Was Pa Ingalls a loser?

I don’t know loser, but he was a bed wetter.

In the show, they tried to make him out as a hero for taking all those odd jobs or as a victim, but looking back, it appears that he was really irresponsible. I don't know if he'd get the same edit if the show was made today.

Was he an alcoholic in his character like in real life?

OP = Nellie Oleson

He was a poor planner, a deadbeat, and skipped out on debts. In The Long Winter, he's constantly going to the general store to eat, while his wife and children are starving to death.

Fuck him.

It was a true portrait of the pioneer experience. There was really no such thing as a “middle class” at that time. The real Charles Ingalls did lead his family into a mostly rootless existence that involved essentially starting over every few years in a new place. That was a pretty common existence in the latter half of the 19th century in the US.

One of the stations is showing a Little House marathon this entire week.

What was up with Katherine MacGregor? People bitch about Bonnie Franklin, but MacGregor takes scenery chewing to a different level. Did she think she was doing Noel Coward?

Talking shit about Katherine McGregor is verboten on the DL, r7. She’s like the patron saint of this place.

Medical bills? They used some shit from the yard for any ailments.

No, he couldn't afford to pay for Mary when she was going blind, R9. Caroline had to take work in the hospital and he had to sell the farm or something.

This was pre-new deal period. The kids not only survived, even the one that was disabled blind, they thrived. The kids were literate. Laura Ingals, one of his girls, wrote one of the most successful family/YA novels in American Literary History.

The novel was so successful that a century later, it was adapted for a TV series. Which is the only reason you know about it OP because you ain't well read, right?

I happened to catch an episode the other day, for the first time since I was a tween. The portrayal of Pa was quite sanitized both in the Little House books and the TV show.

They really did keep pulling up stakes and starting over.

R11 = MARY!

He was an infiltrator, that's for sure.

I read all of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books (Mary!) when I was young (pre-teen). Even then, I remember feeling frustrated for Laura. Every time she managed to generate some income, Pa would swoop down and grab that cash.

Pa Ingalls reminds me of Matt Roloff with his half-baked, no-money ideas, making money off of his kids.

Yes, IMO, Pa was a loser and did not provide for his family.

He must have been good in bed. Ma came from a family who had some money. There had to be a reason for her to leave her life of comfort and follow a poor farmer and endure all that hardship.

[quote] He was a poor planner, a deadbeat, and skipped out on debts. In The Long Winter, he's constantly going to the general store to eat, while his wife and children are starving to death. Fuck him.

I don't remember this part. Maybe I need to re-read the "Little House" books.

Why did he decide to become a farmer when he always had to run off and take other demeaning jobs? Remember when he went to do blasting for the railway, or when he had to deliver explosives?

That is exactly how I saw it R16. Pa must give good dick! A a child I never understood why he couldn't build proper stairs for Mary and Laura.

I never saw this show.

Exactly, R19. He couldn't even build them a decent house with a bedroom. Laura and Mary had to sleep in an attic with that awful ladder leading up to it.

He was the richest man in Walnut Grove!

[Quote]I never understood why he couldn't build proper stairs for Mary and Laura.

Or why Ma didn't make him do it. Why was she so passive? Didn't she want her daughters to have something decent?

I thought I would never see the day... you bitches are now trashing Pa Ingalls. Is no-one sacred?

Why did they have so many children when they were so poor? Didn't people think about that in those days?

No, they didn't. In those days, it was rare for a child to make it to adulthood.

Katherine MacGregor appeared on an episode of All In The Family or was it EMERGENCY?

I think Pa & Ma were hoping to have more boy children, i.e., extra hands to do heavy lifting, etc. As it turns out, Laura was Pa's cash cow despite being a girl.

Maybe, I now recall even Mrs. Oleson making a snide remark to Caroline about how many children she and Charles had (I think it was when the Ingalls were going to take in some orphans).

Home perm kits are not cheap OP. Not a lot left over for other lesser essentials.

[quote]I don't remember this part. Maybe I need to re-read the "Little House" books.

There's a mention of him going out and eating pancakes with the men.

Ma should have busted his head open with a cast-iron skillet.

[quote]Why was she so passive?

He was dicking her real good.

R25 and R29 I thought they only had 3 kids? In any case, 10 kids was the norm back then.

It's so weird some of you are talking about the TV show as if it were historically accurate.

In the book series, several chapters are devoted to Pa's legendary dick game. Which explains why Ma never even noticed her house was lopsided. Bitch was always dizzy & limping.

Ma probably married Pa without realizing he was a poor financial risk, women married too young in those days and had little financial education, beyond being shown how to keep the household accounts.

And once they were married, her only option other than staying was to leave and go back to her parents, knowing she could never marry again until he died because divorce was either illegal of impossible. So in those days, if the husband wanted to haul out to the Frontier and fuck up being a dirt farmer, she went if he'd take her. Some wives and children were left behind until Pa made his pile out west or gave it up, usually with no money sent to support them. No, women didnt have as lot of good options, if Pa wanted to abandon civilization.

I think Ma also came from money.

There have been a few biographies of LIW over the last few years that have given more context to her life, not just the one that Rose Wilder Lane prettied up for mass consumption.

[quote]I think Ma also came from money.

That China Doll that sat on the mantel must have cost a pretty penny.

11 thick inches does not a loser make.

Even if Ma came from money, well, many families wouldnt help a daughter who married badly, and many husbands would refuse to accept "help" from his in-laws as he'd consider his manly pride to be more important than the welfare of his wife and kids. So in the 19th century it was common enough to see a woman from a well-to-do family being reduced to poverty by a husband who made bad financial decisions, and the wife staying because she didnt have any better options.

I hope she at least got some good dick out if that marriage, because it didnt sound like she got anything else.

R34...historically accurate???

As a kid I was apoplectic about the mountains in southwest Minnesota. They looked exactly like the mountains in “Korea.”

Read “Wisconsin Death Trip” for a clear-eyed look at how awful the life of a Midwestern farmer could be in the late 19th century.

No one forced them to be farmers, R42.

Yes, he was, OP. A charming loser ("Pa's tuning up his fiddle!"), but a loser nonetheless.

It killed me when I revisited the books in adulthood and realized this.

Obviously he was a drnk, which is why the books resonated with the public.

Thanks, R37, but some of us managed to make it ALL THE WAY to R16.

[quote] many husbands would refuse to accept "help" from his in-laws as he'd consider his manly pride to be more important than the welfare of his wife and kids.

Many, but not Pa Ingalls.

[quote] There was really no such thing as a “middle class” at that time.

I disagree, the Olesons and Doc Baker, would be considered middle class. They were more comfortable than the farmers but they still had to work for their livelihood. There really wasn't any upper class people on the show, no large landowners like the Cartwrights from Bonanza or robberbarons.

R47, also an early user of OnlyFans. Doc Baker and Reverend Alden spent all of their sarsaparilla money on that stinky round ass.

Yeah, the Ingalls lived on charity several times.

Pa was likely also a draft dodger, because there's no documentation of where he was between his marriage to Ma (1860) and Mary's birth (1865). He definitely didn't serve in the Army, there would be records of that.

Did R48 just call us middle class??? Nels, get the shotgun!

R21 You’re an idiot, heat rises, that was the warmest and cushist place in all the nasty draft trap little house.

PA was a drunk. It was when he put that fiddle down when we scurried up the ladder. We knew what he wanted.

That's not my point, R52. The house was a fucking shack, and the girls had to live in the attic. Why couldn't he provide a better house for them all?

Pls.

He was a hot piece of ass and was getting it up and down the prairie.

[quote]You’re an idiot, heat rises, that was the warmest and cushist place in all the nasty draft trap little house.

Heat can only rise when there is a fire. If Pa was too lazy/cheap to keep a fire burning all night, then the loft would get cold.

11 thick inches pounding Ma made for a lot of heat.

[quote]and the girls had to live in the attic.

Oh, poor them!

This is the real Ma & Pa. My question is why is there a black man's hand on Ma's shoulder?

Are they dead in that pic, R59? They look like corpses.

[quote]Are they dead in that pic, [R59]? They look like corpses.

You think Pa was going to splurge for Olan Mills in Mankato?

R60, maybe they look dead b/c of the daguerrotype photo process, where you had to sit still in front of the camera for a while.

Also, taking memorial pictures of dead people was very popular in Victorian times. They would actually paint people’s eye lids to make them look alive.

Pa died something like 20 years before Ma. Laura never saw Ma or Mary again after Pa's funeral.

How dare anyone besmirch the talents of Miss Katherine MacGregor! She should have a shelf FULL of Emmys for having to deal with Shitbra, the cunt known as Melissa Sue Anderson and the retarded twins!

Ma would have preferred the Ponderosa life style.

R64 where did you hear that?

[quote]Pa died something like 20 years before Ma. Laura never saw Ma or Mary again after Pa's funeral.

Did she blame them for his death?

I too, loved Katherine MacGregor as Harriet, R65. She was wonderful in the role.

[quote] Pa died something like 20 years before Ma. Laura never saw Ma or Mary again after Pa's funeral.

For reasons which are well known to them.

"There was really no such thing as a “middle class” at that time."

There was a large middle class in civilized areas during the 19th century , the professionals and clerks and shopkeepers and so on. There would be a fairly small middle class out in the frontier but it'd exist, there would be the doctors, shopkeepers and business owners, ministers, schoolteachers, and so on... basically anyone with a high school education and a job that didn't involve physical contact with dirt.

What you didn't find out on the frontier was an upper class, you'd just have people who were the richest family in town, or the owner of the largest local employer. Those people thought they were upper class, but they weren't really wealthy or well-connected. They were just the richest person for hundreds of empty miles.

If only Albert could have had his version of a 19th century OnlyFans.

He could have helped out with extensions to that dump Laura had to live in.

He would have been in high demand as the farm boy twink.

One of my favorite DL quotes ever, regarding Mrs. Harriet Oleson:

[quote]a shopgirl in Flyoverville who thinks she's the Queen of England...it's hard to top Harriet as THE embodiment of DL.

Albert would have blown all his OnlyFan tokens on his drug addiction and Laura would be no better off.

[quote][R64] where did you hear that?

There's a biography called Prairie Fires that came out a few years ago. The first little anecdote is Laura getting word that Ma had died. She hadn't seen any of her family since Pa's death. She apparently did once make a trip back to South Dakota to see Carrie and Grace, but that was even further along.

Albert was a total hottie, especially as he got older. He was the only reason I watched Little House.

What about the old man, the one that owned the mill and started the town? Wouldn't he be considered rich back in the day?

Pa was one of those dreamers who thought that moving would solve his problems. Every time he started to get ahead a bit, some disaster like a plague of locusts or a fire would happen. They didn’t have any support back then from government agencies and the same government was lying to people about how great the frontier was, so that they could wrest it from the Natives. Finally in Dakota, the family had some stability. I’m sure Ma was pissed at him a lot for dragging them from pillar to post.

When did Matthew Labroteaux (sp?) go back in the closet?

R79 Don’t you mean wardrobe, they didn’t have closets back then.

Wasn’t Laura’s daughter Rose a lesbian? She was also obsessed with Albania. An Albaniaphile Lesbian.

"You’re an idiot, heat rises, that was the warmest and cushist place in all the nasty draft trap little house."

It'd be hotter than blazes up there in the summer, with a good chance of drafts from cracks in the ceiling in winter. What are the odds that Pa kept the roof in top shape?

Wasn’t Albert their child?

The house didn't appear to have any insulation either? It must have been freezing in the winters.

They adopted Albert so he could clean Pa's cock cheese.

Reading the Little House series as an adult is pretty eye-opening (I read it multiple times as a girl).

Teaching in that era - Jesus. The new teacher who borrowed the bull whip so he could defend himself against the group of thugs, farmers' sons, who most likely murdered the instructor before him. And poor Laura, who was made to become a teacher, even though she hated it, to pay for Mary to go to the school for the blind.

And, I think it was little Carrie, who was devastated when Mary left to go to school. Mary's one job was taking care of her, and I'm sure she was the mother figure in Carrie's life, so to have her leave suddenly would have been traumatic.

It seemed like Pa was allergic to people and always wanted to be on untamed land. All well and good if it's just you, but dragging a wife and kids into these dangerous places was crazy, though not uncommon then. It's just what you did. The one prop I'll give Pa is that he seemed to get Laura in a way her mother could not. I think they were very alike in some ways.

What exactly was the point of sending Mary to blind college? She never worked. She just came home and the only thing she contributed was craftwork that they sold. Surely she didn't need a special school for THAT

[quote]It seemed like Pa was allergic to people and always wanted to be on untamed land.

It wasn't just that. Laura also wrote a true autobiography, called Pioneer Girl, which was only published in 2014. She was a little more honest about Pa's character there, describing Pa sneaking the family out of town in the middle of the night to avoid paying rent.

What kind of nickname is Half Pint?

Why did any of them go to school, R87. They were poor rubes, who were either going to become farmers or wives of farmers. What was the point of any of it. Besides, what could they have possibly learned out in that little one-room schoolhouse on the prairie?

Did Albert die in the show?

Quantum mechanics, Rose.

Albert was having sex with Willie and Pa.

What about Mr. Edwards, R93?

It's true, the kids of the rural poor rarely finished high school, if high school was available in their area at all. The teacher of the one-room schoolhouse may have had only a high school education themselves, and well, if the kids were going to be a farmer or a farmer's wife what was the point? They didn't need school to know how to plow and harvest, and quitting school to work full-time on the farm made you a grownup of a sort, and probably made life easier in the short term. A kid who just worked the farm could put his or her feet up at the end of a long work day, while a farm kid who stayed in school had to do their chores before and after school, pitch in with extra work when needed, and then sit down to homework while Pa put his feet up.

Going to college, of course, was incredibly difficult for a frontier kid. Even if they got a scholarship and didn't have to find a way to pay, there weren't any colleges out on the wild frontier, and travel was so expensive that it was a barrier to higher education. Hell, people could go decades without seeing the brothers and sisters and parents they left behind east of the Mississippi, because they couldn't afford the trip, or the time away from their business, ranch, or farm.

Hester Sue started the first BLM chapter in Hero Township!

R88 thanks for reminding me about Pioneer Girl. I am bumping that up on my reading list.

There is no need to drag Hester Sue into this mess.

Dumb question, back in those days could they just go to any of those square states and claim the land as their own and that was it? Did they have to file anything with the government or pay taxes on their new property?

Depends on the time and the state, R99. I'm sure there were places where you could just go and squat without any trouble, but a lot of great plains "pioneers" were given land through government land grants. And that must have involved deeds and taxes and stuff.

Hester Sue and Adam were secret lovers. Mary didn't suspect a thing.

True R101. The school constantly reeked of Hester Sue’s vag. They did it in the bed right next to Mary and she never noticed. Though she did take several black eyes from getting punched by Hester Sue in the throes of passion.

R99 One of the things about homesteading was proof that you were going to be on the land permanently and to claim it you needed to plant apple or peach orchards within three years to show you were invested. This is where Johnny Appleseed came in. He was an advance man who would plant seeds on the edge of the frontier and sell saplings to new arrivals making land claims. Because it took ten plus years for the trees to bear fruit it proved that they were invested in being there. Of course the apples had nothing to do with what we eat today, they were used to make cider, which was needed because the water may not be drinkable without the alcoholic content of cider to make it so. Also, the cider press process would then provided Johnny with all the free seeds he needed to go forth and plant a new round of saplings further west.

American baby boys weren't mutilated back then. So there is something positive to say about the pioneer days.

Who cares if Pa was a loser? Look at that bod!!

Not a huge fan of Family Guy, but this opening is brilliant !

How did the kids not hear Pa railing Ma?

R106 I've always thought that was funny but as with most of their gags, Stewie's whine goes on too long

[quote]How did the kids not hear Pa railing Ma?

They did. Mary went blind from weeping because she thought Pa was killing Ma every night.

Half Pint was originally the nickname Pa had for Ma's cunt after he blew in her.

Re-reading the books as an adult made me suspect that Laura had a bit of the ADD. Remember her being so entranced with creek water she jumped in and almost drown?

He was a boozer, a user and a loser!

Op, that's how I felt after reading the books. I never watched the TV show, but I read all the books including Farmer's Boy about the childhood of Ingall's husband.

My feeling about Mr. Ingalls was that he was a charming man, singing and fiddle playing while chasing dreams that never worked out. Locusts, floods, illness and other calamities would cause them to move again and again. Ma and Pa Ingalls finally settled in a small town after giving up on farming. Laura was the big success in the family, basing her books on their pioneer life. Her early life was charming, the family parties when they still lived near kin. But, as many also stated on this thread, pioneer times were tough for many families, and death was a frequent event on their nomadic travels.

[quote]Pa died something like 20 years before Ma. Laura never saw Ma or Mary again after Pa's funeral.

Mary never saw any of them again much sooner.

What about Almanzo or "Manly"? Was he a loser, too? I vaguely remember that he lived off of Laura, also. Not as bad as Pa Ingalls, though.

R115 Hell I wouldn't mind working to support Manly, as long as he was home to have sex with every night.

He didn't have male children, which was crippling in terms of running a successful farm.

Farm families relied heavily on their boys as unpaid labor.

Pa was shit out of luck — he had four deadbeat female mouths to feed and no one to help him with the planting and harvesting.

And Carrie was retarded. Don't forget that.

Pa Ingalls was clearly unstable, constantly crying, couldn't keep his children safe, fathered a blind child.

[quote] Pa was shit out of luck — he had four deadbeat female mouths to feed and no one to help him with the planting and harvesting.

Definitely a loser for failing to realize he could have ran a lucrative whorehouse staffed by his family.

r5, he moved the whole family into the general store, didn't he? I don't recall him getting food from the store but not letting the others eat.

Well this thread has been a surprising Sunday delight.

I now will go masturbate to Pa's 11 incher...

[quote]You’re an idiot, heat rises, that was the warmest and cushist place in all the nasty draft trap little house.

It wasn't cushy at all. There's a scene in the books where the girls, who all share a bed, wake up one morning and they're under a foot or more of snow that had blown in during the night and covered them almost completely.

Pa didn't care, R123.

How do we know he wasn’t run out of town on a rail after scamming and gritting in each new town. I think that’s what really happened and Laura just cleaned it up.

Who knows, R125. The real question here is why anyone would have headed out to the uninhabitable prairie in those days. Was Pa nuts? He had to have been.

You can totally tell Pa would have been the one to take the short cut at what became Donner Pass and make them all suffer.

A few years ago we had a thread that I just found, but I swear there was also a post that posited that Pa was bipolar and uprooted the family every time he had a manic episode. What I'd love is some background on the nutty homesteaders that Laura stayed with her first year teaching. The wife threatened the husband with a knife.

[quote]Pa didn't care, [R123]

Damn straight! He knew how to make more children if he lost the first set.

If he were alive today, he'd be a Trump supporter.

[quote] The real question here is why anyone would have headed out to the uninhabitable prairie in those days. Was Pa nuts? He had to have been.

Have you never heard of the pioneer spirit? It is just like there are plenty of people who would be willing to try their hand at colonizing the Moon or Mars, today, its about freedom, adventure, finding your fortune, etc.

Maybe the real Pa would be, R130, but I doubt if TV Pa would.

MacGregor's performance reminded me of the mother on Malcolm In the Middle: A reminder that this is from the perspective of a child, and the yelling adults seem like ogres. I loved Mrs. Oleson's voice. She had that plaintive tone and was so self-righteous and self-pitying. I loved her character and I loved how accurately she portrayed an asshole. A fine counterpoint to dear Caroline, whom I also loved and thought was stunningly beautiful.

As for Pa: He tried. It looked like a shitty life. I don't think the show could have enjoyed the success it did if it had been more faithful to the books.

I always thought he was. He was a kind man and seemed to love his family but definitely shiftless.

He was a user, abuser, and a loser.

[quote]he could have ran

Oh, dear!

He could have been successful and supported his family well, but spent so much on Soloflex, hair perm appointments, waxing and tanning products.

I let him touch it.

Hawt.

Thank God for UP TV☝

Nellie Olsen's great granddaughter may have declared that she was a daughter of fine lineage, but at least 1/8 of that lineage came from the great plains. Her resemblance to her great great grandmother is obvious.

"Why did they have so many children when they were so poor? Didn't people think about that in those days? "

People barely think about these days. Plus, in theory, if you were working the land, weren't more kids supposed to be better - free labor.

Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, was from roughly the same time period. Seems like they had a better quality of life over in Colorado. Better-looking men as well.

Is that Andrew Carver from Showgirls at r143? After people caught on to his raping ways I guess he hit the trail.

No, R144, that's William Shockley, actor on Dr. Quinn.

Who cares, R143? Dr. Quinn was a terrible show.

William Shockley played Andrew Carver

At least pa wasn’t a rapist

R146 SHUT YOUR MOUTH! DR. Quinn was a WONDERFUL show.

R144 William Shockley played Hank Lawson, the local saloon/brothel owner, so rapist tendencies wouldn't have been out of place.

R143 There are several differences. First Dr. Quinn, focused on the family of a Doctor. And, one that came from old Eastern money, at that. Secondly, Colorado Springs was a much larger and established town. It was more like the episodes of Little House where they all move to Winoka or at least when the blind school moved to Sleepy Eye.

Start your own Dr Quinn bullshit. Pa was a dick.

Pre-industrial revolution, many people earned their living on the land, society was largely agricultural. It was a tough life but it was also typical of most people in your community so it probably didn’t seem so hard. If Pa Ingalls lived today, he’d be constantly trying to start up businesses that failed and his wife would support the family.

No one here cares about Dr. Quinn, R149!!

I remember when he went on trips to larger cities and always ended up crying about some shit.

Well this is quite timely for this thread! On PBS tomorrow night with gay legend Victor Garbor narrating and interviews from former cast members.

This show always made me want to visit Mankato it sounded so glamorous.

Wait. Was Plum Creek in Walnut Grove?

[quote] If Pa Ingalls lived today, he’d be constantly trying to start up businesses that failed and his wife would support the family.

In a way that did happen on the show. Caroline sold eggs to the Mercantile and ran the restaurant in Winoka and later the one at Nellie's hotel.

Laura was actually a cunt in real life and Rose Wilder Lane was a founder of the Libertarian party.

IMHO Laura cleaned up the reality of her dad's shiflessness because she wanted her books to be uplifting and popular, and then Landon cleaned him up a bit more because he wanted to play a character that was popular and endearing.

But still, a basic shiftlessness and irresponsibility comes through all that polishing, the reality must have been unbearable.

Laura's editor daughter made the story more down-home and Norman Rockwell than it was.

Another reason people had so many children in the olden days was because so many died infancy.

Luther Burbank (1849-1926), the horticulturist, was one of 15 children born to his father's three wives, the first two dying in childbirth. Only eight of the children lived to be adults.

R115, Almanzo came from a relatively well-off family but struck out to make his own way on the frontier. It went well enough until bad luck struck. He and Laura had diphtheria, their first home burned to the ground (for which he'd secretly gone into debt), crops failed, and then he had a stroke that left him partially paralyzed, making physical labor very hard. It took them decades to establish a stable living for themselves.

Anyone interested in their real story (not including Pa's big dick) and the historical background should read Prairie Fires.

Amazingly, Almanzo’s family farm in upstate New York, where the book Farmer Boy takes place, still exists and is a museum. Website is crap, but here’s the link.

Any idea how long the walk was to school, or to town? When Laura and Mary walk to school, is it an hour's walk, fifteen minutes? I can't tell.

I’m surprised people didn’t commit suicide more often back then jfc

R162 is right...Prairie Fires is a great read that shows the contrast between reality and the LH books. Pa was all over the place and kept investing time and money in places, only to end up abandoning them to move on to some other place. The family was poor, and the settlers were caught up in the government’s battle with the Native American population over land. They were constantly sick and had their crops destroyed by swarms of grasshoppers repeatedly (this was mentioned in the book, but it wasn’t a one-time thing and then, as now, the government was not very generous in bailing out the poor in a disaster). It was a hard life and the kids were along for the ride.

Who’s watching the PBS show tonight?

Ok, if we're not going to talk more about Kate MacGregor, then I'm leaving this boring thread!

What PBS show?

this was the manifest destiny period. The US gov gave people money to develop farm land (just to white people though.) Charles Ingalls was looking for good, fertile farm land. Farming was were the money was at. Also, wood which is why they went to walnut grove.

Also, this was a better time for wome. Woman were involved with all kinds of professions, including school teachers.

I like Willa Cather better.

Pa was a loser with a heart of gold. He was hysterical like a woman.

R169 I posted above at R154

I read a review of Prairie Fires that went into the family history a bit and they were rabid far right libertarian assholes. Pa was almost certainly mentally ill and dragged the family all over the map because he couldn’t stay still. It’s a shame because I loved the books when I was young.

Here’s an interview with the director of tonight’s PBS documentary. An NYU professor says Pa is crazy and they mention that each move drove them deeper into financial ruin.

Rose Wilder Lane was also most likely bipolar, so it had to come from somewhere.

Laura had a younger brother, Charles Frederick Ingalls (called Freddy) who died in infancy, but I don't think she ever wrote about him. She and Manly also had a son, who died after 11 days, and must have been sickly from the start, because they never named him.

Thank you R173 / R175...I missed that! I definitely want to watch the documentary.

Maybe the family being poor and also rapid right wing libertarians are related, just as they seem to be today.

I used to edge him but not allow him to cum. Then put him in chastity.

It's the quiet gals you have to look out for.

Pa is sounding more like my own pa all the time

The Charles Ingalls family died out. Mary never married. Laura had her daughter Rose and her son that died within weeks of birth. Rose married and had a son that was either stillborn or died shortly after birth, and then never had other children. Carrie didn't get married until she was her in her 40s. She married an older widower with two kids, but never had her own. Charles Frederick died at about a year old. Grace married a much older man as well and never had kids.

If you read the original manuscript, "Pioneer Girl" it's clear that Laura did not have the best education and Rose did a lot of editing and rewriting to make the Little House series. I found the books to be so boring compared to the series. If they stuck to the books for the TV show, they never would have been renewed after the first season.

Almanzo was also loser who made very bad choices. Most girls marry their fathers, don't they? Even in an interview with Rose he said, "my life has been mostly disappointments."

The one interesting thing in the Pioneer Girl book...Laura talks about an attempted rape when she was a teenager. She was apparently taking care of a sick neighbor with a seizure disorder. While she was sleeping, the neighbor's husband came into the bedroom and told Laura to keep quiet and lie still. She screamed and never went back.

The 1909 death certificate for Rose Wilder and Claire Gillette Lane's stillborn son. He was born during the sixth month of pregnancy.

The reason I preferred the books to the TV show was all the descriptions of food, people, environment, etc. They were expressive and did a good job at setting the scene. Even knowing how idealized they are now, I still appreciate the books for that reason.

The show seemed silly to me and even as a kid I felt a little bit like it was an oversimplification.

This is the biggest Mary thread I have seen on DL in many months.

If pa was a loser Mr Edwards must have basically been a hobo. Even ma disapproved of him even though he gave the girls a penny for Christmas. Also does anybody remember the song he used to sing?

The real Almanzo was amazingly good looking as a young man. There are no pictures of the young Charles Ingalls but my guess is he was also sex on a stick. I can't figure out why else Caroline Quiner, who came from a little bit of money and had a stable life, would have married him and stuck with him through all his craziness. The Ingalls women apparently had an eye for manflesh.

Pa and Ma weren't great looking.

Almanzo was ok.

Laura was an attractive older woman.

I always thought Laura's real father was Nels Oleson, because Laura looked a lot like Willie.

I figured either Caroline let him cum in her snatch to get back at Pa, or he may have overpowered her while she was trying to sell some brown eggs and Harriet was on an errand.

How did Laura get a stud like manly?

[quote] The US gov gave people money to develop farm land (just to white people though.)

The land didn't just go to white people. The story of black homesteaders is a little known story that should be told and explored.

But he built that shitty wood structure with no insulation in Minnesota.

Yeah r192 I always wondered what the fuck was wrong with him. Like are you trying to kill your family?

Old Dan Tucker!

That's so weird that the boys died at birth or in infancy for three generations. Some sort of genetic complication or just a sad coincidence?

R190 she was a sturdy gal, that’s why. She had a squat efficient plow horse-like frame and probably all of her teeth.

That was practically a supermodel back then.

R177, the right-wing libertarian stuff came later when Laura's books were successful, and I think mostly from her daughter.

R190, Laura was quite pretty and obviously a good catch--she basically supported her family while Pa continued failing.

R192, aren't American homes still horribly built? It's crazy to me that my parents huge home has one heating/cooling control for the whole house.

R195, miscarriages, infant/child death, and women dying as a result of childbirth were commonplace until the medical advances of the 20th century.

The documentary positions Laura being tasked by Pa to be Mary’s eyes after she goes blind as the point she sees the world in a larger scope and develops the descriptive language that will become important to her as a writer.

I know this is likely to be unpopular opinion, since we all have to rail at the SJWs, but I really like how they’ve been handling this reevaluate of the Little House books.

No one has insisted that she be canceled, just considered more fully. They did take her name off an award, which I honestly think is reasonable given that the World Fantasy Award did the same with Lovecraft.

R186, that beard is disgusting. Did he grow it to be "ironic"? Were they hipster douchebags living in Brooklyn?

[quote]Laura was quite pretty and obviously a good catch

So why did they hire Melissa Gilbert to play her on tv?

"This show always made me want to visit Mankato it sounded so glamorous."

It's not.

Medical care on the frontier ranged from basic to nonexistent. If there was a doctor in town, a farmer who needed medical care for one of his children could ride into town and hope his wife could keep the kid alive while he was gone, and he'd be gone for hours going to town and back and the doctor would come when he could make the trip. When the doctor arrived he had no antibiotics, oxygen, antivirals, he could set broken limbs or maybe remove an appendix on the kitchen table (without anesthetics) and give the patient a slug of laudanum to get them through, but that was about it, and the doctor needed paying in cash or eggs or firewood. There weren't any hospitals out on the frontier, if a person needed major surgery to remove a tumor or save their sight or whatever, that meant a trip to a "city" and debt the family would never be able to pay because there was no medical insurance, so it was routine for people to die or go disabled because the family couldn't afford treatment.

The country doctors were nearly as poor as the people they treated, for all their education and college degrees, and were probably owed money by every poor family in their territory. Which is why some of the medical schools that produced poor country doctors started admitting women towards the end of the 19th century (I read a biography of such a female country doctor), they couldn't get enough men to sign up for such a gruelling, comfortless, thankless lifestyle.

I’d like to discuss Pa Ingalls more

Thank you, Wikipedia, I mean R203.

I read a couple of the books and then grew out of it--the detail was lovely. I felt I could see and touch the landscape, the food, etc. Ingalls was very gifted. I think she wrote too many books and got fucked up in later life, just like so many on DL. (minus the books)

Thank you, Wikipedia, I mean R203.

I read a couple of the books and then grew out of it--the detail was lovely. I felt I could see and touch the landscape, the food, etc. Ingalls was very gifted. I think she wrote too many books and got fucked up in later life, just like so many on DL. (minus the books)

It really is funny to re-read the LH books as an adult. I never realized when I was a kid that the Ingalls' situation kept getting worse as the books went on. In Little House in the Big Woods, they are portrayed as halfway successful. They have a decent house, good crops, and plenty of food. Also, they are close to family.

But Pa Ingalls got tired of plowing around stumps and had to move out west. Then everything went to hell.

I recently read Prarie Fires and Pioneer Girl. Each of them make it clear that the Ingalls were really destitute for most of the time during Laura's childhood. She really papered over Pa's failures in the books.

Did daddy drink a little? And Michael Landon a lot?

Still pissed the only teaching job Hester Sue could get was at the damn Blind School.

Nellie Oleson was right.

Nellie knew a loser when she saw one

In her autobiography "Prairie Tale", Melissa Gilbert said Michael Landon, and many of the show's crew members, abused alcohol on the set of this show everyday. "He was always a hard worker and hard drinker", she writes, "and he and the crew would regularly have a few drinks of alcohol on the set, which is probably part of why he might have developed pancreatic cancer at such a young age." Landon was known to smoke three to four packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day, as well as to notoriously step out on all his wives.

All unresolved issues from his bed wetting days, therapy would have done Landon good.

Wasn't Michael Landon a rightwing Christian and a big bully on Bonanza.

Do you think Melissa Gilbert ever masterbated to thoughts of Pa?

R215 Michael Landon was Jewish and remained so through his death. You might be thinking of his son Michael Landon Jr. who is an evangelical Christian.

Pa was the worst kind of loser. Continually knocking up Caroline with no intention to provide for those kids. The only reason he didn't abandon his family is probably because he was too lazy to get far enough.

I knew a woman who knew Katherine MacGregor and she said there was no acting in her performance. That’s who she was in real life.

[quote]Bitch was always dizzy & limping.

That made me laugh, R35.

No, R80, it was a Chifforobe.

Was pa constantly crying in real life? Was that normal for men back then?

The little house troll is earning her combat pay

Laura’s pa smells like a hog!

Pau was abusive. He whipped 8 year old Laura with a strap in Little House in the Big Woods.

He beat Mary with a sack of potatoes until she went blind and then sent her to a school for the blind in Iowa, where she was repeatedly assaulted by roving gangs of men and ending up killing Hester Sue in a fiery inferno.

That episode was on today. I was busy reading the latest McCalls, so some of the details are fuzzy.

The proposal in Golden Years must be the coldest in literature.

'Your hand is so small!' Almanzo said. 'How would you like an engagement ring?'

'That would depend on who gave it to me', Laura answered.

'And if it was me?'

'Then it would depend on the ring.' Laura drew her hand away.

Laura's marriage to 'Manly' lasted for over 70 years. The first four years the wheat crop failed every year, they had a baby who died aged 3 weeks and then Laura forgot to watch the fire and the house burnt down.

[QUOTE] In The Long Winter, he's constantly going to the general store to eat, while his wife and children are starving.

Almanzo and his brother are described as eating about 30 pancakes each with molasses and bacon while the whole of De Smet (ugliest town name ever) is starving. They invite Pa to eat and instead of wrapping some up for his family, Pa wolfs down a stack of 12!

Almanzo comes across as quite selfish too. He forces a local homesteader to sell all his seed wheat so that Almanzo doesn't have to sell his. He keeps his in a secret compartment in the wall, but Pa realises it's there and helps himself to a few pails of grain.

[QUOTE] And, I think it was little Carrie, who was devastated when Mary left to go to school. Mary's one job was taking care of her, and I'm sure she was the mother figure in Carrie's life, so to have her leave suddenly would have been traumatic.

The youngest was Grace, not Carrie. Carrie was ten when Mary left home.

I got annoyed at Pa for taking Laura's teaching pay (about 80 dollars) and persuading her to spend it on an organ for Mary to play when she came home in vacations, when Laura had no use for an organ but loved horses and would have much preferred to buy a pony. After she married Almanzo, she went horse crazy.

Bump

What did you expect a pioneer in those days in that location to do? Go to Yale Law School? It was a time like these times are becoming. A few extremely rich people and a whole lot of poor people. I'm sure he was making the most of the opportunities he was given. And he was a loving father and good husband, a good, honest man, whose family loved him, so how is that a loser?

I never saw this show.

Bump for more Pa Ingalls gossip

Country girls! Hmmph! 🤮

I read somewhere that Pa probably gave them all syphilis and that's how Mary turned blind. It explains his nuttiness, Christ that beard, and all of the miscarriages and still births and early deaths. Rose was crazy too. From the siff.

My family has carpet!

Laura’s pa smells like a hog!

Pa Ingalls really loved Albert. I mean REALLY. I saw them! 😝

iOS it true Albert wasn’t a real character? I remember how much I loved the Albert centered episodes like when he became a morphine addict.

Pa has crazy eyes

Pa seemed a whole different kind of crazy on the show. He was always hysterical like a woman.

I’m sad that pa was an illusion

Is anyone else listening to the Wilder podcast on Spotify? Really interesting series with historical context. They say Pa is the elephant in the room for his constant moving and uprooting his family each time on a whim. They think he was manic.

Oh yeah…. He also slept all around Walnut Grove for cash. Men snd women too.

Pa’s glistening chest.

Pa spent a lot of time highlighting and teasing his bouffant hairdo...

The family had to make sacrifices for Pa to look good!

Lol r246! What a bizarre t-shirt. I may need to get it.

[quote]Oh yeah…. He also slept all around Walnut Grove for cash. Men snd women too.

So wait a second, you mean all that time Pa spent in the stockroom with Mr. Oleson...at Oleson's Mercantile...

OMG, that's why he was always nude!