But with the deepening of winter's grip on the prairie, temperatures began to drop. The winds shrieked, and the ice formed on the length of the pump handle. Every window in the farmer's house was crystalled and etched, and out in the turkey sheds, a terrible clatter arose as the turkeys scrambled to huddle closer to the glowing bulb.

The strongest turkeys were the first to die. They elbowed the weaker birds out of the way, until they could place themselves directly against the hot bulb. Their comperes, unwilling to freeze, gathered about them until they covered them. Inside the pile of turkeys, the big birds smothered.

But that was not the end of the carnage. The weak birds then crawled under their dead brethren to get closer to the light, and a thousand birds climbed on top of them, too. And they too suffocated.

In the morning, the farmer rose early to inspect the damage done by the cold. HE had reason to suspect his losses were lighter due to the lightbulb. But when he cracked open the door to the shed, what he saw was a horror. A few dozen birds waddled stiffly in the cold, yodeling their discomfort from the long frigid night.

But his focus was on the pile of over 800 dead birds in a heap in the center of the shed, stacked ten high. Not a sound emerged from the white feathered mountain. A thousand beady eyes stared up, incriminatingly. And through the barnyard rose the awful smell of a thousand unplucked, ungutted turkeys, slow roasted by the heat of a 300 watt Sylvania bulb.

Eventually, bad weather did Worthington's turkey industry in. It caught on again, in the Painesville area. But Turkey Day continued to be the regional capital's annual highlight. Every year a famous politician was invited to be the honoree at the August Turkey Day Parade. One year the honoree was Nelson Rockefeller, who was still eager to be president and could recognize a photo opportunity when he heard of one.

But Rockefeller's fate was sealed that late summer day, because though he was innovative and rich, he was woefully ill-informed, and insisted on wearing a shoe-length herringbone overcoat, when everyone with two brain cells to rub together could tell it was shirtsleeves weather.

When the float wound its way past the courthouse with Nelson standing up top, waving at the crowd, his white cashmere scarf flowing down him like a wizard's whiskers, the children pointed at him and laughed, a great man who did not know how to dress himself. The whole town talked about the herringbone overcoat for weeks.

So Rockefeller was the final victim of the fierce Minnesota winter. Though it was only halfway to September, the icy hand of fate had fingered its final bird.