Today we celebrate the 124th wedding anniversary of Almanzo and Laura Ingalls Wilder.
In honor of the day, let’s share what we love best about the romance or relationship between the two (this can be either during their courtship or during the marriage)!
The cutter rides to and from Laura’s desolate teaching post. What a guy.
I love their lifelong partnership and how they worked together to make Rocky Ridge.
There are so many things to love, I couldn’t possibly begin to name them.
But one passage that I adore is from These Happy Golden Years, Chapter 20:
*****
“I declare,” Ma said. “It never rains but it pours.” For strangely enough, Tuesday evening a young man who lived on a neighboring claim came by, and asked Laura to go buggy riding with him next Sunday. On Thursday evening, another young neighbor asked her to go buggy riding with him next Sunday. And as she was walking home Saturday evening, a third young man overtook her and brought her home in his lumber wagon, and he asked her to go riding with him next day.
That Sunday Almanzo and Laura drove north past Almanzo’s two claims, to Spirit Lake.
*****
I’ll just let you revel in the subtle beauty of that passage…
I love when he offered her a ride when she had just got her namecards. She loved the horses.
Rebecca, I always loved that line too!
I remember reading These Happy Golden Years for the first time as an eight year-old, and loving each of the kiss descriptions, to the extent that I read each of them out to my uncle when he came for dinner that night.
I also liked his jealousy when Uncle Tom was visiting!
By far, however, from the books alone, was the description of the house, the beautiful pantry and the lovely settled feeling that is on the last page of THGY.
When she tells him she is just going with him so she can get home ….. he was such a gentleman.