Iowa offered Laura Ingall's family chance to survive

There's something about spring that gets me thinking of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Maybe it's the anticipation of blooming wildflowers like those that she and her sisters run through in the opening sequence of "Little House on the Prairie." Or maybe it's that my ancestors settled only a few miles from the house in the big woods that the Ingalls later left, just before the spring thaw.

Mostly we think of Laura living in Walnut Grove, Minn. But she spent time as well in Iowa, near Burr Oak. It's known as her "missing years," because she rarely wrote about that time.

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There's good reason for Laura to not have spent any ink on those days. In the summer of 1876, grasshopper plagues wiped out farmers throughout Minnesota. Then the Ingalls' infant boy, Charles Frederick, died.

That fall, as the burr oak leaves yellowed across the Iowa bluff town, the family avoided destitution when a friend offered them a job running the hotel he owned. Ma, Mary and nine-year-old Laura spent most of their time with the daily chores that the hotel demanded - cleaning, cooking, laundering, baby-sitting.

Faced with the financial stress of doctor bills, rent and groceries, the Ingalls sold some of their belongings in Burr Oak. As homesteaders, they'd received free farmland and always had grown or hunted most of their own food.

Crushed by poverty, the excitement of Burr Oak only tormented them. The village served as a major crossroads, with more than 200 covered wagons passing through every day, heading to new lives and opportunities both West and South.

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Burr Oak plays a special role, though, in understanding Laura and pioneer times. It's the only one of her childhood homes that remains on its original site.

And in a small brick house, not far from the hotel where the Ingalls toiled, Laura's third sister, Grace, was born the spring after they arrived. Laura's pa, who did not like working in a hotel, became a partner in a grist mill and spent his days grinding crops the farmers brought in from their wheat and corn fields, helping him to earn a few more dollars.

Homesick for the freedom that farm life offered, Charles brought his family back to Walnut Grove soon after.

They'd spent only a year in Iowa. But it allowed them to survive and to regain their footing in an uncertain world.

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The Ingalls would return once more to Iowa, again for tragic reasons.

In 1879, after the family had settled in De Smet, S.D., pretty, blonde-haired Mary became severely ill and suffered a stroke. Blindness re-sulted.

Two years later, the Dakota Territory partially paid for Mary to attend the Iowa School for the Blind in Vinton. For meals on the trip there, the Ingalls ate fried blackbirds, which that summer had destroyed the family crops. Laura then worked 12 hours a day for a mere 25 cents basting shirts to help pay her sister's tuition.

Though harsh by today's standards - the 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. school day was rigidly structured and spills during mealtime were met with punishment - many considered the facility progressive. It was co-ed, and corporal punishment was prohibited.

Mary excelled in music and even earned a perfect mark in "deportment," or conduct. But financial strains and bouts with illness hurt Mary's marks and even kept her out of classes for some time. She finally graduated in 1889 at the age of 24.

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Laura's life as presented in "Little House on the Prairie" wasn't all that close to reality. A few episodes - the premiere when the Ingalls leave Wisconsin for Kansas and the episode in which she and Almanzo marry - are fairly accurate. But Laura's tales couldn't easily be stretched into 200 hour-long episodes.

Indeed, Laura didn't have a brother named Albert. And when Mary returned from the Iowa School for the Blind, she never married or had a child.

But fictionalization didn't damage the series' value or quality, for the show remain-ed true to the lessons and themes of Laura's books.

Ironically, of the few episodes that recounts a real incident - "The Lord is My Shepherd," about the birth and death of Charles Frederick before the Ingalls come to Iowa - was one Laura chose to never write about.

(originally published March 21, 2004)