Yes, that kid is sticking his head right where you think he is sticking it.
He was a neighbor kid, younger than me but a friend of mine growing up. His mom, on the left, was one of my mom’s good friends. (In April I have to remember to tell you about the four of us, the tornado, and the chicken costume… remind me.)
Anyway, the topic of this post is the Snowgal. It was a “snow day” in the ’80s, and the schools in our area were closed. The boy, we’ll call him “J.,” and I were at my house. We decided that we’d “live the dream” of building a snowman–a rare treat in NE Texas. We figured that we’d roll snow until we got to his house and set it up there.
We started in my parent’s driveway and moved up the street. We took a sharp right, rolling the growing ball through the ditch. We took a left at the next intersection.
By this point, the fool thing was getting very big and hard to move.
J. went and got his mom, J.R.
Together the three of us kept going. Miraculously, we were able to get it up an incline and to the edge of her yard.
“That’s it,” J.R. said, panting. “Let’s build the rest of her.”
“Her?” I asked.
“Yes,” J.R. replied. “Snowmen get enough attention. We’re building a girl. With boobs.”
At the time, being on the cusp of adolescence myself–the great “blossoming” of young womanhood, I felt terrifically self-conscious at the mere mention of the word. J., being a boy, thought it was hysterical and started rolling up her, um, parts.
It did not help that J.R. made a joking reference to Queen’s “Fat Bottomed Girls.”
We put Snowgal together pretty quickly. My own mom came over to check it out (she’s pictured at right). I must have volunteered to do the photo–probably because the whole “snow bosom” thing weirded me out.
That would seem to be the end of it, right?
But, oh, no. Not hardly.
Early on the next morning J.R. called my mom. I hear Mom saying “Uh-huh… yeah… right…” And then I hear hysterical laughter.
Turns out that, in the night, some wiseacre decided to plow down Snowgal with his car. No, it wasn’t an accident. The driver did it on purpose because only by flooring the gas could a car have made its way up the front slope and into the yard. Now tell me, who in their right mind runs down a kid’s snowperson? Was this some sort of lame-brained attempt at Bible Belt censorship of our ample-bosomed friend?
Trouble was, for the driver, that packed in all that snow were rocks, glass and goodness knows what from the ditch through which Snowgal was “birthed.” A drop in temperature had made the snow into a giant block of ice. When the nut job that hit Snowgal with his car pulled back from the scene, he left some paint on her hips and some evidence that the front end of his car was seriously messed up. As in he had a lost bumper.
Poor Snowgal lost her head from the impact, but the–ahem–bulk of her was still standing.
The moral, people?
Frosty the Snowman may be a dandy, proper Yankee willing to fade away in the springtime sun–but don’t you dare try and tussle with a Texas Snowgal.
She’ll mess you up, y’all. And take away little pieces of, if not your heart, at least your ride.