Category Archives: Wendy Welch

The Monday Book: THE LONG WINTER by Laura Ingalls Wilder

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I found THE LONG WINTER at a thrift store, one of my first fun outings in a year involving non-socially-distant hiking. The title looks different when you’ve emerged from your chrysalis, post-vaxx and post-winter weather, to go do something with a friend.

Most American school children read this book before they graduate middle school. As a child I had the boxed set and devoured them over and over. It’s a little odd to read them as an adult and realize how much sweetness hides some truly terrible things.

Last night I read LONG WINTER in one sitting. How did I miss that sense of threat that pervades every chapter, as the family ticks down from the last of the butter to the last of the milk to the last of the flour to the last of the potatoes, to the last of the burnable fuel? The dawning realization of the townspeople that the train was not coming, the train that was their literal supply line, anchoring them out on the prairie with the safety of coal and already-ground wheat and other “new-fangled” things like kerosene. Ma’s ingenuity at producing a button lamp from axle grease. Pa buying the last two cans of oysters in town for Christmas dinner. The hay sticks that they burned as fast as they made them; twist hay to have the warmth to twist more hay.

And the darkness. The robbery that Pa participated in to get the supplies he came home with.The dying of the lamp on Christmas Night. The inability to buy flour or lumber at any price because “Banker Ruth bought it all.” What happened to Banker Ruth when winter was over, one wonders?

The heroism of Almanzo and Cap, going to buy wheat from a man in the middle of nowhere, is offset by the fact that Almanzo walled up 150 bushels of wheat before they left. So no one could ask him to buy it.

It is a different book as an adult than as a child. I’ve observed there are several rewrites and washouts of these American classics over time, based on racist overtones and the charming overwrites of things like being illegally in Indian territory, or quite possibly murdering a railroad employee, etc. You know, these are still American classics. Just, now that I can see what wasn’t meant to be visible to children, I appreciate Wilder’s two-layer genius in writing all the more. She told the whole story, twice at the same time, for two different audiences. Gonna go back and read the rest of these now.

Yep, American classics: fear, prejudices, frontier justice, snowball fights, family spirit, and all.

Hope Springs – –

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Jack’s Wednesday guest post is on Thursday again – – –

I was thinking about this blog post yesterday and going to do it about various hopeful small building projects we had planned on doing until Covid 19 hit. We had planned to have the bathroom remodeled and create a small laundry room and even had thoughts of an added room. But all that has had to wait!

Now that Wendy and I have had our two vaccine shots we can look forward to being less nervous about socializing and that means we can call on more expert friends to help, as they did when we erected the pergola on our back deck. They can also sit under the pergola now!

Two of them were able to visit yesterday and, socially distanced, added their knowledge and brain cells to our general thinking going forward. The idea of the extra room was dumped when they pointed out that our log cabin jail in the back yard IS our extra room. So what would have been the laundry room will be built, but to house the freezers that are currently in the jail. That will create room there where we can also house a wood burning stove in case it’s needed in winter. Once the freezers have moved out we can put a bed in there and it can become again Wendy’s writing studio combined with an extra guest room. The washing machine can stay where it is in the corner of the kitchen and we got rid of the dryer a while ago. We even have a composting toilet waiting to be installed in the jail too – en suite!

But in the process of composing this a certain phrase crossed my mind – one of the reasons for delay was ‘a shortage of lumber’. Now, for Scotsmen of my age that has a completely different meaning than here in the US. On a Saturday night, back in the 1950s and 60s young men would go to the local dance hall in hopes of ‘getting a lumber’ – engaging with a young woman in hopes of finding a secluded corner for some ‘slap and tickle’. There was rarely much tickle and a great many slaps.

I’m continually finding yet more differences between British English, Scots English and American English!

But, back to the subject – although I was head of the construction trades department at a college in Scotland for a number of years, my own specialty is painting and decorating. So I’m not comfortable with anything else, and particularly with plumbing or electrical. The area where the freezer room is going already has a double electrical outlet and they won’t need water or a drain, so easy. The first job I tackled when we had our bookstore was to convert a carport into an enclosed garage, and this is similar but smaller. An area with an existing concrete floor and a small deck above supported by pillars. Make the deck into a roof, create insulated walls and add a door. What could possibly go wrong – – –

Shift the freezers then get the wood burning stove and install it. What could possibly go wrong – – –

Create a toilet suite in the jail. What could possibly go wrong – – –