as Paul had now kindly invited me to camp in his garden instead of in the shadow of this monstrosity.
Paul and his family lived under the town water tower, a vast white object that, if decorated correctly, would probably become the world’s largest upside-down onion. It towered above the town and ‘FRAZEE’ was proudly painted on its bowl, letting everyone know exactly where they were.
Paul’s family took me in as one of their own and, after leading me through a garage full of fishing gear, invited me to pitch my tent on the tidy lawn behind their bungalow. At a small table on the porch, Paul’s father, an elderly man in a grey T-shirt, denim dungarees and tidy white beard, patiently scaled and gutted recently caught sunfish that filled a plastic bucket. He dipped each one in a dish of milk and then flour before his wife ferried them into the kitchen where she was busy preparing for the invasion of her children and grandchildren, two of them, energetic twins, took great interest as I put up my tent, only to shriek in complaint at the fetid smell once they scrambled inside.
I was invited to join the family for supper, and ten of us crowded round their narrow kitchen table. After holding hands and saying grace, a feast of ‘pot stickers’, a type of Chinese dumpling filled with ground turkey and fried until they stuck to the pot, was served with heaps of rice salad and fried sunfish. After supper Paul and I wondered into town for the street dance. It was time for my ‘Frazee Turkey Dayz’ weekend to get under way.
In the centre of Frazee, under the orange glow of the town’s street lamps, hundreds of residents and outsiders were gathering for the much-anticipated annual street dance. Bunting drooped from telegraph poles decorated with spirals of fairy lights and canvas banners hung over the street welcoming everyone to the town. A pleasant July evening, the day’s earlier storms had cleared the air and under a star-filled sky a lively buzz of excitement resonated in this small Midwestern town. Frazee’s Main Street had been closed off at either end by two enormous turkey-transporting juggernauts, and the space in between was quickly filling up with lively revellers. Leather-clad bikers revved the engines of oversized chrome-decorated motorcycles, clusters of burly men in cowboy hats and blue jeans attracted the admiring glances of giggling blonde-haired Daisy Duke look-a-likes, and from a makeshift bar set up in front of the town’s magnificent fire engines, firemen clad in yellow trousers and tight-fitting Frazee Fire Department T-shirts handed out a constant stream of plastic cups brimming over with cold beer. Paul seemed to know everyone in Frazee, and as the drinks kept coming I was introduced as a continent-crossing cyclist on my way to Brazil. Turkey farmers and ranchers greeted me with roughened hands and ready smiles and impressed local girls asked to squeeze my prominent calves. It was going to be a good night.
The live music started and I looked out over an ocean of swirling, swinging, jiving Midwesterners. Willie Nelson, Travis Tritt, The Eagles and Kenny Rogers—with a feeble knowledge of Country and Western music, I was only able to recognise a few of the classics that kept the crowd moving and my feet irresistibly tapping. But I’d soon had enough of standing on the sidelines. The beer had numbed my shyness and as a new song was greeted with a wild ‘Whoooop!’ from the crowd, I waded into the action, introducing myself to a wholesome-looking girl with the clear completion and bright smile of someone who had spent most of her life outdoors. A flattering checked shirt was tied in a knot above her toned midriff and her big eyes and all-American white-toothed smile sparkled under the rim of her cream Stetson.
‘I don’t have a clue how to dance to Country and Western,’ I called, trying to be heard above the music.
‘Everyone can dance Country and Western,’ she returned with a smile, and putting one hand round my rigid waist and clasping my unattractively sweaty palm in hers, she pulled me into the crowd.
The band played late into the night, interrupted only by the deafening clanking of the freight trains that rumbled through the town every hour, massive, mile-long mechanical serpents that passed so close you could see the driver ringing his bell in recognition of the jubilant mass of people below him. The crowd cheered. This was one hell of a Friday night. I had arrived in the Midwest, in a small town, and I was dancing under the stars with hundreds of happy people. The band kept playing. Travis Tritt was being covered by a group of seven elderly men performing on a trailer bed. They wore denim and Harley Davidson T-shirts, had bandanas and drooping moustaches and their paunches were supported by ornate belt buckles. With closed eyes and sweat-beaded faces they belted out the familiar chorus. The crowd loved it, roaring and twisting to the amplified metallic twang of the guitar and the whine of the harmonica. I had a beautiful cowgirl in my arms and at last life felt good.
I had never seen a snapping turtle. I didn’t even know they existed, but they were a local Minnesota delicacy and Paul insisted, the next day, that I track one down. With the sort of half-hearted hangover that can only be achieved by drinking litres of tasteless American beer, I made my way accompanied by Paul to the local butcher. Ketter’s Meat Market and Locker hadn’t changed for a hundred years. It had one of those false flat fronts I had only ever seen before in Westerns, and a wooden deck raised a few feet above the street. On the counter stood a huge old-fashioned set of scales and bundles of sausage strings were hung up on the back wall. The dusty shelves were lined with bags of various types of jerky—air-cured slivers of marinated meat, the favoured chews of cowboys and cyclists—and disturbing jars of pickled turkey gizzards that would have looked more at home in the laboratory of a mad biologist.
The proprietor was an unhappy fellow who seemed too skinny to be a butcher. A blood-stained apron hung around his neck and in his large rubber-gloved hands was a menacing meat hook.
‘Wal, this is a friend of mine. He wants to see your turtles.’
The butcher gave me an investigative look as if to establish I wasn’t an operative for the CIA.
‘Sure.’
Paul stayed back in the store while Wal led me behind the scenes into a cool concrete corridor lined with the mechanised heavy doors of refrigeration and lit by white fluorescent strips. At the end of the passage a set of damp concrete steps took us underground to another large metal refrigerator door, which opened into a dark, dank, musty cell. I began to recall a schoolboy production of Sweeney Todd and visualised the other unlucky tourists who had came down here to ‘see the turtles’ and who were now being sold upstairs as jerky and gizzards.
A single fluorescent strip hanging from the ceiling flickered to life like an injured insect and adjusting to the raw, unnatural light that now filled the small room I made out eight or ten monsters huddled on the floor around my feet.
‘Keep ’em down here cos the cold makes ’em sleepy. They can get pretty frisky when their blood’s up.’
I had expected to be shown a handful of terrapins paddling about in a dirty fish tank. These lifeless monsters were the size of coffee tables. Armoured horned heads with yellow eyes and ferocious pointed jaws peered out from thick, uneven, lichen-covered shells. Stiff, powerful arms with thick claws rested on the ground on either side of their grotesque faces. These things weren’t turtles, they were prehistoric beasts. Stupidly squatting down for a closer look and a possible photo, I reached out a hand for a stroke. Before I made contact two strong arms grabbed my shoulders and I was yanked backwards, my buttocks landing on the cold hard floor.
‘You wanna lose those little English fingers you’re going the right way about it.’
‘Sorry, it’s just that I thought….’
The butcher took an old broom from the corner of the room and cautiously began prodding the head of an especially large specimen. I can’t say I saw what happened next, it happened so fast, but after a powerful head movement on the part of the turtle the butcher’s broom was six inches shorter.
‘That’s
