TURKEY, Texas -- Out on the sculpted caprock and between the rows of cotton, the wind is tearing along like a runaway freight train, raising curtains of dust and playing holy heck with the electric lines. Inside the Bob Wills Center, the people of Turkey are belly-up to heaping helpings of their namesake bird, eaten on long folding tables off plastic foam plates.
"Hi!" grins a weathered retiree in a plaid shirt and a well-worn cowboy hat. "I'm Ray Whitaker and I live in Turkey, Texas -- just the other side of Gobbler's Knob!"
Back in the kitchen, the women of the Turkey Proud Committee are already scraping remnants of Jell-O salad and green-bean casserole into a motley assortment of Tupperware and old Cool Whip containers. One aluminum table is stacked precariously with sparkling Pyrex pie plates and casserole dishes, waiting for their owners to claim them.
The electricity lurches on and off at irregular intervals -- off more often than on. The band members sit idly at their electric instruments, the fluorescent lights are useless, and the coffee is a lukewarm mess.
"The Lord is making us grateful we don't have many days like this," says Jane Johnson, proprietor of the Hotel Turkey.
Turkey, Texas -- as befits its name -- is big on Thanksgiving. It's also big on the things that many Americans cherish only as fading memories: working the land, families that stay together, neighbors who do more than wave.
"I didn't think anybody would come," Belle Davis confides to Margie Bell, who was in charge of the event.
But Turkey's annual community Thanksgiving is pronounced a surprise success. Ms. Bell and her helpers estimate they've fed 250 souls from the town of 500-plus. And that's not counting the scores of dinners that were carried out to shut-ins and farmers working in the fields. A dozen large turkeys have been reduced to scraps.
A cowboy with dust in his handlebar mustache and coating his battered boots slips out the kitchen door carrying a plastic foam container crammed with turkey, dressing and all the trimmings.
Most of those who sit down to the communal tables look as though they've come straight from church on this Sunday afternoon. The old outnumber the young, and women outnumber men.
The committee advertises the gathering in newspapers, and the radio station in Memphis generally gives it a few plugs.
"We want everyone to come," says Betty House, who says she's loved Turkey ever since she moved there 1946. "It's like a big family."
As in families everywhere, no one escapes without eating their fill -- and then some.
"Did you get some dessert, hon?" a middle-aged woman asks, hovering over a late-comer. "Are you sure, now?"
Despite the wind and the dust, people have showed up from as far away as Quitaque (10 miles), Estelline (31 miles) and even Memphis (42 miles). The farmers of this southeast Panhandle county are the last people to be dissuaded by a little inclement weather.
"You have to understand," says Ms. Johnson, who moved to Turkey six years ago from Denton, "they're used to it."
Her husband, Scott, says he read somewhere that the caprock region suffers the most drastic changes in weather of any place in the nation, and he believes it.
Last Thanksgiving, a blizzard dumped eight inches of snow. This summer, Turkey baked at 120 degrees for three days running.
"They're the hardy ones," Jane Johnson says of her adopted neighbors. "Despite freezing to death or burning up or getting blown away, they stayed."
The town, which has suffered the decline in population endemic to rural America, seems to be holding its own. The Hotel Turkey pulls in thousands of visitors each year, and three new businesses -- a fabric shop, an artist and an antique dealer -- are about to open. In May, a 60-mile section of horse- and bike-trail between on an old railroad bed will open between Quitaque and Estelline.
"A lot of new young couples have moved in over the year," says Delores Price.
"Well, not a lot," says her daughter-in-law. "But a lot for us."
Above all, though, the people of Turkey give thanks for one another.
"They pull together. They're just really there," says Mary Nell Tripp, who admits that she resisted getting to know her new neighbors when she retired to Turkey from Amarillo nine years ago.
Their friendliness wore down her reserve, she says, and now she's part of a group that meets at the cafe to chat every Thursday from 3 to 5.
She's never needed to call on anyone for help, she says, but if she did, "they would be there, and I know that."
"Things are so much different in a small town," says Ms. Bell. "When one grieves, everybody grieves. When one is happy, everybody is happy."
She hoists a large aluminum pan full of turkey scraps and heads out the back door.
"Where are you going with that?" asks Chelsea's father, Brian Wheeler, rushing to take it from her and carry it to her car.
Mr. Wheeler, a native of Turkey, says he's never considered moving away.
As the wind whines around the corner of the building, he ponders the question of what Turkey can be thankful for.
Bursting into a belly laugh, he says: "Still being here."