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never needed replacin’.”
    â€œHow true, Homer,” said Grandpa Virgil. “Not even a single shoelace.” 7
    Grandpa Homer continued. “And soon word spread about them Everlasting Shoes. Folks took to calling them Gottfrieds, and folks came from all across the county and sometimes from clear out of state just to buy a pair. They’d stay in town right at the Any Hotel, where we all live today. Except for back then it was still called the Stanley.” 8
    â€œHow I do remember, Homer,” said Grandpa Virgil. “I was only about knee-high back then, but I remember my pa sayin’ how much hair there was in that hotel on any given day. Must’ve been good business.”
    â€œMust’ve been, Virgil,” said Grandpa Homer. “But now listen close, kids, because here’s what happened next. Within a month or two, there warn’t a man, woman, or child within seventy-five miles of Wymore that ain’t bought and wore a pair of Gottfrieds. And so Gottfried Schuh naturally started makin’ more and more of his famous shoes. After all, they was sellin’ like blowout patches. 9 But the problem was his shoes ain’t never wore out, and so no one ever needed to buy another pair of his shoes again. They just took to tradin’ ’em with their neighbors whenever their feet growed some. And that’s how come Gottfried Schuh never sold another pair of his Gottfrieds, and at the end of six months he went clean out of business with a huge pile of Gottfrieds in his factory.”
    Not only was that the bad part of the story, but it was also the part where our grandpas decided to spin us around in the chairs to face the big mirror, put a bowl on our heads, and give us a trim. 10 We usually felt sorry for ourselves when that happened, but as long as we got to find out what happened to Gottfried Schuh, we said we wouldn’t do no complaining. Our grandpas said it was a deal.
    â€œSo there he was, kids,” Grandpa Homer began again. “Penniless once more on account of makin’ all them eternal shoes. But a man like Gottfried Schuh warn’t a man to give up so easy. He might’ve been outta work and down on his luck and without a penny in his pants, but there was something he had on his hands. And can either of you guess what that was?”
    We looked at each other in the mirror, and by the way our tongues were sticking out the sides of our mouths, we could tell each of us was trying to come up with a better guess. But none of us did, and so we just said, “Nope.”
    Grandpa Homer turned to Grandpa Virgil. “Virgil, what about you?”
    And Grandpa Virgil said, “Why, Homer, I’d say he had his hands on the McKay machine, is what I’d say.”
    â€œRight you are,” said Grandpa Homer. “The McKay machine. But what do you do with a McKay machine when you already got more shoes than you can ever find feet for in the whole state?”
    That was another question we didn’t know the answer to.
    â€œWell,” Grandpa Homer said, “if your name’s Gottfried Schuh, you roll up them sleeves of yours and tinker around with that McKay machine and make it do something else useful. And you probably wanna know just what that was.”
    We did.
    â€œWell, then, I’ll tell ya,” said Grandpa Homer. “But to tell ya, I’m gonna have to tell ya somethin’ else first. You see, Gottfried still kept in contact with a sister he had back in the old country. They’d send letters to each other back and forth, and that was how Gottfried kept up on the gossip in his old village. Things like who had the best apricot preserves that season and whose hen laid the most eggs.”
    â€œWhose?” we asked.
    â€œ
Whose?
” said Grandpa Homer.
    â€œYeah, whose?” asked Grandpa Virgil.
    Grandpa Homer just shook his head. “That ain’t so important right now. But what is important is