Growing Up Bulldog: The Stowbilly Chronicles

Growing Up Bulldog: The Stowbilly Chronicles is a collection of humor essays by author and poet Michael Pollick. Pollick grew up in the small city of Stow, Ohio during the 1960s, 70s and 80s, and is now writing a series of pieces based on his admittedly skewed childhood memories. The Stowbilly Chronicles cover topics such as Stow's infamous Fourth of July parade, the dreaded 2-2-2 school system, favorite Stowbilly foods (chipped chopped ham, Spin Blend, Altieri's Pizza, etc.), and even a playground confession or two.

Here's the author's take on the beloved Christmas icon, Archie the Snowman:

Archie the Snowman: Pay No Attention To The Man In the Shack

Stow, Ohio during the 1960s and 70s had a pretty solid grip on the strip mall and freestanding store concept, but not so much on the Giant Shopping Mall retail phenomenon. We Stowbillies knew from birth that Akron was the place we ought to be for all of our Orange Julius and matinee movie needs. Akron had several shopping malls at that time, but the one that became the default setting for “going to the mall” was Chapel Hill Mall. This mall was located at the top of an actual hill, near one of the most inane five point intersections ever constructed. One road led directly to the mall parking lot, while the others apparently led to a training camp for Ice Road truckers.

During the Christmas season at Chapel Hill Mall, employees would set up a Winter Wonderland down the center of the main entrance to the mall. A white picket fence separated the mall shoppers from the cotton-snow-lined Village of the Keebler Damned, which was filled in with candy canes, animated see-saws, toy trains and other Christmas effluvia. At the end of this trail stood the holiday Golem we Stowbilly kids both feared and respected: Archie the Snowman. Even now, I feel like I just named the 50-foot Stay Puft marshmallow man sent to destroy us all.

Archie the Snowman stood a mind-boggling 20 feet tall, with a proportional top hat and other winter gear that reminded us all of that other talking snowman. You know the one. Say no more. Archie also had two giant eyes that flashed a bright yellow as he spoke. There was not enough therapy in the world to overcome a 5-year-old's first encounter with Archie, the original Flashy Thing. First off, he was the size and shape of the bouncy Bumble that Yukon Cornelius managed to take down in “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Second, Archie's flashing yellow eyes could be seen for hundreds of yards around the mall, so there was a definite intimidation factor to consider.

Archie's main task was to engage the under-10 set while Mommy and Daddy and all the other shoppers made the rounds. He accomplished this with the assistance of a mall employee hidden inside a shack near the lowest level of his impressive snow belly. This person would listen to each petrified child as he or she stepped up to a microphone positioned in front of Archie. The effect on most of us was pretty close to the scene in “The Wizard of Oz” where Dorothy pleads her case in front of the Wizard. Standing in front of Archie the Snowman was just like that, only without the Technicolor fireballs and flames. Archie didn't go out of his way to be mean to his customers, but when you're twenty feet tall with a booming amplified voice and glowing headlights for eyes, you're already facing a perception problem with your target demographic.

Depending on who was manning the shack, Archie generally struck the right balance between inquisitive 20-foot-tall snow friend and ersatz Santa Claus. He would lead each child through the slush ball portion of the interview: Age, grade, general goodness. The conversation would then naturally drift into deeper waters, like siblings, parents and gift wish lists. Overall, the few minutes of terror spent with Archie was a useful pre-interview for the real Santa Claus located in the exact epicenter of the mall. If things went well with Archie, Santa's interrogations would be a breeze. If there were false starts or incomplete thoughts with Archie, however, there was still a little time for self-correction and introspection before getting in that second line.

Visiting Chapel Hill Mall and Archie as a young adult in the 80s was a sobering experience. The entire Wonderland set was still there in all of its traffic-generating glory, but there seemed to be a veil between me and the Christmas spirit it was meant to trigger. I felt like I was an alumnus of Archie the Snowman elementary school, and now all I could notice was how small the chairs really were. Archie himself was still hard at work, asking scared modern children the same questions he peppered us old-timers with back in the day...