A Work in Progress

Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder

In the not so distant (literary) future Laura Ingalls and Almanzo Wilder are going to meet and marry and hopefully live happily ever after.  But for now the two are separated by distance though they are very much of an age.  While Laura lives with her family in the deep woods of Wisconsin, Almanzo lives in New York state with his parents and three elder siblings.  And by all appearances his family is happy, healthy and relatively well off.  Farmer Boy, published in 1933, is a little bit of a digression from Laura's story begun in Little House in the Big Woods. 

It's the late 1860s and Farmer Boy chronicles Almanzo's ninth year in very much a similar fashion as Little House--following the rhythms of the seasons.  Unlike Laura's father who is a trapper, Almanzo's is a farmer so their lives are dictated by the planting, growing and harvesting of their crops.  This was a time when to be a farmer was looked upon as a way of independence and self-sufficiency.  Everything the Wilders have is what they grow or build or make themselves--from the food on their table to the clothes on their backs.  They are not ever at the beck and call of anyone else--from wheel-wright to shopkeeper.

The story begins once again in January as Almanzo and his brother and two sisters trek through the snow to school.  As one of the youngest pupils Almanzo must sit towards the front of the class with no desk and only his primer in hand.  School is not, unsurprisingly, his favorite activity.  He'd much rather stay on the family farm and he dreams of having his own horses to take care of and train.  But for a boy as young as he is he must wait, as a poorly trained horse would be ruined, and they are too expensive for a boy so small.  Instead he has two calves he must care for and train and will use to help in many of his chores. 

Happily for Almanzo he spends more time on the farm helping than in the classroom.  While his elder siblings often trudge off to school or when they eventually must go away for their schooling, he stays at home to help with the many tasks that farm life demands.  Cutting ice in the coldest months ensures the family will have a fresh supply all year long.  Everything has its season--from picking potatoes to berries, threshing wheat, felling timber, sheering sheep and selling horses.  

He helps with making candles and watches his mother weave homespun and knit and later barter with the tin man for her household wares to get her through each new year.  Little is bought in a store, and even their shoes come from an itinerant cobbler.  Almanzo's first pair of boots are almost a rite of passage as he had only worn moccasins--growing feet mean boots are something of a luxury.

Daily chores can never be neglected and often they must be done at the same time each day in order to keep the animals on schedule.  It's no wonder then that the appetite of a growing boy's such as Almanzo is so vast.  And there is always such an abundance of food. 

"The big blue platter on the stove's hearth was full of plump sausage cakes; Eliza Jane was cutting apple pies and Alice was dishing up the oatmeal, as usual.  But the little blue platter stood on the back of the stove, and ten stacks of pancakes rose in tall towers on it."

"Ten pancakes cooked on the smoking griddle, and as fast as they were done Mother added another cake to each stack and buttered it lavishly and covered it with maple sugar.  Butter and sugar melted together and soaked the fluffy pancakes and dripped all down their crisp edges."

If carbohydrates are fuel for the body, Almanzo needs them all as it's not unusual for him to spend his entire day working during a busy time of year on the farm from sunrise to sunset.  It's not all work, however.  A bountiful harvest means days of rest, too.  When the County Fair rolls around in the fall the family dresses in their Sunday best and spends the better part of three days there.  A prize pumpkin grown on a 'milk diet' means a blue ribbon for Almanzo, but so much fun actually begins to tire him and he is always happiest returning to the farm.

The Little House books are surely an idealized look at life in the late-1800s, but they are filled with warm happy memories of a way of life long gone.  It's not always a perfect world--there are bullies in school, and mischievous cousins, and lessons hard learned.  But it's such a fascinating look at what was a very different world.  My favorite part was when Almanzo's parents went away to relatives for a week leaving the four children home alone (How old are the oldest siblings?  Not as old as I imagine them to be, I suspect).  They are told not to eat all the sugar and to keep up with the chores.  It's every child's greatest desire--the minute the parents are gone to go and make ice cream and eat all the cakes, but trust me, never feed the piglet sticky taffy!

Pure escapist reading for a cold winter's day!  If I think it's cold, at least I don't have to do chores in -40F weather!  These books are absolutely delightful and I am sorry I never read Farmer Boy as a child.  I thoroughly enjoyed it as an adult.  I already have Little House on the Prairie at the ready.  Laura and her family are moving from Wisconsin to Kansas.  I'm ready for more adventures.

The Lieutenant's Lady by Bess Streeter Aldrich

Silly me.  Here I pride myself in my pioneer spirit when it comes to the weather--hot or cold, rain or shine, braving howling winds or baking pavement.  I am an inveterate walker.  Morning and night, and of late completely bundled up in many layers of clothing, I walk to my bus stop for my daily commute to and from work.  But a week ago I was utterly defeated by the Arctic freeze that hit the US and sunk temperatures here in Nebraska to as low as -25F with the windchill.  I stayed home instead of venturing outdoors on the coldest couple of days.  So much for that pioneer spirit.  I'll pass on a potential case of frost bite, thank you very much.  After reading The Lieutenant's Lady by Bess Streeter Aldrich, however, I'm feeling less smug about my Midwest heartiness.  The descriptions in the book brought home to me just what cold really means.

Back in the 1860s when Nebraska wasn't even a state, just a barely tamed territory, and the tamed part of the equation was debatable, young Linnie Colsworth has come from her very citified eastern home to visit her cousin Cynthia.  Both young women are of a similar age, if not of a similar disposition.  One dark, "not made to be flirtatious" but practical and intelligent, and the other fair and coquettish turning heads wherever she goes.  Cynthia knows her allure and she uses it catching the eyes and attention of many a young man including Army Lt. Norman Stafford with his strong face and well-knit uniformed figure and as handsome as any other possible beau about. 

Linnie had been listening to Cynthia sing his praises and upon finally meeting him finds him to be fine and strangely attractive after all.  "There was something about that grave manner, that lean sunburned face, those steady gray eyes."  Linnie can only seem to be cordial or cold, friendly or unfriendly compared to Cynthia's confident coyness.  Linnie is disparaging of her own looks which she believes to be only ladylike and uninteresting--"sort of a female calf", though Lt. Stafford sings her praises nonetheless . . .

"He was sensible and interesting, treating her as though she were an intelligent person and not a flirt or a dolt."

. . . calling her a true friend to himself and Cynthia.

It's not that Linnie doesn't have her share of attractiveness or attention from a few eligible young men, but she doesn't quite realize, or admit to herself anyway, just how taken she is with Lt. Stafford.  It's all but a given that Cynthia will become betrothed to Norman, but that doesn't put an end to her flirtatiousness.  And when Lt. Stafford travels to his post at  one of the northern forts when duty calls the idea is that when spring comes and better weather arrives Cynthia will travel upriver to be with him and they will finally wed.

Linnie finds herself wondering what the lieutenant would think if he knew what was underneath Cynthia's dainty soft ways, if he realized just how self-centered she was.  "But a man in love never saw through that kind."  Life is so queer.  She finds herself thinking about Norman Stafford, who is thinking about Cynthia, who has been chatting up yet another potential suitor.  In the end Cynthia marries the other man and gives as her excuse that Norman's letters had stopped arriving, and what is she to do?  She begs Linnie to break the news to Norman.  So when Linnie begins her return journey home by way of Sioux City, she detours thinking only to deliver the news to Norman in person. 

The year is 1868, however, and traveling up the Missouri River from a bustling and up and coming city such as Omaha to the wilds of the Dakotas and on to Montana Territory where there are only Army Forts is not a journey to be taken lightly.  Her rashness will have repercussions and the news she brings is not exactly welcome.  Perhaps Linnie isn't truthful to herself even in deciphering her true motives, but once she's there the realization sets in just how improper her behavior has been for a respectable young woman.

Linnie's journey there and back is truly harrowing and will test her limits.  Nebraska was not yet even a state, but merely a territory as were the Dakotas and Montana where she ultimately must travel to to deliver her verbal 'dear John letter'.  A journey by steamship up the Missouri takes weeks and travel is interrupted by raging rivers, sandbars and marauding Indians.  And that is in the summer.  Her voyage back is beset by problems with the weather, which in October is practically winter.  Her mantra becomes "I can stand it."  Literally she goes to the end of the world and back again both physically and emotionally.

If you're curious about what happens to Linnie, Lt. Stafford and Cynthia, here's the little nudge from me to go and pick up the book.  Beware, though, if you read the book description on either the back cover or online more of the plot will be revealed.  It won't ruin the pleasure, but I always like approaching a new story without too much information.

This is what I hope is only the first of many books about or set in Nebraska, the Plains or the West in general I will read this year.  It's strange to read about the city I live in, recognizing street names and references and trying to imagine it as an up-and-coming place yet still part of the wilds really.  The characters talk about traveling to the "States", of which Nebraska would soon become part.  Although born in Iowa Bess Streeter Aldrich (1881-1954) lived in Nebraska most of her life.  I've got a number of other books by her as well as a biography of her life.  The Lieutenant's Lady is a later book, published in 1942, and it was a thoroughly enjoyable read.  I hope to visit her home, which is not far from Omaha.  You can read more about her here.

Little House in the Big Woods

Let me warn you--if you start reading Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House in the Big Woods, you will not want to put it down.  I read in in practically one sitting and have already started Farmer Boy.  It was with a feeling of nostalgia that I started reading thinking that here is a simpler way of life, a world without the cares of our modern world, but I had to reassess my perceptions time and time again as I read.  It was a simpler world in so many ways, and sadly thinking of it I think our modern world is lacking in many ways, too.  But to think that people's lives were in any way easier is most decidedly a misconception.  The Big Woods were often harsh and unforgiving.  Just surviving in such a demanding environment was a challenge.  To say that the past is another country is not so very far off from the truth really.

The story, written for a juvenile audience (but enjoyed by people of any age) is a simple one and simply told, but it's quite beautifully told, too.  It follows the rhythms and seasons of the year beginning in Autumn and following through to the next.  It's written in third person and told from the perspective of six-year-old Laura who lives in the deep Wisconsin woods with her Pa, Ma, older sister Mary and baby Carrie.  It's not hard to see why Laura is such a beloved childhood character.  She's very much a real (and imperfect) girl that any child can relate to.  Her Pa calls her his "half-pint of sweet cider half drunk up" because she's so small.  Plainer than Mary, she has mousy brown hair with no little ringlets that receive so many admiring glances like Mary's.  She's mostly good, or at least tries to be, but Pa has occasion to take the strap down from the wall when she misbehaves. 

Laura is particularly fond of her father, who sets out each day to check on his traps.  If she's lucky he will finish early and will take out his fiddle to sing or tell stories of his own childhood or of his father's who lives even deeper in the woods where the trees grow so very close together.  To modern ears it's strange to hear of a small girl relate how much she loves bear meat or how she and Mary play with a pig's bladder--handily blown up to be batted around like a balloon, but this is sometime just after the Civil War in a wild and untamed (and untrammelled) America.  But it's fascinating, too.

This is Laura's story mostly.  The world, her world, is seen through a small girl's eyes.  It is a world of wonder and happiness mostly.  But there are also moments of adventure like when her Ma unknowingly slaps a bear outside their barn at night.  There are no near neighbors.  She has only her sisters to play with and cousins on those few visits that are made at holiday time.  But the world opens outward through her Pa's stories.  And finally at six she is old enough to travel into town which is quite a sight to behold.  The store where her Pa trades his furs is filled with so many things she could look for weeks and still not see everything. 

Just as such a young girl would not know her parent's history, so the reader has yet to learn of their meeting and romance.  But Ma, Caroline, grew up in the East, and Laura admires the beautiful dress she knows Ma brought with her and is saved for those extra special occasions like a dance during sugar snow season when the sap is taken from the Maple trees.  It's a time when friends and family come together t help Laura's grandparents turn the sap into sugar at the end of winter.

I read Little House in the Big Woods as a child and it just shows you where my mind is usually at that the part I remember so vividly happens to be that sugar snow.  I remember Laura and Mary eating the snow that has had syrup poured into it to make candy.  (I always wanted to try that by the way but never have).  I don't know why I ever waited so long to reread the book and now will read the rest anxiously following the family's adventures.  To say I loved the story is an understatement.  Farmer Boy is a story I didn't read as a child--I'm sure I thought a "boy's" story would hold no value for a little girl like me.  But I am certainly enjoying it now.

If you have never read Little House in the Big Woods (or any of the other books), I highly recommend it.  Or if it's been a while, go and pick up a copy now.  It is a perfect Winter read!