Mansfield

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

The trip had been wonderful, Monday. There was something about it that brought back the old days for Collette, and she loved it. The skies had been clouded and the hills were like blue mountains in the distance. They passed a good deal of rolling farms and hills, forests and cleared valleys… all were lovely in the mists and storm clouds above.

Francis and Linnea wrote in their new notepads from Grandma, of their travels over the four hours. Carrie-Bri even read to them for two of the hours on the way back home from her old journal, started three years before. It was fun to hear about the past and Carrie’s take on it, which was always more humorous than Collette’s account. All sorts of people were needed to make the world spin, and Collette wouldn’t have Carrie be any other way. She hoped she never changed, in that respect. And then they plotted revenge, discussed the latest goings on, and listened to various music selections from Ireland, Turkey, and Elvis.

But then they had arrived at Mansfield, much to everyone’s delight. They walked slowly through the museum and the house tour, delighting over the pieces and diagrams of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s history. It truly was fun, although Carrie complained a bit at first.

“We drove four hours for this?” She moaned when she saw the little white house.

“Carrie, it’ll be fun,” Collette told her. “We still have the other stone house, the museum, and the bookstore to look through.”

Perhaps the most startling fact was that Laura herself was no more than four feet and eleven inches. They realized that she must have been hardly taller than Francis, which explained the tiny cabinets and chairs and such.

“She was a midget!” Carrie exclaimed.

Meanwhile, at the bookstore, Francis found a small pewter-like toothpick holder in the shape of a milk bucket, with Mansfield and the little white house on the front. Linnea settled on a slate and a small piece of yellow chalk. She had wanted the little violet pioneer dress and bonnet, but Mom encouraged her against it, as did Carrie, out of sheer embarrassment.

An old pecan tree had blown down in high winds three years previously, and someone had been hired to slice off the branches into little discs and place them in labeled holders, for mementos. Laura and Almanzo had planted that ancient pecan back in 1900, and Mom and Grandma decided they should each have a piece. And so, as they were driving out of the parking lot, Collette ran back inside to purchase two pieces.

But the museum had also been very interesting, and Francis and Linnea were quite enthralled. There was even a wall covered with “Little House on the Prairie” books in all sorts of languages, from Arabic to Jagalog to Bengali and Hebrew. There was Pa’s fiddle, which someone still played every third week in September, old and tired, from Germany in 1850 (not much older than Collette’s violin, and OLeif’s). There were rather severe pictures of all the family, prints in brown and white. If only they had smiled more! There was Laura’s white lawn dress from 1900, looking still fresh and delicate, one she had pieced herself.

In the house, there was the Christmas clock Almanzo had bought for her, trading a load of hay for the old piece, fixed only once, and cleaned only once. There was the little library and stone fireplace inside, a very cozy and charming lay-out.

Even the English cottage further down the road was lovely, with a view to the valley and the hills beyond, its French doors and ivy-wrapped chimney. It was as though they had stepped back in time, past the cliché of it, to the real thing. Francis was especially fascinated with it all. They would all hope to return.

But it was soon time to leave after a quick stop by the graveyard and lunch at a nearby park. As they fixed their sandwiches, however, the temperature suddenly dropped. Whereas the winds had already been fierce, wintry gusts blew them back to the van. They shivered until the doors were closed and they were headed back to Jeff City for ice cream at Central Dairy, right before the doors closed. It had been a splendid day, almost a healing day, if it were necessary.

Just at that moment, Collette felt like fixing up a couple of pies for the day. She would be at work, instead, from seven-fifteen till four in the afternoon. However, there were times, when spring was coming in, and the winds were high, and the promise of late afternoon storms were in the air over billows of white puffs in blue skies… those were pie days and lemonade… with the crickets chirping in the evening, as the rain came. Someone would be out in the hammock, Carrie no doubt, watching the skies and swinging to the rhythm of the wind. There would be someone reading tales of witch hunts and pirates and no-goods inside to Francis and Linnea. That would be Rose. And Dad and Joe would be out in the yard, finishing the lawn-work before the rain came. And Mom would be indoors fixing dinner. Those were the golden days, and Collette would never be able to get enough of them. Even if she wasn’t there to enjoy them with the family, just hearing about them was enough.