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Original poster

Any Laura Ingalls Wilder fans?

233 replies

moondog · 16/09/2012 19:17

I visited the LIW house and museum in Missouri a few weeks ago and it was one of the most moving experiences ever. I made a detour of thousands of miles to see it.
If anyone loves her just as much as I do I wanted the chance to tell you about it so that you can savour every delicious detail.

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Original poster
moondog · 17/09/2012 18:18

God yes, Ma complaining about stinking Indians.
In 'Farmner Boy' a terrifying brutal part when the teacher gets out a huge bullwhip to deal with a big group of rough boys who want to beat him up (and actually killed the last teacher.)

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HumphreyCobbler · 17/09/2012 18:18

them Grin

Laura was under five foot wasn't she?

The bit about Mr Edwards gets me too.

Butchering your own pigs is GREAT. We made black pudding and brawn and everything. This year the pigs are rather small so have had a stay of execution.

Original poster
moondog · 17/09/2012 18:17

Chandon, it wasn't sad.
She was happy. They had a good life.

Also intersting is how Laura and Rose made adjustments for the sake of narrative, omitting or collapsing events. They left Walnut Grove (Plum Creek) and went to run a hotel in Burr Oak, Iowa, then came back. A little brother diea and was buried there.

Yes, so sad that none of the girls had children. Rose left all royalties to a young lad she semi adopted and now his daughter gets the lot and doesn't help out with the museum in Manson.

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Tommy · 17/09/2012 18:16

big fans here too - I would love to go there!
I bought a set when I was pregnant too and read them to all my DSs. We have them on audio book and love listening to them in the car. DH and I always exchange a Hmm when Ma's rather less than tolerant views come out!!

Original poster
moondog · 17/09/2012 18:15

Who was tiny?
Or what?
The quilts?
Or them? Grin

You can see Mary's tiny little (adult) shoes and the beadwork she did at the college for the blind.
I couldn't even continue reading to my kids when I got to the part about Mr Edwards walking 40 miles iwh Christmas presents for them.

I love all that di it yourself stuff.
I was running a grist mill this summer in the States. That was ace.
What is all this about butchering your own pigs?
I want to do that.

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Chandon · 17/09/2012 18:14

Tell me more.

Those books are my comfort haven, when dh sees me read little house books he knws I am down or sick and is especially kind to me.

I think they are magical as they really transport you to a different time and you get to meet real people. I love so much about it, I love her strong personality most. I grew up with Laura Ingalls Wilder ( and Jo from little women, and Lizzie Bennett ) as my role models. I liked it that she refused to say she would obey Almanzo in the wedding ceremony. Was she a bit f a feminist? ....

Bit sad about how hard her life was once she married.

HumphreyCobbler · 17/09/2012 18:11

I would be overwhelmed too. Those books were terribly important to me as a child.

I was always terribly impressed by how skilled these people had to be. House building, pig killing and butchery (I thought of Laura roasting the pig tail when we butchered our own pigs for the first time), hunting, cooking, farming. They had to do it all or they would have nothing.

HumphreyCobbler · 17/09/2012 18:09

Pa's fiddle? The quilts they made?

They were tiny weren't they? Both of them.

Original poster
moondog · 17/09/2012 18:05

They like Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder best and I finished it last night and enjoyed it very much.
If you could only see her lovely stone chimney and tiny little bespoke kitchen Almanzo made for her with a lovely view as she hated making bread! Her little writing desk! The beds they died in! Finally, their grave in the Mansfilef cemetery a mile or so away.

Speaking ot the guides was momentous in itself. They told me stories of people turning up from all over the world. We tored with a group of Mennonites so at one stage it was like we had gone completely back in time.

Then we had a picnic in a grove by the house.
It was the best part of my time in the States, it beat even the week we spent later on in the summer in NYC.

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Original poster
moondog · 17/09/2012 18:01

Every scrap of the house was built by Almanzo and it grew and grew as they prospered over the years. It is exactly as it was and the people running it told me upstairs is full to the brim of more stuff that they haven't room to exhibit. There will shortly be a new museum.

As many of you know, she began to write seriously only at a late age, with her daughter's encouragement. Rose was for a time, the seconf highest paid journalist in the States, and the sotry of how she nurtured her mother's talent, only to be eclipsed by it is extremely interesting and complex. As Rose grew wealthy, she built another fancy house near the old one for her parents and got them to move in, while she took over the farmhous. Then after 7 years she left and they moved straight back in!

Rose was a trailblazing feminist, whizzing aronud the place, hanging out in Albania and doing all sorts of stuff women didn't do in those days.
Many of the people at the house/museum knew her when they were children. I bought a sunbonnet there (which I wear after a G&T or two) and on my kitchen table I have some hickory nuts from the farm. It overwhelms me to see them there.

The museum folk don't like the book 'The Wilder Life' (it is on sale there) and told me they thoguht it made fun of them. I diasagreed with them and told them it was simply about people looking at her throguh a fresh light. I loved it. She reminded me of me, and reading it a few months ago made me decide to go and visit.

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SheelaNeGoldGig · 17/09/2012 18:00
Envy

I'd love to go someday.

Original poster
moondog · 17/09/2012 17:54

Oh how lovely that there are so many of you.
Gather around while I fix us some hot coffee and salt pork. Grin

Ok, brief background is that I have always loved LIW and read her books over and over as a child and indeed an adult. A few years ago (thanks to MN conversation) I got more interested in her life as an adult and found out more about the numerous sites associated with here. The most important is argualby, the one that seems least important as it is the house she and Almanzo built and where she lived after the stories ended but it is here that she wrote the books and where all the important artefacts are kept.

This is where I went-Rocky Ridge Farm in Mansfield Missouri.
Here

Over the years I have spent many summers in the Staes on sort of working holiday and this year we took the children for 6 weeks. Beforehand I read them all nine books (we finished the last the day before we flew) and as I read to them each night, even my dh crept in to listen and they were all as enchanted as I was. So when I told my dh that, instead of the beach hoilday we had planned, we would be going to Rocky Ridge farm, he happily agreed.

I can't beging to describe how amazing it was. It is just a little amateurish outfit run by elderly women, but that is what makes it so special. It has everything there you can imagine, Pa#'s fiddle, Mary's braille slates, the girls' quilts, the little jewellery box-cases and cases of lovely things. I began to cry as I went in (I am NOT that sort of person) and couldn't stop for half an hour. It was so overwhelming.

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Chrestomanci · 17/09/2012 17:36

also v interesting

mignonette · 17/09/2012 17:36

I have this cookbook -

www.amazon.co.uk/The-Little-House-Cookbook-Frontier/dp/0064460908/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1347899588&sr=8-1

I have always loved her writing and that of her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane. My grandpa built me a trundle bed and my grandmother made me a 'pioneer' style dress, smock and sun hat which I practically lived in as an 8 year old. I can still recite huge chunks of the books from memory, such is the amount of re-reading both in childhood and adulthood.

I have several biographies of Laura and her family and was so upset when I read about Ma and Pa's little son who sadly died.

I'd love to hear everything OP!

Chrestomanci · 17/09/2012 17:31

this the article you were looking for?

I'm reading very gentle, comforting books at the moment as I'm Pg, but REALLY enjoying finding out about the lives of some of my favourite authors (although as they are largely very sad it does undo some of the good of the gentle books Smile). It's enough to turn you into a raving feminist...

Hullygully · 17/09/2012 17:13

ooo ooo me too.

LRDtheFeministDragon · 17/09/2012 17:11

Ohhh .... but that's the bits I love, theoriginal! Grin I always liked that you knew Laura secretly thought she was being better and she didn't see why Mary got all the credit!

(Erm ... I am a middle child too ... Grin Blush)

About her education, though ... I always squirmed in sympathy when she was faced with a class and three out of five of them were older than her! Scary.

I am always slightly disappointed that in photos Almanzo is really, really not good looking (though I reckon from photos standards of what's pretty have changed quite a lot). I kinda secretly wanted her to marry Cap Garland and you get the sneaking suspicion she had a thing for him too.

HumphreyCobbler · 17/09/2012 17:04

I vividly remember Laura moving from the family house when she married Almanzo, and the cake tasting like sawdust in her mouth when she realised that it was for ever. Seemed such a momentous change. I felt more for Laura at that moment than I did when I left my own parents home for the last time.

Bookbrain · 17/09/2012 16:55

My fave bit is when Almanzo Wilder gives Laura his name card and not Nellie :)

And do you remember the house they move into when they get married? I still want a big pantry with little handmade drawers to keep my flour and sugar and salt and pepper in. Why did I marry a man who can't do woodwork? sigh

Yohoahoy · 17/09/2012 16:54

ooh yes, big fan here - I even have the cookery book Blush

I have always wanted to visit the museum so would love to hear about it :)

TheApprentice · 17/09/2012 16:49

I'm another fan who would be very interested to hear what Moondog has to say. I still remember getting Little House in the Big Woods in my Christmas stocking one year.

TheOriginalSteamingNit · 17/09/2012 16:38

Somebody put up a really interesting link on another thread, about how Rose had romanticised and Laura resisted but gave in - and Laura was much less nice and indeed less well-educated than you'd think from the books.

I always thought the Mary-Laura relationship was done in a very passive-aggressive sneaky kind of 'Brutus was an honourable man kind of way. There are lots of things like 'Mary was a good girl, and Pa had told them not to move, so when the bad Indians came and started trying to kill the dog, Mary sat still like a good girl and did not try to help the dog, but Laura could not sit and be a good girl while the dog was being killed, so she bravely but naughtily got up and saved the dog's life'.

I mean, not that, but like that.

InkleWinkle · 17/09/2012 16:29

Moondog are you coming back to tell us about it? Smile

Takver · 17/09/2012 13:28

Its interesting, I've never thought of the books as particularly anti-Indian either. I'm thinking for example in Little House on the Prairie where Ma expresses what I imagine were pretty typical racist views for the time, but Pa points out that the white settlers have been taking over the native people's land, for example, and are the wrong-doers themselves.

Whitamakafullo - is your biography good? I'd love to know the title if so.

Agree with LRD that a mother and daughter co-operating on a book should be celebrated rather than criticised.