Little House series: book vs reality

[kitkat]

I may be remembering the early books (Big Woods and Prairie) wrong, but I thought Pa said one time that a person needed a good watchdog on the frontier. Perhaps he said that after Jack came back or after he was presumed lost, but if Pa felt that way then why in the hell did he not put Jack in the wagon!

I'm reading the series to my kids right now, and by coincidence, we just finished reading the part where Jack is almost lost last night. When they are crossing the creek, its during the spring thaw, and the creek starts rising very rapidly as they are crossing. They didn't expect it at all, Pa says that he'd never seen a creek rise so quickly, and the whole family came very close to being washed away by the rising water. Pa has to get out of the wagon and swim to guide the horses across. When they realize that Jack didn't make it, Pa spends at least a couple hours (I'm guessing based on the fact the book says that his clothes had dried out) looking for Jack, and says that if he'd realized that the creek was going to rise that fast, he would have put Jack in the wagon. The quote about needing a good watchdog comes from Pa lamenting Jack's presumed death.

Having the dog swim at all may seem callous by modern standards, but Jack was a working dog who'd safely swum across creeks in the past, so I don't think that Pa was being deliberately cruel to him.

[EmmieJ]

The Hallmark channel shows reruns of LHOTP. One night, when there was nothing else on, I watched part of an episode. I remember liking the show when it was originally on, even though it didn't match the books. I confess -- I had a crush on Michael Landon. He was seriously defrauding!

The episode I watched has been mentioned in this thread. It's when Laura is kidnapped by a lady whose daughter had died, and she goes a little cray cray and believes Laura is her daughter. So she locks her in the basement and has a birthday party for her.

In the end, Laura is set free and instead of running like a scared rabbit as far away from the crazy lady as possible (which is what I would have done), she takes her by the hand and leads her to I guess the daughter's grave site, and they pray together. Oh blechhhhhhhhhhh! My teeth hurt from the syrup.

I don't know if most of the episodes were as preachy as that one, but if so, I'm glad to report that it didn't cause me permanent harm.

[freejoytoo]

:lol: I'd forgotten about the ending. At the time I found it moving, which says a lot about my taste as a child - the cheesier, the better!

[urban teacher]

I think one reason fundies like the books is because in a lot of the early ones, kids are told to not talk. They can't talk if other adults are around or sometimes if alone with parents. Laura at one point, can't even request a song she wants to hear.

[teddybear]

I finally broke out my books today and started re-reading them. Made it through the first one and ready to start #2. Just as fun as I remembered.

[itsnikki05]

I think it was one of many normals at the time. My family's experience was pretty isolated at that time, even if they didn't move around a lot. Cousins still own the property that my family lived on starting in 1863. It's not isolated at all anymore, but was then. My great-great grandmother was one of the first "white" children born in that county. (I say "white" as there were some Cherokee intermarriages in the 1600's on the east coast) The US is a big country and even now there isn't one "normal."

I live on a rural one acre lot, there are one acre lots in cities that aren't as rural as my lot. I drive an hour to get to work, my brother lives on a 1/8 or smaller lot in a big city and bikes a couple miles to work. Are either of our experiences not "normal" for now?

We live in a rural area as well. :) DH has to drive an hour to work. We live in between some decent towns... to do any shopping (and by shopping I mean Walmart or Goodwill) we have to drive 30 minutes to one town or 25 to the other. It takes 15 minutes to get my daughter to school if I'm not behind the bus... there's not a school in our town. Now, there is a mall, it's probably.. 35/40 minutes away. And then we're an hour from Memphis (where DH works).. and that's a pretty big city for around here. But I don't drive in Memphis. ;) Haha!

[itsnikki05]

I didn't like Rose in "West From Home", either. I hope that she fust came off badly and wasn't like that all ofthe time IRL.

As for corsets, I think that they look comfortable, too! Scoliosis and big boobs...a corset would rock! It's actually hard for me to stand with my shoulders back and not hunching, a corset could make me do that and hold up my breasts at the same time (I'm one of those weird people that loves wearing a bra, takes some of the weight off of my upper back).

I admit, I love structure too. My breasts are quite large, and it friggin HURTS to walk around without a bra. I can't do it. And they can't be one of the pretty lil numbers, no. It has to be one with uber wide straps and super supportive. LOL! The boobs only get a rest at bedtime. I can only sleep with a tshirt on. Anything else just... well... I'll likely toss all my clothes off at some point if I try to sleep with much else! LOL!

[kian]

Sister Mozz Thank you for the info on PMs! I appreciate it!

And yes, wouldn't it be crazy if I end up related to that poster? It was in reading her comments I saw something and thought "Oh that sounds just like my family" and then another post and it was "WHOA I think that *IS* my family!"

Or I could be completely wrong and look like an idiot :?

[DarkAnts]

We live in a rural area as well. :) DH has to drive an hour to work. We live in between some decent towns... to do any shopping (and by shopping I mean Walmart or Goodwill) we have to drive 30 minutes to one town or 25 to the other. It takes 15 minutes to get my daughter to school if I'm not behind the bus... there's not a school in our town. Now, there is a mall, it's probably.. 35/40 minutes away. And then we're an hour from Memphis (where DH works).. and that's a pretty big city for around here. But I don't drive in Memphis. ;) Haha!

I like to say that I live in a rural area now. Albuquerque is 70 miles away. The nearest town is 45 miles away. The walmart we have was the smallest super walmart ever built back in 2005. But, it is the "big city" for many folks. We have three grocery stores including the walmart, some ok restaurants, and a hospital.

[DarkAnts]

I'm reading the series to my kids right now, and by coincidence, we just finished reading the part where Jack is almost lost last night. When they are crossing the creek, its during the spring thaw, and the creek starts rising very rapidly as they are crossing. They didn't expect it at all, Pa says that he'd never seen a creek rise so quickly, and the whole family came very close to being washed away by the rising water. Pa has to get out of the wagon and swim to guide the horses across. When they realize that Jack didn't make it, Pa spends at least a couple hours (I'm guessing based on the fact the book says that his clothes had dried out) looking for Jack, and says that if he'd realized that the creek was going to rise that fast, he would have put Jack in the wagon. The quote about needing a good watchdog comes from Pa lamenting Jack's presumed death.

Having the dog swim at all may seem callous by modern standards, but Jack was a working dog who'd safely swum across creeks in the past, so I don't think that Pa was being deliberately cruel to him.

Rivers will have high times and low times during thaw. The highest level happens when the snow melt from the previous day hits the river. It sounds to me like they started to cross right before this and thats why the river started to rise while they were crossing it.

[luckystone]

Sister Mozz Thank you for the info on PMs! I appreciate it!

And yes, wouldn't it be crazy if I end up related to that poster? It was in reading her comments I saw something and thought "Oh that sounds just like my family" and then another post and it was "WHOA I think that *IS* my family!"

Or I could be completely wrong and look like an idiot :?

Hey it happens! I think there are loads of people in the world and sometimes you'll read a story that's exactly the same as something from your life...but then realise they're on the other side of the world and different in other ways and it's just a coincidence.

But at least once I have come across someone I've known irl on a random forum. A poster linked to her blog and I realised we were from the same town so I read, all these things that sounded familiar jumped out at me and suddenly this person came into my mind as having all those traits. I kept reading until I found a picture that confirmed it (she was anonymising herself pretty well but this picture of something she bought idenfied parts of her house and her pets which I recognised). It was bizarre.

That was a random, extemely popular forum, I've also had it happen with more directed forums (people studying my degree in my country, not very surprising). I always try and change details of my life just so nobody recognises me :lol:

[Wolfie]

I like to say that I live in a rural area now. Albuquerque is 70 miles away. The nearest town is 45 miles away. The walmart we have was the smallest super walmart ever built back in 2005. But, it is the "big city" for many folks. We have three grocery stores including the walmart, some ok restaurants, and a hospital.

There actually are no Walmarts or Targets in my town. There are three chain grocery stores, an IGA grocery, a Kmart, a "hometown" Sears (small location, mainly appliances, and it really is just a place where you can order online and have it shipped there) and three hardware stores. The hardware stores close at 7, which isn't fun when you realize that there is something that you need after 6:30. (I'm about 10 miles out of town.) Closest Target and Home Depot is about 30 miles away, closest Walmart is about an hour away. I don't shop Walmart, though, and usually just try to get my Target shopping done when I'm in the town where I work.

But I love being able to sit here in the pines and watch my chickens, and look at nature. Even if I am in a battle with the deer and raccoons at times too.

[SPHASH]

I don't know, but Rose Wilder Lane grew up to become a prominent libertarian who opposed the New Deal. So despite the poverty her family endured, she didn't see government programs/aid as the answer.

The ironic thing about that is Pa Ingalls's paternal grandmother was related to Franklin Roosevelt thru the Delanos. FDR's mother was a Delano.

[Hisey]

Was anyone else traumatized by Mary's going blind (in the books, not the show)? That frightened me so much I couldn't read the books as a child. I had also been told that Ma died in the same epidemic, so between the two tragedies I couldn't handle the books. But I was a kind of super-sensitive kid. I did read the books as an adult, and I love them.

I thought that the show was pne of the worst things on TV, and never watched beyond the first few episodes. They just took advantage of the "wholesomeness" of the era (girls in dresses and aprons, women at home, hardworking dads) and spun a lot of nonsense out of that. And there were so many bad actors! Albert, for one, little Carrie, Mary. . . none of them could act. And the whole Nellie/Willie business was so black and white and predictable. My daughters have read the books but I've never even told them about the show because I think it is a waste of time.

[Deleted01]

Does anyone else occasionally pull out the cookbook and read it like a novel?

:whistle:

[Olivia]

I grew up near Almonzo's childhood house and we went several times for "Farmer Boy Days" when they had demonstrations and whatnot.

What always struck me was that the house sounded huge in Farmer Boy, but it's like a kitchen, a common room and the parlor downstairs and basically two bedrooms upstairs. Definitely a different sense of scale, and I wonder how much of it was Laura's perception and the contrast between their childhoods.

[Rosa]

I'm sure it was her perception. I've been inside reconstructed soddies, they were like living in a rootcellar. And the typical log cabin was just one room w/a sleeping loft.

And COLD. When i was a kid i went to living history summer camp and we spent all afternoon one day trying to chink a log cabin with mud & straw - it was REALLY HARD to keep the wind from just blowing through, and they were homesteading cold-ass places. Not like Lincoln's homeplaces in Kentucky & Illinois, really really cold winter places.

[VVV]

Does anyone else occasionally pull out the cookbook and read it like a novel?

:whistle:

Maybe. :wink:

[Glass Cowcatcher]

Maybe. :wink:

I need to find that again. I remember cooking from it as a kid. That and the Boxcar Children cookbook.

[bellicosebroad]

I'm sure it was her perception. I've been inside reconstructed soddies, they were like living in a rootcellar. And the typical log cabin was just one room w/a sleeping loft.

And just the times. People didn't build 5,000 square foot McMansions just because they felt like it (hell, they couldn't have), and they didn't need all that space anyway because there wasn't as much "stuff" to be had, nor the massive consumption of easy to get things. That probably was a huge house for the time. My grandfather was born in a log cabin that was probably 250 square feet if that; I saw it when I was in my 20s and it's basically just a room with a hearth/crude fireplace and a door. He was the first of 12 kids and great-grandpa did eventually build a real two story farmhouse, but not until there were six people (two adults, four kids) living in that little cabin.

The farmhouse wasn't all that big, either, maybe 750 square feet on each floor -- kitchen, "great room" (livingroom), mom and dad's bedroom, and kind of a mudroom off the porch on the first floor, and the second floor had four (I think) small bedrooms. No closets. Hooks all along the walls to hang things. By the time I saw it, there was no furniture in it anymore, but the bedrooms were teeny and I don't know how they jammed beds, armoires and trunks (for clothes storage) in them and slept 12 people besides.

[torticat]

When they realize that Jack didn't make it, Pa spends at least a couple hours (I'm guessing based on the fact the book says that his clothes had dried out) looking for Jack, and says that if he'd realized that the creek was going to rise that fast, he would have put Jack in the wagon. The quote about needing a good watchdog comes from Pa lamenting Jack's presumed death.

Having the dog swim at all may seem callous by modern standards, but Jack was a working dog who'd safely swum across creeks in the past, so I don't think that Pa was being deliberately cruel to him.

Yes to this.

Also, on the subject of Charlotte the beloved doll, Ma makes Laura give up the doll because she doesn't realize Laura still loves the doll (she notes that Laura never plays with it anymore). When Laura finds the frozen and bedraggled Charlotte in a puddle, Ma helps her with a thorough restoration, washing and drying the doll, ironing and starching her clothes, and replacing her yarn hair and button eyes.

I rather love these parts of the books (Jack and Charlotte)--the resurrection/restoration theme that they have in common and the fact that both incidents happen because of lapses in parental judgment, but that when Pa and Ma realize their errors, they go to great lengths to make things right. The love and joy in the reunions with Jack and Charlotte would never have happened were it not for the respective mistakes Pa and Ma had made earlier, which I read as thoroughly human and very real, but not unloving.

Great thread, thanks (from a mostly-lurker).

[kian]

Does anyone else occasionally pull out the cookbook and read it like a novel?

Um....

yep.

[summerof66]

This thread (and the Anne thread!) have brought back so many beloved childhood memories. You guys have inspired me to rummage through the house and dig up all my Little House books. Hopefully soon I'll have time to re-read them all and begin sharing them with my own daughters.

I've enjoyed all the great discussion in this thread and want to send out a great big thanks to everyone who posted links to additional information. I got lost down a couple of rabbit holes over the weekend and it was fantastic! :D

[roddma]

Growing up, her family moved multiple times, including once when they fled under the cover of darkness leaving a boatload of debt (tsk tsk Pa Ingalls)./quote]

Yet another part Fundies miss. Debt was a very much a part of this era.

I read a real bio of LW too. Can't recall all the names used for the Nellie character but the TV Nellie is thought to be based on Gennie Masterson. The Olsen's last name was actually Owens. They owned a mercantile but move to New York and back to Desemet Iowa, then New York again.

[WokChop]

Does anyone else occasionally pull out the cookbook and read it like a novel?

:whistle:

I do. :geek:

I am bound and determined to make a salt rising bread starter that actually ferments. I have to find a way to achieve and maintain the correct temperature. So far, no luck. I need to channel MacGyver. Maybe I'll give a whirl over winter break.

I love good ol' stinky salt rising bread. Unfortunately, I can't find it locally anymore.