The crystalline stuff of childhood dreams -- and of angst for some neighbors -- sprawls in white hillocks across Billy Powers's front yard in Anchorage's City View neighborhood, waiting to be reshaped into the giant form known the world over as Snowzilla.
It will all happen by Christmas, Powers promises.
And it might be more charming, more photogenic than ever even though it will include the usual trimmings: the 5-foot-tall hat framed from tomato cages and the corn-cob pipe fashioned from a wooden dowel rod and oversized soup can.
This year, Powers plans a somewhat smaller Snowzilla who better fits into family photos. But megalomaniacs need not worry. Snowzilla will still stand taller than a two-story house, top hat included, with scaffolding required to erect the snow colossus. It's just that Powers isn't planning to break his personal record of 27 feet.
"A lot of people want me to go for record size, and that's one reason he is probably the most famous snowman that ever walked the planet, or stood on the planet," Powers said. "But we're not going to go real big this year."
More important than size: "How does he look? Is he nice? Is he friendly?"
From the sound of it, Snowzilla will be jollier than ever. For one thing, he'll greet guests with bigger-than-normal eyes. "Peggy, my fine sweetheart, said, 'You need big eyes. So he looks friendly,'" Powers said. "I'm not yet sure how we're going to accomplish it, but we are."
Powers also plans to create a Snowzilla that greets guests with a hat tip. He'll do that by slanting the top hat and eyes a bit and placing a tree-limb arm in a cap-doffing pose. "We're just going to be a little bit different."
Powers, a 59-year-old pipe welder with four of his seven kids still at home, said he's made big snowmen for decades. But Snowzilla didn't become an international sensation until 2005 when the Anchorage Daily News wrote an article about that year's 16-foot-tall lawn ornament.
Families arrived snapping photos and convoys of sightseers idled in cars. Foreign news crews showed up. When the parades of people blocked traffic and late-night noise thumped from speakers, neighbors complained.
Three years ago, city code enforcement officers issued a cease-and-desist order to maintain the peace. But the giant snowman rose overnight in defiance. The city did nothing to stop Powers, likely because Snowzilla never became a safety issue, said Jack Frost, the city's chief of code enforcement. "I just don't think a public hazard existed, so there was nothing to follow up on," he said on Wednesday.
Frost (yes, that's really his name) said Snowzilla isn't on the city's radar this year. It won't be unless it becomes a danger, such as if its large features threaten to melt onto the sidewalk and smash passersby. "There's snow structures built all over Anchorage, and people are enjoying winter and I think that's great," Frost said.
The controversy has only enhanced Snowzilla's fan base. A website sprung up in 2008 -- created by a sympathetic techie from Europe -- to raise legal money in case Powers needed to fight for the snowman. Another person has offered money to have exclusive rights for a children's book, Powers said.
But he's refused it all.
"This is about family and Christmas," he said. "You'll have a grandmother out there who can barely take little-bitty steps. She'll sit there on the bench and her family will gather around and other families will come and someone will say, 'We'll take your picture.' They'll swap cameras. People are out there drinking coffee, laughing. And then the carolers come."
So, like Powers and his family do every year, they've sprinkled Snowzilla's heart -- symbolic snowflakes kept in the freezer all summer -- into the growing mounds of snow outside 1556 Columbine Street. And now that school's about to close for Christmas -- freeing up a cost-free workforce that includes Powers' four kids and their friends -- the construction can start as early as this weekend.
"We can do the snowman in one day if push comes to shove," he said. "And if it gets down to serious crunch-time, we got to bring in the big dogs -- the high-schoolers and the grown men. We can do it."
Contact Alex DeMarban at alex(at)alaskadispatch.com