Anchorage Daily News

Billy Ray Powers may be a jolly, happy soul, but if his snowman ever comes to life, this city is doomed. It's taller than his house. It's got to weigh as much as Godzilla.

It has a corncob pipe and a carrot nose and two eyes made out of beer bottles.

Powers didn't really plan on making a snowman big enough to eat Anchorage.

"The kids and I started out doing a snowman, and it started getting kind of big, then it started getting kind of out of hand," he explained. "And then (my neighbor), he comes over and says, 'Man, looks like you've got a big project.' I says, 'Yee-aah.' He says, 'Well, I'll help you with it. 'So he jumped in and that's kind of how it went."

"It just turned into a monster," said that neighbor, Darrell Estes, who lives across the street. "People stop by, and they're just flabbergasted. They walk up and knock on it to make sure it's real snow, not Styrofoam."

This was a joint project. Estes helped. Powers' kids helped. Kids around the neighborhood helped too.

When all the snow in Powers' yard got used up, the kids pilfered more from around the neighborhood.

"The kids carried buckets on sleds," Powers said. "Bucket after bucket. This house, that house," he said pointing up and down the street. "This house over here and that house up there. Since then we've had more snow. But that's where it all came from."

Since you can't be rolling snowballs the size of small planets, they hand-packed this thing "like you would a Baskin-Robbins ice cream cone," as Powers puts it. By the time it was done, he needed an extension ladder to reach the top of its head, more than 16 feet off the ground.

We know what you're thinking: Is he keeping probe poles handy in case Frosty the Snowmutant waves goodbye, saying don't you cry, and suddenly avalanches?

He's not. This honker isn't going anywhere until spring, maybe even summer.

"It's solid ice," he said. "I put the arms in with my power drill."

People are getting a kick out of this.

"You wouldn't believe it," he said. "Oh my, it's just endless, the thumbs up, people taking pictures."

Even guys from the fire department stopped by. Even the police.

"There was one policeman from Hawaii," Powers said, "a great big guy, 6-3 or so. He stood in front of it, and his partner took a picture of him."

And just where were those policemen when someone stole the snowman's corncob pipe?

At the time, it wasn't nearly as big as it is now.

Powers figured whoever did it jumped up and yanked it right out of the snowman's lips.

Making it had been a bit of work. He and Estes had wrapped a bunch of little circles cut from manila envelops around the end of a glue stick and bunched them together so they looked like corn kernel sockets. Then they attached these to a tin can and used a ski pole for a pipe stem.

The pipe was gone, and Powers wanted it back.

It helped that the crime scene was covered with a fresh layer of snow. He and Estes and a couple of the kids got right on it.

"We followed these tracks up alleys and clear over across from Wendler junior high, the pizza parlor over there. And then we kind of came to a dead end. We came back here and ... picked them up again down at the end of the street and on into a trailer park. And we followed them right into their yard."

Powers knew he was dealing with kids, but big, big kids, from the size of their shoe prints. Sleuthing about in the dark with flashlights in front of a trailer drew the attention of young girl, who came out to see what was going on.

"She came out on the porch and says, 'What are you guys doing?' And we told her. 'We're looking at these shoe prints here, and they come right through your yard.' And she says, 'Well, those are awful big shoe prints.' I says, 'Yeah, they're pretty big boys, whoever it is.'

She says, 'Well, nobody like that lives here. We've just got one old guy, and he's real small. In fact we call him 'The Leprechaun.' "

Then the one of the big guys came out. He got grumpy, and Powers got diplomatic.

"I'm not accusing anybody," he said, "but basically, the best thing would be, if you know who did this just to give the pipe back."

The Corncob Pipe Retrieval Team retreated, moving on up the street a ways.

"The next thing I know, I see this shadow," Powers said. "And one of the boys came out and put the pipe on the hood of my car."

If you want to see the giant snowman for yourself, it's at 1556 Columbine St.

Daily News reporter Debra McKinney can be reached at dmckinney@adn.com.