Laura Ingalls’ Friends
Remember Her
By Dan L. White
Close friends recall
Laura Ingalls Wilder
with
reminiscences, recollections and ramblings
Dan L. White, his wife Margie, and five children settled in the Ozarks some years ago, on a forty acre farmstead, just north of the Gasconade River, right where Indian Creek and Brush Creek meet, about 12 miles up the road from Laura's Rocky Ridge Farm. This book, Laura Ingalls' Friends Remember Her, is by and about Ozarkers, remembering two of their own.
Copyright 1992, 2008 by Dan L. White, all rights reserved.
Smashwords Edition 1.0, November, 2009
Soft Cover - ISBN 978-1440498541
Cover design by Carrie A. White
Discover other titles by Dan L. White at Smashwords.com:
Devotionals with Laura
Smashwords
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Table of Contents
1. The Move to the Ozarks
2. Interview with Nava Austin
3. Interview with Peggy and Erman Dennis
4. What Made Laura’s Books So Happy?
5. Interview with Emogene Fuge
6. Interview with Neta Seal
7. Laura’s Thoughts on Country Life
8. Interview with Anna Gutschke
9. Did Rose Write Laura’s Books?
10. Interview with Carl Hartley, Sr.
11. Laura’s Thoughts on Home and Family
12. Laura’s Lonely Little House
Laura Ingalls’ Friends
Remember Her
Chapter 1
The Move to the Ozarks
Let's go back a bit.
The year is 1894. The country is in what's called a depression. That means people don’t have much money and have no place to get any.
The prairie has a drought. That's year after year of not enough rain in the springtime, and hardly any at all in the summer.
Because of the depression and the drought on the prairie, Almanzo and Laura Ingalls wilder and their seven year old daughter Rose are moving to a place they have never seen, and heard precious little about.
When Laura had moved with Ma and Pa Ingalls from the big, dark woods of Wisconsin to the hot Kansas prairie, and then to the flowered banks of Plum Creek in Minnesota, and then to the little prairie town of De Smet, South Dakota, her purplish blue eyes had always twinkled with anticipation. Moving to a new home was exciting.
Pa Ingalls was not prone to stay settled in one place. Somehow it always seemed easier to pick up and move to a new spot than to stay put and fight it out where he was.
And grown up Laura Ingalls Wilder, who was still just as short as a half-pint, had moved just about as much as Pa Ingalls.
When she and Almanzo were first married, they lived on Almanzo's tree claim homestead. Then they moved to their other homestead. Then they sold it, and moved
back to the tree claim. Later, after getting over diphtheria, they moved in with Almanzo's parents in Minnesota. Then they moved to Florida for two years, and finally moved back to De Smet, in town, in a rented house.
Now, on July 17, 1894, Laura, Almanzo and Rose were moving again. This time 650 miles away, out of South Dakota, all the way south across Iowa, then almost all the way across Missouri, to the Ozark Mountains.
Let's try to imagine that morning, through Laura's eyes:
_____________
Ma Ingalls stood with her arms folded primly in front of her, her hair pulled tight in a bun, an apron around her waist and her eyes wet and glistening. Ma had always hated moving, and now precious little Laura was moving far away.
Pa Ingalls stood with his hands on his hips, and puffed on his pipe, faster than normal, with the balls of smoke scurrying to disappear in the softly whooshing wind.
And Laura's sisters Mary and Carrie and Grace just stood there, ready to say good-bye, although they hated to. Since Mary had gone blind, Laura had really seemed like the oldest sister in the family, even though Mary really was.
Sitting
up on the wagon seat, with Laura beside him and little Rose peering
out from behind, Almanzo lifted the reins, spoke to the horses, and
they headed south. Good-byes rang through the early morning frisky
air, one after another, and then a second time, and again. Laura and
Almanzo were really, really going to this far away, unknown place
--
the Ozark Mountains of Missouri.
All eight shiny eyes stared hard, those of Ma and Pa and Carrie and Grace. Though the memory was blurred and tear stained, they would never forget the sight of the waddling wagon. Mary couldn't watch them leave with her blind blue eyes. She didn't stare with her wet eyes, but she listened to the steps of the horses grow fainter, and fainter, and finally just fade away.
The horses' heavy, plodding feet stirred up little poofs of dust from the parched, powdery ground. Long, skinny shadows thrown by the early sun crawled along their west side, and the Congregational Church and the schoolhouse grew smaller and smaller behind them. The boxy peddler's wagon waddled slowly along, farther and farther, until sometime after nine o'clock, the little prairie town, and Ma and Pa and Mary and Carrie and Grace, disappeared between the burnt brown earth and the milky blue sky.
_____________
So Laura left these beloved people and the little town on the prairie, with all their memories. Pleasant walks in the prairie grass with Mary, telling her listening ears of every wildflower and every knoll. Long rides around the lake when Almanzo was courting Laura. The school, the church, the friends. All this faded in the dust behind the wagon.
They also left in the dust bad memories of life on the prairie. Seven years of drought had cost Laura and Almanzo their two 160 acre homestead farms. Their first house had burned. Their little baby boy had died. Almanzo's health had been ruined by an attack of diphtheria. His left foot was forever deformed, and afterward his hands always fumbled when he harnessed the horses.
They were leaving the Dakota prairie because life there had been too rough. Their life on the prairie had been unhappy. That was why they were leaving. They were looking for something better, a happy place, where life could be enjoyed, not endured.