Suzanne Supplee, author of Artichoke’s Heart and When Irish Guys Are Smiling, has graciously agreed to be our guest blogger this happy Monday. She even posed for that picture there on the fourth of July, because she is such a very nice person. And! She chose to write about her favorite books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, whom you may know best from the television series Little House on the Prairie starring Melissa Gilbert. But Ms. Wilder was an author who wrote a series of beloved books about her life growing up in pioneer days in cold, brutal places like Wisconsin and Minnesota. They’re books every Southern girl, and probably many other gals as well, have read and memorized over the years, and I am very excited that Suzanne chose to write about her experience with them.
Without further ado, here is Suzanne’s guest entry:
*Granny and Cogy, my grandparents, were farmers in Tennessee. Actually, Cogy farmed, and Granny cooked and kept house and put up vegetables and sold Stanley Home Products. My grandparents were industrious, hardworking, country people.
Since they lived only a few miles outside the town where I grew up, I visited them regularly, and I spent many summer days of my childhood having Laura Ingalls Wilder-like adventures on their farm. I waded in the creek across the road from their old farmhouse and rode the pony, Milk Chocolate. I pushed bales of hay off the back of Cogy’s pick-up truck, went fishing in the pond, had sleepovers with my cousin, bounced on the feather bed at my great-aunt’s house, played board games, and devoured Granny’s homemade teacakes. There were hogs and hens and horses and herding dogs and even the occasional rattlesnake or bobcat, although I never had a personal encounter with either of those, thankfully.
When I first discovered the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, I knew immediately the series was for me. I wanted to read about how Pa built a house with his own hands. I wanted to experience that first heavy snowfall in Wisconsin. I wanted to braid my long hair, just like Laura and Mary. I wanted to skip On the Banks of Plum Creek and sleep in the Little House in the Big Woods. I wanted a loyal dog named Jack. And more than anything, I wanted a sturdy father who called me Half-pint.
When the Little House television series started in the mid-seventies, I had already completed the books, or several of them anyway. I’ll confess I wasn’t much interested in Mary and Laura’s adult lives. I viewed these girls as peers, not parents, and when Mary went blind, I was pretty much done. At any rate, the television show allowed me to start the series all over again. I watched it each week without fail, often scrutinizing how well (or poorly) the shows producers adhered to the original storylines. And if I stop typing and listen, I can still hear that opening music, see young Laura running through the field in her prairie dress, picture Ma and Pa smiling and bouncing along in the covered wagon (I don’t even need YouTube for this).
My grandparents are gone now. They are buried, along with my parents, in a bucolic cemetery across from the tiny clapboard church where Granny taught Sunday school and Cogy sat ramrod straight and dozed during the lengthy, dry sermons. One of the reasons I love being a writer is that I get to recapture these parts of my childhood, revisit the places I treasured, close my eyes and remember. Perhaps this is the reason I still, all these years later, feel a kinship with writer and farm girl, Laura Ingalls Wilder.*
All content within the asterisks is © Suzanne Supplee 2008 and may not be reproduced in any form without her permission. The photo above is also courtesy of Suzanne and may not be reproduced without her permission.
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I love this! I love BOTH of Suzanne Supplee’s books too. What a pretty woman!
I always loved the Little House books, too. I told my mom I wanted to live a simpler life! Alas, I also loved TV.