He moved quickly from toothpicks to toys. And by the time he was a lad of 168, he had carved over a million wooden trains, trucks, ducks, and doodads. Needless to say, his room was getting really crowded. Just then, Shinny Upatree called.
Living in the cold northlands in a dense forest, Bushy was, well, bushy. He grew thick, curling hair that fit his head like a hair helmet and was so dense you couldn't drive a nail through it, even if you'd wanted to for some strange reason. His hair blended perfectly into his thick white beard, giving him the look of someone wearing a huge cotton ball with just his eyes, nose and forehead sticking out.
Bushy's whole family dressed in dark green and brown clothing made from the velvet dropped from the green antlers of certain kinds of Moose and Elk. It was cross stitched with soft vines which often still bore blackberry leaves and dried berries, sort of ornamental-like. Dressed like this, the elves were so camouflaged you could only see them in the forest shadows if they grinned.
When Bushy got Shinny's call to come to the North Pole he loaded all the wooden toys into his wagon (his really really big wagon pulled by a really really big horse) and headed off to the land of ice and snow. After 5 months, Bushy showed up on the very spot where the new Village was being built at the North Pole. He'd never seen so many kinds of elves before. And there was this one guy in a red suit who had a big white bushy beard, just like Bushy's. You know who.
Well, boy, were Santa and Shinny ever excited when they saw all the wonderful wooden toys Bushy had brought! There were just enough for Santa's first Christmas. And the elves would even be able to use some of the big toys to finish building the Village. Seems that the entire Village was based on a toy theme, almost as if the whole idea and purpose of the Village was...toys. Son of a gun. Talk about being in the right place at the right time!
And so began Bushy's stay at the North Pole as head ToyMaker. He put on his familiar carpenter's apron with deep pockets laden with homemade tools, mauls and awls mostly. He carried a nail sack of wooden pegs. His hat was the bucket he used to gather tree sap for gluing wooden toy pieces. The tree sap worked great on the toys, but it didn't do much for his hair. Of course, when more modern times rolled around, Bushy's attire became more updated. He swapped the wooden glue bucket hat for a nice aluminum one.
Since Santa would be needing more toys for next year, Bushy began teaching his carving secrets to hundreds of elf apprentice toymakers. They were soon turning out enough toys to replace all the toys Santa had delivered that first Christmas. The only trouble was that Santa was going to need even more toys each year, because there were more boys and girls in the world each year. Bushy knew he had to come up with something to make more toys.
One day, Bushy disappeared into the tree house where he lived. He didn't come out for 27 days and 27 nights. When he finally came out, he had two things. An incredible craving for a corn dog with mustard. And the blueprints for a magical toy making machine he called the Magnetic Kinetic Toy Hulla-Ballu.
When Santa saw the plans for this incredible toy making machine, he gasped with excitement. It would not only be the wonder of the North Pole, but of the whole world. And it would mean that there would be enough toys for all the good boys and girls all over the world for hundreds of years.
Bushy made that first toy making machine over 500 years ago, a second one about 260 years ago, and now this year he and his team of elf engineers are perfecting a brand new Magnetic Kinetic Toy Hulla-Ballu that will be the biggest and best ever at turning children's dreams into toys. The funny thing is that with all the power sources in the world today, the best one is still the hamster on a wheel that runs the whole doggone thing!
