Visitors often walk through this high prairie farmhouse and say they can feel her. They don’t know how. They don’t know why. But she’s here.
A teenage girl is in the farmhouse museum, taking the tour alongside me. She and her mom are in my tour group. The girl is looking at the old woman’s artifacts, nestled behind Plexiglass cases, taking lots of pictures with a phone.
“This is the clock SHE wrote about, Mom,” says the girl.
She.
Everyone here is on a first-name basis with “she.”
The girl says her grandmother is who first got her into the classic book series, back when she was little. The girl has been in love with “her” ever since. Her grandmother would read these books to her every night. And when her grandmother went on hospice care last year, the girl returned the favor.
The home is nothing fancy. It’s your typical Missouri farmhouse. Like something your grandparents grew up in. Musty smelling. Unlevel. Creaky. Two stories. Simple to a fault.
The home was built in 1894. She and her husband made a $100 down payment. There were two rooms. Her husband and a few local carpenters built the rest. Sometimes they paid workmen in bales of hay. Or with chickens.
I rest my own hand on the cracked and faded wood paneling. I feel like I’m in the household of an old friend. The teenage girl, however, is having an almost spiritual experience. She traveled here to Mansfield, all the way from Florida, to make this pilgrimage.
She is carrying one of “her” books in her arms. A paperback. Tattered and worn.
And I kind of understand what she’s feeling. When you fall in love with a writer, you never fall out of love.
I read the old woman’s books when I was a kid, too. I read eight of her books in one week. Then I read them again before returning them to the library. I was smitten.
Four of those books were written in this house. The others, written in the guest cottage next door.
When she moved into this home, she had only been writing for one year. She was new to the craft. Wet behind the ears. Much like the author of this column.
She cut her teeth in this house, writing articles for the “Star Farmer” of St. Louis. Then, the “Missouri Ruralist.” Farmers’ magazines. Homespun articles of practicality. When to plant your corn. How to treat a lame chicken. Salt-of-the-earth stuff.
At age 65, she made it big. America fell in love with her. For the rest of her life, she would receive fan mail from girls and boys all over the nation. And she wrote every child back. Each one. She wrote letters every day. Until arthritis said it was time to quit.
Their little fan letters are still scattered on her dining room table. “Dear Laura…” they begin. You can see her pencil marks on the table’s surface.
She died in this farmhouse three days after her 90th birthday. It was winter. She was tired. They say she went easily from complications with diabetes.
A television show in the 1970s would later depict her life. The show was fanciful and charming. Feathered bangs and all. But it was fiction.
Her real life was fraught with the marrow-crushing pains of pioneerism, dirt farming, illness, and infant death.
Her husband had a stroke as a young man. She lost a 12-day-old baby. They traveled by covered wagon. Diphtheria nearly killed them both. He wheezed and limped for the rest of his life.
I think what touches me most about this old homeplace is how similar the inhabitants were to my own people. My own relatives who grappled against the elements, against fate, against better advice, to build a life of independence and prerogative. To be fully American. Or die trying.
As I leave the farmhouse, the teenage girl asks whether I mind taking a picture of her and her mother. They sit on the porch. They smile.
“I can’t believe we’re on Laura Ingalls’ porch,” the mom says. “I wish Grandma could see us now.”
The girl clutches her well-worn paperback as though it is dear.
“She can,” the girl replies.
Questions: SeanDietrich@gmail.com
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Originally published on Sean’s website. Republished here with permission.
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