Once upon a time, when Papa was just a little boy,
it rarely snowed in the Mojave Desert of Southern California. Every now and then, there was a sprinkle or two, sometimes up to two inches. But one year, when Dougie was about nine years old, there was two feet of snow on the ground when he woke up in the morning! Talk about a winter wonderland. Dougie hoped it would keep snowing, higher, and higher, until the whole house was covered. He gleefully imagined tunneling everywhere, a long tunnel to the store, another one to the park, one all the way up to Grandma's house. The final tally in Quartz Hill was two feet of snow, which lasted quite a long time.
After dressing warmly in his boots and coat and gloves and knit beanie cap, Papa did all the things advertised as the benefits and very meaning of snow: he threw snowballs at his sisters, made snow angels by lying on his back and moving his arms up and down and sliding his legs back and forth, and they teamed up and made a very rickety snowman five snowballs tall. Later in the day Dada would make a most convincing snow poodle that stopped traffic alongside the house as admiring spectators wished for snow poodles of their own.Then the Little Papa set out on an adventure, aiming to plow through the deep, deep snow, all the way to Grandma's house, a full mile away. He plodded. He pushed through walls of drifted snow. He plunged into snow pits that buried him to his very waist. Panting, he marched, and trod, and sweated despite the frost air. He passed the various real estate buildings and the barbershop and the newly installed Circle K (which made Quartz Hillians feel Big City). Cars spat snow at him. And he faced and overcame all the many perils of the snowy, snowy mess. When he came to the tall hill at the base of Avenue M, right across the street from the Quartz Hill Market, he realized this could prove to be the hardest challenge of all.He had been climbing this hill since the first grade, when after school at Quartz Hill Elementary, which was about four blocks away as the crow flies from Grandma's house. He KNEW this hill. He could do it. He had to do it.Dougie would do it.He started marching up. And slipping. It was a very steep hill. About two years later his little sister Pammy would suffer a tremendous bicycle crash at this location, but he didn't have any inkling of that. In about three years from now, he would insanely ride his skateboard down this steep hill, hoping and praying that no car would zoom up from around the Y-branch at the bottom of the hill, where cars were known to zoom up too fast.At the top of the hill he stood panting and flushed, drained of all energy. He was so close, and yet possibly he wouldn't make it, oh to come so far and be so near, and to perish, here, beside the road. His parents would find him, maybe in about six months, a little skeleton. Could he make it? He took a step. It was hard, for the snow was deep. He took another step. Just keep going. He plodded boot stomp after boot stomp, lifting his feet up above the snow, moving forward.He came up along the avenue, this mighty, intrepid adventurer, braving the fey snows of Quartz Hill, face windburned and eyes blurring, step by step, until he stood dizzily at the bottom of Grandma and Grandpa's long, steep driveway. Dougie figured it must be about 32 miles to the top of the driveway, and he was spent. His boots were full of ice water. He face was numb. He was all played out. This must be the spot where his skeleton must be found in six months, and oh the weeping when they recognized his huge, shiny skull!Then he did a surprising thing. He started walking, and slipping, up the long, long driveway, one bloody mile at a time. His tongue was hanging at about waist level when he was only halfway to the top. And yet the house seemed no closer. It was more than a boy could bear. But he plodded up, and up, and up, and then through a haze of wavering light, he was at the front door, ringing the doorbell.He could hear Grandma's beloved voice inside: "Who in the world could that be?" ...the door swung open and Grandma stood there blinking, staring at Dougie, not sure she was seeing what she thought she was seeing (her bifocals were awfully thick), until she burst: "It's DOUGIE!"She helped him in and shed off his wet, cold clothes, warmed his hands by holding them to her cheeks, and soon he was at the table having his favorite cinnamon toast and cocoa, wrapped in a warm blanket, while his clothes spun around in Grandma's dryer.Grandma kept chuckling as she sat at the table with Dougie, sipping her coffee. "I thought you might come up today, I just had a feeling. But you're crazy, the snow's too deep! My ruust choont!"Note: Ruust Choont is a phonetic spelling for Grandma's loving Hungarian nickname for Dougie. It means: "Bad Bones."
All Stories © 2009 Douglas Christian Larsen
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