It happens that today is bitterly cold here in Minnesota. As an old friend once remarked to me: "It's so cold the dogs are sticking to the trees."

How cold is it, Johnny? It's so cold that the moment you step out into it you worry about yourself. You can feel the frozen air attack your soft tissues, and you know you are at most a half hour from freezer burn and alligator skin.

It is so cold you worry about your cell walls shattering, and your whole cellular integrity going ka-splat.

And it was on such a night as this that what I am about to tell you came to be, exactly as I am saying.

When I was 27 I was invited to move out to Worthington, Minnesota, in the southwest corner of the state. It is a flat pancake of a prairie area, low in water, scarce in trees, but thick with wind and horizontal snow.

When the night is dark and the winter cold, the farmers lie under three comforters, wondering about the creatures in the barn, whether they will be alive in the morning or nay.

Every cold night fills you with doubt, about the lives around you, and your cash investment in them.

Now it happens that Worthington, in the years before I moved there, was the turkey capital of Minnesota — possibly of the world. There was enough dispute in the matter that the city fathers of Cuero, Texas challenged the city fathers of Worthington to an annual race, between their fastest turkey, always named Ruby Begonia, and our turkey, always called Paycheck. The two birds would run down the street, and whichever one of them managed to run in the straightest line would be declared the winner, and disgrace and ignominy was the loser's lot.

Much of the festivity of this race devolved from the common perception that turkeys — particularly the big whites that farmers in Worthington and Texas raised, an overbred, meat-heavy gene pool known more for their affinity with sage dressing than any other kind of sagacity.

The big whites are so front heavy with breats meat that they are unable to have ordinary sexual intercourse. To breed, they must de deseminated, a task which has filled many a dreamy farmboy's workday afternoons, and strengthened many a yeoman's wrist.

But this story is older than that, and goes to the first implementation of electrical lights in the long sheds that the turkeys wintered in.

A bare light bulb was placed in the middle of each shed. The idea was that the radiant heat of the bulb would keep the temperature of the shed from dropping below 25 degrees below zero, when all turkey life ceases.

During the early weeks of winter, the bulb worked fine, creating a warm aura that the turkeys clustered around to keep off the cold. It also allowed the turkeys to see one another at night, which was a social plus, although one which we cannot do into much detail about, as it is an area shrouded in mystery, and better that way.