Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" Series

[smittykins]

Since I'm much more a fan of the books than the TV show(blasphemy, I know), I decided to create a thread where we can discuss them.

 

Laura is my favorite character, since she's spunky and acts more like a normal child.  Mary has always been too "goody-goody" for my liking, starting with the first illustration in Little House In The Big Woods--she's walking very prim and proper, while Laura has her hat in her hand and skipping.  Mary didn't even want to play hopscotch because "it wasn't ladylike" and she was what, 6?

 

Ma also had her moments, making Laura give up Charlotte, always correcting her daughters' grammar(I know she had been a schoolteacher, but come on!), and tersely correcting Pa in LTOTP that it wasn't a sociable, but a "New England Supper."  I know it wasn't easy being married to Pa, and uprooting the family everytime his "wandering foot got to itching," but I wish she would loosen up just a little!

 

Anyway, looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

[radishcake]

Aw! Re-read time! These were my favorites when I was a kid. I always wanted to do things the way they described them in the books. Drove my mom crazy! I was very much a "Laura" kind of kid so I loved her best. Almanzo was my first book crush! I loved the books with them together! I think I have Plum Creek & Shores of Silver Lake but I'll have to hit up the book store for the rest.

[galax-arena]

Almanzo was my first book crush!

Man, did you ever see pics of the guy? Almanzo could get it. 

[radishcake]

Man, did you ever see pics of the guy? Almanzo could get it.

Oh yes! Real life & tv Almanzo. Dreamboat!

[spidermiss2426]

I first read these as an adult several years ago and reread them many times since.  I need new copies now.  I never read them as a child.

 

And yeah, I loved Laura MUCH more than Mary.  I would not have any patience for Mary.  I wish kids today could read the series more-- there certainly is a difference between the generations of now versus then!!!

 

Although, I like show Ma more than book Ma. 

[fishcakes]

I reread all of these about ten years ago, as well as a couple of books of Laura's letters and previously uncollected writings and those of her daughter Rose, which are interesting. The thing I remember from one of Rose’s interviews of her father is Almanzo saying something like, “my life has mostly been a disappointment.” Poor Manly. Farmer Boy was my favorite of the series, and the food in that one sounded so amazing, especially compared to what the Ingalls were eating, which was usually, like, porridge and a wooden stick.

 

I want to read Wendy McClure's books, but a friend of mine did and said she had to go back and read all the Little House books at the same time so she could get the references. I'm sure I'd need to do another reread as well.

[smittykins]

Farmer Boy was my favorite of the series, and the food in that one sounded so amazing, especially compared to what the Ingalls were eating, which was usually, like, porridge and a wooden stick.

 

I was late to the game on Farmer Boy(I wasn't interested as a kid; I wanted to read about Laura and Mary, not some *boy*), but the financial disparity between them and the Ingallses struck me, too.  They were able to have a cobbler come to their farm and custom-make their shoes, and send their older children to "The Academy," which I assume was a private school, while the Ingalls family lived in poverty much of the time.  I'm sure having living sons to help with the farmwork made a difference.  It also makes me glad I didn't live in those times, when you either worked sunup to sundown on a farm or twelve hours a day, six days a week in town.

[Pickles Aplenty]

I cut Mary some slack for not being as carefree as Laura.  She was the oldest, and was probably told by Ma a million times that she had to behave and set a good example for the younger kids.  That's often what happens with the oldest.  I do think she became more interesting after she came home from the school for the blind; the chapter where Laura describes a much more animated Mary who laughs and moves with confidence is one of the best of the series, IMO.

 

Like a lot of other people, I completely skipped Farmer Boy and only read it recently.  I thought it was okay.  I agree that the financial difference between the Ingalls and Wilders is very sharp, and I often wonder if Laura ever felt inadequate compared to Almanzo's relatives.  Her background was dirt poor, while he ate the best food and lived in a nice house.  That must have come up at some point in their marriage.

 

Speaking of Almanzo, he was one of my biggest crushes growing up.  Good to see he was just as hot in real life as I had always pictured him, but I have stumbled upon that picture before.  Laura chose well.

 

My favorite book of the series is These Happy Golden Years, since I am a sucker for romance and find Laura and Almanzo's courtship to be one of the most romantic things I have ever heard/read.  You know a guy has it bad when he travels miles in the snow to bring his sweetheart home for the weekend. *swoon*

 

This might be an unpopular opinion, but I always liked Eliza Jane.  I know she was naive and idealistic and should have controlled her class from the start, but I always had a soft spot for her.  Farmer Boy made me like her even more, since she covered for Almanzo when he marked up the wall while their parents were out of town.  Plus, Eliza Jane was a suffragette.  That in and of itself is awesome.

 

My ranking of the books, from favorite to least favorite: These Happy Golden Years>Little Town On the Prairie>The Long Winter>On the Banks of Plum Creek>By the Shores of Silver Lake>Little House On the Prairie>Little House In the Big Woods>The First Four Years>Farmer Boy

[NoahC]

I'm almost done with Farmer Boy, and so far, the series is great! It's a really easy read, but fascinating to know what it was like back in the 1870's. The main reason I started reading it is because my four siblings love the show, and I don't really like it, so I tried the book out.

[Winipo75]

So glad to see a thread for the books! Little House on the Prairie was the first non-picture book I read. I loved it, and quickly read the rest of the series by borrowing them from the library. Of course, that wasn't enough, so I used my allowance until I had all 9 books. I read them multiple times and shared them with a little girl I used to look after in the summer months. 7 of the books I own are the original copies I bought as a child (I had to replace LHOTP and OTBOPC because I loved them too much and read them too often, so they fell apart).

 

 

I agree that the financial difference between the Ingalls and Wilders is very sharp, and I often wonder if Laura ever felt inadequate compared to Almanzo's relatives.  Her background was dirt poor, while he ate the best food and lived in a nice house.

I was thinking about this lot on the week-end, since I just started re-reading Farmer Boy. I remember the fascination with food from before, but it's really jumping out at me this time. It kind of makes me wonder where it's coming from. Perhaps Laura talked to Almonzo about his memories and, as a little boy, food was one of the things he remembered most. Or maybe Laura focused on it because of the contrast to her own childhood. I was also struck by the description of the Wilder farm. Almanzo's father had three barns, multiple cows, horses and other livestock. Very different from Pa the hobby farmer with his tiny barn and two oxen (or two horses) at one time. I'm sure it helped that Mr. Wilder had sons, but I still can't help thinking that Pa was not meant to be a farmer.

[Athena]

I cut Mary some slack for not being as carefree as Laura.  She was the oldest, and was probably told by Ma a million times that she had to behave and set a good example for the younger kids.  That's often what happens with the oldest.  I do think she became more interesting after she came home from the school for the blind; the chapter where Laura describes a much more animated Mary who laughs and moves with confidence is one of the best of the series, IMO.

 

Like a lot of other people, I completely skipped Farmer Boy and only read it recently.  I thought it was okay.  I agree that the financial difference between the Ingalls and Wilders is very sharp, and I often wonder if Laura ever felt inadequate compared to Almanzo's relatives.  Her background was dirt poor, while he ate the best food and lived in a nice house.  That must have come up at some point in their marriage.

 

Speaking of Almanzo, he was one of my biggest crushes growing up.  Good to see he was just as hot in real life as I had always pictured him, but I have stumbled upon that picture before.  Laura chose well.

 

My favorite book of the series is These Happy Golden Years, since I am a sucker for romance and find Laura and Almanzo's courtship to be one of the most romantic things I have ever heard/read.  You know a guy has it bad when he travels miles in the snow to bring his sweetheart home for the weekend. *swoon*

 

Poor Mary. I felt bad for her too. I loved Laura of course.

 

I read most of the books as a kid or preteen. These Happy Golden Years was the most memorable because their courtship was just so sweet and romantic. It was so simply written but so beautiful how they got together.

 

I could never get into the books about Rose. I started one, but it didn't work for me.

 

I was reading GoodReads reviews about The First Four Years, and I don't think I'll ever read it. It just sounds too depressing to me. It's bad of me not to face the reality, but I have such warm memories of reading the books and the good episodes of the show (the earlier ones) that I don't think I could face reading Laura and Almanzo at their worse.

[Jamoche]

The sheep-shearing scene in Farmer Boy is incredibly clever, and I wish more people had read the book so I wouldn't have to explain the whole thing when I'm in an analogous situation. I've got a software test department that sometimes fails to grasp that sure, it may look like you can do part B before part A, but if you do that the job is not actually finished.

[BooksRule]

I've re-read all of the books countless times (I have one of those boxed set of the paperbacks that I got years and years ago--they are ragged by now).  I love the food descriptions in the books.  The Wilder family in 'Farmer Boy' ate very well, didn't they?  I always wanted to fix some 'apples 'n onions', but never have.  However, when I read 'The Long Winter' I always have to have a snack beside me the whole time.  Imagine having nothing but brown bread and tea for months!  Reading about the food can also make me appreciate what I have (not to get too preachy).  I remember the scene in 'By the shores of Silver Lake' where (to celebrate their first meal in the Surveyors' House) they each had a dish of peaches and saltine crackers as a treat.  And, in 'Little house on the prairie', (I think it was that one) Laura and Mary were each given a little snow white cake (which were delicate and white because they were made with scarce white flour instead of coarse wheat flour--and maybe white sugar instead of brown--I can't remember). 

[smittykins]

Imagine having nothing but brown bread and tea for months!

 

I've always wondered if they experienced digestive issues after their "Christmas dinner in May."

[bunnywithanaxe]

I vote 'Farmer Boy" as the most fun to read aloud. (Former boyfriend and I read the series aloud together.)

[Snow Apple]

I enjoy reading about the food too. In The Long Winter, you can just feel the fear and hunger with nothing but wheat bread and potatoes. Must have been especially bad for Pa to have such skimpy meals after working so hard in the storm day after day (even if he did sometimes have a meal at the Wilder's place). But trust Ma to save a frozen salted cod fish and knew just when to bring it out for a little bit of cheer.

 

Speaking of fish, in one of the earlier books, there was a time when hunting season was over so Laura and Pa caught fish and the family ate fish for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. In that one line, you can tell Laura was grateful they had food, but tired of the same thing for days on end.

 

I always wanted to try vanity cakes.

[Athena]

When I read the books as a kid, I also borrowed The Little House Cookbook from the library. It looked so good even then. Has anyone tried the recipes from it?

[BooksRule]

I always wanted to try vanity cakes

 

.From the description in the book, I always pictured them looking and tasting a little like New Orleans beignets (only without the powdered sugar on top)--since they were fried and would puff up as they cooked and would be hollow inside.  They always sounded good.

 

Also, the description of eating so much fish made me think of how having beef for a meal was a treat.  I remember the description of how they enjoyed the beef that Pa got as part payment for helping drive some cattle across the plains near their homestead.

[ramble]

My sister was so into these books as kids that I went the opposite way & avoided them. Now that I have kids we've read the entire series aloud twice & have all the books unabridged on audio CD. The kiddos often listen to the storytapes to go to sleep. They each have their own favorite. They wore their LHOTP homemade dresses with bonnets for many years. They even made the ginger water or vinegar punch that the Ingalls drank in the fields on hot days.

[Badger]

I loved reading about the food too especially the blackbird that was fried in its own fat.  There's a book called "The Country Kitchen" which was written in the 1930's by a woman who would have been a contemporary of Laura Ingalls Wilder and she has a lot of recipes mixed in with her anecdotes too.  

The scene I always remember in the LHOTP books is the one where they get their Christmas presents.  I think they each get a drinking mug, a penny, and a stick of candy.  Can you imagine modern kids being satisfied with that?  Heck, I don't think kids of my generation would have been.

[RagingTomato]

Little House books have always been a favorite of mine; even as an adult! I, too, didn't read Farmer Boy as a child. The popcorn and milk grossed me out. I love to reread The Long Winter during one of our midwest snowstorms.

 

I saw the Little House cookbook in a shop at Silver Dollar City one year and have kicked myself ever since for not buying it. I would love to try some of the recipes they used back then!

[ramble]

Question for all y'all. Have you read Old Town in the Green Groves? Which is written not by LIW, but by Cynthia Rylant. It covers the time between On the Banks Of Plum Creek & By The Shores Of Silver Lake & deals with the birth & death of Laura's brother Freddie. My kids wanted to know about that time because we've read a biography of LIW so they were aware of it. They consider it an "outside" book, just like they differentiate the TV show as often being outside the books. 

 

ETA: @RagingTomato Amazon has the LHOTP Cookbook.

Edited June 14, 2014 by ramble

[CousinOliver]

I have found my people!

 

I love these books.  I even found a way to work them into my Master's thesis.  Truly, my love for these books cannot be propery expressed. 

 

I read them many times as a child, first as library books then as a boxed set.  I don't know what happened to that, but as an adult I went back to library books and then my DH got me the set a few years ago as a gift.  I'm a 40+ University Professor and I will gladly read them over and over again (In fact, read OTBOPC two nights ago and OTSOSL last night.) 

 

There are scenes I'll skip now, like when Jack the bulldog dies or the description of the railroad workers.  And I don't read the song lyrics any more.  But, for the most part, I love reading the old stories again.  

 

My favorite chapters in all of the books are the Christmas chapters.  I also loved the food descriptions.  Unlike many of you, I read Farmer Boy as a child and it has always been one of my favorites.  But, it does seem quite out of place among the other books. 

 

I always notice something new in the books, even after all these years.  In the last couple of nights it's been how they were able (and willing) to budget money even when they were in times of plenty. 

[Sir RaiderDuck OMS]

In The Long Winter, you can just feel the fear and hunger with nothing but wheat bread and potatoes. Must have been especially bad for Pa to have such skimpy meals after working so hard in the storm day after day (even if he did sometimes have a meal at the Wilder's place).

More than any other book, I suspect The Long Winter gave us a greatly sanitized version of what happened, especially with regards to Almanzo and Cap riding north 15 miles in near-whiteout conditions based on nothing more than someone's remembering someone else saying the guy MIGHT have some wheat. IIRC, the guy won't sell them the wheat, and Almanzo basically talks him into it. Real life was likely much darker, assuming the guy balked at first: Almanzo and Cap were watching their whole town gradually starve to death, and no way would they have gone back empty-handed when the guy had food. It was probably more like "We can either buy it from you, or just kill you and take it. Your choice." Similarly, when the merchant charged extortionate prices, the book has Charles shaming him into backing off: more likely is the townspeople just taking the wheat by force. And who could blame them?

Edited June 16, 2014 by Sir RaiderDuck OMS

[Sir RaiderDuck OMS]

I was reading GoodReads reviews about The First Four Years, and I don't think I'll ever read it. It just sounds too depressing to me. It's bad of me not to face the reality, but I have such warm memories of reading the books and the good episodes of the show (the earlier ones) that I don't think I could face reading Laura and Almanzo at their worse.

It's also not nearly the quality of the other books. The other books were heavily ghostwritten by Laura and Almanzo's daughter Rose Wilder Lane to the point where some critics have said she basically wrote them based off stories her mother told her (others dispute this, saying she merely "polished" what her mother had written). The First Four Years was found in Laura's papers after she died and published completely unchanged; apparently, Almanzo's death shortly after she finished the first draft caused her to lose interest in the project.

Edited June 16, 2014 by Sir RaiderDuck OMS

[lottiedottie]

 

Speaking of Almanzo, he was one of my biggest crushes growing up.  Good to see he was just as hot in real life as I had always pictured him, but I have stumbled upon that picture before.  Laura chose well.

 

My favorite book of the series is These Happy Golden Years, since I am a sucker for romance and find Laura and Almanzo's courtship to be one of the most romantic things I have ever heard/read.  You know a guy has it bad when he travels miles in the snow to bring his sweetheart home for the weekend. *swoon*

 

Everything you said. THGY makes me weepy because it is just so damn sweet.

The Little House series is my all time favorite and I love to reread them from time to time. They are a nice reminder of what's really important in life (family, the little things) I've been trying to convince my sons to read them, as I think they would enjoy the stories.

[Unraveled]

The food parts of the books were always my favorite parts.

• Young Mary and Laura playing with the pig's tail (after the family butchered the pig and used everything from that animal).
• The wealth of food from the belated Christmas dinner in the spring after the very long winter.
• Shared lemonade from a town-wise Fourth of July celebration.
• Cambric tea which sounds lovely (hot milk with a little bit of tea to feel like a grown-up).

 

Of course everything about Farmer Boy. Here is what Manley eats in one meal: baked beans, potatoes, ham, bread, turnips, pumpkin, three types of jam/jelly, pickles, and pumpkin pie.

[kikismom]

I've had to replace my books many times; I read them all over again every year.

 

Some of you may enjoy these:

http://perusingtheprairie.wordpress.com/2011/04/08/little-house-drinking-game/

http://en.uncyclopedia.co/wiki/Laura_Ingalls_Wilder

http://ingallscousin2blog.wordpress.com/2013/03/17/lands-claims-of-charles-ingalls-under-the-public-land-laws/

[BatmanBeatles]

Everytime Ma said something in her gentle way, it was buzzkill time.

[fishcakes]

When I read the books as a kid, I also borrowed The Little House Cookbook from the library. It looked so good even then. Has anyone tried the recipes from it?

 

I saw this in the library recently and checked it out but there was nothing I wanted to make, mainly because everything was so labor-intensive. There's a recipe for cheese that involves wiping mold off the curds every day for a week, then waiting five months for the the flavor to develop. There are so many reasons I would have been a terrible pioneer and waiting five months for cheese has to be near the top of the list.

[BatmanBeatles]

There is no way I could have roasted a whole pig in my oven.

[Stine]

I grew up reading the Little House books (my grandma gave my sister and me one of the books for each birthday and Christmas gift until we had the whole set) and I can't even count how many times I've read each of the books. Like many of you, I love all the descriptions of the food, especially in Farmer Boy. I've always been curious what some of the foods described would taste like (e.g. vinegar pie or fried apples n' onions). 

 

Probably my two favourite books are These Happy Golden Years (I loved reading about the budding relationship between Laura and Almanzo) and The Long Winter (which I reread while living through the polar vortex this winter--can't imagine what they had to go through in comparable temperatures, with no heat and no food!). 

[kikismom]

There's a hotel in Canada that makes vinegar ice cream; it tastes like blackberries.

I love The Long Winter; it would be depressing to live on ground wheat and potatoes, but their meals the rest of the time are pretty dismal.

For breakfast Ma made biscuits or potatoes or toasted bread. For lunch it was potatoes and salt, and maybe for dessert, a plate of tomatoes with sugar. For supper, surprise! It's potatoes and biscuits and for dessert, more biscuits maybe with Ma's preserves or salt pork grease.No wonder Carrie and Grace and Mary had diabetes. Laura was lucky to marry young and get the hell out of there.

[BatmanBeatles]

I never had the desire to try buckwheat pancakes since I don't like whole wheat pancakes.

[Athena]

I never had the desire to try buckwheat pancakes since I don't like whole wheat pancakes.

 

I'm biased because I like buckwheat in general. If it makes you feel better, it's not a wheat or a grass. It's gluten free and more related to rhubarb. I find the bread or pancakes when done well is lighter than solid whole wheat food.

[Pickles Aplenty]

 

For breakfast Ma made biscuits or potatoes or toasted bread. For lunch it was potatoes and salt, and maybe for dessert, a plate of tomatoes with sugar. For supper, surprise! It's potatoes and biscuits and for dessert, more biscuits maybe with Ma's preserves or salt pork grease.No wonder Carrie and Grace and Mary had diabetes. Laura was lucky to marry young and get the hell out of there.

Okay, this cracked me up. :)

[BatmanBeatles]

It seemed they ate the best in Little House In The Big Woods what with them living where there was plenty of game.

[kikismom]

It seemed they ate the best in Little House In The Big Woods what with them living where there was plenty of game.

Yes, they had so much game meat and fish!

But also the attic/loft was filled with pumpkins and squash, onions and peppers, they had the maple sugar from the trees, free firewood and building material in lumber and stone. Pa always complains about "grubbing out saplings"...It's worth it to live in a place with free building supplies for house and barns and fences and free heating and cooking fuel. You don't have to work at grubbing out saplings on the prairie? No you just have to work to earn enough money for coal, kerosene, wire fencing or fence posts, lumber for a house a barn, money for meat and sugar etc.

 

 

I had an ancestor who lived in Minnesota during the time the Ingalls were down in Plum Creek. 3 years of grasshopper swarms and then 4 years of drought. Most settlers left. He stuck it out, and after those 7 years he had 600 acres of land, 25 cows, 14 horses, countless chickens and pigs and geese and sheep and a ten room home made of stone (And a family of 4).

 

 In The Long Winter, when Pa tells the story of the railroad supervisor "He was an Easterner; he didn't understand that you need patience in this western country." Ma breaks in to add "And perserverance."  Pa says "Yes! And perserverance!"

I always thought Ma was secretly dropping an anvilicious hint to the husband who couldn;t stick with anything he started long enough to make it work. But Charles Ingalls had as much self-awareness as a gnat.

 

We need to start a Little House Translation Guide.

As you put it----

Ma says something in her gentle way=buzzkill

 

Pa says "We'll live like kings!" = scraped up just enough food to keep from passing out on the street.

Pa says "Sometimes my wandering foot gets to itching"=skips town one step ahead of the bill collector.

Pa says "Yes sir! We're free and independent!" = the kids aren't so starving that it's conspicuous to the neighbors

"Carrie's peaked little face" = Ma didn't get enough folic acid during pregnancy and Carrie looks like a cretin.

[BatmanBeatles]

 

But also the attic/loft was filled with pumpkins and squash, onions and peppers, they had the maple sugar from the trees, free firewood and building material in lumber and stone. Pa always complains about "grubbing out saplings"...It's worth it to live in a place with free building supplies for house and barns and fences and free heating and cooking fuel. You don't have to work at grubbing out saplings on the prairie? No you just have to work to earn enough money for coal, kerosene, wire fencing or fence posts, lumber for a house a barn, money for meat and sugar etc.

I forgot about the food they acquired during the fall harvest and butchering. I always thought it was foolish for Pa to move just because more people moved into the area. I just remembered the other time they had a lot to eat. The surveyor's house. They got to eat oyster soup and canned peaches.

 

 

I had an ancestor who lived in Minnesota during the time the Ingalls were down in Plum Creek. 3 years of grasshopper swarms and then 4 years of drought. Most settlers left. He stuck it out, and after those 7 years he had 600 acres of land, 25 cows, 14 horses, countless chickens and pigs and geese and sheep and a ten room home made of stone (And a family of 4).

He probably didn't build a nice house until he had money to pay for it like Pa did.

 

 

In The Long Winter, when Pa tells the story of the railroad supervisor "He was an Easterner; he didn't understand that you need patience in this western country." Ma breaks in to add "And perserverance."  Pa says "Yes! And perserverance!"

Oh snap!

 

 

I always thought Ma was secretly dropping an anvilicious hint to the husband who couldn;t stick with anything he started long enough to make it work. But Charles Ingalls had as much self-awareness as a gnat.

No wonder she snapped when Pa's foot got to itchin' again.

 

 

We need to start a Little House Translation Guide.

Rough language = F-bombs eveywhere

Wooden swearing = Temper tantrums

Edited July 29, 2014 by BatmanBeatles

[kikismom]

"Wooden swearing" lmao I forgot that classic!

Maybe there should be a sound component to the books; like a bell tolling everytime Pa says " I've never been beholden to any man and I never will be!"

 

Buys the Plum Creek house materials with credit. Buys the LHOTP house lumber, glass windows, plow, seeds etc.on credit. In same book has to walk to Independence to get supplies and says "I wish I hadn't borrowed that tobacco from Nelson" and Ma says "But you did." In LTOTP he "borrows" money from Laura to buy the piano for Mary.

I love when Laura tells him she wants him to take it and he's like oh well okay if you insist and snatches it from her hand and crams it into his wallet so fast it's a blur.

"this will really help me out of a tight spot and you can be sure I'll pay you back!" Yeah, Dad, I'm surrrre. He takes her 3 months wages, $75, we never hear of it again, when she marries he gives her a yearling heifer worth $12. Which takes care of payback and the cost of a wedding present. No flies on Charles Ingalls!

 

Does anyone else think it's not a coincidence that in real life, 1 year after Laura marries and isn't there to do half the work (and at least half the bill-paying) Pa lets go of the homestead. He sells it, but owes over $800 to the bank in a mortage he took on the property so he ends up with not much for 6 years.

 

Very strangely, in The First Four Years, in the 3rd year of marriage when Laura and Almanzo end up in big debt, she writes that she coudn't ask the "home folks" for help because Pa "couldn't make much of a crop on the first year of newly turned sod". FFS! He'd been there 6 years!  And got rid of the homestead and they moved to town!  Good attempt at spin though, most people don't notice it, especially child readers.

Edited July 29, 2014 by kikismom

[BatmanBeatles]

Ma gets a lot of flack in the books, but Pa wasn't a saint either.

[Mybrainhurts]

Maybe there should be a sound component to the books; like a bell tolling everytime Pa says " I've never been beholden to any man and I never will be!"

 

My wife and I are reading The Long Winter aloud right now and every time Ma or someone says "Now the train will come in" after one of the monster blizzards, my wife always makes the sad trombone noise and we both just laugh.

 

It's amazing to me realizing how clueless both Ma and Pa were--when you're a kid, you just never realize that they constantly make mistake after mistake.  It really was a miracle that the kids survived to adulthood.  I mean, they lost Grace on the Big Slough because they were planting trees outside THEIR ONE ROOM SHANTY!  How can you lose a kid when all you are doing is planting trees?

[BatmanBeatles]

 

My wife and I are reading The Long Winter aloud right now and every time Ma or someone says "Now the train will come in" after one of the monster blizzards, my wife always makes the sad trombone noise and we both just laugh.

Did she make that sound when Foster made a bunch of noise and the antelope ran away?

[Athena]

It's amazing to me realizing how clueless both Ma and Pa were--when you're a kid, you just never realize that they constantly make mistake after mistake.  It really was a miracle that the kids survived to adulthood.  I mean, they lost Grace on the Big Slough because they were planting trees outside THEIR ONE ROOM SHANTY!  How can you lose a kid when all you are doing is planting trees?

 

Most of it does go over your head as a kid, but I remember reading the books as a preteen or early teenager (13/14) and being a bit weirded out by Pa and Ma's actions. The books paint this idyllic picture of the family, but if you look at their lives on the whole and bigger picture, it is depressing. The moving bothered me as a kid because as others said, they had it better in the earlier books. I understand the appeal to go west, but it did seem that Ingalls were not the most adept.

[DoughGirl]

I've never read the LH books, because I can't deal with the hunting (I know that's how it was but I don't want to read about it), just watched the show, so I find these posts about Ma and Pa enlightening. So Pa really would have skipped out in the dead of night after running up bills? That would have been sacrilegious for TV Pa.

Can someone here tell me if the books explained where the Ingalls got the money to send Mary to blind school? It was never addressed on the show despite the fact that they never had money to spare. Somehow I get the feeling Laura may have paid for it?

[Athena]

Can someone here tell me if the books explained where the Ingalls got the money to send Mary to blind school? It was never addressed on the show despite the fact that they never had money to spare. Somehow I get the feeling Laura may have paid for it?

 

This happens at the end of Little House on the Prairie, but I don't recall if they actually mentioned it in the books. I did read somewhere (Wikipedia) that the tuition was paid by the Dakota territorial government since Mary was a resident. Laura's income had to chip in to the family for the loss of Mary at school though. 

[DoughGirl]

This happens at the end of Little House on the Prairie, but I don't recall if they actually mentioned it in the books. I did read somewhere (Wikipedia) that the tuition was paid by the Dakota territorial government since Mary was a resident. Laura's income had to chip in to the family for the loss of Mary at school though.

Thank you for the info.

[Mybrainhurts]

Did she make that sound when Foster made a bunch of noise and the antelope ran away?

 

Absolutely.  Honestly, they should have called DeSmet "Idiotville" with the way most of the town acted in that book.  The Ingalls fit right in there.

 

The books paint this idyllic picture of the family, but if you look at their lives on the whole and bigger picture, it is depressing. The moving bothered me as a kid because as others said, they had it better in the earlier books.

 

What drove me crazy about Pa moving from the Big Woods is that he didn't do it for any other reason than his feeling that the woods were getting "too crowded".  Yeah, dude, just take your wife and your three girls who were under the age of seven and go wandering around to Kansas to a place where you heard that the government would probably let people settle in at some point in time.  It's lucky they didn't die of malaria or anything else while there.

[kikismom]

The Ingalls actually lived in Burr Oak, Iowa for a while; which is never mentioned---possibly because they skipped out on the rent they owed. In Laura's original manuscript Prairie Girl, she tells about how they packed and crept out quietly in the dark and left before dawn, and how Pa called the landlord a "mean old skinflint"---for expecting them to pay their bill.

 

How about when they leave "Indian country" because the soldiers are coming to throw them out and Pa storms into the house in a snit and insists on leaving the next day, and how the plow is left in the field because they "didn't have room in the wagon"? Researchers say the Ingalls homestead was not on Indian or government restricted land; some miles from it in fact. And hundreds of thousands of settlers took plows, Pa did when they left other places. So...why? All I know is they bought all that stuff on credit. And he decided they had to leave right away...

 

Later in that same manuscript, things become curiouser and curiouser. Remember how the books say that when the railroad men left camp, Pa "saved" the old man in the claim shanty and sent him on the last wagon East? Remember they were all alone at Silver Lake? And Pa spent the winter "searching for which claim would be the best one to file on in the spring" ?

Well, Laura never mentioned how she really knew Almanzo came from a prosperous family in Minnesota----because Pa read about it in Almanzo and Royal's letters from home in their claim shanty while they were gone for the winter. What was Pa doing in someone else's unoccupied home? He wasn't looking for more sick old people to rescue--he knew everyone was gone, and you don't find people looking in the envelopes of other people's mail.

 

Then he tears down the railroad company's buildings to use their lumber to build his storehouse on Main St. Which is really odd because Pa didn't own that lot on Main Street. He just built on it with lumber he didn't pay for. Guess who owned that town lot?

 

Eliza Jane Wilder!

Remember how Eliza picked on Laura and Carrie "for no reason" and said bad things about Pa? The lot was eventually paid for...two years later...and the sale paper says the buyer was Caroline Ingalls, not Charles. (I'm just guessing Pa didn't want any assets in his name that the bank could seize .)

 

So was the real Pa Ingalls a pioneer, or just another dead-beat dad?

Edited July 30, 2014 by kikismom

[Pickles Aplenty]

 

How about when they leave "Indian country" because the soldiers are coming to throw them out and Pa storms into the house in a snit and insists on leaving the next day, and how the plow is left in the field because they "didn't have room in the wagon"? Researchers say the Ingalls homestead was not on Indian or government restricted land; some miles from it in fact. And hundreds of thousands of settlers took plows, Pa did when they left other places. So...why? All I know is they bought all that stuff on credit. And he decided they had to leave right away...

I'm thinking scenes like this were Rose Wilder Lane's contribution.  I've been reading about her, and her politics really influenced the LH books, to the point where people considered them propaganda.  Any time Pa throws an anti-government tantrum and bails, I wonder if it really happened, or if Ayn Rand's BFF came up with it on her own.