Last month I spent more time than usual poking around my hometown of Price in hopes of finding something familiar. What I discovered amounted to practically nothing. Take, for example, the block letter C that adorns a landmark formerly known as Crack Ledge. Thanks to erosion, not much of it remains, in spite of concerned citizen Leif Nelson’s efforts last year to organize a repainting party.
“Price is not a place of days gone by,” insisted Nelson; however, it appears to me that Price is very much a place of days gone by, one that would require nothing short of an archeological dig to uncover even a vestige of my boyhood stomping grounds. Take, for example, Carbon College, a local institution of higher learning and the presumed inspiration for that faded block letter. Well, today, it’s known as Utah State University East, and not a single building from the original campus has survived with the exception of the Elmo Geary Theater, which was added long after the others—most of which dated from the Nineteen Thirties. My favorite was a baseball stadium with arched windows that resembled a miniature Yankee Stadium. Also a WPA-era football grandstand affectionately known as “Old Splinters.”
Like a ghost I wandered the campus where 56 years ago I had served as sophomore class president, passing young people who might very well be the great-grandchildren of my Carbon College classmates—who knows? No faces and not one single thing was familiar; that is, until I happened upon a boulder I immediately recognized as my alma mater’s pet rock “Gibby.”
Gibby (short for Gibraltar) mysteriously appeared in front of the main entrance back in 1940—a prank perpetrated in part by the youngest of the notorious Bunnell brothers. Boyd Bunnell would go on to become a local prosecutor and judge, but by the time his part in the caper was revealed the statute of limitations had expired and Gibby had become not an obstacle but a beloved touchstone.
Normally, the 1,500-pound rock was painted in school colors and served as a centerpiece in yearbook photos such as this one. In my day the artist-on-call was my friend and sophomore class vice-president Richard Holdaway. Unlike the honorable Judge Bunnell, neither of the two Richards ever confessed to turning Gibby into an eight ball; that is, not until just now.
Evidently, we started a trend, and in years that followed Gibby would be repainted time and again—almost always on the sly under cover of darkness. Though composed of sandstone, she now wears so many coats of paint that she is immune to erosion. As for censorship, I suppose if anyone should complain, she can always slip on another coat.
