“I hate to tell you this,” my friend’s husband told her once as we were setting off to hike the Mary Ingles Living History Trail. “But there is no way that blind woman walked 400 miles down the banks of the Ohio River.”

“Ohhh!” exclaimed a teacher at my mother’s school upon learning of her Laura interest. “Did you know her sister Mary used to live where I’m from in Virginia?”

Do the rest of you Laura fans get this stuff too, or is it just because of my location here on the former Virginia frontier? I hear it all the time. People are always confusing Mary Ingles with Mary Ingalls.

They lived over a century apart in different parts of the country and don’t even spell their last name the same way, but that doesn’t seem to make any difference. Folks around here are convinced that the frontier woman who was captured by the Shawnee Indians in 1755 from her home near present-day Radford, Virginia, was Laura’s blind sister Mary, who lived on the midwestern prairies more than a hundred years later. Since Mary Ingles became famous for her escape from captivity and subsequent walk following the Ohio, Kanawha, and New Rivers back to her home, these same people really marvel at the idea that she not only accomplished such an amazing feat… but did it blind.   (Mary Draper Ingles was NOT blind.)

I enjoyed teaching my 8-year-old Mary Ingalls fan about another Mary Ingles today at a living history encampment. Unlike many adults, she had no trouble comprehending that this was a different Mary.

If you’d never heard of Mary Ingles before, and have run into folks who try to tell you crazy stories about how Mary Ingalls was captured by Indians, now you understand where their confusion comes from. And now you can explain it to them and help educate the public until this ridiculous myth is forever dispelled.

If the toys available to a child determine his or her interests, my kids will be Laura fans from the get-go. I’m always on a mission, it seems, to figure out how to create Little House related toys.

I’ve got a huge set of Lincoln logs that can be used to recreate Little House in the Big Woods and Little House on the Prairie… complete with a train set and a tube of grasshoppers so Pa can get his job working on the railroad after the grasshoppers eat up all the crops and the story can continue on into De Smet. (Okay, just kidding about the tube of bugs. But hey, it might not be a bad idea!)

Little girls like dollhouses, right? So I’ve got one of those — a replica of the Wonderful House on Plum Creek (see, they really can act out ALL the stories!), with little Laura and Mary dolls to go with it. Had to buy modern dolls, braid the hair, and make their clothes myself, but it’ll do. What’s that? Laura and Mary didn’t wear pink and purple shoes? Pshaw, it will never be noticed from a trotting horse!

And dolls? Well, American Girl dolls are all the rage, of course, so I had to snatch up my very own Kirsten doll before she went extinct. After all, she’s the closest thing to Laura we’re gonna get.

And then there’s the old-fashioned toys that have been collected from various museum giftshops. It’s funny, as simple a concept as a Jacob’s ladder is, and yet my eight-year-old niece will play with it for hours and not get bored.

And we mustn’t forget the Radio Flyer wagon. With its canvas top to convert it into a prairie schooner, of course.

Yes, my kids are going to be set. But even I draw the line at this Little House converted toy I saw today:

Lego minifigure

I hope you all got as good a laugh out of that as I did. (In all honesty, if it actually LOOKED a little more like Manly, I’d be snapping it right up and would next be in search of a Laura. After all, then we could create Rocky Ridge out of Legos and finish the stories up right! Hmm, this could be my next quest after all!)

How about you? Any regular toys you’ve converted into a Laura-ish kind of toy? I’m always on the lookout for new ideas.

P.S. Okay, so I didn’t notice at first that there are actually six Little House minifigures in that set!! I’m impressed with Pa, though we’d need to paint on a beard! And Laura’s not too shabby!

Got 45 minutes to spare? When it comes to Laura, of course you do. Beyond Little House’s Sarah Uthoff and Amy Lauters were guest speakers today on Iowa Public Radio’s “Talk of Iowa” on a segment called “Laura Ingalls Wilder Remembered.”

I love how I learn something new every time I hear my favorite Laura experts speak. As terrified of public speaking as I am, I really notice the folks who do it well—and these women do. Especially on our favorite topic.

They talk about Rose’s role in the Little House books, Burr Oak (since it’s Iowa after all—and with a guest appearance by Burr Oak’s Steve Luse), and LauraPalooza, among other Laura-related topics. My favorite quote comes courtesy of Sarah: “The Little House books,” says Sarah, “are like an episode of the Simpsons.”

Ready to listen? It’s right here.