Literary Dream Tour, Part 5 (BetsyTacy Land)

Okay, whew! I'm finally getting back to recording our momentous literary dream tour, and speaking this morning to an elementary moms' group about Raising Book Lovers was just the kick in the pants I needed.

When last we spoke (or I wrote and you read), we were in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, checking out Laura Ingalls Wilder's beloved Plum Creek. After stopping to peer up at Pa's church bell, we had to hightail it out of town because Walnut Grove is motel-less. We spent the night in glorious Springfield, Minnesota, home of--uh--a place with great milkshakes. Because our private Betsy-Tacy tour wasn't scheduled until 11:00 a.m. the following morning, we drove leisurely the next day and stopped in New Ulm, the Leavenworth of Minnesota. Only, their town is real German, instead of Washington 1950s faux German. Nor was New Ulm only about the bakery we found--it's also the location of Wanda Gag's house!

 

It's just me, but I might call it "The WANDA Gag House"

Wanda who? you ask. Wanda, this Wanda:

What can I say? Minnesota is Literary Land. Border to border. (We'd already stopped in St. Paul to see F. Scott Fitzgerald's house and Sinclair Lewis', and I'd been reading Lewis' Main Street at night, which is set in the more northern town of fictionalized Sauk Centre. But who cares about those two?)

Well, my GPS led me astray--choosing the wrong Center Street in Mankato and landing us miles out of town and potentially late for our tour! Imagine the shrieking and frantic phone-mapping and apologetic voicemail messages left! Imagine us bumping top-speed down a dirt road, trying to reconnect to pavement, and seeing everything--private tour, newspaper interview, dream vacation--going up in a cloud of sand and gravel! This could all have been avoided if Mankato would just rename Betsy's street "Hill Street," like it is in the books. Just another helpful tip.

It turns out we were only six minutes late, and we pulled up to find two tour guides, The Free Press reporter Dan, and the newspaper photographer all waiting on Tacy's porch for us.

Tacy, like all Minnesotans in winter, isn't big into landscaping

Squee! See the porch? Too bad I forgot to take a picture of the bay window, from which Mrs. Kelly/Kenney could see the picnic bench on the little hill. Tacy's house holds the gift shop and tons of photographs and memorabilia. No idea how they fit so many kids in there. In the picture above, you can see the upstairs bedroom window. That bedroom belonged to all the girls, so it was the one through which Tacy dangled the thread tied around her foot and connected to Betsy's foot and bedroom window. Directly across the street from each other!

Like I said, no pressure to keep up with the Joneses on yard work

The tour (of Betsy's house) was pure awesomeness. Having just re-listened to Betsy-Tacy on the drive over, the scenes were fresh in our mind. There was no question or reference or allusion Guide Bob could stump us with. We knew all about colored sand and the backyard maple and playing paper dolls by the stove and Everything Pudding! And unlike in Walnut Grove, the Betsy-Tacy houses are chock full of actual belongings. The piano, Mr. Ray's chair, Maud Hart Lovelace's table from their married life, MRS. RAY'S BRASS BOWL!!! The curators have done a splendid job of restoring the houses to period structure and decoration, so much so that they were featured on PBS's Hometime. We could have stayed for hours. I considered bribing them to take us upstairs. As it was, we settled for plundering the gift shop (I got a CD of piano music from the books!) and taking pictures.

The window through which Betsy watched Tacy move in

The piano! "Howdy, Cy! Mornin', Cy!"

The beaded curtain! We just needed our paper dolls and Lady Jane Grey.

The porch

The commemorative bench!

We hiked partway up the now-developed Big Hill to see where Little Syria used to be. Sadly, Betsy's high school house (and the high school itself) are long gone, and the sites buried under a parking garage for Mankato State.

Of course I bought a walking guide, so we could check out other houses from The Crowd: childhood Winona's, Carney's, Mrs. Chubbock's, Tony's, and Tib's!

Still chocolate-colored. Need to trick-or-treat in Mankato so I can see inside.

Finally it started to rain, and we were starving, but altogether it was my favorite morning of the trip. In the afternoon we visited the Maud Hart Lovelace wing of the library and walked around Sibley Park.

The glass pitcher

The library also had a big binder of MHL press clippings with lots of articles and pictures to page through, as well as all her books, both for children and adults. Awesome.

Who knows if I'll ever get back here? I did tell Sue and Susan at the houses that, for the next Betsy-Tacy Convention, they should have a Betsy hairdressing session, and a Betsy dancing one. We shall see...

And the crowning moment of our childhood Betsy portion was the article that appeared in The Free Press the next day. Winona and Betsy would be proud. Not only did our little visit make the front page, with hilariously unflattering picture above the fold, but we shunted dead Margaret Thatcher to the sidebar!

Literary wonderland, indeed. Thanks for reading! I'll have one more post sometime--this one covering the places from Betsy's Wedding.

Literary Dream Tour, Part 4

We have returned from the land of literary wonders, also known as Minnesota, and I at last have some eyewitness pictures and info for you. To keep things straightforward, I'm going in author order, rather than chronological order because really the trip was more like: poet John Berryman to BetsyTacy to F. Scott Fitzgerald to Sinclair Lewis to Laura Ingalls Wilder to BetsyTacy reprise, with a little research for one of my four WIPs thrown in.

So let's begin with Half Pint. We finished listening to On the Banks of Plum Creek as we drove south and east across the state to Walnut Grove, including a portion down the Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Highway (14). All I can say about the scenery is: (1)Minnesota isn't totally flat, and (2) we don't actually have seasons in Bellevue, Washington, after all, because our "winter" is still green and lush. Who knew the world could be so gray and beige?

 

Yeah, baby!

The town might actually have been bigger in Laura's day, but at least it made the museum easy to find.

"This must be the place," Pa said.

From reading Wendy McClure's The Wilder Life, we were prepared for the place being more TV Little House than book Little House, so what we did find was fun. The portion devoted to the book Little House is actually more like a really, really well done research project: big on foam-core posters and lean on artifacts. They did happen to be having an exhibit of illustrator Garth Williams' original sketches, which was fun.

Fave book pic: Nellie yanking on Laura's braids!

See what I mean? Whoever put this exhibit together must make awesome Creative Memories scrapbooks.

Liked this one for the close-up of the engagement ring which, yes, was for sale in the gift store.

Willie's Woes

And who says even die-hards like us didn't learn something? Read that caption under Willie "Oleson's" picture--it's enough to make you doubt if there is a God. Even the nine-year-old was horrified that Willie suffered blindness because of two totally random accidents, while his much awfuller sister Nellie seems to have gone through life relatively unscathed. And why did no one think of setting up a match between blind Willie and blind Mary??? Granted, she was in DeSmet by then, but the territory didn't seem to be overrun with blind singletons.

There were a few authentic Ingalls items at the Museum. The first, which I forgot to take a picture of, you might remember from the chapter "Surprise" which recounts the first Christmas after the darned locusts eat up everyone's livelihood:

"Merry Christmas, Laura!" Miss Beadle said, and in Laura's hand she put a beautiful little box. It was made of snow-white, gleaming china. On its top stood a wee, gold-coloured teapot and a gold-coloured tiny cup in a gold-coloured saucer.

The top of the box lifted off. Inside was a nice place to keep a breast-pin, if some day Laura had a breast-pin. Ma said it was a jewel box.

The other precious item was no less than Pa's "big green book" described in Little House in the Big Woods:

They must sit quietly and listen while Ma read Bible stories to them, or stories about lions and tigers and white bears from Pa's big green book, The Wonders of the Animal World.

Maybe Laura was more interested in what lay between the covers than in getting the exact title correct.

I confess the girls hurried me through the book Little House room because they weren't too excited about reading all the poster boards, but the TV Little House room had some treasures of its own sort.

 

 No way--a scale miniature of the TV house! Both exterior and...

interior! The wee Pa even has a wee 70s shirt on! I don't remember the girls' up-ladder bedroom being so open and lofty, but, heck, I only watched a few episodes.

It was no Pacific Science Center Harry Potter exhibit, but there were numerous props and such from the show, including the hearth.

Not to mention some awesome kitsch, like sunbonnets and patchwork tote bags. Thus,

I kid you not.

Outside there were some replicas--a schoolroom, somebody-un-Little-House-related's house, a covered wagon and general store and post office and such. Plus a rebar-enforced "soddie," built to the dimensions of the Ingalls' on Plum Creek. Let's just say I have no idea where the kids slept or how Ma and Mary could bear to sit in the thing all day.

Home, sweet replica

After doing our share for the local Walnut Grove economy in the gift store, I asked directions to the actual Ingalls homestead. "Oh, just across the highway and up the road about a mile and a half," the woman answered, "but it's not open yet for the season because it might be too messy still." I thanked her politely but neglected to mention that, Lady, we've come all the way from Washington State, and we don't care if we have to slog through snow or mud, but we are going to see that site! This is the Literary Dream Tour, dagnabbit!

So out we drove, looking furtively in the rearview mirror and the windows of the deserted farmhouse to see if the sheriff of Redwood County was going to get after us. No one did, so we put our $4 in the honor system box and drove out on the unpaved road to the creek.

The path went across short sunny grass, to the edge of the bank. Down below it was the creek, rippling and glistening in the sunshine. The willow trees grew up beyond the creek.

Over the edge of the bank, the path turned and went slanting down, close against the grassy bank that rose up like a wall. 

Laura went down it cautiously. The bank rose up beside her till she could not see the wagon. There was only the high sky above her, and down below her the water was talking to itself. Laura went a step farther, then one more step. The path stopped at a wider, flat place, where it turned and dropped down to the creek in stair-steps. Then Laura saw the door.

The door stood straight up in the grassy bank, where the path turned. It was like a house door, but whatever was behind it was under the ground.

Squee!

I didn't take a picture of the actual depression in the bank because it was...well...a depression in the bank. But you could picture how the rebar-enforced replica soddie would exactly fit there and how the path wove down and around. The dugout site was located up the bank from the creek some ways, which really brought home how high the creek rose in the "Spring Freshet" chapter:

Right at her feet the creek was rushing and roaring.

The path ended where she was. Angry water was leaping and rolling over the steps that used to go down to the footbridge. The willow clumps were drowned and tree tops swirled in yellow foam.

One our visit we found a quiet, low creek and had it all to ourselves.

From the footbridge built for tourists we spied the "tiny fishes...so small that you could hardly see them," and the girls combined two childhood literary favorites by playing a game of "Poohsticks." (If you haven't cracked your Winnie the Pooh lately, it's where you throw sticks in the water on one side of the bridge and see whose comes out first on the other side.)

We explored what the map claimed was "Tableland," but it was suspiciously too near the dugout and too anti-climactic for the geographical feature described in the book. More like a tame slope. We managed to find the spring because it was still partially iced over, but no luck locating the big rock (also marked on the map) that the girls sat on to watch Johnny Johnson drive the cows home at the end of the day. And no one exactly knows where Pa built the wood house. I would dearly have loved to see where the leeches and old crab were, but those are also lost to time.

All in all, the three-hour drive was totally worth it. Not for the museum so much, unless you're a huge fan of the TV show, but for the chance to hang out on the prairie with the Ingalls and to scramble over mud and rocks that once felt Laura's bare feet.

Next...on to Mankato, Betsy's "Deep Valley"!

Literary Dream Tour, Part III

We're in the single digits now, and it's time to update you on our latest pre-departure news.

1. The great Laura Ingalls Wilder dilemma faces us: we've been listening to On the Banks of Plum Creek in the car as we drive hither and thither, and we only have about 3 hrs left of Cherry Jones' masterful reading. Now, 3 hrs is almost exactly how long Mapquest estimates it will take us to drive from Minneapolis to Walnut Grove. So we should eject the disc and save the rest for our trip, right? Of course. Except the boy, who disdained going on a "girl-book" trip, wants to keep listening. Uh-huh. He is particularly interested in hearing the chapter "Town Party" because we just heard about Laura and Mary going to school with the dreadful Nellie Oleson, and we are all fascinated and drawn to the dreadful Nellie Oleson like rubberneckers to a five-car pile-up. Plus, Cherry Jones does such an awesome job, someone should give her the audiobook equivalent of an Emmy.

Her "Oh, Charles!"es are perfection!

So far I've managed to avoid the issue by not having all three kids in the car at once, but I don't know how much longer I can delay...

2. What do the great Laura Ingalls and Betsy-Tacy have in common besides Minnesota? Locusts, of course. I've driven the 13YO nuts by moaning about the coming infestation every time Pa buys something new and tells Caroline, "Don't worry, Caroline! Just look at that wheat! Once I harvest it we can pay for the house/pay for the horses/buy new dresses/buy anything, period!" Oh, Charles.

From FineArtAmerica.com. Because nothing says Fine Art like a Locust

If you recall, I was reading that book on the locust plagues of the 1870s-1880s, which excerpted LIW at length, but it also went on to quote Maud Hart Lovelace (!), her Gentlemen from England in particular. Not only that, but, when Aunt Ruth moves in with Joe and Betsy in Betsy's Wedding, she regales Betsy with stories of "fires, blizzards, [and] grasshopper plagues...Aunt Ruth loved disasters." It occurs to me that Aunt Ruth would have been about LIW's age. Very cool.

3. And why oh why has no one exploited the Downton Abbey - Betsy-Tacy connection? Same bat time, almost the same bat place, if you count the London chapter in Betsy and the Great World. All the things women love about Downton can be found in the Betsy books: hair, elaborate clothing, suffragettes, women speaking their minds, WWI. Great World and Betsy's Wedding have so many, many period details that someone should hop on the bandwagon and bring them to the screen. (Only please don't let HBO or Showtime do them, or Betsy would constantly be having to rip off her top and  do the nasty with Mr. O'Farrell, Marco, Bob Barhydt, and any other man thrown in her path...)

I got so curious about all the references to songs and dancing that I discovered this book from the Maud Hart Lovelace Society:

When the kids see this, they'll dump the Xbox and run to the piano!

Too bad there doesn't seem to be a CD included because heaven knows I do not have Julia's or Carney's or even Betsy's piano skills to bring the songs to life, and how dearly I would like to hear "Howdy, Cy!" (Did find this link to a plodding, dirge-tempo piano version--can't imagine Julia playing that to wake anyone up..!)

For the curious, I discovered this whimsical video of dances from Betsy's married era:

Although they describe it as dances from the 1920s, they're actually from the WWI period.

"Certainly the Crowd danced--in smart hotels as Mr. Bagshaw's guests, in their homes entertaining Mr. Bagshaw, and, when the weather turned hot, at country clubs and leafy lakeside places Mr. Bagshaw was aware of. They danced the merry one-step and the swaying, gliding tango and the maxixe and the hesitation." (Betsy's Wedding)

 The ancient, worldly Mr. Bagshaw was the one who praised Vernon and Irene Castle for bringing the culture "out of the turkey-trot-bunny-hug vulgarity." Imagine Tib doing the bunny hug! So sad that no one learns to dance anymore. At Easter dinner my niece told me her middle school incorporates square dancing into every semester of P.E., and everyone loves it. I'm telling you: Downton Abbey Dancing Lessons. Million dollar idea, and you can have it for free.

You're welcome.

Stay tuned.

Literary Dream Tour, Pt 2

A couple thrilling updates for you all, in the Laura Ingalls Wilder and Betsy-Tacy department. I count fifteen more days until we leave for Minnesota, but we've been making steady progress preparing.

First off, for all you Maud Hart Lovelace fans who devoured the Betsy-Tacy books (including the spin-offs Winona's Pony Cart, Carney's House Party, and Emily of Deep Valley), I recommend you drop everything and give this one a try:

That cover artist might not be a Lois Lenski or Vera Neville, but the story inside is fabulous. Now I have to add at least a drive-by of Fort Snelling and Pig's Eye Park to the itinerary. Set in the 1820s and 1830s around Fort Snelling, at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers, Early Candlelight is peopled with soldiers, fur traders, Sioux and Chippewa Indians, and the DuGay family. Love interest Jasper Page had more than a hint of Delos Lovelace in him, and I found the love story unpredictable and satisfying. Can't wait to try more adult fiction from this woman!

The 9-year-old and I have re-read our way up to Betsy In Spite of Herself, so we're on track there. I'd forgotten how humorous the books are and how well Lovelace captures the mindset of each age. The 9YO skipped a bit through Heaven to Betsy because she deemed the Essay Contest "boring" (!!). I grant you, the Philippines don't light my fire either, but there is no skipping over any possible mention of Joe Willard for this reader.

As for the 13YO, she hasn't picked up a single LIW or Betsy-Tacy book, to my disgust, but she did submit to sitting through Episodes 1 and 2 from Season One of Little House on the Prairie. I must confess: we howled through it.

A rare pic of Pa with shirt on

When Pa fell out of the tree for no discernible reason, it called for replays and re-enactments. My husband and I agreed we hadn't laughed that hard since the skit in Portlandia where Fred and Carrie are giving instructions to the housesitter. Good stuff. Now the only problem is that there are so many episodes and so many seasons, that we can only hit a couple more highlights before the trip. If you have a favorite episode, preferably with something ludicrous happening in it and Pa with his shirt off, let me know in the comments.

With Plum Creek on my mind, I picked up this book from the library:

and sure enough, Lockwood quotes the whole scene in On the Banks of Plum Creek where the Ingalls' see the cloud of pestilence approaching and then have to flee inside, ripping locusts from their hair and clothing and crunching them underfoot. I had no idea what a scourge these insects were throughout the 1870s and 1880s before they mysteriously disappeared. Swarms consumed 50 tons of vegetation a day, leaving famine and ecological devastation in their wake, just as we read in LIW.

And one final note, coming full circle to Betsy-Tacy, after my first post on the Literary Dream Tour, a reporter from The Free Press in Mankato contacted me about doing a story on our visit! We'll see if anything comes of it, but how cool would it be to be mentioned in the very newspaper that Winona's dad used to edit? That's like a rip in the life-literature continuum! When worlds collide, baby.

Thanks for tuning in! Now if I can just get some more writing done, in between all this reading...

Literary Dream Tour, Pt I

Charles and Caroline Ingalls

So I've booked the dream tour.

Maud Hart and Delos Lovelace

Yep, this spring break, while college students are getting drunk in Mexico's tourist towns and more normal families head for sunshine and Disney theme parks, I'm taking the girls and heading for the slushy cold land of Laura Ingalls Wilder and Maud Hart Lovelace. Since my daughters are four years apart, this might be my only window for this kind of thing--as it is, I had to bribe the 13-year-old with a side trip to Mall of America. For her, the LHOP and Betsy-Tacy series are a fuzzy memory, buried under the collected works of J. K. Rowling, Rick Riordan, Suzanne Collins, and Meg Cabot. At least the 9-year-old, who prefers realistic and historical fiction, is as thrilled out of her mind as I could wish. Out of all the Little House books, On the Banks of Plum Creek is her favorite, set in Walnut Grove, Minnesota.

While the Ingalls' dugout has long ago collapsed and returned to prairie (now marked only by a sign and, according to the internet, not open till May), Walnut Grove houses the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum, featuring replicas galore, a few actual items, and plenty of memorabilia from the television show which my girls have never seen and which have as much to do with the books as--well--which don't have much at all to do with the books. Nevertheless, we're going to blitz through Season One of the show so that we might enjoy the TV memorabilia on its own. I must say, given the amount of the website and museum devoted to the show, the purist in me doubted the chops of the LIW Museum. However, when I called yesterday and hit them up with a random question, fresh from my re-read of Plum Creek, they knew the answer!

Q: After the grasshoppers came and ate all the wheat, where did Pa walk to, to find harvest work?

A: They think he walked to Olmstead County, where his brother Peter was.

Dude. That's 160.97 miles, or 64 hrs 23 mins of walking.

Poor Pa! 161 or so miles, in his worn-out boots, with no highway to speak of. Ma estimated the walk would take a week each way, so that's about 23 miles per day, or over 9 hours walking. Yikes. Danged grasshoppers.

We ourselves will be driving that luxurious highway in our luxurious rental car, because after Walnut Grove we'll go straight to Mankato, a.k.a. Betsy Warrington Ray's "Deep Valley." Unfortunately we'll miss the extravaganza scheduled for Betsy's 121st birthday on April 6, but the awesome people at the Betsy-Tacy Society have our private tour scheduled. I repeat: our PRIVATE tour. Oh my word. We're already starting a notebook of questions, so that poor woman doesn't know what she's in for. Everything from, "Was Mr. Meecham (in Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill) based on a real person?" to "Why did Betsy's family get rid of Rena and hire Anna instead?" Not to mention, can we still see the elementary school/Ekstroms' house/library/Baptist church and so on. Applying my 21st century internet stalking skills, I've already located the Lovelace's rental house in Minneapolis for a drive-by because Betsy's Wedding has lots of Joe Willard in it, and I'm all about Joe Willard.

Better cut this off here because I'm planning on re-reading the entire Betsy-Tacy series, and I'm only on Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill. I'll probably also pick up LIW's  By the Shores of Silver Lake, too, just to refresh my memory on the Ingalls' leaving Walnut Grove.

I invite you to read along, and watch for more posts on our Literary Dream Tour!