The Storyteller's Little House

Summer travels took a detour this year, and in July the kids and I wended our way through hilly back roads of Missouri and found Laura and Almanzo Wilder’s little house in the Ozarks.  I’d heard a long time ago that there was a museum there, but I thought, “Missouri?  Laura never lived in Missouri!”  But she did.  It was not a move taken lightly.  After their marriage, written about in These Happy Golden Years, Laura and Almanzo suffered greatly in De Smet, South Dakota: they had lost an infant son, lost their livelihood in a drought, and their property in a fire.  So when their daughter Rose was seven years old, and Laura had saved $100 from sewing jobs, Laura and her husband packed up what was left, said tender farewells to Laura’s parents, and began the long trek to Mansfield, Missouri.

In the house in Mansfield there is a picture of Laura and Almanzo taken in 1942.  Laura is 75 and Almanzo is 85.  Since they are the only two in the picture, you can’t tell that Almanzo is only 5 feet 4 inches.  Laura is a few inches shorter still.  Their bodies are not touching; nevertheless the picture exudes closeness and contentment.  How could I know so much about this couple?  How could I feel so connected?  Because Laura wrote her stories.  I know how much Almanzo would do for her, how much he loved her in such a practical, earthy way.  Perhaps they are not such an extraordinary couple.  But we know them.  That’s the difference.  Laura had wanted for years to write down her stories--the stories of life on the prairie.  She raised a daughter and partnered with Almanzo in the upkeep and daily routines of the farm.  Their daughter Rose became a world traveler and a published journalist and author. Then Rose said, “It’s time for you to write your stories.”  With the earnings from one of her books, Rose built her parents a sort of retirement home--with electricity and lots of space.  It was nicknamed The Rock House.  Here in 1932 at age 65 Laura began writing The Little House in the Big Woods.  Seven years later Laura had written her first four books.  Years of being eyes for her blind sister Mary had sharpened Laura’s ability to describe the world around her.  Rose typed and edited them and they were published with great acclaim.

Having read the Little House series at least twice through, it was pure delight to visit the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum with my children.  Consisting of a low-ceilinged museum building and the two houses where Laura wrote the books, it was more than a museum full of artifacts.  How much would the fiddle have meant to me if I had not heard Pa play it for the girls as they feel asleep in the wagon on the prairie?  If I hadn’t sung along to “Turkey in the Straw”?  I did these things when I read Laura’s books.  And what would it mean to see Ma’s sewing machine if I hadn’t read about Ma and Laura making Laura’s lovely wedding dress (which was black, by the way)?  And why would I care to see pictures of Ma’s china shepherdess if I didn’t know how carefully she was packed up for every move across the US, and that unpacking her was the sign of the family being truly settled . . .until the next move.  I wandered through the exhibit and houses with a sense of privilege and excitement.  The tours were guided by women who seemed to love and admire Laura and Almanzo just as much as I do.

  

Prior to our visit to the museum, I started reading The Little House on Rocky Ridge to the children.  It turns out I was something of an uninformed elitist: I had always considered anything with the title “Little House . . .” that wasn’t written by Laura Ingalls Wilder as something second class--not worth the read because it wasn’t first hand like Laura’s books were.  But once I learned that Laura, Almanzo and Rose had settled in Missouri, I was curious to know more about that time in their lives.  The Little House on Rocky Ridge was written by Roger Lea MacBride, Rose Wilder Lane’s adopted grandson and heir--she never had children of her own.  As I began reading, my skepticism began to evaporate.  The story is told from Rose’s point of view, but in the third person, just as Laura’s books are written from her perspective.  But in the Rocky Ridge books, Laura, the tomboy who dislikes having her bonnet on her head and has trouble obeying, is now Rose’s mother: Mama.  I found myself smiling and shaking my head and wondering, Laura, don’t you remember being a child?  And then I feel like I know Laura even better--we have now both been children and mothers.

The Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder usually includes The First Four Years.  This book was actually the only one not published during Laura’s lifetime or even Rose’s.  When I first read it as an adult, I knew none of this, but I did see that it had quite a different tone.  So many difficult things happened to Laura and Almanzo, and the story didn’t have life to it.  When I finished it, I grieved.  I was sad for our girl Laura who had married with so much hope and commitment, and was now facing a difficult life.  In my reading aloud to Elisabeth at age 5 I stopped at These Happy Golden Years, telling Elisabeth that I wasn’t ready to read The First Four Years to her.  She bugged me about it for a while, but eventually forgot about it.  Nevertheless, I carried around that sad ending in my mind.

But reading The Little House on Rocky Ridge opened up the story again, and this time there was hope.  Manly and Laura had suffered much, but they had saved, and they were ready to find a new life.  The book, well-researched by MacBride who was privileged to hear the stories directly from Rose Wilder Lane and read her journals, ends with their new community of Mansfield coming together to build a barn for the Wilder family just in time for winter.  

My six-year-old son was astonished to hear me say that Laura was a hero.  “She’s not a hero.  You have to be someone like Neil Armstrong to be a hero.”  So I explained to him how Laura is a hero because she held these words and pictures and memories in her heart and when the time was right, she poured them out so that generations later, we can understand the mindset of a pioneer family and we can see, from a child’s view, what it was like to leave the only home you ever knew, and to head west.  We feel the angst of living in a new railroad town.  We endure the long winter and the chapped hands and the grim sadness and fear that we might run out of food.  

She’s a hero because she loved her husband and stood by him for better or worse, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, until death parted them.  Almanzo had a stroke at a young age and lost good use of his hands.  A fire destroyed their home.  They lost an infant son.  

She’s a hero because after 65 years of living, she knew it was not too late to tell her story and to tell it well.  This was not her first writing, but this is the stuff that would last.  She wrote four books at that house, and then she and Almanzo were ready to return to the farmhouse down the road that had been their home for most of their married lives.  She wrote to her daughter Rose, “Thank you for five years of rest.”  

Thank you, Laura.  You've helped us see our world.  

For information on the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum, click here.

For information on the Little House Books and other books about Laura's family, click here.