Tom Davies - The Hungry Cyclist - Pedalling The Americas In Search Of The Perfect Meal

‘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 why we call ’em snapping turtles.’

‘And these things live in the wild?’

‘Sure. They make great eating too—four different types of meat per turtle. Makes a fine stew.’

We handed over a few dollars in exchange for a kilo of ‘snapper meat’ and headed home. Paul’s mother was a snapper-stew aficionado and in her small kitchen, which was a confusion of pots and pans, recipe books and washing up, she went to work. The rubbery meat of different shades was cut into small chunks and browned on each side in a little butter before being added to a large pot. Thrown in with it were chopped vegetables—onions, potatoes, celery, carrots and tomatoes—cloves of garlic and plenty of seasoning. The contents were covered in water and left to stew over a gentle heat. Paul’s house quickly filled with the sweet aroma of snapper stew and soon enough his family gathered around the kitchen table. Steaming bowls of this hearty Minnesota classic were passed from place to place, and after grace was said, the slurping began. Chewing on the subtly flavoured meat and drinking up the warming broth, I realised the butcher was right. These strange-looking creatures that lived in the swampy waters and ditches of Minnesota made a great stew.

‘Leg or breast, Miss Minnesota?’

Taken in by the kind people of Frazee as something of a cycling celebrity, the next meeting on my Turkey Dayz agenda was to join none other than Miss Minnesota for a VIP turkey dinner before she crowned this year’s Miss Frazee. The bikini-clad beauty that had been screwed up in my pocket for two days was going to become a reality. This would be something to tell the folks back home about.

The dinner was held at the substantial mansion of a prominent Frazee real-estate dealer. A recently built home in a traditional style, it boasted a grand hallway that led up to a sweeping stairway lined with wooden balustrades. The bathroom was encased with dark marble and in the living room a vast television beamed a football game to the owner’s sons, who slouched in the expanse of an enormous leather sofa.

On a veranda that ran the length of the back of the house, a long table had been set up for the feast. Various journalists and people of local importance were there, and the finest Frazee spread was on display. Turkey soup, turkey fricassee, cold turkey breast, turkey Caesar salad, grilled turkey drummers and a large turkey hotpot. The people of Frazee were clearly proud of their town bird and loved eating it. I raced a couple of keen local dignitaries for the best seat in the house—next to Miss Minnesota herself. She ate as I expected, nibbling away daintily at a piece of turkey breast. I more than made up for her lack of appetite and as a result soon found myself in a strange, sweaty, post-turkey coma that left me completely unable to communicate with the Barbie doll beside me. Her teeth were whiter than white, her skin was free of any blemish, her hair perfectly blonde, and she said all the right things, mostly about her boyfriend, who came in the muscle-bound shape of the Minnesota state football team quarterback. We had an enjoyable evening. Miss Minnesota was pleasant on the eye and she never stopped smiling. She was kind enough to leave me with a signed photograph of herself to add to my collection. I was unable to return the favour. We wished each other luck and went our separate ways. Miss Minnesota was there to crown Miss Frazee and I was there to watch her at the greatest of American small-town events. The beauty pageant.