To the Ozarks

From a very young age, my mother would take me to the local public library--a small, stone structure that smelled faintly of mildew--in Hudson, N.H and tell me to pick out as many books as I liked. Early on, I developed the habit of wanting to read the same book over and over and there are two books I remember dragging home a lot. One, I think, was called "The Rainbow," a beautifully illustrated story of Noah's Ark--for reasons I know not, bible stories had my attention--just not in church. The other was Alice in Wonderland, the book I learned to read with. I seem to remember the moment the word on the page connected with the word in my head, and the code was broken. I read many books as a kid--I was an avid reader, something my mother delighted in and something my father scowled at since I seemed to have my nose in a book constantly and he believed it was making me antisocial.

Louisa May Alcott and Helen Keller were my heroes when I was a child. I can't say why exactly my childhood imagination was stuck in the 19th century, but it was. I was hooked. Mostly, I was fascinated by how one lived and this included all aspects of daily life from cooking to bathing, from plowing (no kidding) to how log cabins were built (really, no kidding). But I was equally taken with all of the characters in stories I read--fictional or nonfictional. In recent years, I thought maybe the Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books--which I adored and read repeatedly between the ages of 8 and 10--had been replaced by spicier, more entertaining (whatever that means) stories. Now, I rarely have a student who has read these books, let alone heard of them. Even other people my age think of the tv series and sneer when I mention the books important to me as a child. Yes, the tv show was awful, but the books...ah the books...Yesterday, that assumption about their current popularity was modified. As I have been here in St. Louis for three weeks, I decided I really couldn't leave Missouri without traveling down to the Historic Home and Museum of Laura Ingalls Wilder (photo above). It sits outside the small town of Mansfield, population 1350-ish, off of route 60 in southern Missouri. Three and a half hours from St. Louis, the area is farm country, remarkably quiet and isolated even though it is about 40 miles east of Springfield. Touring the house with a very knowledgeable docent named Betty was charming enough, but it was the museum that spurred an onrush of memories from my childhood when I would get all excited over "old stuff;" here, there were all sorts of photographs (of the family), documents (letters, 19th century teachers' certificates, old marriage certificates), quilts, dresses, and tableware. Assorted other items indicative of lives lived. There were families there, too, usually with children around ages 7, 8, or 9. There were these two young girls in particular, with their mother, who were working their way through the museum seemingly at the same pace I was. Consequently, I overheard bits and pieces of their conversations--and they really were talking about nearly every artifact and relating it to the stories. I became impressed more and more as both girls recalled with perfect clarity what scene was in which book and how the artifact they were looking at fit into that part of the story. The two girls knew these books inside and out, and the museum made it all real for them. Later, in the gift shop, I heard a little boy talking to his mother, also quite knowledgeable about the books, never getting the plot wrong as he patiently reminded his mother of what happened in On the Banks of Plum Creek. So there are kids who still read these books...

And what novel did I finish just last night? Charles Frazier's Thirteen Moons. Yet another 19th century setting, but without the Garth Williams illustrations.