3 Santas and the Emerald Palace

It is Christmas time. Time to go see the Emerald Prince in the Emerald Palace. Now the Emerald Prince is currently in “good mode.” Otherwise we would have had to go see the Frog Prince in the Boggy Pond.

But he is on Santa’s list of good boys and girls this year and has made the cut-so it is the Emerald Prince we go to visit. So it is off to see the Emerald Prince and convey our best wishes for a blessed Christmas.

So we deck ourselves with Christmas finery including Santa Hats and head from South Ozarklandia to the North Regions of the State of Misery where the Emerald Prince resides.

Now the Emerald Prince lives in the Emerald Palace. And quite a grand place it is –at least for some of us in Ozarklandia. The floors are not like our floors in Ozarklandia.
Instead of being made of dirt, they are made of concrete. Instead of having “outhouses”, the Emerald Palace, has indoor plumbing. Its guests receive regular meals. Now the cooks are not from the Cordon Bleu in Paris; however the food is nourishing. The guests refer to the Palace has having “3 squares a day and a cot.”

For an Ozarklandian, the place looks pretty good. The Emerald Prince seems to be well treated. He is in a better frame of mind than before he took up residence at the Emerald Palace. He is safe, reads much and works out regularly at the Spa at the Emerald Palace. His clothes are better than when he lived on the street. He is safer and healthier. All in all, things are looking up. In fact the “digs” are better than many of us have in Ozarklandia. (This reminds me of a wonderful story. I was in church when a young lady talked about going to a mission to the poor New Mexico Indians. She said some of the people on the mission not being from Ozarklandia said how poor the Indians housing was. She said to her the housing looked better than what she lived in around Neck City. So I guess it is just a matter of perspective anyway.)

The Emerald Palace has an emerald roof. (See pictures above.) Evidently it is very popular and people want to live there real bad because it is surrounded by barbed wire to keep people out.

So off the three Santa go to visit the Emerald Prince. We arrive dressed all in red and with our Santa hats on. As usual, HarleyDad has his camera and is snapping shots with Great Abandon.

Now before you go into the Great Hall of Visitation, you have to walk through a machine that is an electronic hunting dog I think? It sniffs you. Now for us Ozarklandians that is concerning because when you only take a bath on Saturday night and this is on Thursday, you get a little worried. At any rate HarleyDad takes a photo of the “Sniffer.” This is evidently a “no-no”. One of the large Emerald Palace Guards comes over and wants to know if Harley Dad shot the “Sniffer.” Sure I reply, I shoot everything. The Guard makes HarleyDad delete the photo. It seems somehow that if the wrong people know too much about the “Sniffer”, they will be sneakin’ into the Emerald Palace and perhaps bringin’ in too much Christmas joy.

Then comes the Bad News. No Christmas hats inside the Great Hall of Waiting. Grinches. They never explained why—but HarleyDad believe it is because they think people will be sneakin’ in presents in them their hats. So we doff our hats in honor of Emerald Palace Tradition.

We are ushered then into the Great Hall of Waiting, while we sing Christmas carols to the consternation to the servants of the Emerald Palace.

We see the Emerald Prince but before we can meet face to face, he must first be arrayed in the fine clothes of Visitation provided to guests of the Emerald Palace. Grey pants and white tee shirts are the Christmas dress of the Palace.

We finally get to visit with the Emerald Prince and the visit is a good one. We discuss numerous items including the baking of the wonderful Christmas pastries of the Emerald Palace. Also there is a discussion of the mysterious method of manufacturing a Christmas waisal (known to the guests of the Palace as Christmas “Hooch”) by a process that we are very familiar with in Outer Ozarlandia. This involves ice and copper tubing. But the secrets of manufacture must remain confidential like all great recipes.

One of the other peculiar customs of the Emerald Palace is that we are allowed to bring in Christmas bags full of quarters. So quarters we bring. We feed them into machines for softdrinks, pop corn, pizza and the wonderful fare of the Guest Hall. This fare is know as the “Big Az” (yes, you heard it right-the Big Az) burger. This is one of the finest burgers known to mankind. Then there are the cigarette machines allowing you to have Marlboro’s which can be traded to letters, stamps etc. etc.

Yes, dear reader, American capitalism, goes on in the Emerald Palace. Think of it as Junior Achievement for American’s penal institutions. Now HarleyDad believes that there are so many guys in the Palace because they thought it was a penile institutionsand after they got there found out it was a penal institution. Bet they were surprised.But enough of deep philosophy.

By the way, when you visit the Palace do not wear a white tee shirt. This is very important. The guests of the Palace wear white tee shirts when they visit their families. So if they have to get up in ordered to be numbered (Count your blessings, name them one by one), then if you are wearing a white tee shirt they may make you be counted too. That would really freak them out-thinkin’ that they had one more prisoner than they thought was in the Guest Hall. So don’t confuse ‘em.

At any rate, the visit was a great one. Many of the Guests of the Palace are depressed this time of year because the barbed wire keeps the families of the Guests from breaking in and spending Christmas with their loved one in these plush surroundings. But the three Santas from Ozarklandia would not be denied and broke in anyway. However after a few hours of bliss, we were thrown out of the Great Hall of Waiting so other anxious family members could break in as well.

Now it is reported that our President, W., said that we have so many prisoners in the State of Misery that we should just put up barbed wire all around the state. I guess W. has found a way to solve our problem. What’s a little barbed wire around the state. We been having to many out-of- staters (foreigners) pass through these parts anyway.

We did see some prayin’ during the Christmas season. Right next to us were two guys with a Bible praying. Now that seemed like a good thing to do around Christmas time. I guess I have seen as much praying in prisons as I have seen in churches. Both are pretty good places for doing that. Sinkin’ ships and fallin’ airplanes are often good places for that too.

Did you know that Jesus was in prison. Matthew 25:36 says, “I was in prison and you came to visit me.” Now HarleyDad used to preach in prisons long time a ago. But he still suspects that the prisoners liked to see him because he brought the Sunday paper when he came to preach-and he did not preach too long. Now HarleyDad has refined his techiques and has cleverly sent his own son into prisons to identify with the prisoners. Ironic isn’t it.

Well, it was time to end our visit. But it was a joyous visit, a good visit. and even the Palace Servants and the esteemed Guests of the Palace seemed to pick up the spirit of Christmas cheer.

We put our Christmas hats back on, having waved good-bye to the Emerald Prince, and headed to our sleigh to visit other good girls and boys.

They did look at us strangely however as took some of the shots above in weather near 0 degrees outside the Palace. I guess it was because we did not have our coats on.

Above are some pics of our visit.