This entry originated as a Facebook post on August 8, the beginning of my trip as I loaded up on the Hampton Inn complimentary buffet breakfast. Suppose I should have posted this first instead of last, but glad to take the time after my trip to muse this thought, once again:
I wonder who Laura would be in the modern era, had she been born in 1967 instead of 1867. It’s an interesting contemplation of the roots of her brilliance: was she a product of her circumstances or was it in her regardless? She loved books, music, storytelling, and her handsome hero Farmer Boy. In between teaching in rural red schoolhouses, she wrote essays and poetry. Raising chickens, she wrote newspaper columns. Sewing buttonholes and scraping together a dollar to move to Missouri, she kept a diary. And after Ma and sister Mary died, she began taking notes.
I imagine modern-day Laura would be living a life similar to one of my other favorite Wisconsin writers, Michael Perry, a guitar-playing, firefighting, farmer who built a shed in the woods in order to drink terrible coffee and write.
I’m sitting here wondering what I get out of these excursions across the plains to stare at replica cabins, musty quilts, handwritten school tablets, and broken china. She told historical fiction about the founding of our country and some of that history is problematic in our modern era; she really painted Ma with a broad, racist brush and asked Pa some hard questions about who the land really belonged to. In her version of the events in which she created the stories that became Little House on the Prairie, I am conflicted with her point of view of Indigenous People; was she othering them when she wanted the baby in the papoose, or was she, in her child-like point of view, connecting with the plight of the Osage through the baby's eyes?
I feel like these books are an important stepping stone towards dialogue as opposed to dismissiveness. After all, I do believe she was quoted as saying if she were a part of the Osage tribe, she would have scalped the first man who tried to claim the beautiful prairie from her.
I think she leaned into compassion for the plight of the Indians during that time in history but she missed the mark; I'm also judging her 90+ years later.
Back to her as a more spirited writer, when she wrote, she invited you to delight in a delicious drink of lemonade, find magic playing in a creek, and find a connection to her humanity from long ago.
Will never got into the books but loved the chapter when Laura got a time out for being naughty, he knew exactly how she felt. She hooked me when I picked up On the Banks of Plum Creek, where she noted upon seeing the swimming hole for the first time that suddenly, her whole skin was thirsty; I too knew exactly how that felt.
It’s remarkable that her homesteads still exist, thank goodness for land records from 1870 and 1880. Seeing her living spaces—and not some soundstage—demonstrates how the magic she saw in her surroundings was real.
Good lord, this is a ramble. Best hitch up the Bronco and hit the road.
