You're probably familiar with the Mother Goose rhyme about the old woman who lived in a shoe. She gave them broth with no bread, whipped them soundly, put them to bed. So it appears that in the short term she actually did know what to do.
This little ditty was printed in 1784 but existed in some form long before that. And it's had influence through the years. For one in an Ellery Queen novel called There Was an Old Woman, which does at least have something to do with shoes.
But also, and more to the point, someone actually built a house meant to look like the big shoe the lady moved into. It's on Bear Lake, which is on the border of Idaho and Utah. It looks to be a nice destination for families with children, especially if they live in or are already traveling through the West. What seems best about it is that it can tickle their imagination, and not in the sensory overload way that the most advertised places do.
2 comments:
Mother Goose, eh? I always felt sorry for those poor children..
The Ellery Queen story sounds like one of their more bizarre efforts - sibling rivalry on the part of one particular sibling. Nasty business because it sounds like they were pretty nice guys compared to Thurlow and his mother (I'm just assuming he did the deeds not having read the story and his mom did shoot at the reporters and Velie). But you're right that it did have something to do with shoes.
The shoe house looks intriguing but would be good if there was some kind of nursery tale museum things around. What was very nice were the pictures of the family at Bear Lake. The rickety boardwalk and the white sand make it look like an abandoned New England beach.
Probably, even for the time, the child-rearing on display is an absurd exaggeration. One hopes, anyway.
I gave short shrift to the Ellery Queen novel because it wasn't the focus of the post. But I've read it a couple of times and it is good. One thing about their books is that they tend to bounce between relatively realistic plots and over-the-top ones. There Was an Old Woman was one of the latter, and very clever at it.
More nursery tale things does sound like a neat idea. Maybe they can make that a goal for their next fundraiser. It does look like a very nice beach, of the freshwater variety, and seems relatively accessible as well. I like the stele that says "Idaho" on one side and "Utah" on the other.
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