Reporting from Mansfield, Mo. And the boyfriend? Ned Nickerson was not only a ridiculous name, but Ned Nickerson was also a superfluous human being. The two sets of twins were simply too good, too sheltered, to hold any 8-year-old spellbound. And their names: Bert, Nan, Flossie, Freddie. Perhaps they were related to Ned Nickerson.
Laura Ingalls Wilder, by contrast, was not only inspirational, but her stories also proved aspirational. A real girl with a sister named Mary and a Ma and a Pa and a dog named Jack. A real girl born in a log cabin on the American frontier in , who lived through blizzards and grasshopper invasions and fires.
My journey, which starts in Springfield, takes about 50 minutes on U. A few miles after Seymour, I head south on Missouri 5 and turn onto Commercial Street, gateway to Mansfield, where a drive down the main drag takes two minutes at most, and the view includes a couple of insurance offices, a psychology clinic, some empty storefronts, a Chinese restaurant and a bank.
After I meet up with Jean Coday, my tour guide, she chauffeurs me the brief distance from the middle of town to Rocky Ridge Farm and selects the first stop, a modest building that sits between a gift store and the farmhouse that Laura and her husband, Almanzo Wilder, started to build in On an afternoon in July when the heat index is rumored to be , only the slamming of car doors interrupts the low roar of cicadas.
Nonetheless, the parking lot holds at least two dozen vehicles. Those artifacts are displayed in a 2, - square-foot building that is divided into two spaces, one devoted to Wilder, the other to her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, a writer who achieved fame long before her mother. My guide, who happens to be the director of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Home and Museum, takes me from glass case to glass case, gently directing my attention to a handkerchief that Laura embroidered as a child, her teaching certificate and the slates the Ingalls girls used when they attended school.
