Hello! I hope everyone is having a great Christmas. I wish all of you peace, love and joy in the coming year. This year, I wrote a story for Christmas. It's kind of an action/adventure Santa story for kids. Here it is. Enjoy!
SEARCH FOR SANTA
Hi, how’re you all doin’? I’m doin’
okay, I guess. I mean, I’m doin’ okay now, but it gotta admit I wasn’t
doin’ so hot a few days ago. What? Why? Whaddya mean why? Can’t someone
have some issues without everyone suddenly jumping all over him? Just
because your life is all hunky dory doesn’t mean you have to start
buttin’ in on my business.
Oh, uh, sorry about that. It’s just
that things’re goin’ okay now and I don’t wanna jinx it by bringin’ the
subject up. But, since we’re talkin’ a little about it now, and nothin’
ain’t happened so far, and it’s Christmas and all, I guess it’d be okay
to talk about it just this once. Besides, I gotta admit, I’m dyin’ to
tell someone about it.
I mean even now I don’t hardly believe
it. It’s kinda like somethin’ outta a dream. Okay, so I’m gonna tell
you, but don’t go askin’ if it’s true or did I make it up or nothin’
like that. ‘Cause I’m tellin’ ya, this is the gosh honest truth. Okay,
here goes nothin’.
First, I gotta tell you a little bit about
myself. The name’s Little Jumbo Twofeet, but you can just call me L.J.,
which is what everyone else calls me. Oh, now don’t start already. Don’t
look at me like that. Little Jumbo is my name. Why’re you laughin’?
It’s a perfectly good name for any respectable gnome to have.
What, again with the laughin’? What’s so funny? Oh, you don’t believe
I’m a gnome, huh? You think gnomes have high squeaky voices and are shy
and timid? Hah, shows how much you know about gnomes. We gnomes have one
of the most important jobs you could ever want to have. We help people.
Didn’t know that, huh? I didn’t think so. Lotsa people don’t.
Yeah, well here’s somethin’ else ya didn’t know. We also help Santa.
No, we don’t make toys! We ain’t elves. The elves make all the toys,
get all the glory, sit on shelves. Yeah I know all about them. Everyone
knows all about them. But that’s all they do. Kinda one-dimensional,
don’t ya think?
Now, we gnomes are much more important, but we
don’t get no publicity like. It’s okay, that’s the way we like it. Ya
see, while the elves are busy makin’ toys and bein’ cute, gnomes are
busy doin’ everything else.
Whaddya mean, like what? I mean like
everything. We take care of Santa’s sleigh, feed the reindeer, polish
the tack, and muck out the stalls. Gnomes take care of the grounds
around Santa’s magic castle. We plow the driveway and shovel the walk,
decorate the trees outside and change the bulbs on Santa’s Christmas
displays, and brother, does he have a bunch of displays!
Then,
there’s Santa’s magic castle and workshop itself. We make sure
everything in Santa’s workshop is workin’ and runnin’ smooth—conveyor
belts, workbenches, paint cans, toolkits. We chop wood for the fire for
Santa’s fireplace. We cook the meals, wash the dishes, and help Mrs.
Claus bake Christmas cookies.
Sometimes, Santa asks us to help
with a special project or problem. It was the gnomes that really solved
the problem with the Great Fog of ’64, where Rudolph saved the day. The
elves would like to think that they were responsible, but really it was
the gnomes. Going back even further, there was the year of the Great
Melt, in which the polar ice cap started meltin’ like no one else’s
business. You think we got a problem with global warmin’ now? Well you
ain’t seen nothin’ until you saw what that solar flare almost did to us a
couple of hundred years back.
So, like I said, even though the
North Pole is one of the happiest places on earth, we’ve still had our
share of hardship, just like everybody else. But all them bad times
rolled inta one ain’t nothin’ ta compare with what almost happened just a
few days ago. It was horrible, and it almost brought Santa, his magic
castle, the elves, the gnomes, and the whole kit and caboodle crashin’
down on us. We was that far from hangin’ up an outta business sign. I’m
tellin’ ya, it was that close.
It started just a little over a
week ago. I was walkin’ down the old mill path, just enjoyin’ a nice
winter walk. The mill stream was frozen over, snow was on the ground. It
was a real winter wonderland, just like always here at the North
Pole. I was just walkin’ along mindin’ my own business, enjoyin’ a
little free time, which is real rare this time of year.
So, I’m
walkin’ along, when all of a sudden I see some smoke comin’ up from
beyond Blitzin’s Ridge—off in the direction of the Ghostly Woods. It
wasn’t a homey lookin’ smoke like the white smoke that comes out of a
chimney. This smoke was black and dangerous lookin’ and there was a
whole lot of it.
Now, you can imagine I got real worried in a
hurry. First, smoke is always a bad sign, and second, nothin’ good ever
came from the Ghostly Woods. In my granddaddy’s day, when Santa was just
startin’ out, there were a lot of bad creatures that was livin’ up here
at the North Pole.
Before he could set up shop, Santa had to
clear all of them out. He signed an agreement with the gnomes to help.
The gnomes beat the creatures back, out of the North Pole and into the
Ghostly Woods. They were beaten so bad, that none of them creatures
dared show themselves for more than 1,000 years.
What? Huh? Oh,
what sorts of creature were they? Oh lots of nasties, I can tell ya.
There were bats and wolves, abominable snowmen and trolls. And goblins.
Oh, the goblins were the worst. I’d rather meet an abominable snowman
than a goblin any day. Luckily, goblins have become few and far between.
We don’t hardly ever see any these days. Or at least we didn’t, but I’m
gettin’ ahead of myself.
Like I was sayin’, I saw smoke comin’
from the direction of the Ghostly Woods—not a good sign. So I hoofed it
over to Santa’s workshop as quick as I could. I had to find the big guy
quick, and this time of year, he spends most of his time over at the
workshop doin’ quality control, because that’s what ya gotta do when you
got elves on the job, sorry to say.
When I got there, though,
Santa weren’t nowhere to be found. Nobody’d seen him since he went for a
little stroll just before lunch. This was bad. First, Santa had
precious little time for a stroll, and second, Santa never, and I mean never, missed a meal. I knew something was terribly wrong.
Quick
as anything, I rounded up a few of the lads—Tommy Tingle Crowsfoot,
Jingle Jangle Gobsmacker, and Hulu Wahoo Nederlander—for a search party.
Quickly, I told ‘em about the smoke I’d seen out Blitzen’s Ridge and
they all agreed that somethin’ must be goin’ on in the Wood.
The
next step was ta get us some supplies and provisions, because it ain’t
smart ta go runnin’ inta the Ghostly Woods willy-nilly without bein’
prepared. The only place to get the supplies was Santa’s magic castle.
It’s got anything in it that you could wish for. The only problem is ya
hafta ask Mrs. Claus for permission to take anything outta there.
Now
you can imagine that we didn’t wanna upset Mrs. Claus by tellin’ her
ol’ Santa was missin’. But, we still had to ask her for permission to
take the food and tools that we needed for the expedition.
It was
here that the elves helped us out. See, elves ain’t much good for
anything but makin’ toys. There is one other thing that they’re good at,
though, and while it’s usually annoyin’, this time it came in real
handy. Of course, I’m talkin’ about makin’ mischief. Elves always like a
good joke, especially when it’s at the expense of someone else.
I
was able to convince a few of ‘em ta play a joke on a couple of the
gnomes that were workin’ in the castle. They poured boilin’ water down
the backs of their shirts. Well, that set off a good knockdown, dragout
brawl that kept Mrs. Claus busy for the better part of an hour—plenty of
time for me and the boys to get what we needed and scram.
Once
we were all outfitted okay, we headed on over to the ridge. The smoke
was still risin’ as we climbed to the top of the hill and looked out
over the Ghostly Woods. It was just like I thought. The smoke was coming
from right in the middle of the woods. We knew we had to move quick.
There was only a coupla hours of daylight left, and nobody wanted to be
stuck in that haunted forest after dark.
It was then that I
spotted somethin’ lyin’ in the snow about midway between the ridge and
the woods. We all slid and slithered down the backside of the ridge as
quick as may be and trotted on over to it. We stood in a circle around
it, hardly daring to touch it.
Lying in a circle of churned up
snow was a big black boot. Only one person we knew wore a boot like
that. I picked it up and checked inside. Size 18 EEE. Sure enough, it
was Santa’s boot. Now things was lookin’ black indeed. Santa missin’,
one of his boots in the snow, signs of a struggle, and black smoke
comin’ from the Ghostly Woods. We didn’t know what was goin’ on, but it
sure as heck couldn’t be good.
