Of course I wanted this ring the minute I saw it advertised so I called Walnut Grove to get more information. The ring is based on a drawing from a 1884 Montgomery Ward’s catalog that resembles Laura’s written descriptions. 1884 is the year Laura and Almanzo got engaged. Now we don’t know whether Manly got Laura’s ring from a catalog, he could have gone to one of the local jewelry stores in De Smet, but we do know they ordered other things from the Ward’s catalog (such as their first Christmas gift to each other, the glassware set that included the famous oval bread plate) so it’s not a stretch to assume he ordered Laura’s ring from Montgomery Wards as well, especially if he didn’t want gossip spreading all over town that he was buying a ring.

The museum is taking orders for the initial batch of rings for just a few more days, the order will be sent to the jeweler on October 3.  Since the rings take 4 weeks to make, this is probably your only chance to get the ring in time for Christmas. The museum will continue taking orders after October 3 but the jeweler needs a minimum of six orders for each production run. The initial prices ($299/10k gold, $199/sterling silver) are good through December 31, 2011.

The museum will be taking prepaid orders at Laurapalooza next year but wouldn’t you rather have your ring by then? I know I would. Luckily I have a birthday coming up in November so the timing couldn’t be better. What’s your excuse reason?

Here’s the ordering information for you one more time – go make that phone call so that you can show me your ring at Laurapalooza 2012!

I understand it’s a different time now; the world can be a dangerous place.  Even as I sat there slightly annoyed that no one was stopping, I acknowledged that it might not be safe for me if the wrong person stopped to “help.”   And it’s not like I have a right to complain that no one helped me, I can’t think of a time when I’ve stopped to help a stranger on the road either.

Maybe that’s one of the problems, in Laura’s time people in communities were probably more familiar with each other and therefore felt more responsible for helping each other out.  Laura once wrote, “Sweet are the uses of adversity when it shows us the kindness in our neighbors’ hearts.”
Some of the 50 cars that passed me by…yes, I counted…might have been my neighbors – I was less than 2 miles from home – but they didn’t know it so I didn’t get a chance to find out about the kindness that might have been in their hearts.  I would never pass by someone I knew but it’s easy to speed on by a stranger and assume someone else will help them out.

I wonder if that’s one of the reasons so many of us are drawn to the Little House books and Laura’s Ruralist articles; the sense of community, people helping people.  Yes, the theme of the LH books is self sufficiency but would they have really been able to be so “self sufficient” without the help of their neighbors and charity coming from friends?  I know many people still experience this today; maybe I’m jaded because I’ve always lived in large metropolitan areas rather than small towns.  I can’t help but feel, though, that things and people were different in Laura’s day.

Luckily, I have something Laura didn’t – AAA.  I can pay for the type of help that used to be freely given and eventually the flat tire (and the flat spare) were changed and I was on my way once again.  I can’t say that I’ll stop on a lonely stretch of road to help out a stranded stranger anytime soon but maybe it’s time to get to know some of my neighbors.

Or what if Pa had been able to sweet talk Ma into one more move west?  I’ve often speculated that if they’d moved away from the drought conditions of South Dakota to the greener pastures of Oregon or California, Pa might have been able to finally have the farm of his dreams.  I’ve always wondered if there was a sting of defeat when he left the homestead and made that one last move into town.

But my biggest “what if” is this – what if Rose had succeeded in convincing her parents to leave Missouri and move to the Santa Clara valley of California?  I imagine most of you have never thought about this but, living just a few miles down the highway from the Santa Clara valley, I sure do!  Now the valley is better known as Silicon Valley and there isn’t an orchard in sight but back in the early 20th century it was known for its agricultural rather than technical value.  Laura toured it in September of 1915, the tail end of the dry season, so although she liked the look of the farms and thought the mountains beautiful, she thought it might be too hot and dusty.  If only she had been there in March, in the heart of the rainy season when everything is lush and green.  She might not have thought $500 an acre was too much to pay.  It would have been the perfect compromise for their health problems, never too hot nor too cold.  She was also afraid that buying land in the Santa Clara valley might not be as good an investment as buying more land in Missouri.  Maybe she was wrong about that.

Most importantly, in my life at least, if she and Almanzo had settled in Santa Clara, the Laura Ingalls Wilder House and Museum would be just miles away from me today and I could drive up there anytime I wished, immersing myself in Lauraness.

Ah, if only.

In honor of this much loved holday, I think we should all get out the molasses and make LIW’s famous gingerbread recipe.

Happy baking!

Most people probably think of Laura as the embodiment of sweet, simple, old-fashioned things.  I often see her quote -  ”I am beginning to learn that it is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all” –  in blogs that have nothing to do with LIW herself.  It’s a great quote and it comes from an even greater Ruralist article but sometimes I think if I see it one more time, I’ll throw up.   Please don’t misunderstand me, I like the quote too but I think the overuse of it epitomizes many people’s very one-dimensional view of Laura.  We think of her as good and sweet, representing everything that’s lovely in the world and we forget that she was a very human woman with all the contradictions and complexities that exist in each one of us.

We know Laura had a bit of a temper in the books as a young girl but she seemed to grow out of that as she matured, learning to curb her tongue while she absorbed the lessons that Ma and Pa taught her about how a young woman should act.  Yet she admits to a temper as an adult in her Ruralist articles and at least one memorable first person interview, with a woman whose mother was friends with Laura and Almanzo, talks about the fact that Laura had a flaring temper.  I must admit I was a little shocked the first time I read this, I tended to think of Laura as a sweet, quiet lady – more like Ma.

Yet another contradiction – who among us hasn’t been inspired to cook, clean, bake or garden because of Laura’s writings but the truth is that Laura didn’t really like doing any of these things.  I had such an obsession with baking bread as a teenager, trying to connect with my “inner Laura” so it was a shock to learn that Laura never enjoyed baking bread, hating the feel of the dry flour on her hands.

One thing that many Laura fans discuss is her relationship with her daughter Rose.  To say it was complicated appears to be an understatement.   When I was younger, I blamed Rose, thinking that she twisted and exaggerated everything in order to justify feeling sorry for herself.  Now, as an adult survivor of complicated mother/daughter relationships I realize there’s probably some truth on both sides and that Laura might not have been a perfect mother any more than Rose was a perfect daughter.

Do we need Laura to be “good” or could we handle finding out information that contradicts our mental picture?  As a fan, would you be shocked to find out something about Laura that was less than favorable?  Does finding out more about the real woman take away your enjoyment of the books at all?  I know for me, it’s been a journey and sometimes I find it hard to give up my own ideas of who Laura was.   I guess we’ll never really know, all we have left is what she wrote and what others wrote about her, but I’d love to hear how you feel about it.

I don’t know how long Jack really lived with the family or whether little Laura really had a special relationship with her bulldog but it’s no surprise to find out that Laura loved dogs and that several became members of her family when she was an adult. She writes about Shep and Inky in Ruralist articles, drawing life lessons from the actions of her dogs. My favorite passages in West From Home (letters from Laura to Almanzo while on a trip to San Francisco in 1915) are the ones where she seems to be just as concerned about Inky’s health as she is about Almanzo’s. Anyone eavesdropping on phone conversations between my husband and me when one of us is traveling would hear similar concerns about Jasper, our beloved 13 year old Golden Retriever.

Recently I had a chance to read notes Laura kept on a trip she took to South Dakota with Almanzo in 1931. They brought along Nero, their Airedale, and a good portion of Laura’s notes had to do with how Nero felt about the trip. Apparently he was not fond of Kansas and he really didn’t enjoy the heat and wind of the South Dakota summer. Nero also got nervous when Almanzo drove in traffic; clearly he was a dog of discernment. He ate well on the journey, Laura writes about Nero’s meals of hamburgers and snacks of ice cream when the heat got to be too much. It sounds to me like Nero had himself a dandy time on the trip. My Jasper is the veteran of several cross-country road trips but he rarely eats when traveling so I’m amazed at the amount (and variety) of food that Nero seems to have put away.

It amuses me that Laura wrote so much about Nero’s experiences on the South Dakota trip but it also reminds me of why I love her so. My dogs have been a big part of my life. I know what it’s like to love a dog as much as any other member of my family and Laura did too. I always knew we were kindred spirits.

Laura held her hand up to the first light of the new moon. The gold of the ring and its flat oval set shone shone in the faint moon radiance. Three small stones set in the golden oval glimmered…a garnet, with a pearl on each side.

~Laura Ingalls Wilder, in These Happy Golden Years

Reading those words about the engagement ring that Almanzo gave Laura sealed my fate. I’ve been on a quest for that ring ever since.

I bought my first garnet ring while still in high school. While the garnet and pearl combination was popular during the Victorian years, it’s not easily found in modern jewelry so that first ring was silver with a garnet and two tiny diamonds on either side. Although I cherished it at the time, deep in my heart I knew it wasn’t authentic. The search went on.

Back in the dark ages, before internet auction sites, there were antique stores. I had a little more luck there, I found a lovely ring with three garnets and six pearls. Okay, not quite the ring but I was getting closer.

Then came the Internet and suddenly my search was made so much easier. There was a plethora of antique garnet and pearl rings available to buy.  Went a little crazy. If what they say is true that three or more of anything is a collection, I have a collection of garnet and pearl rings.

This is just a small sampling of some of the rings that have found their way into my life. None are exactly right, which is why I kept searching those auction sites, usually late at night when it’s very easy to talk yourself into something even though it isn’t exactly what you’re looking for.

And yet, the constant searching for “garnet pearl ring” paid off not too long ago. I found a listing for a ring made in 1884 (the year Almanzo and Laura got engaged) featuring a center garnet flanked by a pearl on each side. The setting is flat and best of all, it was the perfect size to fit on my index finger. Why is that important, you ask?  Because Laura describes wearing her engagement ring on her “first” finger. In The First Four Years she actually uses the word “index” finger. It doesn’t appear to be a common practice; in all my research I’ve never uncovered any evidence that people commonly used the index finger for engagement rings. Since Ida’s “broad circlet of gold” was on her first finger too, maybe it was a De Smet custom.

So you see where I’m going with this, don’t you? Even though I already had 1 or 2…or 10, garnet and pearl rings lying around, I had to get this new one. It was made in 1884, was the perfect style and fit my index finger. It was a sign, I tell you. Well, at least that’s what I told my husband.  I also told him that I would stop searching for “garnet pearl ring” on the Internet…and I will, soon.

It’s been no different with Laura< but I never could figure out a way to bring her into my modern world. I have collected lots of items from the various homesites but it’s never seemed practical to wear a sunbonnet or drag my Charlotte doll to work with me every day. You can only wear your “Little Town on the Prairie” t-shirt in public so many times before people start to wonder about you.

Luckily I found a solution not too long ago. Through an email newsletter sent out by the LIW Memorial Society in De Smet, I saw a picture of Laura’s silverware, her wedding present from Almanzo. It’s a beautiful pattern that I would happily have picked for my own wedding silver, even without a LIW connection; unfortunately it was only made in the 19th century and is no longer for sale today – except through the magic of a certain online auction site. The pattern is called Crown and was introduced by Rogers Bros. in 1885, the year Laura and Almanzo were married. Laura wrote about her wedding silver in the book The First Four Years when she described the pantry Almanzo had made for her in their first little house:

“There was one drawer that already held a whole sack of white flour, a smaller one with graham flour, another with corn meal, a large shallow one for packages, and two others: one already filled with white sugar and the other one with brown. And one for Manly’s wedding present of silver knives and forks and spoons. Laura was so proud of them.”

Later, when their house caught on fire, a neighbor went into the pantry and started throwing dishes and other household items out the window:

“… so the silver wedding knives and forks and spoons rolled up in their wrappers had survived.”

Thanks to the quick thinking of that neighbor, visitors to the Laura Ingalls Wilder Home and Museum at Rocky Ridge in Mansfield, Missouri can still see pieces of that wedding silver.

I started collecting pieces of this silver pattern a couple of years ago and eventually had enough place settings to give a small dinner party. But it wasn’t enough. I still wanted to find a way to bring Laura into my daily life. Then I remembered spoon jewelry. (Did anybody else out there have a spoon ring? They were all the rage when I was in junior high; and I had a couple of them.) But now I wanted something a little more useful than a spoon ring. Hmmm. How about a watch bracelet made of spoons? Was such a thing even possible? I thought it might be. But finding someone to make jewelry out of old spoons is not that easy. I contacted a few sellers on the aforementioned auction site and none of them wanted to touch my old spoons for fear of breaking them. I considered trying to do it myself, but then I came to my senses.

After almost a year of searching I found a vendor that specializes in all kinds of spoon jewelry and they were more than willing to take my “heritage” pieces and make a watch for me. Here is the result of their amazing work.

I love my watch. To everyone else it’s just a unique piece of silver jewelry and I get many compliments on it. But it’s so much more to me. I think about Laura every time I look down at my wrist and I’m thankful that Almanzo had such good taste in silver patterns. 

Next week: the search for the perfect “garnet and pearl” ring.

The Ingalls Homestead offers camping opportunities on their land;  there is space for your RV (with hookups) or tent. But the best news is that if, like me, you don’t have a tent or RV, you can still spend the night by renting one of their covered wagons or an air-conditioned bunkhouse.

The four covered wagons are set in a slight curve on a lovely stretch of land just below the visitor center. It’s as if you’ve been on the trail all day and have just set up camp for the night.

There are two sizes of wagons – large and small, the main difference being that the large wagon can accommodate 2 more than the small.

The interior of each wagon isn’t roomy but I was pleasantly surprised at the comfort. You enter through a small dutch door on one end. There are benches along the side of the wagon and a “large” shelf bed at the other end. They’ll tell you that the bed sleeps two but it would have to be two children or a couple on their honeymoon (that REALLY liked each other) to be comfortable, in my opinion.

In the small wagon, a mattress can be put down on the floor between the benches for another sleeping area. The benches double as beds, along with the floor area, in the large wagon.

Each wagon has its own picnic table right outside the door and bathrooms with showers are just steps away. The wagons have electricity and come equipped with a portable fan, all the comforts of home.

There’s a bunkhouse next to the wagons with two sets of bunkbeds, one double bed and something that the Ingalls would have loved on a hot summer night – air conditioning. Now that’s my idea of roughing it.

Once the day crowds have left, the Homestead is yours to explore. Take a sunset stroll along the hill the way Laura and Mary used to. In the mood for a moonlight hike? There’s something magical about walking where Laura walked, under the stars with only the light of the moon - and your flashlight - to guide you. There are other lodging options in De Smet but this has got to be the most unique and one that a LIW fan will probably find hard to turn down.  Spend a night right on the prairie, you won’t be sorry.

But even I didn’t think I could possibly find a way to link a trip to Walt Disney World in Florida with Laura Ingalls Wilder…until recently.

On a recent vacation to Orlando, while reading The Wilder Family Story, I discovered that Almanzo’s older sister Alice, a beloved character in Farmer Boy, had lived in Georgiana, Florida, from around 1887 until her death in 1892. A little research uncovered that Georgiana was near Cape Canaveral which is only 40 or so short miles from Orlando. That was a fascinating fact but I didn’t think much of it until my husband asked if we were going to go there and look for Alice’s grave. Now I don’t know about you but grave hunting isn’t exactly on my normal itinerary for a vacation. However, the idea was intriguing. Plus, I would never turn down an opportunity to drag my husband on a LIW trip. He gets a little more into it each time we visit a site, which fits into my evil plan to turn him into a “Laura” fan.

Thanks to the Internet, I soon had the exact location of Alice’s grave and directions to get there – ROAD TRIP! Georgiana, Florida, doesn’t really exist as a town anymore even though you can find its name on a map. It probably used to be a bustling community but all that’s left now is the historic Methodist church, where Alice and her husband worshipped and daughter Myrtle was married in 1902, and the graveyard across the street. Still, you can get a sense of how it must have been in Alice’s time. Perched on the shore of the Indian River with plenty of citrus orchards for work, it probably was a pleasant place to live. Apparently the Florida heat and humidity didn’t agree with Alice though. She and Albert moved to Florida to improve his health, which worked for him but her health declined and Alice died in Florida in February 1892 at the age of 39. Laura and Almanzo were living in a completely different part of Florida at that time but I would like to believe that they were able to take a train to Georgiana to visit with Alice before she died.

The graveyard is a short walk down the road from the church. No one has been buried there for over 50 years and, according to the Internet, it’s quite haunted, but no spirits materialized to disturb our visit.

Alice’s headstone, which reads Alice M. Baldwin, was easy to find and there was something momentous about standing in front of her grave. She felt like a real person to me, rather than just a secondary character in a book. I wished I’d brought flowers and it bothered me that there probably weren’t a lot of people around who even knew the story of the young woman buried there. I felt so strongly about the flower issue that we actually came back the next day to lay a bouquet at the site and to take more pictures. We hope to return on a future visit to try to determine where Alice and Albert lived in Georgiana.

All in all it was an unlikely “Laura” trip but a very special one. It isn’t every day you get to do something so out of the ordinary. If you’re going to be in the Orlando area, I would recommend a side trip to Georgiana to anyone that wants to dig a little deeper into the lives of Laura and her extended family.