Do you think Caroline Ingalls ever regretted marrying Charles?

Because she was a devout Christian and women had no opportunities to live independently and she would have been shunned by society for leaving her husband. Best she could do was hope for better times.

You mean they didn't sit around blaming Ulysses Grant or Rutherford Hayes for their problems?

Women didn't have regrets back then.

[quote] You mean they didn't sit around blaming Ulysses Grant or Rutherford Hayes for their problems?

They were too busy worrying about cholera and being scalped.

He really was a selfish son of a bitch and put his family into harms way repeatedly.

IRRC she finally put her foot down in South Dakota. Charles started in about going to Oregon and Caroline said she wasn't leaving.

Why didn't she leave? Because he was hung like a mule.

I just got the annotated "Pioneer Girl" book and have read a lot about the Wilders. I don't think it was necessarily a male ego thing, I think it was a cultural thing, people wanting their own land, their own space, and women were invested as well as men. They traded up from 25 acres of swamp land to 100 acres of bottom land as the frontier advanced. It was economically the way you progressed in those days, maybe the only way.

[QUOTE]Do you think Caroline Ingalls ever regretted marrying Charles?

Ladies and ladies .............. rare image of Charles at night behind closed doors.

That would make a long deep furrow in the virgin soil R9 --

She probably had nowhere to go to and the Patriarchy is against her: it was very hard to get a divorce back then, women who left their husbands were frowned upon, their character was called into question, she would have been ostracised.

Or maybe she just loved him.

I don’t know what her background was but it’s not hard to imagine she was also from a family of poor Scandinavian farmer folk who immigrated to the US and who came from nothing. It’s probably the only life she’d ever known. And as a Christian she probably had hopes for some kind of redemption for her suffering.

She hated black people and thought all Indians should be killed.

Caroline's stepfather was a prosperous farmer.

[QUOTE]She hated black people and thought all Indians should be killed.

Since she grew up in Detroit and then moved into Apache country, can we really blame her ?

Great link, r14. Anyone have the book Laura's Album? I would like to see what the real life Olsons looked like.

Ma doesn't look 100% Caucasian in the photos in r14's link, and it states that she was the first white person born in her Wisconsin town. I wonder when her ancestors arrived.

The Ingalls had their first child five years after they were married. Was there such a thing as natural birth control back then? It seems unusual that it took that long for Caroline to get pregnant.

Caroline and Charles had copious amounts of wild, non-reproductive sex. She spat, he withdrew. They did a lot of anal.

Oh I remember that from Little House in the Red Light District, thanks for the reminder r18! Must re-read that.

Little Whore House On The Prairie.

Little Whores Get the Big Wood

Would you leave a good looking guy whose pecs were always showcased by his suspenders?

If you like that sort of thing, read Life of an Ordinary Woman by Anne Ellis. It is a fascinating first hand account of life in mining camps.

What I most regretted was marrying a man whose jeans were so tight it took us both working together a couple of hours to peel them off every night and then on again every morning.

She may have hated black people but it was a black doctor who saved the family from malaria. While Laura would have been, in reality, too little to remember the Kansas time (most of the stories in "Big Woods" actually occurred AFTER the stories in "Prairie") I doubt the black doctor story was something she just threw in there as dramatic license.

Ma was often a killjoy in the books. Laura idolized her father but all Ma did was criticize and frown.

The real Charles was creepy looking.

Michael Landon was much better looking.

Mrs. Olson appears only once in the books, at a party Nellie is having. Nellie is nasty to her and Mrs. Olson is rather kind to Laura. You get the sense she was an immigrant from the speech pattern she has.

The real Almanzo though was better looking than Dean Butler.

He and Cap Garland can search me for grain any time.

Dean could still get it.

Maybe she was the adventuresome type herself, OP. Marriage was different 150 years ago, but by all accounts he seems to have been a loving husband and father. He wasn't a drunk and went to extremes to provide for his family in the face of tribulations that are hard to fathom today--starvation, child mortality, serious illness in a time when medicine was primitive. It's pointless to apply 21st century mores to a couple on the post-Civil War American frontier.

The pic of Dean is 30 years old. He’s tubby now.

A bit of prairie gossip: Laura adored her father & her sister Carrie, but, Laura seemed quite indifferent to her mother & other sisters. After "Pa's" death, Laura cut herself off from the rest of the family (except Carrie), there's a rumor that Laura didn't attend her mother's funeral.

Charles' eyes are hella creepy in OP's pic. He looks dead

I am dumbfounded that there are possibly multiple people hanging around on DL at one time who have in-depth knowledge of the real Ingallls' family at the ready.

I can only claim to have been a big fan of the TV series as a child. ...And of course, like many girls, I had the book series; though I confess I didn't read much past Little House in the Big Woods.

R10, that's funny, right there.

Did Caroline invent the shit bra?

R28’s pic is over hundred years old. He’s dust now.

I think Carolines sister married Charles Ingalls brother. So there wasn't a lot of selection in those days.

One interesting fact was that Laura Ingalls Wilder attributed her success as a writer to the fact that she had been her blind sister Mary's 'eyes' for so many years. She knew how to vividly describe the scenes and events of her past for readers so well because she had described imagery to Mary for so long....

And Almanzo WAS a hottie. So was Cap Garland but he died very young!

And to highlight the difficulties and deprivations of that life...no Ingalls daughter had a child who lived except Laura's first daughter Rose.

Caroline lost a son. Laura lost a son. Grace I don't think ever conceived. Or maybe she had a stillbirth? Someone did I believe. Mary never married.

Carrie was always thin and small. It was thought that was because of the minimal food during the Long Winter.

I mean...that family suffered and the results were felt for generations.

Rose had a stillborn son.

Cap Garland seemed cool but Almanzo seemed like a drip. So did Ma. She was sort of a bitch. Charles seemed like an idiot who couldn't hold a job and thought entertaining the church as a "darkie" was good stuff.

"Charles seemed like an idiot who couldn't hold a job..."

Hmm. So I will perhaps my childhood wish of having Ma and Pa Ingalls as my parents to instead declare that I wanted Ma and Pa Ingalls *as portrayed in the TV Series* to be my parents: Lovely, attractive, caring parents; Charles working at the mill. Sweet-tempered Caroline saving the day working at Nellie's Restaurant, in the face of nasty and incompetent Mrs. Olsen.

^ "So I will perhaps amend my childhood wish..."

[QUOTE]Rose had a stillborn son.

I had one of those. I named him Lucky, after Lucky Luciano. Then I just kept screaming 'more boys, more boys'

[quote]Did Caroline invent the shit bra?

Ma never wore no bra.

I always remember the television episode where Mary thinks she can see again but it is just her wishful thinking. Or bad mushrooms they found on the prairie. 🍄

caroline did seem quite tightly strung. I remember in one book Laura and another girl, a cousin?, riding a pony around after working alongside their mothers and Caroline not approving, as fun was not ladylike.

Laura seemed ADHD in parts of the books. I wonder how much of that was real, and how much was embellishments by Rose. Remember when Laura almost drown in a flood because she became so mesmerized by the water rushing by the cabin?

[quote]One interesting fact was that Laura Ingalls Wilder attributed her success as a writer to the fact that she had been her blind sister Mary's 'eyes' for so many years. She knew how to vividly describe the scenes and events of her past for readers so well because she had described imagery to Mary for so long....

I remember reading the books and being devastated when Mary became blind.

In one of the books, maybe By the Shores of Silver Lake, the Ingalls family is building a house. Laura wrote that Pa didn't have one of the tools he needed and a neighboring family let him use theirs. Then she said that her pa didn't like having to do that, because he believed in the saying, "neither a borrower nor a lender be."

I always thought that was odd, because that's how immigrants and settlers get ahead, by pooling their resources.

It seems like if the family had stayed in one spot, even back in the big woods in Wisconsin, that they would have done better for themselves. The fact that they had daughters and not sons hurt them as well. Charles had to do a lot of work on his own. Even if it had been socially acceptable for daughters to work like sons back then, farming is hard work and young girls aren't strong enough to plow a field behind horses, cut timber, etc.

^I suspect that was not Pa but Rose's libertarian beliefs creeping into the book.

That's true, R49. I read that she became a bit of a nut.

"Rose was a frumpish, middle-aged divorcée, who was tormented by rotten teeth and suffered from bouts of suicidal depression." She despised Franklin Roosevelt,calling him a dictator and hoping he'd be assassinated.

Before they started moving west the Ingalls were part of an extended family. Wilder wrote about the parties and dances. I was sad when reading that Caroline and the kids had to leave that behind. Have you read Farmer Boy about Laura Wilder's husband's childhood? I really enjoyed that book. They stayed in one place. It was a hard life but had some charm.

Life was so different then. My elderly aunt told me when she was a child in 1915 or so her mother was in the bedroom with a woman and her husband all night. She could hear her mother moaning but didn't know why. In the morning a new sibling appeared and she was asked to empty the bloody slop bucket. She didn't even know her mother was expecting, didn't know how babies were born, and totally grossed out about all the blood. She was about 8 at the time.

Another elderly aunt told me how in 1919 her father found his unmarried teenage sister deathly ill (they lived on an isolated farm in the mid west) and she confessed she had taken poison because she was pregnant and afraid of her religious parents. He jumped on a horse and rode as fast as he could to the doctor but she was dead when they returned. Her family was devastated and her parents disavowed their strict religion, saying they would have forgiven her if given the chance. That's in part why I'm so strongly pro-choice. Ban abortion and poor women die. Rich women will always find a way. That and there are way to many people on this fragile planet. We're a scourge.

Amazing thread. I love the knowledge here at the DL. I mean, I come for the Golden Girls but stay for this stuff!

January 1, 2018 is Alison Arngrim's 56th birthday. Someone should start a tribute thread. That Nellie is a friend of us nellies.

Whoa, Nellie - I mean today, January 18th - is Alison A's birthday.

I love Alison Arngrim! Her book was a great too!

I loved Farmer Boy.

You could tell Almanzo's family was really well off. Especially compared to the Ingalls'.

That link was very informative, thanks, R14.

So no blood descendants from that family. That really is a shame.

For years we thought Mary went blind from scarlet fever, but it was probably congenital syphilis via Pa.

So, there aren't any direct descendants of the Ingalls?

Loved Farmer Boy. The Wilders weren't leading a trashy hobo like existence like the Ingalls.

R57 R59 There are no direct descendants from the Charles/Caroline Ingalls line except for Rose Wilder Lane. And she passed awhile ago. And it seems this is in part due to the conditions of their existence. They had only daughters who survived and (most) of the daughters couldn't bear children. Carrie was sickly, thin and small from malnourishment. Mary never married perhaps due to her blindness? Grace married but there were no children.

There are Quiners from Caroline's side and Ingalls from Charles side who are the closest living descendants to the family.

I remember when Laura Ingalls Wilder died, it was two days after my 30th birthday, I read the books to my daughters (this was pre-coming out, obviously) and they brought back special memories.

It was all Nellie Olsen's fault.

Ma looks sort of like Jessica Biel.

[quote]Mary never married perhaps due to her blindness?

Married women had to earn their keep via a lot of hard work. No man in that time and place would marry a blind woman who would have to be looked after and provided for her whole life while giving back very little in return.

Ma's main concern was demon rum. As long as Charles stayed off the bottle, he was a real 19th century catch. He built her entire houses, that had to count for something. And he played the fiddle and didn't seem to beat the kids. Not like she had a lot of options to find a guy who would do all that and plow the fields too.

I'm going to try and attach a picture of Peter Ingalls (Charles older brother) and his wife Eliza Quiner (Caroline's younger sister).

They traveled with Charles and Caroline through part of their journies though they are not mentioned much in the books. Baby Freddie was born and passed away during one of these times. LIW skipped that entire time-frame in her books.

When strangers saw the children of both couples (double cousins) they not only thought they were sisters, but twins.

BTW. Laura was named for Charles mom. Carrie was Caroline.

It's interesting that American libertarianism (aka rightwing libertarianism) was founded by women, Rose Wilder being one of them. Why was that?

A lot of misery seems to have been the result of Charles’ poor social skills, not being cooperative with his peers which was really necessary in a society where you could not realistically be totally self-sufficient. On the other hand he didn’t drink, which was potentially a horribly destructive factor in the life of a family. The Temperance Movement did not just spring up like a mushroom in the field.

I have a unique perspective on the Ingalls myth because I read the books as a young girl and loved them, but never watched the TV show because it sounded like a Pollyanna fake version.

Clearly R69 you were mistaken...just ask the baby used as a battering ram during the fire

The description of the train ride in "On the Shores of Silver Lake" is beautiful. And of course Ma has to try and quash the fun by not wanting the girls to have candy.

"The Long Winter" could be made as stand alone film as it has a lot of tension and a good, self-contained plot. It's also the only book that has a narrative away from Laura's point of view, when Almanzo and Cap go in search of the grain store they aren't even sure exists. It's agonizing to read the part when the horses keep falling into the deep grass and having to be pulled out over and over and then when they are coming home and see the storm coming behind them...

Historians have even matched up Wilder's descriptions of the storms (as she pretty much describes when they strike) to weather records and they dates match. It's a really great book. Probably my favorite.

Ma could have hsd her way with Mr Edwards, if she had a mind to.

Mr. Edwards was what they called a confirmed bachelor.

Ma was sweet and kind in the TV show, and a strait-laced shrew in the books. Weird.

Karen Grassle was so frustrated with her role (her only line was "More coffee dear")

But after some time away she did say she was grateful for the show giving her financially stability, so she could do regional theatre (which is her first love) the rest of her life. Without having to worry about the bills.

She even did a commercial to hawk "Little House" tapes

Mary went blind from meningoencephalitis. She seems to be the only female in the wilder family not to suffer from diabetes.

I seem to remember in Farmer Boy there being a family from the 'wrong side of the oxcart tracks' . The sons would come to school and cause trouble for the male schoolteacher, who was a slight young man. Some of the fathers set the teacher up with a bull whip and he chased the boys out the next time they showed up to school.

Yeah, bullies even back then.

I liked that Wilder always described the food they ate meticulously. From the pan fried potatoes to the cheese-making process.

I was also amazed at the amount of food that the Wilder family ate. Again, with her vivid descriptions of their meals and what Almonzo took for lunch while in school, you could tell they were hearty eaters because of all the hard labor and long hours they put in.

What's more important, I guess, is that the parents had the means to provide plenty for them. And most of the food came from their own farm, no less.

No it wasn't r77, we JUST told you it was Pa's leftover syph that leaked into her eyes, in utero.

God. CATCH UP.

That's a sad description, R65, but probably true.

Was that really why Carrie was small? She didn't get enough food to eat? That's sucks, probably since she didn't develop properly she wasn't able to have kids. But what was Grace's excuse? She married a man that already had kids.

Place holder because I need to read this entire thread. So interesting.

Never saw the TV show but I read Farmer Boy and was desperate to have a pet piglet like Alonzo or whatever his name was, did.

Laura was as strong as a little French horse.

I would have left and become a hooker.

R81, I seem to recall reading that Grace married later in life. She may not have been able to have kids by that point, or at least at an age where it would be more difficult to conceive.

I think it was the 2nd season where it was hinted pa's huge dick was appreciated by many, "whether skirted or trousered."

That Laura broad sounds like a tattle-tale selling out her family secrets for $$. I can imagine her with a little notebook and pencil eavesdropping every chance she had.

The sisters.

How do we know "She hated black people and thought all Indians should be killed."?

Was it in the books? It's been 30 years since I read them so I don't remember. Just curious.

Yeah, I want to know that too.

Nellie Olsen.

Nellie Owen's husband. Owen's was her real name.

Nellie Oleson is a fictional character based upon three girls from Laura's youth.

Nellie's last name was changed, but she was a real person.

[quote]Nellie's parents, William and Margaret Owens (renamed Nels and Harriet Oleson in the television series; called only "Mr. and Mrs. Oleson" in the books), did, as Laura describes, run the local mercantile in Walnut Grove, Minnesota. Nellie Owens, and possibly two other girls, are the basis for the fictional Nellie Oleson. The character reappears later in the "Little House" series of books, although this iteration was almost certainly based on another of Laura's schoolmates.

Later in her life, Owens moved to California and then on to Oregon, where she married Henry Kirry and had three children, Zola, Lloyd, and Leslie. Her brother Willie went blind from a firecracker explosion, attended a school for the blind, married, and also had three children. There seems to be no indication that Laura ever saw Nellie Owens again after Laura's family left Walnut Grove in 1879. Nellie died on November 2, 1949 in Oregon.

Interesting fact: Mary died four years after Ma, but the last two years, she was not in good health. She had strokes and other ailments.

Link with entries on her blindness. (On the pic, I noticed a small hand on her (right) shoulder)

Nellie Oleson, based on three different girls.

R96) See R94)

It says that Nellie was based on 2 other girls, but she still existed.

I was always struck as a child reading this series by the description of the absolute treat to have a single orange in one of the books - very probably The Long Winter - like pure sunshine had come to town or something! This was held against my own coming home from school to an always well-stocked fruotbowl for an afterschool snack. Even now I will sometimes be peeling or eating an orange and flash to that idea of treasuring a small pleasure and the lesson not to take simple abundance lightly. That was something that definitely stuck from the books initially, although I read the series a few times over. I wanted Almanzo to take me for a sleigh ride with bells - I hadn't seen snow ever at this time in my life!

Later, in my thirties I had to sort family possessions and found these well thumbed paperbacks with cracked spines. Re-reading them as an adult woman was interesting and i paid more attention to Ma and Pa. I too was especially interested by the descriptions of food and cooking.. I am not American and was entranced anew by the sound of slow cooked salt pork baked beans with molasses! There was also an interesting historical American unusual sounding apple dish in one of the books but I have forgotten the details.

Mmm vanity cakes!

Only one vanity cake apiece, girls!

As requested, an Alison A thread

R62, you’re 90? That’s quite an accomplishment!

Y’all are going to send me to the library to read these kiddie books again. I was in third grade the first time.

R98, me too! Sometimes when I get a dry, unsatisfactory orange, I wonder if the prairie kids would have felt cheated, or if it still would have tasted like a miracle to them.

I started reading “Little House In the Big Woods” to my daughters and although it blew their minds, they didn’t like it the way I did. (They didn’t love “Harriet The Spy”, either, the little bores.) I found the descriptions of life back then fascinating, and I remember all the little details. Guess I was a weird kid. Those books are a treasure.

Charles Ingalls was indeed hung like a mule.

He and Almanzo appreciated their "special bonding time."

Well. I’d best be going now.

There were 2 Carries and I believe 4 boys all named Charles. It must have been awful for parents and siblings to lose so many children. Laura herself lost a son in a house fire.

WAIT... these people were real??? Well fuck, I never knew this!

So Nelly Olsen was real? I wonder if she was a real bratty cunt, like on the series?

R108, Nellie's first appearance on the show is is a very faithful recreation of the book in which he first appears in with the exception of the party.

The original TV film (pilot) is so cinematic, beautifully filmed, it really feels like it could have been in theaters. It's pretty much "Little House on the Prairie," chapter by chapter. And it's hands down better than any episode of the series.

It was my favorite as a child, r110. I watched the series faithfully.

It's fun now to watch the series knowing that Mrs. Beadle was simultaneously filming "Eraserhead" (which took years.)

The food that Wilder described in the books did sound good, as described above. Maybe meager to us but such stuff was a feat to them. Nothing sounds better than the Christmas feast in May at the end of "The Long Winter." Their hearty food and hard living worked though- Almanzo died in 1949 at 92 and Laura died in 1957 at 90. 1957! And she and Almanzo welcomed people to their home until he died.

But then, ya know, TV came around and she got hooked on soaps until she died...

Ma could be a real bitch sometimes.In the books Laura has one doll that she brought with her from the Big Woods. One day a neighbor comes to visit with her bratty little girl. The girl sees Laura's doll and throws a fit because she wants it. Ma forces Laura to hand over the doll which she later finds frozen in a mud puddle.

Ma, you cunt!

Charles looks like an absolute neanderthal in that pic. He also looks like he had cataracts in his eyes.

Here's a better photo of Pa.

Pa had bad ideas.

Read all the books many times. Never got the impression Ma was a shrew. A bit of a wet blanket, but overall a devoted mother. Giving Charlotte away was shitty though.

[quote]Laura herself lost a son in a house fire.

I heard it was a grease fire.

Laura's son died shortly after birth. The Wilders house burned down but nobody died.

R72 "The Long Winter" is my favourite of the books - on re-reading it, Almanzo doesn't come off very heroically. He doesn't want to give up any of his seed grain to save the town from starvation so he forces some other guy to sell his grain?!

I only recently learned that Laura Ingalls had claimed that Pa was part of a vigilante party to kill the infamous murdering Bender family!

Cap Garland died at about 24 to 26 in a workplace accident. Given he never married, I wonder if he was gay. It would explain his casual, non-comittal way with the girls. He squired Laura’s friend, Mary (I think) for awhile, but they broke things off and she settled down with another fellow.

Cap Garland

Man, that sucks about Willie Oleson, R94. The kid sounded like a little punk, but that's still a terrible thing to happen. I don't have kids of my own, but considering the child mortality rate in the books (and up to my parents' generation) and all these terrible illnesses and injuries, it does kind of put the helicoptering parents of today in perspective.

I was obsessed with these books as a child and I still enjoy reading about them. There's a book called THE LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE COOKBOOK and it's pretty well-written and interesting. The rapturous details of food--I'll never forget pig butchering day-is due to the fact there was so little of it. Most of the time the family ate 3 meals of corn a day (gruel and johnnycake), during travel and the Big Winter. Pa couldn't make any other crop work and he didn't seem to be much of a hunter. Ma had to take care of the garden and domestic animals, cook and forage, raise 3 girls. No wonder she wasn't a ton of fun. Her daughter wrote that Laura was rather grim and emotionally unavailable as well. That kind of hardscrabble life changes you.

Thanks for posting the NYer article, which I haven't read yet, but Rose GAVE all of Laura's copyrights to some sleazy lawyer that befriended her. If I remember correctly.

Cap Garland was gay as a goose and a big hit with all the girls in town.

They used to call him "Judy."

So what do you all think was Ma's issue? She thought herself a failure for not producing a son?

Was Albert really a morphine addict?

On the Banks of Slut Creek

Albert never recovered after his girlfriend Sylvia was raped and murdered by the fiendish Mime.

R122, yes, I was going to mention that about "The Long Winter" but I forgot. There are, I believe, two scenes where Royal and Almanzo are feasting on pancakes. (The rest of town is starving.) Pa enters their home and right away goes to the secret hole in the wall and unplugs it, revealing where they stored their grain. Yet Royal and Almanzo seem to be shocked that the rest of the town is going through such a hard time - even though it hasn't stopped snowing since October. That's American Individualism for you.

I always wondered if Eliza Wilder made friends with Laur once Laura and Almanzo married, or if she held a grudge against her for 'lazy lousy Liza Jane' forever.

R124 Hard to believe that guy is only 26. He looks like he's in his 40s.

R133, they must have. Laura and Almanzo sent Rose to live with her for awhile in order for Rose to get a better education.

Yes, r89, MA's racism is in the books. And there's an illustration of Pa dressed as a "darkie".

I only read the books because they were so drippy on the series. They were kind of jerks in the books, which made them kind of interesting.

I hated the one where they lived in the mudhut- Plum Creek. I can take poverty porn in literature but a mud hut is too much.

Replica of the mud hut. The family spent two years here.

*shudder*, r137.

I bet that "mud hut" stank to HIGH HEAVEN, what with four unwashed......well, you know....

[quote] I liked that Wilder always described the food they ate meticulously.

They didn't have camera phones in those days; women couldn't take pictures of their food. They had to describe it.

[quote]Replica of the mud hut. The family spent two years here.

OMG! It's a PALACE!

They took tintypes R140.

Don't be an ass r139. The girls were all little then.

Ma got some good good lovin' on the prairie.

It wasn't a "mud hut"; it was called a dugout and they weren't the first or last to live in one. The walls were whitewashed so they weren't living in dirt. And they loved it. See how fucking happy she was? See the happy???

Mudhut is as mudhut does r145

Willa Cather's prairie set stories are much grittier, but they're also for adults.

When you read LHOP as a kid, you view Pa through Laura's eyes. He seems so fun, playing his fiddle and having his scruffy friends over. Then you read them as an adult and you realize Pa was really a loser. Goodtime Charlie, charming to a point but ultimately pretty irresponsible and useless.

Sizemeat.

The woman who played Nellie wrote a book,"Bitch on the prairie" or some such title, and it's quite an interesting read. Michael Landon was well known to not wear underwear and there were a bunch of drunks on set.. Alison and Melissa Gilbert were good buds on set. Melissa sue Anderson was a total snob bitch.

R150 I really enjoyed reading her book. She is a good story teller and seems like a strong but warm and friendly. I remember feeling like she is someone I'd like to be friends with.

[quote]But then, ya know, TV came around and she got hooked on soaps until she died...

She was in her eighties by then. What else was she supposed to do? If she had lived a few more months, she could have gone to the Drive In to see Michael Landon make his film debut in I Was a Teenage Werewolf.

Vanity cakes! You’re killing me!

I adored the LH books growing up. The meticulous descriptions of everyday tasks, like making bullets and cooking, were fascinating, and they teach young minds how to think systematically. The early books are written with simpler diction, the later with more complex diction and vocabulary. The series grows with the child.

My favorite parts of the books are Laura’s description if nature, sometimes brutal, sometimes beautiful. Discovering Grace in a pool of violets after fearing her lost, or the way their dugout melted into the earth, overhung with flowers, were lovely. Some descriptions are almost hallucinatory, like the wheels of fire (burning tumbleweeds) rolling across the prairie and sewing chaos, or the locusts marching robotically over the land (and the baby!) and destroying it. Some parts of the LH series are sublime in the true sense of the word, something rarely achieved in children’s fiction, or fiction generally.

Ma was the superego, Pa was the id. That’s how some relationships works.

So Almanzo came from a wealthy family? I guess Laura married up?

Not really.

"During their first years of marriage, described in The First Four Years, the Wilders were plagued by bad weather, illness, and large debts. In the spring of 1888, Wilder and his wife were both stricken with diphtheria. Although they both survived, Wilder suffered from one of the less common, late complications of the illness, neuritis. Parts of his lower limbs were temporarily paralyzed, and even after the paralysis had resolved, he needed a cane to walk. His inability to perform the hard physical labor associated with wheat farming in South Dakota, combined with a lengthy drought in the late 1880s and early 1890s, further contributed to the Wilders' downward spiral into debt and poverty."

On the show Nellie was a right bitch but Nancy was a total sociopath .

The TV series was basically as though the Ingalls stayed in the setting of "On the Banks of Plum Creek" and never left - except for the arc when they moved to the town and mey Albert (who never existed in real life.) So there was no South Dakota which is where the Ingalls moved shortly after Mary went blind.

I never saw the very first regular episode but remember a flashback episode- doesn't the first episode show them living in the dugout?

They did show Almanzo have what appeared to be a stroke on the show which I thought they added for dramatic license. Of course, it was while he was plowing a field so they could have the music swell. It was a two-parter and then their house got hit by a tornado and destroyed. And then a season later, the worst thing happened...

Shannen Doherty joined the cast.

Has anybody read "Prairie Fires?"

The real story of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her crazy daughter Rose is a pretty interesting one. Laura wrote these stories at the urging of Rose years after the rest of the family died (probably so they couldn't contradict her!) and while they had a completely dysfunctional relationship, they were all about making money so she churned out the books. Moreover, they were the original Deplorables (blaming everything on the government) while other documents show that the family did receive what government help was available at the time.

Charles was a pretty luckless guy and rather than his misfortune on bad luck and bad decisions, Laura blamed - you guessed it - the government! Not sure if this has already been posted but Rose was completely bonkers (probably bi-polar) and was involved in the founding of the Libertarian party. Also, apparently Laura & Almanzo were tiny - like 5 foot.

Laura sounds like a rather bitter old lady, but I guess a hard life will do that to you

[quote]R153 The series grows with the child.

Rather like Woody Allen's penis?

God....NONE would have been safe had he ever guested on the show, later on.

I'm FB friends with a doughy, balding 40 year old straight man who embarks on relationships with women who are clearly out of his league and in a few weeks when they dump his ass he posts these vague status updates about his heartbreak and the value of "inner beauty". The funny thing is the guy is a major asshole who is hyper critical of women's looks.

R163 Oh god. Typical!

It's also strange when older guys complain that younger guys reject them, and complain it's so "agist"...but then, why aren't they going after older guys, themselves??

The sacrifices were worth it, to know Mary would be the most stylish girl in Vinton, Iowa.

[quote] Laura seemed quite indifferent to her mother & other sisters.

I told you all Missy Gilbert was a prima cunta assoluta, but no one would believe me.

I just started reading Prairie Fires and it seems Pa was a draft dodger.

Damn, I need to get that book.

The other book that came out a while ago sounds interesting too.

I don't know about Caroline but if he doesn't become king soon, I sure will have

[quote]The woman who played Nellie wrote a book,"Bitch on the prairie" or some such title

Turn in your gay card. Now.

Previously TV has a thread about the Ingalls family.

Found this interesting stuff in R171's link:

Remember how the books say that when the railroad men left camp, Pa "saved" the old man in the claim shanty and sent him on the last wagon East? Remember they were all alone at Silver Lake? And Pa spent the winter "searching for which claim would be the best one to file on in the spring" ?

Well, Laura never mentioned how she really knew Almanzo came from a prosperous family in Minnesota----because Pa read about it in Almanzo and Royal's letters from home in their claim shanty while they were gone for the winter. What was Pa doing in someone else's unoccupied home? He wasn't looking for more sick old people to rescue--he knew everyone was gone, and you don't find people looking in the envelopes of other people's mail.

Then he tears down the railroad company's buildings to use their lumber to build his storehouse on Main St. Which is really odd because Pa didn't own that lot on Main Street. He just built on it with lumber he didn't pay for. Guess who owned that town lot?

Eliza Jane Wilder!

Remember how Eliza picked on Laura and Carrie "for no reason" and said bad things about Pa? The lot was eventually paid for...two years later...and the sale paper says the buyer was Caroline Ingalls, not Charles. (I'm just guessing Pa didn't want any assets in his name that the bank could seize .)

So Pa was a 19th century grifter?

The Ingalls were a sketchy bunch, R172, and they all had the clap.

I always thought they seemed kind of trashy.

Like Piaf, she had no regrets.

Charles was a descendant of Richard Warren who came over on the Mayflower.

R177, splendid. But did he have a large member?

His ten inch cock made up for a lot of inadequacies.

Do you think Ma and Pa or Laura and Almanzo fucked before they were married? I wouldn't marry a guy if I didn't know what he was packing.

The parents may have. Why would they have waited?

Pa sounds like a trash pile! No wonder Lazy Lousy Lizy Jane hated them. Laura and her Freeper daughter made sure generations of girls were Team Laura because of the books! That's quite a masterstroke of PR.

OP, lest we forget, Pa's nickname was "Girthy."

[quote]R173 So Pa was a 19th century grifter?

[quote]R177 Charles was a descendant of Richard Warren who came over on the Mayflower.

So, he was related to the Mayflower madam...

When I was a kid I wrote a letter to Laura Ingalls Wilder, she was dead but I did not know.

Rose Wilder Lane wrote me the most lovely letter back.

[quote]The real Almanzo though was better looking than Dean Butler.

No way.

Butler was far hotter.

[quote]R185 Rose Wilder Lane wrote me the most lovely letter back.

[italic]"We regret to inform you..."[/italic]

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Ma didn't slut shame. During the long winter they took in a couple who were shunned by townsfolk for having a child out of wedlock.

[quote]Rose was quite promiscuous. At 17 she went to live with Eliza Jane supposedly to attend a private school. Rumor had it she was pregnant

It was not pregnancy but a little scissorine, that Eliza Jane and Rose had.

r185

Wow, how desperate for attention was she?

r180

No, but Mrs Oleson knew intimately about her Mister.

It's been said that life on the frontier was heaven for the men and children, and hell for the women. The men could finally be their own bosses and master of all they surveyed, and the children could run around unsupervised much if the time, while the women were stuck in the house with endless drudgery ahead of them and probably a baby every year. If they lived near enough to town or mining/logging camps to have the company if other women, theyd find that the society of uneducated women who hated their lives revolved around vicious gossip about their neighbors. There was nothing to do but work, no entertainment but saloons and brothels, where "good" women couldn't go, but their husbands could.

It was pretty much physically impossible for a woman to ditch that shit and go back to her family, her family could be a thousand miles of wilderness away and travel was dangerous and expensive. The only escape was to leave the husband for another man, which would mean universal condemnation and possibly losing custody of the children, and who's to say that the new man would treat her any better?

[quote]R193 ...the women were stuck in the house with endless drudgery ahead of them...

Or the mud hut....

I just finished reading "Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder" and it is super interesting and very absorbing. Besides learning about the very real Ingalls and the extremely unbalanced Rose Wilder and her dysfunctional relationship with her mother, and the book is researched meticulously - down to letters, journals, census records, etc - it's really the history of American west and the US. The book stars with Laura in a wagon and by the end of the book, nearing the end of her life, she travels on a plane. Both Laura and Rose lived very long lives - especially for the times - Rose only died in 1968, so as distant as so much of their story seems, it's really not that far off. The book again was EXCELLENT and I highly recommend it. More about Rose being unbalanced - she ran around claiming she was muslim and at times wore a hijab, and she hated Jews, she made a ton of money and spent it all, she had numerous breakdowns and periods where she couldn't get out of bed for months at a time, and she "adopted" a few young men along the way. She was fucking bonkers!

I’m reading Prairie Fires. It’s beautifully written in addition to being interesting. Good boiographers are not always good writers, but this author is both.

I’m also reading Prairie Fires but I think I should have read Pioneer Girl first.

she was one hot mama

Which one of you bitches is my neighbor? I just went online to put a hold on Prairie Fires at the library and the one copy they have is currently checked out.

Based on the discussion here I'm currently reading Prairie Fires. I'm really enjoying it but wow, Rose is seriously messed up. Today she would be diagnosed as what? Bi-polar? manic depressive? Sociopathic cunt? In addition to be selfish and delusional, she doesn't seem to have any sympathy or compassion for anyone other than herself. Everything that happens to her is always someone else's fault.

Fuck that. I wanna hear about Little Gloryhole in The Prarie. Homosex did not start in the 70s!

In her later years, Laura Ingalls Wilder loved watching I Love Lucy. She couldn't believe the wacky hijinx that girl got up to.

R201 Rose also spends a lot of time living with other single women.

....

Carolyn was into double anal.

well, look at him. He was hot.

I can honestly say, of all the things I've thought about - and I've thought about some arcane, time wasting shit in my day, I have never thought about this.

same here r207. leave it to the DL to come up with some shit nobody gives a fuck about.

Rose invented Libertarianism. Of course she was a selfish hateful cunt.

The New Yorker had an interesting article a couple of years ago....that journalist Rose Wilder likely ghosted the Prarie books based on her mother Laura's memories and tales.

[quote]Ma didn't slut shame. During the long winter they took in a couple who were shunned by townsfolk for having a child out of wedlock.

She was going to slaughter them all and preserve the meat.

Remember when Caroline said, "Our daughter's sister's mother will be racist on Twitter"

And Charles said, "What's that?" And Caroline says "I don't know either but I bet we'll have to lock her in the ice house as punishment."

N O

r212

Caroline would never lock anyone in the ice house, but I would

Quiner and Ingalls, Caroline’s maiden name, are old Massachusetts names. My family married into both families. One, William Quiner, was institutionalized for “chronic masturbation”, so watch out for that.

Ha! And also, oh my. So Pa’s fiddlin’ may not have always been musical

I read the Laura Ingalls Wilder books as a child. I don’t remember much about the mother’s character. I do remember thinking that Pa was always failing at one thing after another. Laura, as a child and as an adult always seemed to be bailing out Pa. It seemed like Pa took too much advantage of Laura’s success & generosity.

The curious thing is that none of the Ingalls girls have living descendants. Rose had no kids, so the heirs to the Little House books are the descendants of . . . . Liza Jane.

Lazy, lousy Liza Jane!

CUNT-RY GIRLS