard Sale hard the previous three days like a pack of Beagles on a rabbit trail. We were worn out and in need of a diversion that did not include walking around tables and tents set up in the hot sun.

Marion did her research and pointed us toward Showalter’s Country Meats. Abner Showalter moved his family to this part of Kentucky over thirty years ago to settle among the Amish/Mennonite communities here. Butchering their own hogs and cows was a way of life from the beginning. Today it’s their livelihood.

We rode past the long rows of corn and sorghum fields. A horse and buggy met us and the young girls waved.

“It should be up ahead around the next curve,” Marion says.

I didn’t know what to expect. I’ve been in a few processing facilities that would fit inside my house. One summer between college semesters I worked in a chicken processing plant the size of a football field. I kind of half expected a small country store.

When we pulled into the gravel parking lot what I saw was a modern looking steel barn-like structure that covered a couple of acres. A loading area for pick up. A retail storefront. A sign that read, “Live Animal Drop-Off” with an arrow pointing to the barn in the back.

When I walked through the front door, I smelled bacon. Umm, umm, good!

The counter closest to the front doors is not a sales counter. At least not in the traditional sense. There’s no display. No cash register. No customer service sign.

I walked in and found myself face to face with two fellas hovering over a couple of large electric griddles filled with sizzling meats.

“Hi folks. How y’all doing. Come on in.”

I couldn’t take my eyes off the griddles. My mouth was beginning to drool because my olfactory senses were working on a high alert status.

“Could I interest you in a taste of Caveman Bacon?” he asked.

Did he just use Caveman and Bacon in the same sentence?

Before I knew it, he was handing me a napkin with a Ritz cracker in the middle. It was topped with a mild Sage Sausage and a small slice of Caveman Bacon. On the side he placed a piece of smoked bratwurst and a chunk of smoked cheese.

I said it wasn’t a typical sales counter, but I knew right then what they were doing. Them Mennonites are sneaky. They handed all four of us the same sample napkin. We moaned. We licked our fingers. We munched and rolled our eyes toward heaven. They had us right where they wanted us.

For the first ten minutes inside the store all we did was eat samples. Flavored meat snack sticks. Smoked cheese. Blue cheese smoked bratwurst. Holstiener dried sausage. As fast as we ate one, they offered us something different.

“Here. Try this. You’ll like this one.”

But it was the Caveman Bacon that got me.

We finally got away from the counter and started looking through the coolers and freezers that surrounded the huge showroom. I grabbed up a tote basket. Marion was pushing a full-sized shopping cart.

I’m standing in front of the bacon section. Country smoked bacon. Hickory smoked bacon. Dry cured apple bacon. Cured shoulder bacon. Maple bacon. A small tear is rolling down my right cheek.

Abner himself walks up to me with a tray in his hands. “I know you’ve got room for one more sample. This is a Ranch bacon bratwurst. It’s one of my favorites.”

Abner believes in what he sells.

By the time we got ready to leave, we all got out the credit cards and loaded up the only two coolers we had in the back of the truck. We probably had 60 lbs. of Showalter’s finest. And we all agreed that whatever else we found while in Kentucky, this was the best day of the entire road trip.

I made it home to Pine Mountain this morning. I unloaded my travel bags, boxes of goods from the WLYS, and one cooler of meat. The first order of business was to get my bacon, sausage, and tenderloins put away.

My kitchen freezer is a mess. Marion has been pointing out my mismanagement of frozen foods for months. There are things in there that I can’t remember buying. There are expiration dates that predate the last time I bought underwear, which is not often.

One look and I knew I had to clean house to make room for my new additions. A brown roast from 2023. A bag of Italian meatballs that looked like ice balls. A bag of peas and carrots twisted and clamped shut with a clothespin that I’ve been moving around for years. A carton of ice cream that was unrecognizable. A bag of boneless chicken that looked like dried jerky.

One by one I tossed frozen death into the kitchen sink. I kept the Mozzarella sticks. They still looked pretty good. Frozen peaches…good. Creamed corn…good.

Slowly I reorganized and made space in my freezer. And when I was done, I started thinking about how good those pork tenderloins were gonna be with turnip greens. I pulled out a pack of sausage and just stood there holding it for a moment. Lost in a trance, I could almost smell the biscuits and gravy.

The Caveman bacon spoke to me. One pack in each hand. I thought about shrimp and grits with bacon. I thought about pineapple, ham, and bacon skewers. Bacon wrapped chicken thighs. Bacon cheeseburgers. Brown sugar bacon bites. I’ll probably dream of bacon tonight.

So, if you ask me if I liked Kentucky, I’d give you a resounding YES.

They had me at bacon.