Little Author in the Big Woods (4 page)

Pa bought the 172 acres of prairie land along Plum Creek. It came with an underground house called a dugout. The small, one-room dugout was carved right into the ground. The roof was made of willow boughs covered by sod, which is grass-covered ground. It was hidden from view except for the stovepipe sticking up through the sod. The walls, made of packed earth, were smoothed and whitewashed. The floor was earth too. Right by the door was a window covered not with glass but with greased paper. It let in only a little bit of light.

Since they were so close to town, Laura and Mary were able to go to school. Although there was no church when the family arrived, Ma joined a committee to help build one. Pa contributed money for the church bell, and when the church was completed, the Ingalls family attended Sunday services. Laura always remembered the very first decorated Christmas tree in church. The tree held presents for everyone. To Laura, the fur cape and china box she received as gifts were precious.

Minnesota winters were long and hard. Blizzards lasting three or four days whipped across the plains. When this happened, Laura and Mary had to do their lessons at home. But there was a bright side to blizzard season. All the moisture in the ground made for good crops. In the spring of 1875, Pa planted wheat. He was so confident about the crop that he went into town and came back with a load of yellow pine lumber that had been sent to the prairie by railroad. He also came back with glass windows, factory-milled doors, and white china doorknobs. Pa was going to build a house! The shopkeepers all knew about his big wheat field. He would pay them when he harvested his crop.

One of their neighbors, Eleck Nelson, helped Pa with the framing, the roofing, the windows, and the walls. Laura thought the new house was wonderful. She and Mary had a hard time keeping Pa's secret surprise for Ma: her very own cookstove. Laura and her family were thrilled to move into the new house. All summer long, Pa tended the wheat field. What a crop they would have!

Then, one day, a dark cloud passed in front of the sun. The cloud turned out to be an invasion of grasshoppers. The sky filled with them, and the whirring of their wings made a loud, terrible drone. When they hit the ground, it sounded like a hailstorm. Once they hit, they began to eat: all the wheat Pa had grown, all the vegetables in Ma's garden. Leaves, grass, flowers, and fruit. They stripped the fields and prairie bare. The government tried to fight back: they offered children up to $1.00 for every bushel of dead grasshoppers they collected, and 50 cents for a gallon of their eggs.

Despite the terrible grasshopper devastation to their farm, Pa and Ma were not ready to abandon it. So, before the harvest in late August, Pa walked 200 miles across Minnesota to find work. He was not alone; dozens of men and boys went too, all desperate to make some money. They were housed and fed by local farmers who took pity on them.

While Pa was gone, Ma and the girls stayed behind, living in a rented house behind the church, where life would be easier when the winter came. It was hard for Ma to be alone. She had to be both mother and father to the girls. She waited anxiously for word from Pa, and when the first letter came, she cried with relief. Pa came home in the fall, his purse filled with money.

On November 1, 1875, Laura's family welcomed a new baby brother, Charles Frederick Ingalls. They called him Freddie. The girls had fun that winter, both in school and at home with baby Freddie. Spring came, and with it, a chance to plant again. But the grasshoppers had laid their eggs, and now they were back, eating every live plant in sight. When Pa and Ma saw the grasshoppers again, they became discouraged. Then another opportunity arose. Some friends from church, the Steadmans, were buying a hotel in Burr Oak, Iowa. They asked Ma and Pa to help them run it. A new settler named Keller bought their house and farm along Plum Creek. The Ingalls family packed up and moved southeast.

On the way, they stopped at Uncle Peter and Aunt Eliza's farm near South Troy, Minnesota. They were not needed in Burr Oak until the fall, so they would stay and work on the farm for the summer. Laura loved playing with her cousins Pete, Alice, Ella, Edith, and Lansford. And she loved her daily chores of watching the cows and guarding the haystacks. As the cows grazed, she and her cousins played along the banks of the Zumbro River, gathering and eating the sweet, juicy plums.

The only dark note was the worry they all felt about little Freddie. He was a weak baby, and often sick. Laura could only hope that he would grow stronger before it was time to pack up and move on to Burr Oak.

 

 

THREE

A Terrible Illness

1876−1879

Iowa–Minnesota

It was late summer, and the Ingalls family was deeply sad. Laura's baby brother, Freddie—less than a year old—had been sick for months, and on a dreadful day in August 1876, he died. Losing babies in those times was not uncommon, but it still affected the family powerfully, and they all mourned his death. He was buried at Uncle Peter and Aunt Eliza's farm in Minnesota, under a small white gravestone. When autumn came, they had to leave even that reminder behind; they packed up their wagon and headed to Burr Oak, Iowa. They were on their way to help the Steadmans at their hotel.