following account is a post in which the author recounts a repeated dream from his childhood involving bank robbers, the incredible two story rabbit and his trusty Schwinn bicycle.
 
 

    In my dream it is 1957, although in real life I won't be born until several years later (2 weeks after the assasination of President John F. Kennedy). The setting of this dream is a small town though not as small as the one in which I would spend my real childhood. It was the kind of village you saw in middle America back then. The main street of commerce ran wide and low thorugh the center of town until it disappeared into the big prairie sky. The buildings here are almost all from the fifty year period between 1880 and 1930 although some have had mid-century facelifts. Nothing grows over two stories here except oak trees and church spires.

   The fat cars of the fifties line up along the streets next to older models that have come in from the farms and small towns that circle this one. The sidewalks stand a good two feet off the road from back when people came into town in  buggies and wagons. Excess people do not populate this dream, the only ones included in the story my mind is telling itself  are those who move the plot along. But their cars are there, windshields gleaming in the limited sunlight that appears here. 

   The clothes I wear are also from the fifties, a plaid wool CPO, and  a cap, dungarees and Converse tennies. I start in my room looking out the back window of my house at the garage. The yard is spare, just some fall browned grass leading up to  golden asphalt sheets, pressed to look like bricks. Against the wall facing me is the hutch that holds my rabbit and leaning against it is a Schwinn bike with a basket on the handle bars. 

   The rabbit is not black or white like a domesticated rabbit. It is mottled and mouse brown like a wild rabbit. It is a gentle creature but not docile or dumb. I watch it rattling around in its cage, waiting, like I wait at my window, like the bike waits against the hutch. Its paint is faded and powdery from the sun and rust has begun to creep out from the joints where wire crosses wire on the basket.

   Soon the alarm on the bank will sound. I won't hear it but will know none-the-less that it is ringing. The rabbit will too. He will stop his shuffling and stand at the door of the cage until I come out to get him. This is what we have been waiting for, me, the rabbit and the bike.

   I take up the rabbit and get on the bike. Once we are stable the rabbit goes into the basket and we head down town. As we peddle up to the bank the police cars stand in the middle of the road akimbo to each other and the buildings that flank the street. The bank is on a corner, its door cuts a fourty-five degree angle between the side and the front so that as you leave you face out into the intersection. This scene is of course from television, Dilinger may run out of the bank, the  police cars may very well say Mayberry on the door.

   I pop down the kickstand and remove the rabbit from the basket and set it down in the street a little way off from the police cars. He is quiet and still. The officers, guns aready, have seen this before. The weapons are only a precautian. The robbers can be seen moving about inside. The rabbit has begun to grow.

   The robbers run out, bulging bags of money in hand, faithful to their cartoon genesis. Their rushed steps carry them out into the street, guns held ready to fight their way out if they have to. That's when they see the two story bunny.

   They stare open mouthed. Their arms go slack, guns and money hang at their sides. They are astounded. The rabbit looks peacefully down at them, his nose wiggles his eyes blink and..and that's it.

  The bunny does nothing he stands there and exudes goodness. He doesn't pounce on them reach down and snatch one by the head to eat him like a carrot. The rabbit just stands there silent, somehow conveying to all of us that "this is what good is. You can make any choice about what happens from here on out but this is what good is and this is what you will be leaving without if you continue what you started."

   The no longer such bad guys put down their guns, the bank manager comes out and collects the money, the police put their catch in the back of the car and escort them to the edge of town and send them on their way.