About half of the Sears Hall beds have been reserved. I’ve been assured that I can add more beds for those nights if necessary, but if that’s your housing choice, I’d make reservations soon.

This is a relatively short chapter and serves as bit of reprieve from the tension of the story.  In this chapter, the blizzard of the previous days has subsided.  Laura is awakened suddenly.  She lies in her bed listening and realizes that she was startled awake by the silence.  There is no howling wind, no scouring of snow and ice hitting the house.  The sun was shining.  Downstairs, Ma and Pa are beginning their day.  Ma comments that the blizzard was over and that it only lasted two days.  She contradicts Pa (Ma!) by saying, “It may be that your hard winter may not prove to be so hard after all”.  But with a smile like sunshine and a happy voice, we can forgive Ma for criticizing Pa.

Ma is sure there will be school on such a bright day and she hurries Laura and Carrie back upstairs to get ready.  The girls come back to the cozy kitchen to wash their faces and fix their braids.  The kitchen is a merry place.  When Pa comes in he must notice that Laura is scrubbing her face because he comments that Old Sol had his face well washed by the snow.  Ma’s breakfast makes me hungry.  Hash browns, cherry preserves, and toast, lots of carbs to keep the body warm.    Even Ma gets in on the good humor.  She said that the frozen bit of butter is “what the cobbler threw at his wife”.  The big girls and Ma laughed but poor Carrie and Grace didn’t understand.  Mary said, “No, that was his awl”.  The puns and laughter continue with Laura adding, “Oh no!  It was his last.”  Ma cautioned the girls because they were laughing too much at the table.  The merriment was over but the coziness of breakfast and the good cheer continued when Ma told Laura and Carrie to run along to school and that she would do their chores.

The snow on Main Street sparkles in the sun.  There is a ridge of snow running down the street that was taller than Laura, meaning it was about five feet tall as we know Laura was only four feet, eight inches or so.  Later in the winter the snow reached the second stories of many buildings but at this point, it was still navigable.  Laura and Carrie make their way over the drifts to the school.  Mary Power and Minnie are standing in the winter sun watching Cap and the Wilmarth boys sliding on the ice.  Apparently, Mary Power and Minnie made it safely through the storm on Saturday.

At recess Laura laments that she isn’t a boy as she would like to run and play with the boys.    She states, “I don’t think it’s any fun being a young lady.”  Mary Power, who is so Ma-like, says that they can’t help growing up.  Minnie Power cryptically turns the conversation toward her fear of being caught in a blizzard.  She asks the girls what they would do.  Mary says she would keep walking.  Laura stoically says that she wouldn’t get caught in one.

Lunch time arrives and Laura and Carrie scramble over the drifts to find steaming hot potatoes and fluffy biscuits on the table.  Just as Ma is lamenting that she wished she had some butter for them, a knock sounds at the door.  Carrie runs to open it and there at the door is a big furry bear who looked a lot like Mr. Boast.  Mrs. Boast had stayed home to do the laundry as she couldn’t waste a bright, sunny, blizzard free day.  However she had sent…Butter!  Mr. Boast says he’s in town to get the news and supplies.  I believe that Laura uses a little foreshadowing here as the conversation turns to whether there are any shortages at the store.  Pa says, not that he knows of, except for meat.  We of course know that there will be shortages later.

Laura and Carrie joyously return to school and Laura is happy that all the weekdays would now be school days (or was it because Cap Garland’s smile included all of them?)  That night, Laura dreams that Pa is playing his wild storm music again.  She awakes and knows that it wasn’t Pa’s fiddle that was making the wild music.  It was a blizzard.

I wanted to make sure everyone here has seen the list of chapters to the right, as well as the corresponding writer for that chapter’s post. Please note that I couldn’t honor all requests for chapters when they overlapped with others’ requests that came first. Also, I decided I had been too greedy so I reassigned the Christmas chapter.

Chapter 33 — the final chapter, “Christmas In May” — is still wide open!

Posts can be emailed, as always, to beyondlittlehouse at gmail dot com.

When the schedule is wide open it’s too easy to fall behind. In order to make sure that we complete these by spring, I’d like to propose a schedule of one per weekday. Otherwise, it might be Christmas in May by the time we finish. With the current schedule, we will be done with The Long Winter by April 8. We can use weekend days to catch up anytime we get behind.

Think we can do it?

Another bone-chilling sunrise, more ravaging winds with “wild voices,” yet Pa sings. He calls to Caroline that he is headed to the barn, but the fires are going. Ma advises the girls to remain in bed until the house is warmer. Laura can’t rest. The howl of the rushing wind whirls about her mind.

The vicious nature of the weather encroaches on the sanctity of their home. “The frosted nails in the roof above her were like white teeth.” Laura escapes their snarl and abandons the warm bedcovers to join Ma downstairs. The warmth radiating from the hot stove is swallowed by the cold air, leaving the room still dark and chilled. Laura heats the frozen water in the wash basin so that she and Ma can scrub their faces.

With a snowy, rosy face Pa returns. He had used Ma’s clothesline for stability and navigation to and from the stable where he had to carve the snow away from the entire height of the door. Laura readies the breakfast table as he cleans up. Ma pours hot tea to go with their hotcakes, browned pork, dried-apple sauce, and sugar syrup. She rations the scarce bit of milk to Grace and Carrie with an admonition that they all remain thankful for even their sparse supply, “because there’ll be less before there’s more.”

After breakfast and a bit of warming around the stove, Laura and Ma set about morning chores. Seeing Laura hesitate before climbing the steps to the even colder two upper rooms, Ma suggests that Laura leave the beds unmade until the house warms. Pa fetches his wraps, despite Ma’s objections, and heads across the street to “hear the news” in the event someone might be lost. He assures his girls he knows the steps precisely.

Laura tries to watch for Pa, but he is enveloped by the snow before he ever moves away from their door. She resents being in town if it still brings isolation and the added danger of helping others… and says as much.

Ma tries to chase away the fear and unsettledness hovering in the frosty air with a turn toward faith. Is she seeking assurance for herself, or for the girls, or both? She challenges the girls to test their Scripture memory. Mary, Laura, and Carrie draw Bible verses from their hearts, reciting one after another. (I wonder how many of their verses came from the 23rd Psalm which Laura held fresh in her heart during the last storm.) Carrie soon concedes; next is Laura. Mary beams at Grace’s cheers and Ma’s praise. But her expression is quickly overshadowed, and she admits that she really hasn’t won. She can’t recall another verse either. Laura is ashamed of herself for wanting so desperately to win against Mary when she considers that her sister not only has a good mind, but is a good person. The light missing all morning from the room suddenly floods Laura’s heart. She would be a teacher! She would be the one to make Mary’s dreams of college come true.

The strike of the clock startles Laura and Ma from their thoughts, and they set to preparing the noon meal. Pa returns obviously subdued. Ma apologizes that she’s not been able to warm the house. He answers the lingering question of the day. It is 40 degrees below zero. At least no one is lost.

Pa, too, turns to faith, just as Ma had earlier, to cast off the weight of fear. Out comes the fiddle. The music accomplishes what the stove could not. In melody and harmony the Ingalls’ voices and spirits join singing assuring hymns, favorite hymns, rousing hymns until they are all on their feet in joyous praise.

“There’s a land that is fairer than day,

And by faith we can see it afar….”

Their eyes cannot see through the swirling snow driven by the relentless gales. But their hearts see clearly. They are not alone.

De Smet Pageant

The De Smet News carried a big article on the De Smet Pageant. This year for the first time they are going to do an adaption of The First Four Years. The script was written by Orval Van Deest. Van Deest says “This will be something new for the audience, something they have not seen before.” He also wrote last year’s script which I think showed his experience. He is a South Dakota native who spent 26 years teaching university level theater and directing theater productions. Marion Cramer, known to many visitors, for her work in the one-room school at the Ingalls Homestead, is once again the musical diretor. Cramer has written several pageant scripts previously.

Other improvement this year come in the lighting and sound systems. They are replacing the current lavaliere mics that attach to clothing with “face bud” models that are currently popular in concert settings and with some Broadway shows. The change will make changing between outfits quicker and give the technical crew better control for balance when several different people are speaking. They will also hard wire a mic into each set to backup these people based mics. Special equipment was also installed for special scenes, one featuring fire and one featuring moonlight.

http://desmetpageant.org

Sarah S. Uthoff,  http://trundlebedtales.wordpress.com

We open this chapter with Laura and Mary working on their needlework projects in the sunny front room of the story building, expecting the company of friends Minnie Johnson and Mary Power. Mary Ingalls, in talking about the possibility of going to college, tells Laura she wishes that Laura could go to college, too. Laura counters that it’s likely she’ll be teaching school, and “I guess you care more about it than I do.”

Mary, in one of those rare moments of self-actualization, declares she really does want to go, and study “on and on.” She really hopes and prays that college will be in her future, and Laura encourages her.

Right until Laura can no longer see the stitches in the lace she’s knitting. The light is gone, the “air was gray and the note of the wind was rising.”

Pa had been out at the claim to haul in hay, and there’s a moment when all the women in the house, Ma included, fear for his safety. But before they can worry too much about him, Pa appears through the back door, laughing about his near miss.

Ma’s not laughing. But there’s not much she can do about Pa at this point, anyway, I suspect.

He goes out to do the chores while Ma gets dinner, and Ma’s question about whether the trains will get through stops the action. Pa responds cheerfully about how they’d lived without a railroad before, but gives Ma a warning look. And we’re all now worrying about the trains, in that one warning look Pa gives Ma.

As if it’s not enough to be enduring the blizzard, after supper, Pa uses the fiddle to repeat the melody of the winds outside. Ma’s had enough for the day, and quietly says, “We’ll likely hear enough of that without your playing it, Charles.” I get the feeling that Ma’s a little tired of Pa and his cheeriness.

Laura asks for music to warm them up, and Pa plays a variety of marches and jigs as Laura and Carrie dance, and even Ma’s toes are tapping.

At bedtime, no one wants to leave the cozy room with its music, but they dutifully march upstairs to a room so cold the nails in the ceiling are fuzzy with frost, making Laura feel “much colder.” Laura wraps hot irons from the stove in flannels to warm the beds, and the girls change quickly. Mary ducks under the covers first, and in another rare I’m-a-real-person moment, says, “God will hear us if we say our prayers under the covers.” Must’ve been cold!!

While Mary and Carrie snuggle down in their beds, shivering, trying to warm up, Laura goes to the window. She wants to see if she can see any kind of light at all. But “in the roaring night outside, there was not one speck of light.”

Mary’s grumpy at this point, and entreats Laura to come to bed to help warm it. The pair talk for a minute about Laura’s inability to see even the light from their own downstairs window. Carrie, with the help of the warm stove pipe beside her bed and the warm flatiron, was asleep as Ma brought Grace upstairs to tuck in next to her.

Ma asks if her girls are warm enough. They say they’re getting there.

And Laura contemplates this feeling of aloneness as she settles into bed. No light can be seen; no cry from outside, besides that constant wind, can be heard. The storm, she thought, had wild voices and an unnatural light of its own.

Though she was finally warm, Laura shivers. The family is truly, truly, alone.

The solution is that some of the town’s menfolk are taking a trip to Volga to dig the train out, and Pa’s itchy western foot wants to go–even though Volga is east. Mr. Foster will tend to the stock while he’s gone. The girls stop on the way to school to watch the men take off on the railroad tracks in the handcar. “We’ll roll–the o-old–chariot along, and we WON’T drag ON beHIND!”

Interestingly, Royal Wilder is mentioned, but Almanzo is not. Maybe he lost the coin toss?

Pa comes back next day on the work-train, and with him is — well, I’ll be jiggered! It’s Mr. Edwards!

Pa hasn’t seen Mr. Edwards since the wildcat from Tennessee helped him secure his claim the previous spring, and before that, they’d left him in Indian Territory in Oklahoma. I love the “headlong rush” that Grace stops short in the middle of when she sees this stranger coming into the front room. I also love the dish of mashed potatoes Ma is holding when she recognizes Mr. Edwards.

Laura, the writer, implies awareness dawning of Mary’s blindness as Mr. Edwards speaks “gently” about the girls. He’s asked to stay on after dinner, but he’s going on West with the train. (WEST? If the town of De Smet had it so badly without the train, what about the folks beyond them? I know Mr. Edwards is fictional at this point, but there had to be folks in his situation at that time.)

And here we get political. It’s also one of those parts part that — I admit it — I always glossed over as a child. (See also: By the Shores of Silver Lake, “Wonderful Afternoon”; These Happy Golden Years, Uncle Tom’s adventures in the Dakota Badlands) Now, in the Ingalls’ kitchen, Mr. Edwards goes on a mild rampage at the government. I read it pretty carefully this time. That Edwards is so dang quotable:

The politicians are a-swarming in already, and ma’am if’n there’s any worst pest than grasshoppers it surely is politicians. Why, they’ll tax the lining out’n a man’s pockets to keep up these here county-seat towns!

So he says he “put in” every last thing he had for the tax guy that came along and taxed him last summer. Horses, oxen, cow, and then with further prodding from the tax man, added his five children. But thanks to Rose and Laura the writer, Mr. Edwards is a good feminist — or is perhaps married to one. “[My wife] says I don’t own her and I don’t aim to pay no taxes on her,” he tells the tax man.

This surprises Ma, who had no knowledge of a wife and children, and, seemingly, Pa, who admits to as much. When he advises Edwards that he actually doesn’t have to pay taxes on his wife and kids, Edwards shruggingly says “He wanted a big tax list.”

But wait! Mr. Edwards is not married to a feminist! In fact, he’s not married at all. He just wanted to put one over on the tax man. “Got no children and no wife, nohow.”

Mr. Edwards, it seems, is the perpetual bachelor.

But no time for a reaction, because the train whistle is calling, and Mr. Edwards bids his goodbyes, saving Mary for last. “He has a heart of gold,” Ma says in his wake, apparently forgetting how he taught Laura to spit. Oh, wait. That’s the TV show.

Mary stands up and something flutters to the floor. “Mary!” Laura cries. “A twenty dollar – You dropped a twenty dollar bill!”

“That Edwards,” says Pa.

I love the image Laura paints of everyone standing around speechless, knowing they need to return the money, while the train train whistle announces Edwards’ departure.

Then, with a dreamy look on her face, Mary does some quick mental math of her college fund. Added to the money the family collected on last spring’s boarders at the Surveyors’ House, it now totals $35.25.

As of now, I’ve been unable to find information on why she left, and I would rather not speculate publicly. Whatever her circumstances, our best wishes go out to her until her return.

In the meantime, the role of Laura will be played by the understudy, Megan Campanile.

This chapter gives us an enticing glimpse of Almanzo and Royal’s day-to-day life, as well as some depth to Almanzo as a character as his adult back story is introduced to readers for the first time.

We begin with Laura waking up in the morning after her and Carrie’s grueling walk home in the blizzard from school. The girls dress downstairs in the warmth by the stove, and Laura is grateful for the long red flannel underwear under her nightgown that she complained about the day before.

Pa finishes the chores and says this is the beginning of the hard winter, and Ma is surprised that he is worrying about the weather, which he has not done before. Pa replies he is not worrying, but just saying that it will be a hard winter. Ma says they are fortunate to be in town so they can get supplies from the stores during the storms.

After breakfast Laura, Mary and Carrie study lessons since there would be no school until the blizzard ends. Laura wonders what Mary Power and Minnie are doing during the blizzard, and because of the swirling snow can’t even see across the street to Fuller’s Hardware, where Pa has gone to sit by the stove and talk with the men.

In another point-of-view change, the narration shifts up the street to Royal Wilder’s feed store, which is dark because no one will buy seed during the blizzard.

The back of Wilder’s store, however, is cozy and warm and the air is thick with the smell of frying buckwheat pancakes loaded with molasses. Cooking became a necessary skill to learn since the boys traveled west and had no women to cook for them like they did at home. Although cooking is “women’s work” Almanzo became the cook not only because he’s a boy who is good at everything he tries, but also because, simply, Royal made his little brother do it. However, Almanzo is quite a good cook, and can make even better pancakes than his mother.

While the pancakes are sizzling on the stove, we learn that Almanzo took a claim at 19 when the law said the legal age to homestead was 21. This is a secret that he had to keep since his claim could be taken away if anyone found out. When filing for the claim the land agent asked for his age and Almanzo replied “You can put me down as 21″ and the land agent did just that, with a wink.

Almanzo, however, does not feel he is breaking the law or cheating the government. The politicians in Washington don’t know the settlers and what kind of people they are. Furthermore, settlers followed all the rules but then handed over the land to rich men who paid them to do so—meaning they were stealing, but stealing by the rules. The government wanted the land settled and wanted men who would work to do it, and Almanzo was more than willing and able to do that. Why let being 19 get in the way? Almanzo thinks the age requirement is the most foolish law. He felt he was as good as, any day, a man of 21.

Almanzo has done a man’s work on his father’s farm since he was nine and has been saving money since he was 10. James Wilder trained his children well, and he let Almanzo leave the farm when he was 17, when, legally, he could have made him stay on the farm until he was 21. After leaving the family farm Almanzo worked to save money for seed and tools, and raised a crop of wheat on shares in western Minnesota.

While cooking pancakes, frying salt pork and brewing coffee, Royal and Almanzo talk about whether the winter can really last seven months. Royal doesn’t believe it but Almanzo is not so sure. Royal says if it does last seven months, how will the trains go through with supplies? Most importantly, Royal brings up, how long will his stock of feed would last if the trains cannot get through?

This strikes a chord with Almanzo and he declares that no one is buying his seed wheat, no matter what happens.

Royal assures Almanzo that the trains will keep running, but Almanzo’s mind is on the seed wheat stacked in bags around the room and even under the bed. The wheat that represented all the work involved in raising that crop, the wheat that his homestead depends on. Almanzo will not sell as much of one peck, because you cannot “sow silver dollars.”

Royal once again assures Almanzo that his wheat will be fine, and brings Almanzo back to the subject of more pancakes, and they tease each other about how many pancakes they have eaten. As long as they keep eating, they don’t have to wash dishes!