Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder

by John E. Miller

  It was probably this manuscript that Laura was referring to in a note to agent George Bye in May 1943. “I have thought that ‘Golden Years’ was my last,” she indicated, “that I would spend what is left of my life living, not writing about it, but a story keeps stirring in my mind and if it pesters me enough I may write it down and send it to you.” Whether she had completed her adult novel by this time is uncertain; it is likely that she had. But the incentive to go ahead with it—to expand it and revise it into publishable form—was small. She was old, she was tired, and she had been hugely successful with her children's books. Why bother with more, and why risk her reputation in an area where she had no experience? And with Rose far away in Connecticut, the kind of close collaboration that had been possible when she had started out in the 1930s was no longer feasible. Rose had discouraged her from dissipating her energy in trying an adult novel several years earlier, so Laura probably never even told her that she had gone ahead and drafted one anyway. When the manuscript was discovered with Rose's effects after her death in 1968, she had done nothing with it, and it is doubtful that she would have tried to work on it and get it published even had she lived longer.3

  Now, with no more writing projects to keep her busy, Laura could relax and enjoy the accolades that came her way. Letters from enthusiastic fans continued to arrive with regularity, the numbers swelling each February around her birthday. Librarians expressed delight at how her books stimulated so many schoolchildren to read. When the Seattle Public Library sponsored a radio dramatization of On the Banks of Plum Creek, the committee chair for the program wrote to say how popular the series had been. “I thought you would be interested to know how successful Mary and Laura and the baby have been in the Northwest,” she wrote. “We librarians are grateful to you for giving us a series of books so fine and at the same time so appealing to children.” Schoolteachers had their classes write Laura letters after reading her books. “I enjoy your books very much,” one Los Angeles schoolgirl wrote. “I wish I lived when you did. I would like to live on the prairie because you didn't have to be fenced in a little yard. You had free things to do on the prairie.” A boy whose class had already gone through four of the books and was into the middle of the fifth wrote to say that he liked them better than his history text. “I think that your family was an excellent family because you never complained, as when Pa had to walk 200 miles for a job. I tell this because the pioneers had to be tough to start a new country.” And a classmate of his wrote, “Your books have helped us a lot. Your books are more interesting to us to know that the things really happened to real people. Your books are so exciting.”4

  Laura was amazed by all the attention. “The children send me their pictures, Christmas cards and presents, valentines, birthday cards and gifts,” she wrote Frances Mason in 1948. “I think I had letters from every state and have always answered them all until recently.” Rheumatism in her hands, however, made it increasingly difficult and sometimes painful for her to write, so she became more selective in sending replies. Editor Aubrey Sherwood of the De Smet News, whose father had edited the paper back in the 1880s when Laura and Almanzo had lived there, was active in promoting her books and wrote to her from time to time. “Many thanks for the copy of The De Smet News and for your kindness in vouching for the truth of my little books,” Laura wrote him. “I appreciate it. Your description of the old prairie road to Lakes Henry and Thompson made both Mr. Wilder and myself very homesick for De Smet. We used to drive that old road on Sunday afternoons in our country days.” While she continued to answer many letters personally, Harper and Brothers printed a composite one from her that answered many of the typical questions that readers asked so that she could reduce her writing chores.5

  People in Mansfield were aware of Laura's success as an author. From time to time a story was published in the Mansfield Mirror reminding them of another award or recognition, but they probably underestimated just how well known and highly regarded she was. Her writing career had begun after Rose was already famous. To many people, Rose remained the true celebrity, and her mother's accomplishments somehow remained in her shadow.

  Folks saw less and less of the Wilders now. They did not venture off the farm as often. They moved about more slowly, and they were happy just to sit and take things easy. Although some people regarded them as being aloof or even as loners, Laura and Almanzo did go to town now and then to attend church services, to shop, or to visit. He had never been as much of a churchgoer as she, and now even she made it in for Sunday services less frequently. Carlton Knight, the Methodist minister, remembered her coming alone when she did attend. She still managed to go to Friday afternoon meetings of the Women's Society of Christian Service of the Methodist church from time to time. Religious revivalism carried on its strong tradition in the area during the 1940s and into the 1950s, but the Wilders probably did not attend the revivals anymore or go to the singing conventions in Hartville the first week in July.6

  For a couple who were in their seventies and eighties, the massive changes unleashed by World War II and its aftermath must have seemed somewhat bewildering. The Mansfield Mirror ran stories and pictures depicting the German concentration camps when they were liberated by Allied soldiers in early 1945, and the paper later reported the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan. The war had been brought home daily to Mansfield's residents by the departure of local young men to the training camps (one of them, the new Fort Leonard Wood, was carved out of the countryside thirty miles northeast of Mansfield in 1941), scrap drives, bond solicitations, V-mail, battlefront news, and many other things. Still it came as a distinct shock to people to discover that human beings could have brutalized their fellow human beings like the Nazis had or that the world was now in danger of being incinerated by the splitting of the atom. The homely optimism and cheerful spirit exuded by the Mary-and-Laura stories may have appeared to some people, at least, to be somehow inadequate to an understanding of such momentous tragedies. Nevertheless, after the war State Department officials distributed Laura's books in occupied Germany and Japan as expressions of America's generous and hopeful spirit, which they hoped would infect people in those countries, too. It would have been interesting to hear Laura's musings on these subjects, in a manner reminiscent of the columns that she had written for the Missouri Ruralist during and after World War I. Whatever thoughts she might have had, they were not written and preserved.7

  Like the rest of the country, Mansfield became caught up in the throes of change after the war. In a manner similar to small towns like it all around the country, Mansfield faced daunting challenges, as more highly populated places enticed job seekers wanting to advance themselves economically. Fewer and fewer young people seemed willing to live the kinds of lives their parents and grandparents had been content with on the farm and in rural communities. Economic opportunities were limited in rural areas. Mansfield's civic leaders, increasingly aware of this fact, sought energetically to remedy the situation by boosting the town's prospects and by extending invitations to industries to relocate there.

  Recognizing that the war had intensified Mansfield's perennial housing shortage, Main Street businessmen and professionals sought to encourage investment and low-interest loans. But the problem was difficult to deal with, and only modest progress occurred. More was accomplished in beefing up city services and amenities. During the postwar years, higher tax levies and bond issues funded the hard-surfacing of city streets that remained graveled and made possible the installation of new water and sewer systems. Bright lights creating a “white way” around the business district were installed, and a seventy-five-thousand-dollar clinic and hospital were built. In the countryside, power lines financed by the federal Rural Electrification Administration brought electricity into many farm homes for the first time by the start of the 1950s. In 1957 a new dial telephone system rendered obsolete most of the operators who had handled calls until then.8

  At the center of town, the park on the square had
grown more and more ill-kempt until efforts to spruce it up were launched. The decrepit octagonal bandstand, which had witnessed countless concerts since its appearance in 1911, was finally replaced. New benches and plantings beautified the park, which continued to draw large crowds of listeners for Saturday night band concerts in the summertime. The intersection of U.S. Highway 60, which ran along the north side of the square, and State Highway 5 in the middle of town was considered a significant business asset to the community, drawing in traffic and shoppers from miles around. Many store owners worried when rumors spread that one or both highways were going to be routed around the town to speed up traffic. The bypasses were eventually constructed, but not until the late 1950s.9

  Town boosters realized that efforts to keep traffic flowing through the community, improve its appearance, and expand services to its residents were insufficient in and of themselves to maintain and possibly bring about an increase in population. The 1950 census figures augured poorly for the future. While Mansfield's count of 963 was up by 41 over 1940—giving it a better record than that of most nearby towns—the county's population dipped by 2,133 during the decade and seemed likely to continue downward unless some kind of dramatic economic turnaround occurred. Wartime exigencies had accelerated the process of mechanization on the farm, and during the postwar years agriculture in Wright County underwent the same kind of transformation that affected farmers all around the country: increased dependence upon labor-saving machinery, the widespread use of productivity-enhancing chemicals and fertilizers, and modernized methods of production that left fewer farm families on the land—and smaller families at that. Small-town storekeepers, who were in business to serve them, saw demand for their products and services dwindle, squeezing their profits and forcing many of them out of business.10

  The only way out of their dilemma, many Mansfield businessmen believed, was to attract new industry that would provide jobs that could keep local residents and farm families from having to move elsewhere to find employment. Industry had come and gone over the years. The tomato factory and cheese plant had shut down. The brief enthusiasm for lead and zinc mining had died, revived, and died again, although talk resurfaced of possibly making the activity profitable once more. A new lime mill and a frozen-food locker plant started operations soon after the war, but not until the early 1950s did concerted efforts begin to attract industry to Mansfield.

  In April 1952 the Lions Club formed an industrial committee to conduct a survey and to figure out methods of advertising the community to prospective employers. Three years later a Mansfield Industrial Development Corporation was set up for the purpose of wooing industry and raising funds to facilitate the construction of factories in town. Although selling stock in the corporation proceeded more slowly than desired, within a short time the Tobin-Hamilton Shoe Company of St. Louis decided to relocate its operations to Mansfield. Starting with about a hundred employees, within two years’ time it had built an addition onto its factory and more than doubled its workforce. By 1959 there were 375 employees working for the company. Other industries were slower to develop in Mansfield (later, a major steel factory would locate there). In the 1960 census Mansfield's population dropped slightly from 963 to 949.11

  For Laura and Almanzo, the transformations that they had witnessed during their lifetimes were immense. “Times have changed within my memory and I am sure we have all changed too,” she marveled in February 1947. “As I remembered the things of which I told in my stories I could hardly believe I was the same person as the Laura of whom I wrote.”12 Laura's and Almanzo's childhoods had been ones of log cabins, dugouts and sod houses, candlelight illumination, horse-and-buggy transportation, backbreaking labor on the farm, home entertainment, confrontations with Indians on the frontier, grinding wheat in coffee mills, shooting rabbits and geese for dinner, and walking miles across the prairie to get from one place to another. During their lifetime they had witnessed the coming of the railroad and, in its wake, the emergence of the automobile, moving pictures, radio, television, air travel, X-rays, radar, and other technological marvels. By the time Almanzo died, atomic bombs had been detonated, and in the year Laura died the first earth satellite was launched. Many of these developments they welcomed and enjoyed. Driving to Detroit and California in an automobile had been great adventures for them, and Almanzo appreciated the mobility his car afforded him. They had a radio too, but there never was a television set in the house. Occasionally when Rose had lived with them they had gone to the movies, but they never became great movie fans.

  Life at Rocky Ridge, while affected to a degree by modern developments and technologies, remained something of a throwback to an earlier era. Almanzo still liked to putter around in his shop. He enjoyed working with wood and built some beautiful furniture. He possessed a bevy of canes made from different kinds of wood that he had picked up on the farm or that people had given to him. One of them was quite unique, containing a variety of different kinds of wood, each piece being only about an inch long. He also kept some goats and trained them to put their front legs up on a little stool, making it easier for him to milk them because of his bad leg, which prevented him from stooping. He used a bunch of white handkerchiefs to clean their udders. Laura could not stand the handkerchiefs, so he took them to a woman in town to get them laundered.13

  Sometimes when he went to town he would wander over to the pool hall next door to the old theater on the west side of the square and watch the games going on there. He never took part himself; he just sat and visited with the other men. Everybody knew that he had an injured foot, causing him to limp and requiring a special shoe. He would make a cut in the toe of the shoe and stitch around it so that it would fit his foot better. He walked with a cane, and he wore suspenders. He was the quiet type, not very talkative around most people. His big white moustache could give him a stern appearance, and to some people he seemed grouchy and unapproachable. But others said that once you got to know him, he could be quite outgoing and even playful. Peggy Dennis, a young woman in her early twenties who waited on him when he came into the Pennington grocery store, considered him a cutup because he always liked to clown around with her mother. Anna Gutschke, who knew the Wilders for almost a half century, liked him a lot. She recalled, “He had great humor, he enjoyed entertaining. He was absolutely the greatest. He had lots of fun, he was a joy.” Whether people thought of him as a cutup or a grouch, however, he was, in their minds, different, someone a little bit out of the ordinary.14

  Laura was different in her own way. Although as a child and adolescent she had disliked snobbery and social distinctions, as an adult she sometimes gave people the impression that she was a little snooty herself. This reflected less haughtiness and arrogance on her part than certain ingrained habits, a strong sense of propriety, and a measure of shyness that she never fully overcame. No doubt also it mirrored some attitudes that she had learned from her mother about distinctions separating people on the basis of proper behavior and social bearing.15

  Although she had always done her part of the heavy labor—both inside and out—on the farm, Laura always dressed up when she went to town, usually taking care to wear some (cheap) jewelry, a ladylike hat, and sometimes gloves. To town women and farmers’ wives who did not mind being seen in calico dresses, such behavior was certainly different and, to some, slightly pretentious. She liked the color blue, but she must have worn frequently her red velvet dress, because many people remembered seeing her wearing it.16

  Talkative in private, Laura tended to get nervous in crowds. If this sometimes made her seem distant or even haughty, people who knew Laura better generally described her as being friendly and likable, sweet and gracious. Roscoe Jones, who as a kid did odd jobs for her, remembered her as “a very, very kind person and a real sweet lady.” She had a wonderful disposition, said Neta Seal, who got to know her about as well as anybody.17

  During the 1940s, before Almanzo died, the two of them frequently joined Neta and Silas Seal
for dinner at their rooming house. The younger couple reciprocated by coming for meals at Rocky Ridge. Sometimes all of them would go out to eat at a restaurant, maybe down to Branson or Hollister or some other place in the area. Laura loved chicken and dumplings. Neta made a delicious Swiss steak. Almanzo always requested it when she asked him to choose the menu, and he would praise her extravagantly afterward. Once, upon arriving at their apartment, he announced, “Now, Neta, I can't brag on your Swiss steak. Bessie don't want me to, ha ha.” Had Laura become a bit jealous because of his effusive appreciation of her cooking? Perhaps. In any case, there is a hint here of Laura's ability—or at least of her continuing effort—to keep “the man of the place” under strict control. For a while Almanzo believed that he would like to move into town to live in one of the Seals’ apartments, but Laura squelched the notion. One day she told him, “Now, Manly, you go out to your workshop; we can't take that with us, you know. You'll have to sort it out and sell it. Now you go out there and make a list of anything you're going to sell before we move in.” Almanzo could not bear to part with his tools and workshop. That ended his talk about moving into town.18