The town rose up to meet him on that pivotal day in '47 when Don Kilwin strode in off the snowy plain, riding coat whipping in the cold Northern Michigan winter winds. Don Kilwin knew the odds were stacked against him. He knew it when he set off on foot, a hole already in his boot, from the Orinoco basin carrying only his dream and the Black Bean.

He knew, however, that he could not sit idly licking his lips in his tropical paradise knowing how she suffered in the frozen wastes of the deep north. He was, after all, not called Don for nothing, and it was time he lived up to that which was heaped upon him by the Amazonian Queen, Beanutt, ...

... herself when she dubbed him the title "Don."

And so Don Kilwin left his tropical home with nothing but a cocoa bean and a windy smile and after literally stomping hundreds upon hundreds of miles, stood before the very gates of frosted Hell itself: Northern Michigan.

And that clearly brings us to today's topic: fudge.

I don't really like fudge. Fudge is obscene.

Chocolate is sexy. Take this sentence from the repository of all human knowledge, the Wikipedia: Flavored with vanilla and spices, his chocolate was whipped into a froth that dissolved in the mouth.

Can fudge do that? Can it? NO! Fudge would come out something like Flavored with Mayonnaise and Jell-O, his mouth was whipped until it frothed with fudge dissolved in the mouse

In Michigan there is apparently a town called Northern, into which walked Don Kilwin. Don carried in his pocket a cocoa bean. With a wild look in his eyes and a frosty beard nearly hiding his windy smile, he stepped off the plain and into the very heart of Northern -- which only took one step. He laughed a mighty laugh that howled on the moonlit snow, and he yelled into the cold air, "Who darest?"

To this day, no one really knows what he was getting at, but it was spooky nonetheless and the cowering sips of Northern didn't darest him. They did however cautiously step from their front doors to see this wild man from the south with the windy smile.

The first inhabitant of Northern that Don Kilwin laid eyes on was Katy Whelshckitee, and upon seeing her, Don Kilwin aimed his cocoa bean at her and said, "Take this my bean in thine warm fingers and make of it what it willst becometh."

Katy understandably replied, "what?" but took his bean anyway.

Clowns, the beasts we knew, could breathe fire and occassionally got themselves slaughtered. No, wait, those are dragons. The author stole that line about dragons, by the way, from a song by Yaz.

Despite what dragons can do, clowns don't carry cocoa beans in their big baggy pants. Clowns, like most other people, wear underwear in their big baggy pants. Whereas fudge is awful and chocolate is good, so to are clowns and dragons awful and good respectively.

Now, Katy understood this, and that is exactly why she took Don Kilwin's bean and became his wife, but not before the townspeople, upset at his spooky, whipped him in some odd way that involved fudge, a dessert, sandwiches and a mouse. She made from his bean, chocolate. Not very much, of course, but true chocolate, and she gave him children and they opened a Chocolate Shoppe and started a franchise.

Don Kilwin and Katy passed their legacy. on to Don McCarty and his wife, Robin.

Fudge is not chocolate. People think it is. That's because people don't really think. When we say "people think that pigs are made of ham," we are really saying that "someone said pigs are made of ham and so now people think that."

That's what's cool about people. No matter how smart, no matter what your IQ, you still get pimples, you still grow hair on your buttocks, you still stink if you don't bathe, and you still think some of the things you think just because a lot of other people think it too.

There are several places where people are equal: buried and dead, on the potty, having sex, in fast food restaurants, and in clown outfits.

I've never been to a Kilwin's. I didn't even know the Kilwin's franchise existed until I began my extensive research on fudge about an hour ago. You can find the Kilwin's nearest you by visiting the store locator on their web site at http://www.kilwins.com/stores/list_cities.phtml, and I highly recommend you visit them and buy something.

So, next time you find yourself in a clown outfit facing a fierce fire-breathing dragon with nothing but a cocoa bean and thinking about pigs while snacking on confections at a Kilwins, remember the Dons and Beanutt.