Jess
Usually when I see post of that length I think "jeez someone has WAY to much time on their hands... but I am SO enjoying your posts! Keep going!
And cinnamon? In the 1880s? Anyone want to venture the COST of getting it out to the frontier? I have my doubts that Laura Ingalls even would have known what it was except in candy perhaps…
mmm this thread is making me crave hoarhound!
Jess, loved your posts! Every once in awhile, I see some of that TV show and cringe inside. Is there any more coming?
Are you sure? Can anyone get me a citation for Landon’s religion? Because what with Highway to Heaven, I always assumed he was some flavor of Christian, and then there was a (totally unture) rumor that he was a member of my church, and between all this I’m just really confused now.
I’ve been to Price, Utah! It has dinosaurs. And the only completely carpeted restaurant bathroom I’ve ever seen. Walls, stalls, doors, and all.
I have been THROUGH Price several years ago. I live about 5 hours north of it. If you watch closely I am told you can see polygamists as well…
Western Utah and Southern as well was practically frontier well up into the 1930s. And if you get off of the freeway between Santaquin and Cedar City it is STILL frontier… theres a lot of wild area out there. Lots of old ghost towns…
Okay I return you to your regularly scheduled thread
He was born Eugene Maurice Horowitz in Queens, NY (Halloween, 1936) to a Jewish father and a formerly Catholic mother who converted. His mother seems to have been a real nutcase and he generally loathed her (by most accounts, with reason- he had a problem with bedwetting as late as adolescance and she would hang his wet sheets out for the neighbors to see). While he wasn’t devoutly religious, he did acknowledge a generally Jewish ethos and at points in his life had to deal with anti-semitics.
Huh? I always got the impression he was one of the most devoutly religious people in Hollywood.
I think they did show the fiddle on the show, and he DID call Laura “half-pint.” It’s entertaining on it’s own, but not in comparison with the books.
And they have Mary starting to go blind when she was just a kid-what’s up with THAT? She started wearing glasses-Mary didn’t go blind until she was much older, after an illness.
haha this is a great post. i live roughly 90 minutes away from walnut grove (which also has a LIW museum-not as good as DeSmet’s tho) man the mountains in walnut grove are awesome!!! GET REAL this is called the great plains for a reason! people around this area were greatly annoyed with the series, DeSmet where they finally landed isn’t mentioned, and Walnut Grove is still standing!
I also read one or two laura biographys, can’t recall the name at the moment but, little house on the prairie which is in “indian territory” somewhere in kansas is actually the first of laura’s memories. the family left the big woods of wisconsin for indian territory, where they settled for a short time, untill the us government forced all white settlers out, as the land was still indian held and wasn’t open for settlement. the ingalls family returned to wisconsin and the stories from “little house in the big woods” originate then. i can’t remember for certain, but i believe that they went to walnut grove at that time, but the grasshoppers and farm failures drove them out. they then went to burr oak, iowa where they lived above a hotel that pa and ma both worked at while laura stayed with the children. i think this is where the baby son was born and is buried. (i would look up this info, but my pc is being dodgy tonight and will only allow me one window open grrrrrrrr). Laura did not include this town in her story because it was a very hard time for the family, this may be where mary contracted scarlet fever ( ? ) which caused her blindness. i am a little fuzzy but i do believe they returned to walnut grove from iowa but only for a short time when pa was hired by the railroad and they moved west to DeSmet, dakota territory.
In any case, i think i may be repeating what has already been stated. If you happen to be on your way to the Black Hills of South Dakota and to Mount Rushmore, take a detour off the hiway and check out DeSmet. Many of the store buildings mentioned in “Little Town on the Prairie” and “These Happy Golden Years” are still there and the LIW association in DeSmet has done a wonderful job of mapping it out. You can see the surveyor’s house, the claim site, and the house in town as well as the cemetary where ma, pa, mary and grace are buried.
I should stop now, as I am sounding like i could get a job with the South Dakota tourism department. heehee.
I was amazed to find out the settlers were Ayn Rand fans L
I don’t recall a girl-molested-by-father episode. I do recall one where a girl is raped & impregnated & her father regards her as a slut & Albert’s in love with her & she gets killed fleeing from her rapist when he comes back for more & the rapist is arrested… was this just bad luck on Albert’s part (or maybe bad luck on the part of the girls he was interested in?)
I think Pa & the men would have “found” a molesting-father to have fallen to an “unfortunate accident” in the woods… that is,
assuming that he was ever found.
Actually, the price of the cinnamon wouldn’t have been all that high. The Sears & Roebuck company would ship almost anywhere in the United States, and had very reasonable prices on grocery items.
We have a lot of catelogs from the company in the museum in which I work. IIRC, it was something like 15 cents per pound . . . and a pound of cinnamon goes a long way. (You were encouraged to buy in bulk and split the product, and the cost, with your neighbors.) You could get almost any spice you can think of from the catelog, and if you could form a “shopping club” with your neighbors, and have everyone put their order in at once, you could save a lot of money with discounts and lower shipping rates.
Of course, for folks who were barely scraping by, cinnamon would have been a luxury item.
Jess & Friar, you’re right. I twisted up the facts of the show. I looked up an episode guide and it seems that the girl (Sylvia) was raped, but it wasn’t by her father. I made it even more salacious than it was. 
As for Landon’s religion, in interviews he definitely considered himself to be Jewish.
In her book, his widow describes him as “deeply spiritual” but not subscribing to any particular organized religion. He was proud of his Judaism, but far from strict in its observance.
It’s odd and unusual that the family completely died out (five children, one grandchild, no great-grandchildren*). Does anybody know who Rose Lane’s heirs were and if they received any of the proceeds from the TV series? How was the Richard Thomas/Lindsay Crouse movie?
Has anybody been to Allison “Nellie” Arngrim’s site, Confessions of a Prairie Bitch ?
*IIRC, Rose had a stillborn son, but this was the last birth in the family.
I have heard that LIW’s first published writings were fairly unremarkable “What I Grew In My Garden Today”-type pieces for her local paper, which showed little, if any, literary promise, then the LH books suddenly were 100% improvements.
In other words, did her daughter Rose Wilder Lane, a well-known writer, and quite the activist in her day, actually take her mother’s rambling hand-written notes and do 80-90% of the actual “grunt” work in writing the LH books?
Aso, was the 2000 telefilm, “Beyond The Prarie: The True Story of LIW,” which featured Richard Thomas (with a beard, albeit a trimmed one!) as Charles Ingalls, closer to the spirit of the books, closer to being “true?”
Sir Rhosis
Flodnak, you’re right about Pa taking the Indian seriously in the Long Winter and I know he didn’t hate them as much as Caroline. That’s what was good about the books. They showed a more realistic picture of people’s attitudes back then. But I do seem to recall reading somewhere that Rose, Laura’s daughter, may have edited the books quite a bit or even written them to some extent.
Has anyone read the books they have out now about the lives of Caroline and Rose? Are they any good?
Now back to the TV series:
I also remember a child abuse episode where a man who lost his wife during childbirth blamed the child, drank heavily, then beat the kid up all the time. Charles stayed with him while he dried out and the kid stayed with the Ingalls. I remember Caroline saying that alcoholism was a disease. I don’t think anyone during that time period would have ever thought that.
A couple other little things. There are a number of occasions when Dr. Baker talks about getting check-ups. Did anyone get check-ups then? I highly doubt it. And in one episode the Ingalls family goes on a camping trip for a vacation. How could they have taken a vacation? Was the place going to farm itself? And why would they consider camping a vacation?
Ah, I missed Sir Rhosis’s post about Rose’s involvement with writing the books.
Have you ever read “The First Four Years”? Evidently after LIW’s death, it was found written in the notebooks (binders?) that she had written the drafts of all of her other books in. It’s the shortest of the lot, by far, and has a very different style. I had just assumed that that was how she plotted out the basic arc of the book, and then filled in the details in later drafts. I had never heard of Rose rewriting her mother’s books.
My father alternates between watching LH, Trading Spaces and CNN. For the last year that I lived at home I had LH constantly on in the background.
The 70’s interpretation of their clothes was great. Pa wears a shirt with no tie or jacket to church! Only the severely impoverished, unable-to-afford-grass-to-chew-let-alone-food would do that! It’s equivalent to going to the opera in underpants! And the girls and Caroline’s Flower-child dresses- no corsets…
Grumble.
Speaking of moral lessons, there’s a bit in LTOTP during the Fourth of July celebration that I love- Pa’s just started everyone singing “My Country 'Tis Of Thee”, and Laura has a wonderful revelation about what it means to be free. Freedom means moral obligation- the obligation to make oneself be good.
I think North America could do with a bit more of that kind of freedom- the freedom to be charitable, uncomplaining, hardworking etc.
/end grumble/
I think i had read somewhere that the books were a mother/daughter “collaborative effort” whatever that means.
Carrie eventually worked for a newspaper and settled in Keystone, South Dakota (town nearest to Mount Rushmore). She married a man with children but never had any of her own. Grace married and lived her entire life in DeSmet. It really is odd that Rose was the only grandchild.
Another interesting note, most of the authentic possessions of Charles and Caroline Ingalls are now in the Laura Ingalls Wilder museum in Mansfield, Missouri.
Anyone been there? I would love to make a trip and check that one out.
It seems that “Nellie” is now an AIDS activist-the actor who played her husband on the show died of AIDS.
Never would have guessed, huh?
I Like Bacon, I’m a vegetarian – and should probably argue against any point you make, given your user name:)
Would love to visit the museum; I have never watched the TV series, knowing full well that it would pale in comparison to the books. I spent counless hours reading the books, over and over. Does anyone remember the scene where Charles has to take wheat from a shopowner to feed the family - the Long Cold Winter, I think. Oh, and selling the calf so Mary could go to college – and Laura in the sleigh with Almanzo.
Beautiful.