Mobsters, machine guns, a getaway car and ice are elements of the snow sculpture taking shape in the middle of the Green in preparation for Winter Carnival.
The sculpture compliments this year's carnival theme, "The Roaring '20s," a pun celebrating Hanover's winter temperatures and the Jazz Age.
The 20-foot long, nine-foot wide and 20-foot high sculpture will depict a car from the 1920s with a cartoon face on the front grill and mobsters hanging out of the windows.
The snow sculpture's co-chair, Todd Garfield '00, created the design for the car and met with professors and students from the Thayer School of Engineering earlier this winter to plan the structure.
The sculpture's planners are working carefully to prevent a repeat of last year's Winter Carnival sculpture, which collapsed.
Last year's sculpture was supposed to depict a knight on horseback rearing up and stepping on a dragon, but warm and sunny weather caused the horse structure to fall in on itself the Thursday before Winter Carnival weekend.
Workers then changed the scene to depict the dragon's victory -- the knight and horse were converted into a coffin.
This year, the Winter Carnival committee plans to build the majority of the sculpture as a solid chunk of snow. The only hollow part will be the front of the car, which will be formed with snow-covered chicken wire.
Garfield said he is confident that this sculpture will not fall.
"We will cross our fingers and hope that there will be no melt-down," Garfield said. "The main goal is to have it standing when Winter Carnival rolls around."
Garfield said he has heard a variety of weather predictions for the next few weeks, but he is not expecting to have to truck snow to the campus as has been done in the past when mid-winter thaws halted construction.
Garfield said so far the construction is on schedule to be completed Feb. 12 -- the first day of Winter Carnival.
But he said the sculpture-worker turnout has been fair so far and he hopes more students will volunteer. Anyone can help work on the sculpture every afternoon in the middle of the Green, he said.
