Summary

George returns home one day to find the garage door open and Betty standing inside agitated because he is supposed to take her to a church meeting and she cannot find her shoes. Betty complains about her feet all the time. New shoes apparently cause agony and she refuses to acknowledge that her feet have swollen and she needs a larger size. Despite George's efforts to buy her new shoes at several stores in the area, Betty insists on wearing her rundown sandals even in the winter. George humorously calls this routine the War of Shoes.

George likes to browse the historical items in the city office and he recalls his own maternal grandfather, Joseph William Baker, who opened a lumberyard in Madison, Missouri, at the end of World War I. His bride, Margaret, would eventually become George's beloved Mammy. Betty was born to...