(part 2)
We got snow in the desert that winter. Those of you who live in
those parts of the world that get SNOW wouldn’t be impressed, but here in the
southwest, even a light flurry is cause for celebration. If some of the flakes manage to actually
stick to the ground, all the better!
That winter, some stuck. The
children were so excited. Of course, the
first thing they wanted to do was to make a snowman. I didn’t think there was enough snow on the
ground to make a snowball, much less a snowman, but the kids were
nothing if not creative.
It
was still freezing cold when they went outside, so they were able to collect
snow from all over the yard (and, I suspect, some from the neighbor’s yard as
well) and truck it all to the front yard in their red Radio Flyer wagon. When they shoveled up the snow in the
backyard, they also shoveled up a significant quantity of rabbit manure as
well. Undaunted, the kids built their
little snowman anyway.
When
they had finished their masterpiece, they led their dad and I outside for
inspection. Carmon and I looked at each
other and bit our tongues to keep from laughing. The snowman was about two feet tall and
looked like it was covered with chocolate chip measles! The freeze lasted only two days, but that was
more than enough time for us to get many comments from the neighbors about that
snowman. It was
embarrassing. It didn’t bother Carmon,
though. Ever pragmatic, he simply
christened the snowman The Rabbit Poop Queen.
~ ~ ~
We never did get to the little Utah town
Carmon wanted, but that didn’t stop his dreaming of it. During his rabbit ranching stage, our summer
camping and fishing trips always included side trips to pursue that dream. The kids and I got very well acquainted with
the little towns along Highway 89, from Kanab to Richfield.
We passed the big rock candy mountain and
marveled at the fact that the Sevier River gave the impression that it was
running backwards and uphill (it did neither). We stayed at a friend’s house in Circleville
where we found the wild asparagus and Carmon helped a local farmer deliver a
calf. 
Later that summer, Carmon and the boys found a wonderful
camping spot along the river, but had to leave in the middle of the night after
Beed was bitten by so many mosquitoes that he looked like he had the
measles. (Carmon also got to know the
pharmacist of that little town because he had to get him out of bed in the
middle of the night for calamine lotion and antihistamines.)
But our hands-down best rabbit ranch
trip didn’t involve rabbits at all. As
you may have perceived by now, living with a middle-aged Tom Sawyer wasn’t
always a piece of proverbial cake. Many
of the things I laugh about now weren’t all that funny while we were in the
middle of it After one such episode,
Carmon knew he had some fences to mend, in this case with the children as well
as with me. That was when we started to
hear about one more rabbit ranch trip before school started. He had to take me into his confidence because
I understood the differences among the four cardinal directions and could
generally tell in which one of them we were traveling. The children didn’t know, though, which made
it fun. In fact, as we approached our
destination, Carmon would frequently ask the kids to “look to the right” to
avoid seeing a freeway sign on the left.
I didn’t think he could pull it off, but he did. None of the children had a clue as to where
we were until we pulled into the parking lot at Disneyland!
© Gebara Education, 2001. No portion of this book may
be copied by any method without the express written permission of the author
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