Looking for Laura -- Meeting Wendy

Laura's memory is well-preserved and tended at Rocky Ridge, her farm home with Almanzo ("Farmer Boy") for more than fifty years in Mansfield, Missouri. It has been a literary shrine since her death in 1957.

Well, Cupcakes. I'm back from MO (as you know--thanks for a fabulous conference call today! What a great idea, real estate crisis or not...). "The land you couldn't see to the end of," is how Laura Ingalls Wilder described the Midwestern prairie of her childhood. The same could be said of the Ozark hill country of central and southern Missouri. Not quite flat but no great distant landmarks, either, by which to anchor the horizon. I often had the sense that I was in the middle of the lower 48 states, which, geographically I may have been--actually, upon an edit of this blog and to satisfy my own curiosity, I discover that distinction falls to a point near Lebanon, Kansas, 158 miles NW of Topeka and not too much further west than where I was based in Missouri. It was quite a disconcerting feeling for me--almost like being adrift at sea with no land in sight. There were big skies like we have here sometimes in Kentucky or further west, but no moorings past the slight dips in the landscape, no mountains or hills to fix upon. So in traveling three hours south to Mansfield from the Old Order Mennonite country around Versailles it was good to discover that the hills were a bit more rolling and home-like (Kentucky and New England both).

One of the highlights of my four days in Missouri was a visit to the Laura Ingalls Wilder farm, Rocky Ridge, outside of Mansfield. [Other highlights will be posted over at In the Pantry but as this one is especially literary on several levels, I thought it belonged in Cupcake Land.] As a girl I read most of the original LIW books after they were released with Garth Williams illustrations and some again with each of the children (Little House in the Big Woods and Farmer Boy, especially -- Almanzo was certainly an active player at Rocky Ridge, building the farm house and adding onto it as they had more money, doing everyday farm chores and crafting lamps and cabinetry). I also have both Laura Ingalls Wilder cookbooks (the more recent one by William Anderson with interior and exterior photographs from Rocky Ridge and recipes from Laura's notes and the earlier one by Barbara Walker that takes quotes and food descriptions from the books and recreates period recipes from the American frontier) as well as some other Laura-related books, many by William Anderson.


After visiting Laura's farm you can stay in the Little House Inn or Little Prairie RV park or dine at the Little House Country Buffet (I passed on these options but enjoyed their signs).


Of course, I watched the hokey and sugary television series, too, and to this day haven't quite recovered from Michael Landon's hair--thank goodness for the humor and levity of Alison Arngrim's "Nellie Oleson" character. [Arngrim now tours around with her own Confessions of a Prairie Bitch show--ah, the campy aspects of the show still persist thirty years later.] However, I will always love the books for their simple, but descriptive, depictions of pioneer life and the lavish descriptions of food and craft, even pantries. [In These Happy Golden Years there is a several page description of the pantry that Almanzo built for Laura that she enjoyed in their first home together -- she lovingly described every detail of his handiwork. Almanzo would also build most of the kitchen and pantry cabinets in their future homes.]


Laura designed the corner windows with window seats and didn't like shades or blinds, preferring the changing "picture" of their farm landscape.

Rocky Ridge is the farm where Laura and Almanzo moved early on in their marriage and where they would live for over fifty-five years until their deaths, almost ten years apart. Laura, who was ten years younger than her husband, whom she called "Manly," once said she wanted to live to be as old as Almanzo was when he died, at 90. She got her wish and died three days after her own 90th birthday. When they first arrived in Mansfield they built a simple two-room house with a loft in 1894 and would add rooms on as they could afford them. The original part of the house would become the permanent kitchen and dining room.

Their Missouri farm is also where their daughter Rose Wilder Lane was primarily raised and where she would one day return after years of travel and journalistic pursuits to write many of her own books (she was the second highest paid author of her day--who knew?). Laura also, before her fame as a children's book author, was a prolific contributor to publications such as The Ruralist. These writings, assembled in several anthologies, remind me of the home and hearth-based articles that Della T. Lutes was writing and editing during the same era (sometime I will blog over at In the Pantry about Laura Ingalls Wilder's country kitchen and her essay on the design of that kitchen and other elements of her home). However, most importantly to the "Little House" legend and fan base, Rocky Ridge is where Laura wrote all of her infamous books (greatly helped and edited by Rose if you acknowledge some of the more recent scholarship as detailed in The Ghost of the Little House, a book I've just ordered).


Laura's kitchen door.


An appropriately attired young Laura groupie awaits her tour.

But in terms of the Cupcake lore and creation of legend it is important to mention that the highlight of my tour was not seeing the many original items as Laura (and Rose) had left them, or Pa's famous fiddle or numerous items immortalized in the books, not even the fabulous vintage furniture (all original, some handcrafted by Almanzo) and teeny-tiny kitchen with its teeny-tiny counters (Laura was 4'11") and vintage green Depression-era glass canisters (OK, well that was up there). Rather, one of the delights of the day was my chance encounter with writer Wendy McClure.


The side porch at Rocky Ridge has one of three screen doors on the farmhouse. I have always loved screen doors and am planning several on our future farmhouse. Of course, they must screech and bang or I won't want them.

Wendy was dressed in a black trench with a camera over her neck and a notebook in her hand. She also seemed very approachable. So I, of course, blurted out: "Are you a writer?" [Peaches, you see, you really should wear your black trench more often.] So that got us talking about the house, Laura, and why we were there. As it turns out, Wendy is working on a book and I was scouting for article fodder. We exchanged emails and names and of course I Googled Wendy's name later that evening in the motel. Imagine my surprise and delight when I discovered she is the author of The Amazing Mackerel Pudding Plan-Classic Diet Recipe Cards from the 1970s, about which we Cupcakes have emailed in the past (and I think it is mentioned somewhere on one of our blogs). Wendy also wrote I'm Not the New Me, a memoir around discoveries about weight, body image issues and our ingrained diet culture that she started at her blog Pound in 2000, now its 9th year. That's ancient in blog years, Cupcakes! [And just think! Cupcake Chronicles will be two in August and In the Pantry is already four years old! And with Edie's many other blogs we are just a blog-o-rama...]




Rose built the Rock House on the farm for her parents' retirement while she continued to write and live in the farmhouse over the hill. Eight years later, Laura and Almanzo returned to the farmhouse they had built together and I don't blame them -- this, while, cute and cottagey, would not have been their warm and comfortable farmhouse.



Currently working on her next book, The Wilder Life, Wendy is interested in profiling the lore, mystique and contemporary, yet persistent, fandom of Laura Ingalls Wilder along with her own experiences with the books. So last weekend she was on a pilgrimage to some of the Laura Ingalls Wilder home sites which are featured in the books and still preserved as museums or facsimiles. [Not only would I read and enjoy such a book but it is an idea I'd actually pondered myself in the past, but so many ideas so little time...I can't wait for Wendy's book.] In her spare time, Wendy is a children's book editor at Albert Whitman & Company in Chicago. She is living the writing life and an enviable one at that.



I was glad I came down a day ahead and went to Mansfield on Saturday morning instead of the afternoon as originally planned. I also came away with a desire to reread all of the "Little House" books again this summer, to learn more about Rose, and to read Wendy's past and future books. And I want one of those big prairie dress work aprons! Imagine that worn in the garden and while tending my chickens. How very "LA" (as in Laura Ashley--it's probably a good thing you didn't know me during that phase of my life, Cupcakes...)

NOTE: The three archival images are from widely available Internet sources (originals are in various Laura Ingalls Wilder archives). The first is of Laura and Almanzo, c. 1940, and was taken by a visitor outside of their Rocky Ridge farm and later sent to them (the original is framed on the hearth in their Craftsmen-style living room). The second is of Rose Wilder Lane on one of her travels. The third is of Laura, likely taken in the late 1800s, probably around the time of her marriage to Almanzo Wilder in 1885.