The Wooden Shoe is the best-known and best-received of the songs I sing and wrote, or in this case helped write. It was used as the music for Psalm 27. The song and the tune were started by Quentin Reed, the summer after I got home from my mission. This was my second summer to intern as a geophysical assistant at Amoco in Denver (Pan American the summer 1970 before my mission). I think added verses 3-6 and C2-C3. Quentin and I had written Song 087 – The First Prayer the first summer I worked in Denver, which song was probably a major reason I kept at writing songs. Quentin said this song was about Marti, who though engaged to me, still lived in a nursery rhyme called “The Wooden Shoe.” After my mission, Elder Jones (from Delta) and myself received permission to tour Europe on our way home (we never expected to be back in Europe again). We had taken the ferry from Dover and the train to Paris. We rented a little Mini-Cooper and drove to Antwerp in Belgium, to Holland, to Germany, to Switzerland to see my companion Bruno Steinle, and back to Paris. In Holland I purchased a small wooden shoe, which looked like the one to the left. The extended image is of a house built to look like a cowboy boot, reminding me of my 40 years in the wilderness of Texas. Both images are intended to help recall the nursery rhyme by Mother Goose:
“There was an old woman who lived in a shoe,
She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do,
She gave them some broth without any bread;
And whipped them all soundly and put them to bed.”
I like this song. A lot more than the nursery rhyme. I especially like the way others like the song when I sing it to them. Wish all of my songs brought this kind of joy to others.
A goal is for this site to be interactive, for others to record their versions of the Psalms, or provide images or videos which explain a Psalm better. E-mail images, audio, or video to submit@psalmscountdown.net. By making a submission you agree to release copyright and to allow W3D to publish your submission, acknowledging posting of your submission is entirely up to W3D.