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About Wicker's: Early in 1940. Peck developed a sauce recipe for barbecuing meat. He would dig an open earthen pit for the fire, fasten wire over it to hold the meat, then baste it with his special sauce throughout the cooking process. He shared his culinary art with church and lodge groups. Everyone who tasted wanted more. From this beginning, he started filling gallon jugs with sauce. But people still wanted more. So, in 1947, he constructed a small building near his home, the first Wicker’s barbecue sauce manufacturing facility. He bought the vinegar in quart bottles by the case. The woman who worked with him would soak the bottles to remove the labels, then help Peck re-fill the bottles with his wonderful vinegar-base sauce. He sold the products locally and to visitors seeking his barbecued meat and/or the sauce. There was no effort to distribute the sauce beyond his immediate locale. Peck sold his delicious barbecue by the pound each year from a stand on Main Street during the Farmers and Merchants Watermelon Festival. Several of his satisfied customers urged him to also offer barbecued pork sandwiches and a new idea was born. Peck enclosed an area behind his little manufacturing facility. The sides were covered with screen wire and the ground was covered with sawdust for the floor. Thus, “The Pit” came to be a reality. He operated his business only on weekends from May through October and many a Hornersville youth helped tend the pit and serve the customers who came from miles around. Word-of-mouth was his only advertising. It was not unusual to see a long waiting line on Saturday night and Sunday after Church. Sunday night almost became Blytheville Air Base Night. When the word got around, there was a sea of uniforms of all ranks in Hornersville. Wicker’s time honored products are still owned and handmade by local folks. As peck used to say, “WICKER’S IS THE TASTE SENSATION BEYOND IMAGINATION.”