The man entered the shoe store complaining that his feet hurt, because they were tired and they needed some tender loving care. The salesperson said, “Well sir you have come to the right place, as we have something that goes way beyond your basic dress shoes, or cheap sneakers here, as our basset hound Jason would tell you, ‘Quiet your barking dogs in the most comfortable shoe that you will ever wear’. Prince Phillip of Great Britain chose Hush Puppies to wear on a 1959 visit to the United States and at that same time Warren Beatty was wearing them. David Bowie wore Hush Puppies and Princess Diana’s had a custom-made pair. Tom Hanks wore them in Forest Gump and Dennis Rodman, Jim Carrey, Sharon Stone, Patricia Arquette, Ellen DeGeneres, Daryl Hannah, Lenny Kravitz and even ‘Seinfeld’s’ Kramer have worn these shoes. Frank Sinatra’s Rat Pack including Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop wore Hush Puppies and the Beatles wore them on their U.S. tours in the mid-1960s.
They were the first shoes advertised on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, but an ‘electrifying’ boost was given to the brand in 1965 at a Rolling Stones concert in Sacramento, California, when Keith Richards accidentally touched his guitar against an ungrounded microphone and was knocked unconscious. Medics believed that the crepe-soled Hush Puppies that he was wearing at the time saved his life. They were embraced by hippies wearing tie-dyed shirts, beads, bell bottom jeans, long sideburns during San Francisco’s “Summer of Love” in 1967. In 1974, Jimmy Buffett recorded the song ‘Come Monday’ which featured the lyrics ‘I’ve got my Hush Puppies on’, and this song reached #3 on the charts. By 1990, Hush Puppies became so popular that Mikhail Gorbachev invited the brand to become the first American company to manufacture and sell footwear in the Soviet Union. Come into the store sir and I am sure that we can do something about your tired feet.” The man said, “OK I will try on a pair, but I think that Keith Richards could live through anything and after the next nuclear war, he will be this only thing left alive besides the cockroaches.”
Written for Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Tale Weaver #310 hosted by Michael where the prompt is
Tired and Run Down.