Both of them probably would have felt uncomfortable living in town anyway. Although the eastern edge of Mansfield was only about a mile from their farmhouse, they were country folks through and through, and that fact was not likely to change this late in life. Almanzo, Laura's “Farmer Boy,” still liked having animals around, and Laura enjoyed living in natural surroundings. Her living-room windows remained her picture frames for looking out into the great outdoors. Although they had lived in town for a few years four decades earlier, moving back now would require a change in their entire outlook. They felt comfortable on Rocky Ridge, and that is where they would stay.
They were no longer physically able to keep the place up, however. In October 1948 they sold the farm to H. L. Shorter and his wife, Gireda, on an installment plan for eight thousand dollars. The Shorters agreed to pay two thousand dollars as a down payment and the balance in fifty-dollar monthly payments. Indicating why he preferred that to a lump sum, Almanzo explained, “I want some income. I'll let him pay it out in payments each month and then I'll have some money.” The Shorters had previously purchased part of the land from them in 1943. Now they agreed to let Laura and Almanzo continue living in the house and use the outbuildings around it throughout their lifetimes.19
For someone whose health had been supposedly poor since his bout of diphtheria when he was in his late twenties, Almanzo lived a long time. In 1947, when he turned ninety and Laura turned eighty, they were invited to a birthday celebration in her honor sponsored by Chicago's large Carson, Pirie Scott Department Store, but they excused themselves because of Almanzo's failing health. Later that year, however, when the illustrator Garth Williams drove to Mansfield to talk to Laura about the illustrations that he had been commissioned to do for a new edition of her books, he was impressed to see Almanzo still doing chores in the barn. His health became her excuse for staying home again later that spring when the Detroit Public Library opened a new branch in her name. In lieu of her own appearance there, she sent a message to be read at the ceremony and gave them the original manuscripts, handwritten in pencil, of The Long Winter and These Happy Golden Years.20
Despite his growing feebleness, Almanzo put in a garden in the spring of 1949, but a serious heart attack in July left him nearly helpless. Afterward, Neta and Silas Seal dropped by the farmhouse often to help out or to drive Laura to town for groceries. Sensing that the end was near, Almanzo began disposing of his goats, the car, and other items that Laura would not need or be able to take care of. Then, surprisingly, he began improving. When death finally came, early on Sunday morning, October 23, it was unexpected. After Almanzo suffered another heart attack, Laura telephoned the Seals, who hurried over. By the time they arrived, he was dead and Laura was clutching him in a big, wide-armed chair. She did not seem to want to let him go. For a while after the funeral, Neta came to the farmhouse regularly to stay with Laura. She was surprised to discover that the two of them had been sleeping in twin beds, his next to her writing nook, hers by the bathroom. The first evening Neta stayed with her, Laura asked, “Neta, do you care if I sleep in Almanzo's bed and you sleep in mine?” Neta guessed that she felt closer to him sleeping in his bed.21
After sixty-four years of married life, Laura was now alone. “I am very lonely,” she wrote in a letter, saying that her plans were uncertain. “My heart is too sore to write more.”22 He had been her “Farmer Boy,” the hero of her second novel, the young gallant who had won her affection, though he was a decade older. He was the doting husband who had brought her bouquets of wildflowers. But they also were capable of quarreling and bickering with each other, enough that it frequently drove Rose upstairs to escape their flare-ups while she was living in the same house with them during the 1920s.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to penetrate the veil of privacy that obscured the relationship between husband and wife. Evidence contained in Laura's writings and letters, reminiscences of friends and neighbors, and Rose's journals and diaries remains scant. In the triangular relationship among husband, wife, and only child, Almanzo sometimes appeared to be the odd man out. The intense feelings of affection and resentment, pride and irritation that existed between mother and daughter can be documented, mainly through traces left by Rose. But Almanzo seldom was mentioned in her journals and diaries, and when he was, it was usually in a secondary role.
Letters between husband and wife written the few times they were apart indicate that while he exceeded her in years, she was the dominant figure in the relationship. She watched over him like a mother hen, careful to make sure that he was able to get along without her by his side. The romantic descriptions of their courtship in These Happy Golden Years suggest that they possessed feelings for each other expected of every prospectively married couple at the time. More telling, however, was Laura's insistence that she not be required to use the word obey in their marriage vows. Hardly a feminist then or later, she was an individualist whose commitment to freedom and autonomy was a personal rather than a social or political stance. Almanzo's failing health necessitated her heavy participation in physical labor on the farm and reinforced what was probably well established by the time he suffered his stroke: he was more dependent on her than she was on him. It was a partnership that they lived out for sixty-four years, but few people who were acquainted with them more than casually doubted who was the dominant partner.
When Rose returned for her father's funeral, it was her first time home in Mansfield since she had left Missouri in 1937. Having tormented herself for years by believing that her parents needed her on the premises and that she could not honorably abandon them, once she made her escape she did not find it necessary or important enough to visit them even once before Almanzo died. Obviously, the ties that had bound her to the place and to her parents as well as the antipathies and differences that had driven them apart were profound. No one had forced Rose to live with or near them; no one had made her stay away after she left. The volatile relationship generating so much emotional force was that between mother and daughter; in many ways they were two of a kind. For her father Rose harbored affection, admiration, even pride. But there never could be the same kind of intensity in their interactions that existed between her and her mother because they were so unalike. Almanzo was a farmer, a husband, a father, a neighbor, and an individualist. He was essentially an ordinary fellow with the same kinds of goals and expectations that characterized most of his friends. He lived his life with dignity and stoical restraint. He never expected too much from life, and thus he was largely content. Disappointments had frequently visited him, but all in all he was cheerful and satisfied with his lot. His daughter seldom mentioned him in her diaries and journals. He was a constant presence in her life but not a distinctly important one.
Rose's mother, on the other hand, could drive her to distraction. The two were alike in so many ways: intelligent, self-disciplined, perfectionist, critical of other people's foibles and shortcomings, capable of bursts of energy, and highly ambitious to achieve something significant. Each was an individualist, and each opposed governmental intrusions. Each one saw herself as being set apart from the ordinary run of people, and each let no one else do her thinking for her. Rose, the precocious child, demonstrated a brilliance of intellect not evident in her mother. But Laura proved her competence over and over as a housewife, farm manager, loan officer, and author. In her own special way, she was as remarkable a person as Rose. Yet, their differences outweighed their similarities. One was devout, the other a skeptic. One was traditional, the other avant-garde. One was ruled by convention, the other ridiculed it. One enjoyed rural ways, the other escaped to the city as soon as she could. One settled down and lived with a man for two-thirds of a century, the other found it impossible to accommodate herself to any other person for any length of time. One was content, the other restless. One found meaning and satisfaction in simple ways and simple people, the other remained at heart an elitist.
Where did Rose acquire all of her resentm
ents, rebelliousness, ambitiousness, tenacity, creativity, passions, and commitments? Somewhere inside a household that was poverty stricken, worried by illness, beset by disappointment, but inspired by hopes and dreams, sustained by talent and ambition and resourcefulness—somewhere among these hopes, fears, and disappointments Rose developed a personality that distinguished her from her playmates and schoolmates and always set her apart as an adult. The relationship that shaped her was not that between her and her father but rather the one with her mother. With only one child to raise, nurture, and mold, Laura had approached the task with the same kind of tenacity she applied to all of her major activities. To a little girl, her mother's all-encompassing, overprotective watchfulness must have been as much of a burden as the grinding poverty her family endured most of the time that she was growing up.
Central to the relationship between mother and daughter was the struggle for control that persisted far beyond the time that it should have. The mother's efforts to control her daughter's behavior and to attempt to control the environment in which she grew up must have often seemed stifling to Rose. The resentments that flared up frequently and were recorded in her journal entries during the 1930s probably went unrecognized by Laura most of the time. The desire to control also entailed self-control, and both mother and daughter were masters of it, seldom betraying to others their true feelings. But if they constantly got on each other's nerves, they still harbored real love and commitment beneath it all.
During the 1940s, for the first time, Rose finally discovered a commitment that she considered worthy of her full devotion and effort. No place could hold her forever. No man was able to, either. Her desire to write great literature waned, and no other party or organization captured her unqualified loyalty. But finally during World War II she seemed to have found her true calling, in whose direction she had been drifting for a long time. Writing a column, “Rose Lane Says,” for a small weekly newspaper, the Pittsburgh Courier, provided her with an outlet for her radically individualist viewpoint. Then she made national news by writing an antigovernment diatribe in pamphlet form titled What Is This—the Gestapo? after FBI agents came inquiring about criticisms that she had written about Social Security. She found a real intellectual home in taking over the job of book editor of the National Economic Council's monthly Review of Books in 1945. It gave her the opportunity to read political theory and conservative ideology and provided her with a chance to work out more systematically her ideas about the role of government and the place of the individual in modern mass society. Her 1943 book, The Discovery of Freedom, contained the most highly developed example of her conservative philosophy.23
Now that her mother was alone, Rose came to Mansfield periodically to stay with her, usually during the winter months. In March 1953 she stopped for several days with Mr. and Mrs. Alfred M. Morgan, friends from Danbury, after spending the winter in the South. Rose was the only family Laura had left now. The previous year she had bequested to her daughter all of her possessions, providing that upon Rose's death the copyrights to her books would be transferred to the library in Mansfield. Grace had died of heart disease in Manchester in November 1941. Her husband, Nate Dow, had succumbed two years later. Both were buried in the De Smet cemetery.24
Carrie had traveled to Mansfield by train in 1944 to visit Laura and Almanzo. She had sold the family's Third Street house in De Smet that year, but since she was living across the state in Keystone, a pile of old junk and keepsakes were left in storage in one of the rooms, waiting to be disposed of. Among them were pictures, dishes, bedding, some of Mary's old braille books, and other items. After Carrie died in June 1946, the owners hauled most of the stuff to the dump, but they did save two large portraits of the parents, which were shipped to Laura in Mansfield, since she was now the only surviving member of the family. Having no room—or not wanting to make room—on the walls of the farmhouse to hang the pictures, Laura donated them to the State Historical Society in Pierre, where she and her sisters (none of whom had children of their own) earlier had sent their father's fiddle to be displayed.25
The days at Rocky Ridge went by slowly now. Laura emerged from the house only infrequently. Almanzo was gone, and month by month lifelong friends and acquaintances were dying, too. M. A. Freeman, the banker, succumbed at eighty-two in January 1948. Dr. John Fuson, who had practiced medicine in Mansfield for forty-four years, died the following year. In 1951 it was longtime friend Mrs. N. J. Craig. Now and then people dropped by to visit. Berta and Elmer Hader from Nyack, New York, stopped on their way to California in May 1950. Laura had not seen them again since first meeting them in San Francisco in 1915. More often than not it was younger friends, like the Seals, who looked out for her. They invited her to their place for dinner from time to time, and Neta stopped by to visit or to run errands for her or to drive her around.26
As Laura's life grew quieter, Mansfield itself became busier and busier, if only temporarily, although she was no longer part of that activity. Thursdays and Saturdays witnessed the heaviest traffic in town. Thursday was sale day. Large crowds gathered at the sale barn, where farmers brought their cattle and other animals to market. Saturdays, when people came to shop and buy their groceries and to sell their eggs, chickens, and produce, the sidewalks were so full of people that they sometimes had to step into the street to get around each other. Women sat and visited in front of the stores, and the men moved into the park or headed to the pool hall. In the evening in the summertime, the band played in the park, while kids ran around and the adults sat in their cars and listened, honking their horns in appreciation after the songs. Stores stayed open late, and there were the movie theater, pool hall, bowling alley, and skating rink to liven things up.27
Softball became a big attraction during the late 1940s and into the 1950s. With help from the chamber of commerce and the school board, funds were raised to put up lights in 1947, and hundreds of people sometimes showed up to watch the action. A thousand people, the largest crowd ever to witness a match in town, came for a game soon after the lights were installed. Even more came for the annual rodeo sponsored by the Mansfield Round-Up Club several years later. Hunting and fishing were also big attractions in the Ozarks, drawing many from out of town. Main Street businessmen did their part to keep shoppers coming into town by sponsoring sale days, Miss Merry Christmas parades, local talent shows, and other special events. A Boy Scout troop was organized, languished, reorganized, languished, and reorganized again. Organizational activities ebbed and flowed as townspeople tried to keep Mansfield on the upward swing, competitive with its rivals in the surrounding region.28
Laura, meanwhile, had become Mansfield's most famous citizen, surpassing baseball pitcher Carl Mays. The latter's sidearm delivery had hit a Cleveland batter in 1920 when he was playing for the New York Yankees, gaining him notoriety as the only major leaguer ever to kill another player in a game. Even Rose, who for three decades had reigned as Mansfield's most famous literary product, now began to fall under the shadow of her mother's reputation. People seldom saw Laura anymore, but they were aware of her presence in the farmhouse at Rocky Ridge, and from time to time they could read about some new award or recognition that she had received.
A feature story in the Kansas City Star in 1949 and reprinted in the Mansfield Mirror observed that her books about American pioneer life were being read around the world as well as by millions of Americans. “By all standards Mrs. Wilder is a famous author,” the story indicated. “Nevertheless, she is unaffected and as unassuming as in her earlier days here when she helped ‘pull a crosscut saw’ on Ozark timber.” In August 1950 the Athenian Club sponsored a tea for her at the Wright County Library in Hartville, proclaiming it Laura Ingalls Wilder Day. About 135 people attended the event. The Missouri Blue Book, the official manual of the state, recognized her that year in a section devoted to famous Missourians.29
When the Pomona, California, public library renamed its children's reading room the “Laura Ingalls Wilder Room
” in May 1950, Laura sent the original manuscript of Little Town on the Prairie. The following year the Mansfield branch of the Wright County Library system moved into new quarters in a former office building on east Commercial Avenue and named it the Laura Ingalls Wilder Library. A dedication ceremony was held on September 28, 1951, in the Mansfield High School gymnasium. Laura wore her favorite red velvet dress for the occasion and an orchid, a gift from the library. State librarian Paxton Price was the principal speaker of the day, and a violinist played some of the songs that her father had once played and that she had mentioned in her books. The local newspaper took pictures of her standing in front of the library and inside by a shelf containing her books and also a batch of birthday cards that she had received from school children the previous February. “She appeared far younger than her 84 years as she graciously responded to the tribute paid her,” the story in the Mirror reported. Laura later gave the library a set of her books and various heirlooms and mementos to display. They included the trowel that had been used to build the farmhouse in New York where Almanzo had grown up and used later to build their first farm home in Dakota Territory and then their house at Rocky Ridge, a set of dolls that had been given to Laura depicting her family's members, some of Almanzo's walking canes, pictures, and other items.30
During Children's Book Week in November 1952, Laura agreed to attend an autograph party at Brown's Book Store in Springfield, which declared the day “Laura Ingalls Wilder Day.” As usual, she wore her red velvet dress, and she smiled radiantly for the photographer as children gathered around her to get their autographs and a word of greeting. The following year, in December, The Horn Book, a magazine devoted to children's literature, published a special Laura Ingalls Wilder issue. Harper's also published in October 1953 a new edition of her books, illustrated by Garth Williams, one of America's premier illustrators. He had spent time over several years researching and making the drawings, visiting the sites where the action in the novels took place, and driving to Mansfield to talk to Laura. Laura sent her publisher a statement to use for advertising purposes, “Laura and Mary and their folks live again in these illustrations.”31
Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder Page 31