Back to: The Mystery Spot Rambling Ned and the Great Shoe War of 1910
Ned: Did I tell you about how I was wounded in the Great Shoe War of 1910?
Me: Please, Ned, stop telling stories. I'm begging you...
Ned: Our story begins in 1789...
Kid #1: Wait a minute! I thought you said that it took place in 1910...?
Ned: I didn't say it took place in 1789. I just said it began in 1789. You see, in 1789 a poor cobbler named Austin Glumfrik who moved from some other country to this country. Mr. Glumfrik started a little cobbler shop that made the highest quality shoes anywhere. He passed the shop on to his son, who passed it on to his son, who passed it on to his son, who... well, you get the idea. This continued until it reached Austin's great-great-great-great-etcetera-etcetera grandson, Austin Kramer Glumfrik XVII. He had no cobbling skills whatsoever. One time he tried to make shoes for a poor girl who never owned a pair of shoes and he gave the shoes to her and the girl just burst out in tears. And I'm not talking about tears of joy, either.
So he just turned it into just a plain old shoe store. He called it "Shoe Heel" because back then heels were a new thing and Austin Kramer Glumfrik XVII thought that the heel was the most important part of the shoe. "Shoe Heel" quickly became the biggest and the best shoe store in the tri-county area. Not to mention the only. But early in 1910, Arnold Furzlefurd opend up a rival shoe store, "Shoe Heaven," with the slogan: "Good shoes go to Shoe Heaven. Bad shoes go to Shoe Heel." In addition, he gave serious discounts on clodhoppers. This made Austin what's-his-face really, really, really, really, really mad. Very very really, really, really, really, really mad. As the months wore on, Austin Kramer Glumfrik called his rival "a jerk," "a big jerk," "a really big jerk," "a really, really big jerk," "a really, really big stupid jerk," and "so stupid that I can't think of something good to say." To which Arnold Furzlefurd replied, "takes one to know one" and slashed his prices 2 percent.
In the spring of 1910, there was a "Hey, It's May" parade and Arnold was the Grand Marshal. Austin Kramer Glumfrik XVII was jealous, so he hid in an abandoned building near the parade route and threw garbage on the floats from a third story window. Most of the trash missed its target and instead landed on the local beauty queen. Since she had never been bombarded with rotten fruit before, she panicked and fell off the float. The "One Hundred Years of Potato Growers" float had to brake suddenly to keep from running her over, and in the process caused a huge log jam of floats. This wouldn't have been so bad if the fire jugglers had stayed away from the "Carl's Highly Combustible Chemicals" float. They tripped, and in the fiery destruction that followed, the town't beloved supplier of high quality sneakers at rock-bottom prices disappeared without a trace. Of course, I'm talking about Arnold Furzlefurd. His son, Arnold Furzlefurd Jr., vowed revenge on all the Glumfrik clan. And thus began the Great Shoe War of 1910.
Since "Shoe Heaven" and "Shoe Heel" were across the street from each other, the owners hurled shoes at each other's stores. Soon people started to avoid the general area out of fear of being clobbered with clogs. There were heaps of hushpuppies and flip-flop fallout spread over the entire town. Now this is where I come into the story. There I was, walking down the middle of the street, minding my own business when... WHAM! I was gunned down with galoshes! Pelted with platform shoes! Hammered with high heels! Creamed with cleats! And so on and so forth. I was badly hurt in the incident, so I sued those people with the funny names for all that they were worth. I ended up running them both out of business. This made the townspeople mad, since now there were no shoe stores in the tri-county area. They soon ran me out of town on a rail. Well, sort of. I made my escape on one of those railroad carts with a pump handle while the entire town chased after me in a hijacked train. But I still had a lot of money, so things worked out in the end. And thus concludes my story of the Great Shoe War of 1910.