Little House series: book vs reality

[sparkles]

I haven't seen Heartland in years but it's one of those films I can't forget. I'm always talking about it and recommending it to people. Beautifully done in every respect and it's my reference point when I think about pioneers and settling the west. That and Giants in the Earth (set, like the Little House books, in the Dakota territories), which unfortunately was assigned reading in my 10th grade English class taught by our very own living version of Professor Binns. He could not have made it more boring but I've since read it as an adult and come to really appreciate it.

I do remember watching Frontier House (memorable for one of the teenage girls squatting in the field to take a pee on camera, the couple that subsequently divorced and the big flap over the still) and 1900 House. Both were very interesting.

So thanks to this thread, I'll be reading the Little House books. It will be interesting to see how they look through an adult lens, without the benefit of childhood memories. Thankfully though, the experience WON'T be tainted by the TV show; I never watched because I could never stand Michael Landon going all the way back to his Little Joe days.

[WokChop]

When I was a kid that episode messed me up. I was terrified for a long time that I was going to be raped and that I would die from it (I don't remember now why she died, only that she did. I assumed it had something to do with being raped). I know that her father blaming her really scared the hell out of me. My father was that type - that I was responsible for anything bad that happened to me - if I fell off my bike it was because I was going too fast and not paying attention. If I cut my finger it was because I was being careless. In my life nothing was ever a simple accident - there had to be a reason and the reason was usually some failure on my part. So I was pretty sure if a mime raped me in the woods my father would blame me. So I was terrified for a long time. I still get the heebie jeebies over that episode.

Poor Gizmola! What a horrible lot of crap you had to deal with as a kid. :(

I think Sylvia died as a result of her fall. In case you don't remember, when Irv Hartwig found out that Sylvia was alone in an abandoned barn, he went there in order to rape her again. In an attempt to get away, Sylvia started climbing up a rickety ladder that led to...nowhere(?), and she fell. Later, at home in her bed, she whispers to Albert, "Kith me, my love." And then she dies. ...or basically something like that.

freejoytoo, the Greenbush twins, who played Carrie, never seemed "all there" to me. They were always sporting vacant smiles and seemed to have trouble with the few lines they were given. I think maybe they were visiting the Land of Giant Strawberries a bit too often...maybe eating too many mushrooms on the prairie?

[Guest Anonymous]

Here is a comprehensive summary of the Sylvia episodes.

http://www.angelfire.com/ultra/misc/lhotp_sylvia.htm

[GolightlyGrrl]

I'm so happy to see a thread devoted to the Little House series. Laura Ingalls Wilder's books were my literary crack when I was a little girl. I should re-read them.

And I loved the series, at least the early years. The latter years with Albert and Co. were seriously snark-worthy.

I also adored Alison Arngrim's memoir. Girlfriend can write.

http://popcorninmybra.blogspot.com/sear ... %20Arngrim

Note to self: Pick up "The Wilder Life" by Wendy McClure

[fakepigtails73]

This thread reminds me: for those that can read French I recommend "Les Filles de Caleb". It's a book about the life of Emilie Bordeleau, a French Canadian woman living in Québec in the late 19th century-early 20th. She becomes a one-room school teacher at 16 and a few yrs later ends up marrying Ovila Pronovost, one of her former pupils. The novel begins in a Mauricie village, and ends in Abitibi where the family is part of the first settlers in that area (to give you an idea it takes 9 hrs by car to go from Mauricie to Abitibi, so imagine how long it took by horses). Ovila ends up to be an alcoholic who gets itchy feet and would end up leaving his family of 9 kids for months on end. We also get to see how suffocating the Catholic church was in those days.

Emilie and Ovila were the author's grandparents, although it's a novel not a biography.

A TV series was made in 1990, starring Roy Dupuis as Ovila. One of my fave TV shows EVER! I think one can find it with English subtitles.

[GolightlyGrrl]

Edited: Because double posts are satan's greatest joy.

[Angri-la]

I am too lazy to quote, but I really wanted to be on the Frontier House show. I applied, made it to the semi-finals, and was denied for the only reality show I've ever wanted to be on. I wish they had made more seasons. (I've never told anyone but my husband, and now the Jingers). I didn't have a glammed up idea of the era, like the fundies, however. Women had to work their asses off, too. No time for SAHDs to sit and ponder "Prince Charming".

Albert was the sharkjump for sure. He was like Oliver on the Brady Bunch and Scrappy Doo on Scooby. The whole "next gen" was really weird, with the Lil Nellie, and, of course, Shannen D's first meaty role. I am a Shannen apologist, so judge away.

They never gave Carrie any story lines because she couldn't speak clearly, even as a pre-teen, and they tried to keep her "young" longer than they should have. I love that her fall in the opening was not scripted, they just left it in there.

Thanks to all for the sharing of your family stories; I find first person history to be the best history.

edited to not be ruder than normal, and because I made a poor word choice. Glad no one quoted me!

[Gizmola]

Poor Gizmola! What a horrible lot of crap you had to deal with as a kid.

I think Sylvia died as a result of her fall. In case you don't remember, when Irv Hartwig found out that Sylvia was alone in an abandoned barn, he went there in order to rape her again. In an attempt to get away, Sylvia started climbing up a rickety ladder that led to...nowhere(?), and she fell. Later, at home in her bed, she whispers to Albert, "Kith me, my love." And then she dies. ...or basically something like that.

LOL - I promise I wasn't trying to start a "pity party." I was also a very weird kid with a very vivid and rather disturbing imagination.

reejoytoo, the Greenbush twins, who played Carrie, never seemed "all there" to me. They were always sporting vacant smiles and seemed to have trouble with the few lines they were given. I think maybe they were visiting the Land of Giant Strawberries a bit too often...maybe eating too many mushrooms on the prairie?

I agree. She always seemed a little "off."

I just have to add something to the disrespect for Charles running out on the debts. If you want to look down on him, then go find a family member or a friend who has filed bankruptcy because circumstances beyond their control made it so they either left their debts behind or paid their debts at the expense of their family having a place to live and food to eat. Bankruptcy and what Charles did are really the same thing. The debtor is left holding the bag when an honest person falls on hard times, only bankruptcy is official and through the court. Charles didn't run out on debts he accumulated from living beyond his means to buy fancy toys, expensive clothes, electronics, cars, and other things. He ran into debt to build the family a stable future that ended up not happening because he couldn't control the weather. It was a good risk that didn't work out. We encourage people to start small businesses today even if the idea is a bad one, and don't blame them if they fail and file bankruptcy and don't ever pay the bills. Why is Charles held to a different standard? Why is he the bad one not worthy of any respect over this?

Speaking for myself, I think seeing Charles (and Caroline) as fallible came a shock because I read these books first when I was in 2nd & 3rd grade. At that time, I only saw the books (and the tv show) as fairly straightforward and full of details like calico hoop skirts and beautiful glass beads and little vanity cakes, etc. I wasn't old enough to understand the truth of the finances of the Ingalls family, etc. So when you find out that "Pa" left and didn't pay his debts, it jars with your childhood vision of who he was. Regardless of the reason for his "bankruptcy."

[freejoytoo]

I think Charles is a dick for constantly forcing his family to move house even when it wasn't a good time. Him eating all that pancakes when his family was starving doesn't put him in that great a light either, though it could have been made up for the story.

You sound kind of handslappy about the government intervention. A lot of people here have posted about family members wishing they had more of it in the 'good old days'.

[gardenvarietycitizen]

Meanwhile the Haymarket riot happened in May 1886. Laura would have been about 19. Quite a few strikes in the 1830s-1840s petitioning for a 10 or 11 hour day, too, including some by children.

Shannen Doherty has a certain unique smile. When I first saw her on '90210' it kept bugging me that I just KNEW I'd seen her somewhere before, but where??? until finally realizing yep, Little House.

The pancakes story makes me wonder, now... I seem to recall him having to put the screws on Almanzo and his partner, threatening to expose their relatively well-off situation to the other townspeople (?) if Almanzo didn't give Pa a little bit of his "seed wheat" they had hidden in the walls, when the food situation truly ran 100% out at the Ingalls' house. That has me wondering if he couldn't have done similarly to say hey, I'll expose you if you don't let me take a slice of this ham home for my kids instead of just eating it here with you. But... I think I might be confusing some memories of him going to ask for the last bits of stuff left in the town store?

There's various photos of the railway all packed in with snow you can find online, and people trying to dig it out, and you just realize how small they were. The episode in the book where the men go out to the absolute middle of nowhere to buy some wheat they heard rumors of, and a cloud (the cloud was made terrible, oh yes) pops up in the Northwest.... just chilling.

[Arete]

Look, I don't know if the pancake story is true or not, but if it is, I think it has to be looked at from all angles. Moral calculus and survival are a tricky thing. The Wilders could not feed everybody, they only had an opportunity to give Charles a meal. The man was starving. Let's just say he decided that he would not eat because there was not enough for his family. Who would that really have helped, and would it really have been more moral? A living husband and father were a lot better than a dead one. If that meal gave him an extra week, it would have been an extra week of survival. If it's true, he was right to do whatever he could to ensure his survival if it was not at his family's expense. They would have been going to bed hungry whether he ate or not.

My grandmother survived a famine. If her walls could talk, they would tell you she did not give food to starving children that were not hers, even though those children were in far worse shape than hers, because she had to make a decision between 2 bad choices. It's easy for us to judge when we have never known famine, war, or the choices good people have to make and live with to survive their season in hell.

Edited because even though no one believes me at this point, I really do know the difference between the possesive and the plural

[Wolfie]

I do remember watching Frontier House (memorable for one of the teenage girls squatting in the field to take a pee on camera, the couple that subsequently divorced and the big flap over the still) and 1900 House. Both were very interesting.

I don't remember that scene in Frontier House- but wandering away from the group and squatting to pee would have been period appropriate- especially if she was wearing open crotch drawers.

[Glass Cowcatcher]

Meanwhile the Haymarket riot happened in May 1886. Laura would have been about 19. Quite a few strikes in the 1830s-1840s petitioning for a 10 or 11 hour day, too, including some by children.

Shannen Doherty has a certain unique smile. When I first saw her on '90210' it kept bugging me that I just KNEW I'd seen her somewhere before, but where??? until finally realizing yep, Little House.

The pancakes story makes me wonder, now... I seem to recall him having to put the screws on Almanzo and his partner, threatening to expose their relatively well-off situation to the other townspeople (?) if Almanzo didn't give Pa a little bit of his "seed wheat" they had hidden in the walls, when the food situation truly ran 100% out at the Ingalls' house. That has me wondering if he couldn't have done similarly to say hey, I'll expose you if you don't let me take a slice of this ham home for my kids instead of just eating it here with you. But... I think I might be confusing some memories of him going to ask for the last bits of stuff left in the town store?

There's various photos of the railway all packed in with snow you can find online, and people trying to dig it out, and you just realize how small they were. The episode in the book where the men go out to the absolute middle of nowhere to buy some wheat they heard rumors of, and a cloud (the cloud was made terrible, oh yes) pops up in the Northwest.... just chilling.

Got them for you, right here:

Mind you these trains are probably a good 15' tall, so... i'm getting cold just looking at this. :o

I remember also that the men from town almost beat up the train crew when the first train they ran after the blizzard didn't have any food on it. :shock: I don't know if that was in the same book as the pancake incident, but I got the feeling that the whole town was just a hair away from going Little Lord of the Flies on the Prairie.

[Angri-la]

Those are incredible photos, GCC. Thanks, doll!

[Glass Cowcatcher]

Those are incredible photos, GCC. Thanks, doll!

I know. I just imagine the guy in the first one going "The hell, man, the hell?"

[Artemis]

No one else I knew ever read Little House but they aren't very big in Britain.

I read all of them. Many many times. My copies are still in my bedroom, with the covers faded and falling off. I wanted to be Laura (hopeless romantic!) I'm loving this thread - can't comment much as I have a Monday a.m. deadline and am working on stuff, but I'm enjoying dipping in to this and the Hellena thread. Where were you guys when i was growing up . . . ?

[gardenvarietycitizen]

Yep, that was the same book - the town is snowed in and almost starves to death, they've been hoping for this train to get through every few weeks or so, really hoping, and every damn time at the LAST possible minute another blizzard comes through and the crews have to start all over again, so there's no train. Endless cycles of hopes being dashed, and then finally a train makes it, and... nothing to eat on it.

And yep, those are the pics. I can imagine that same "The hell, man, the hell?" and looking down at "what, just this shovel? You're kidding me right?"

[gardenvarietycitizen]

Where were you guys when i was growing up . . . ?

Reading the books in Japanese :) They really did make it to so much of the world!

[Artemis]

Reading the books in Japanese :) They really did make it to so much of the world!

OMG that is amazing . . .

OK, HAVE to get back to it . . . keep posting the pics and posts please

[Beth_Anne]

My first post, though I've been reading a lot for about a month or so, to sort of learn my way around.

I loved the books, innocently as a child, and seeing much more between the lines as I grew older. I loved how you could see glimmers of the real Laura now and then--slapping Mary, always feeling plain next to her (and was it ever a shock when I saw a real photo of Mary, for she was NOT beautiful by then--the leeches on Nellie and so on. She seemed like a very real little girl to me. Of course I believed that every word was as it happened, until I began researching after I grew up. The baby brother was a jolt, and so was Laura's baby son, especially since he was never named. But I remember Laura saying in an interview that of course she had no idea she was writing history, and I took that to mean that the liberties taken were to make the books suitable for children and marketable, as well.

Couple things....I had not thought about Laura and her family being hungry as often as they would have been, but I bought THE LITTLE HOUSE COOKBOOK in 1980 when it was first released and I still cook from it. Much is made therein about how Laura writes about food, especially in FARMER BOY, because the idea of such a bounteous table as Almanzo had during his years at home was all but heaven to Laura, especially the sweets.

I found out entirely serendipitously that my husband and I were married on Laura and Almanzo's 100th wedding anniversary. We chose it because we liked the symmetry of 8~25~85. They could have said the same thing, but of course that wasn't what it was all about for them. Still, it was a fun thing to know.

And there is a new juvenile fiction book out that could have been inspired by the Frontier House tv series, called LITTLE BLOG ON THE PRAIRIE, by Cathleen Davitt Bell. Check it out! It is a purely enjoyable read. And THE WILDER LIFE is very good, too, filled with a few surprises you won't expect.

There is also a book of columns Laura wrote for farm journals and papers, called LITTLE HOUSE IN THE OZARKS. I enjoyed it very, very much, a true peek inside her marriage and, again, she just seemed like someone you really knew--or wanted to.

GHOST IN THE LITTLE HOUSE is....disturbing. There's sure a lot to hold to the thinking that Rose did a lot more of the writing (or at least editing) than anyone would have believed, and since Rose and Laura always had a stormy relationship, it could only have made it worse.

Now back to my reading here......;)

[WokChop]

I've always given Pa a bit of a pass when it comes to Buckwheat Pancakegate. It seems that his responsibilities were more physically taxing, not to mention that most of them had to be done in the bitter cold. For instance, when there was a break in the weather, he would hall straw in from their homestead. If I remember correctly, the deep snow sometimes made the transport extremely difficult, which must have been grueling on him. So, I figured that maybe he needed a bit more sustenance for those tasks. Also, I don't know how starvation may have affected his brain. Luckily, I've never faced starvation and so I can't possibly understand its physiological/psychological effects and if that played a role in that situation.

ETA: What AreteJo said! :P I posted this without having read her post.

[gardenvarietycitizen]

Japanese title is 「大è‰åŽŸã®å°ã•ãªå®¶ã€you can google around for images. Yep, they ported the TV show too...

Trying to get straw from their homestead and what, the horses kept falling through the crust of snow on top of the grass. I imagine in real life Pa probably said some words that didn't make it to the books! :D

[Wolfie]

My first post, though I've been reading a lot for about a month or so, to sort of learn my way around.

I loved the books, innocently as a child, and seeing much more between the lines as I grew older. I loved how you could see glimmers of the real Laura now and then--slapping Mary, always feeling plain next to her (and was it ever a shock when I saw a real photo of Mary, for she was NOT beautiful by then--the leeches on Nellie and so on. She seemed like a very real little girl to me. Of course I believed that every word was as it happened, until I began researching after I grew up. The baby brother was a jolt, and so was Laura's baby son, especially since he was never named. But I remember Laura saying in an interview that of course she had no idea she was writing history, and I took that to mean that the liberties taken were to make the books suitable for children and marketable, as well.

Couple things....I had not thought about Laura and her family being hungry as often as they would have been, but I bought THE LITTLE HOUSE COOKBOOK in 1980 when it was first released and I still cook from it. Much is made therein about how Laura writes about food, especially in FARMER BOY, because the idea of such a bounteous table as Almanzo had during his years at home was all but heaven to Laura, especially the sweets.

I found out entirely serendipitously that my husband and I were married on Laura and Almanzo's 100th wedding anniversary. We chose it because we liked the symmetry of 8~25~85. They could have said the same thing, but of course that wasn't what it was all about for them. Still, it was a fun thing to know.

And there is a new juvenile fiction book out that could have been inspired by the Frontier House tv series, called LITTLE BLOG ON THE PRAIRIE, by Cathleen Davitt Bell. Check it out! It is a purely enjoyable read. And THE WILDER LIFE is very good, too, filled with a few surprises you won't expect.

There is also a book of columns Laura wrote for farm journals and papers, called LITTLE HOUSE IN THE OZARKS. I enjoyed it very, very much, a true peek inside her marriage and, again, she just seemed like someone you really knew--or wanted to.

GHOST IN THE LITTLE HOUSE is....disturbing. There's sure a lot to hold to the thinking that Rose did a lot more of the writing (or at least editing) than anyone would have believed, and since Rose and Laura always had a stormy relationship, it could only have made it worse.

Now back to my reading here......;)

Hey, can you post in regular font? the italics are annoying to read.

[WokChop]

Quote:

Poor Gizmola! What a horrible lot of crap you had to deal with as a kid.

I think Sylvia died as a result of her fall. In case you don't remember, when Irv Hartwig found out that Sylvia was alone in an abandoned barn, he went there in order to rape her again. In an attempt to get away, Sylvia started climbing up a rickety ladder that led to...nowhere(?), and she fell. Later, at home in her bed, she whispers to Albert, "Kith me, my love." And then she dies. ...or basically something like that.

LOL - I promise I wasn't trying to start a "pity party." I was also a very weird kid with a very vivid and rather disturbing imagination.

Nah, I didn't read your post that way at all! ...I was weird, too! My mother wasn't exactly like you've described your father, but she certainly seemed to resent my existence. I don't want pity, either. I don't know many people who had idyllic upbringings...including my own kids!

Glass Cowcatcher, those photographs are great!

Man, this thread just keeps getting better!

[Arete]

Glass Cowcatcher wins the interwebz today on this thread. :bow-blue: