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

With a mountain of cholesterol sitting in front of me, I took an essential gulp of coffee, refilled my cup and with a jammy piece of toast in one hand began to peel through the pages of the Frazee Forum the previous occupant had left behind. The quality of regional Midwestern journalism was as reliable as my breakfast and I entertained myself with the headlines that jumped off the page.

Drawn in by an alluring picture of Miss Minnesota in a floral bikini, I read on. This weekend the town of Frazee was holding some kind of turkey festival, and the article informed me there would be a demolition derby, a mystery gobbler competition, a hillbilly horseshoe contest, a Turkey Dayz parade, a Miss Frazee beauty pageant and, most excitingly, a street dance.

At this point in the trip my contact with the fairer sex had been somewhat limited. The myth that an English accent in America would result in more amorous advances than a man could handle was still, sadly, a myth. I was by no means an ugly cyclist, I didn’t think I smelt too bad, but, to date, the closest I had been to having anything to write home about was an over-eager, over-aged waitress who, bored with serving truck drivers for the majority of her life, cooed over my quaint English inflection.

I had barely seen a girl since leaving New York, but surely a weekend involving a street dance and a beauty parade would provide an opportunity. Farmers’ daughters, beauty queens, beer and line-dancing were on the menu and, who knows, even Miss Frazee herself might fall for my pedal-powered tales of derring-do.

‘More coffee, darling?’

The mental picture I had created was interrupted by the waitress hanging over me with two full percolator jugs of brewed coffee.

‘Sure, thanks. Do you know anything about the Frazee Turkey Dayz?’

The waitress looked blank.

‘Frazee Turkey Dayz?’

Nothing. I held up the article.

‘Fraaaazeeeee. Suuuuure, they’re good folk out that way. It’ll be a blast.’

Ripping the article from its page, I screwed Miss Minnesota into my pocket and was on my way.

You could smell Frazee before its giant cut-out cartoon turkey welcomed you there. The sour stench of mass-farmed poultry was repulsive and clung to the back of my throat. Cycling on Highway 10, parallel to the train tracks that cut an immaculate line through this featureless grassy landscape, I passed the huge sheds and cooling trucks that left me in no doubt what Frazee produced. Turkeys on an industrial scale. The town’s distinctive water tower came into view and I followed signs for Main Street. Getting off my bike, I checked right and left and began lifting my load over the rusty railroad when a brown Willy’s Jeep skidded to a halt on the other side with a smiling young man behind the wheel.

‘Hey, I’m Paul, where you coming from?’

‘England. Is this the right place for the street dance tonight?’

‘That’s right, starts at nine.’

‘Is there anywhere I can camp in town?’

‘Sure, Town Park, with our giant turkey. Follow me.’

If it smelt anything like the battery sheds I passed on my way into town, I wasn’t sure I wanted to camp near the world’s largest turkey, but obeying orders I followed the jeep through the suburbs to the town park: a scrubby piece of land with a few picnic tables on the banks of a small river.

‘This is Big Tom—over twenty feet tall and weighing in at over five thousand pounds.’

I was staring in complete bewilderment at one of the ugliest things I had ever seen. An enormous fibreglass turkey, complete with snood and caruncles. ‘THE WORLD’S BIGGEST TURKEY’, announced a plaque. I wanted to point out that it wasn’t a real flesh-and-feathers bird, but this was the Turkey Capital of the World and I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings of civic pride, especially 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.