Snailville

Smallville is the fictional earthly home of Krypton-born Superman. Snailville, however, has nothing to do with the superhero. Instead, it is the earthly home of racing snails, the shelled gastropods that we children set about to compete against one another. Trembling from nerves, we lined up our racing snails at the starting gate like microcars spoiling for a fight.

A snail racetrack should be sloped at a steep angle to encourage the participants to travel roughly in a similar direction. On a good day, given no head wind, a minimum delay for retracting eyeball stalks, and the absence of menacing predators, a snail’s pace reaches three feet per hour. So the finish line should be chalked at a reasonable distance, that is to say, fewer than 12 inches from the starting gate.

To improve our racing odds, each of us kids owned several sizable snails, the sort that is large enough, if given unfortunate circumstances, to produce a loud crunch beneath a careless footstep in a garden, the resulting squishified mess to be laboriously peeled away and cleaned up with stick and leaves.

Ours were handsome snails. Scrubbed of habitat soil, their shells gleamed a lustrous brown and tan. Admittedly, there is little to differentiate one attractive snail from another. Lacking distinguishing elements such as eyebrows, body hair, facial expression, nose, or body tattoos, it can be difficult for an untrained eye to tell them apart. The dexterity of the single foot or the patterns on the shell may be the few indicators of snail identity. Though snails doubtless can tell one another apart, for our purposes it was useful to easily recognize and identify them.

Some might have casually nicknamed them “Goblin Beak,” or “Google Eyes.” We, however, never considered disrespecting them. Instead, because of our devotion for them and the limited space on each shell, we distinguished each racing snail shell with painstakingly painted numbers. Incidentally, a 2018 issue of the Journal of Molluscan Studies declared the metallic silver and gold ink of Pilot brand pens to be the preferred shell-marking identifier. This discovery arrived far too late for our 1958 snail competitions, so I simply painted number “6” upon my favorite snail in acrylic.

When we lined them up atop the bomb shelter, their shells seemed to serve as protective helmets as they spoiled for the start of the 10-inch long snail-paced sprint.

Did I say, “bomb shelter”? Merely 13 years after the end of World War II, a bomb shelter in Cologne, Germany, where we lived, provided the perfect hardened concrete snail race track. The cement slope with padlocked rusted steel door at one end was the entrance to the sepulcher-like shelter, which was buried deep underground. I speculated what bizarre secrets the long-shackled bomb shelter might hold. Might there be decaying wooden tables and chairs and mildewed bedding awaiting those fleeing a feared Allied bombing run? Perhaps there were stashes of hastily discarded Nazi paraphernalia or mold-growing furry children’s toys or faded, unposted love letters. Worse, could it be a ghastly tomb containing skeletal remains, victims of the tyrannical German Reich?

Our snails were mere blisters atop the concrete racetrack, the entrance to the bomb shelter. I would coax, “Go, Number 6!” but my exhortations did little to hasten the slow unraveling of foot from shell and erection of eyes perched like celery seeds atop miniature bendable celery stalks. I had long learned that eye-poking, entertaining as it was, only slowed a snail’s glacial forward pace.

We protected and secreted our prized snails in glass jars, thoughtfully converted into homey snail residences with random leaves, twigs, and shallow water to provide both nourishment and enough humidity to promote healthy gastropod hygiene. Still, we were not perfect snail handlers. We discovered that warm sunny days could prove lethal for snails in glass jars. The magnified sun rays could reduce our racing snail population to empty shells at the bottom of the jar, floating atop brownish tan ooze, liquified snail bodies reduced to soup.

There was always the danger of intruders. More than once, we discovered our best shell-numbered racing snails murdered, their glass jar residences smashed, along with their shells, amid tiny puddles of snail entrails. We would quickly discover that the neighborhood raider kids had struck.

The starting flag dropped, and the shell-helmeted racers commenced their competition atop the bomb shelter racetrack. I coaxed Number 6 onward, yelling into his earless head, hoping for a stiff forward-propelling thump upon his shell from a falling acorn. He tried hard not to disappoint, slime faithfully administered beneath his foot, which was aimed down the steeply sloped cement raceway. It took forbearance and an adherence to the rules to resist dragging a distracted and wandering snail racer half an inch forward; perched upon this bomb shelter, we learned patience—boatloads of patience.

Had Jesus had been born in Germany, and had this concrete bomb shelter been His temporary tomb before His escape from death on that history-bending day, I suspect He would have paused on his way past the rusted, padlocked door. Snailville would have caught his gaze on His way up and out of that black sepulcher—the racetrack, snail Number 6, and us, patiently waiting—and He, just the sort of guest we could only have hoped for.