Little Author in the Big Woods (10 page)

In the spring, they planted corn and a garden. Rose helped by gathering eggs and the wild huckleberries and blackberries. At age 8, Rose was old enough to take buckets of berries into town to sell for 10 cents a gallon.

Because Rocky Ridge Farm was so close to town, Rose was able to go to school. Just as Caroline had communicated her love of books and learning to her daughters, Laura did the same for her own daughter. Everyone thought Rose was the smartest student in the class. She was an excellent reader and speller, too. She brought home books like
The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew
,
The House of the Seven Gables
,
The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit
,
and
Pride and Prejudice
from the school library. At night, Laura read them aloud.

On Sundays, there was no school or work, and the family relaxed. If the weather was nice, they had picnics with the Cooleys in the ravine near their cabin. Laura and Manly taught Rose to ride a horse, and they bought her a donkey named Spookendyke. Rose was supposed to ride him to school and back, but he was sluggish and stubborn. How she hated those rides!

Life at Rocky Ridge was good. Laura and Manly were able to buy another six acres of land as well as a cow and a pig. Laura and Rose churned butter that they sold for 10 cents a pound. And they had extra vegetables to sell to town folk. The orchard was doing well, thanks to all the research Laura and Manly did about apple growing. They added peach and pear trees and planted strawberries and raspberries in between the rows.

They were able to expand the log cabin too. First Manly added a frame room with actual windows and a door. Later he and Laura selected a new building site a short distance from the log cabin. Manly then removed the new room from the old cabin and, using big logs, rolled it onto the new site. When that was done, he built another new room right next to it and joined the two rooms together. Up above he created a sleeping loft for Rose. The old log cabin was turned into a barn.

Life at Rocky Ridge was not all work. There were corn-husking parties, barn dances, and quilting bees. Laura loved to dance. “There is always a little music in my feet,” she said. These gatherings included an abundance of food. Laura's contribution was usually gingerbread. She used an old recipe of Ma's; the result was soft, moist, and delicious. At home, Laura made gingerbread for special occasions like birthday or holiday dinners.

One year, Rose asked if she could make the gingerbread for Manly's birthday. Laura said yes, she was old enough now. Rose was excited and vowed to be extra careful in the baking. Sometimes when Laura left her to watch the bread, Rose got caught up in a book and the bread burned. Not today. She made the gingerbread, and when she took it from the oven, she thought it looked every bit as good as Laura's. Laura and Manly were away for the day, but how proud Laura would be when Rose served the gingerbread.

Then Rose was surprised by an unexpected call from the minister. She served him a piece of the gingerbread and noticed he had an odd expression on his face as he ate. He said no to a second piece. Rose wondered about this until she and her parents ate their own pieces later that evening. Rose had mistakenly used cayenne pepper instead of ginger! The gingerbread burned their mouths, but they had a good laugh about it.

During the late 1890s, Mansfield was growing fast. There were general stores, hotels, a bakery, a drugstore, an opera house, flour mills, and a bank. Although Rocky Ridge was prospering, it was not yet a fully self-supporting farm. Laura and Manly decided to leave it for a while, and they rented a little yellow house just outside of town. Manly went to work as a drayman, or deliveryman, hauling loads and picking up goods transported by railroad. Laura took in boarders and started making country-style meals using ingredients from the farm, like fresh eggs, milk, fruit, vegetables, and chickens raised on Rocky Ridge. She served them to the travelers staying at the yellow house and invested her earnings back in the farm. As soon as they had enough money, they would return.

Rose became a town girl. She was not sorry to say good-bye to her stubborn old donkey. But she was sad to think she would have to end her studies after eighth grade. The school in Mansfield did not go any higher, and while there were private academies in other towns, Laura and Manly could not afford the tuition.

In the summer of 1898, Grandpa and Grandma Wilder came for a long visit. They were heading south, to settle in Crowley, Louisiana. Manly's sister Eliza Jane had married the wealthy owner of a rice plantation. Before he left, Grandpa bought the yellow house and turned the deed over to Manly.

Laura's family was doing well too. Ma and Pa wrote to say that they were snug and comfortable in their house in De Smet. Mary lived with them now. She knew Braille, a system of raised dots that enabled blind people to read, and she was a big help to Ma with the housework. Carrie worked at the
De Smet
News and Leader
office. She, too, lived at home with her parents. Grace was a country schoolteacher, and in 1901 she married a man named Nat Dow.

In the spring of 1902, things took a sharp turn for the worse. Ma wrote to say Pa was suffering from heart failure. Laura left Rose in charge of the household and quickly got ready to travel back to De Smet. She arrived in time to see Pa, who lingered briefly and then died in June. Ma and all the girls were with him until the end.

Laura mourned her beloved Pa. She had so many fine memories of him. In all her books, Pa is shown as kind, loving, cheerful, and fun. He told stories. He played the fiddle. He could hunt, trap, and build or fix just about anything. Now he was gone.

Still grieving, Laura stayed in De Smet for a while before going back home. She missed her father but took comfort in her husband and daughter. Yet Rose was soon ready to leave Mansfield. Her aunt Eliza Jane had invited her to Crowley, Louisiana. If she lived in Crowley, she could go to high school and even study Latin. Laura could see how much the opportunity meant to Rose, so she and Manly agreed to allow Rose to live in Crowley for a year. A brilliant student, Rose crammed four years of Latin into one, and she graduated from high school in 1904. At the ceremony, she recited an original Latin poem she had written. Clearly, Rose was a very bright girl, with many opportunities open to her.

But once she was back in Mansfield, Rose's opportunities seemed to shrink. Although she was a high school graduate, she could not get a job. Rose wanted to help her parents, who were still struggling to make ends meet. Without a job, that was not possible. And she wanted to go to college. How would she manage that?

Then she saw her chance. The depot master in town agreed to teach her and his own daughter telegraphy. The electric telegraph was a communication system that transmitted electric signals over wires from location to location that translated into a message. Long before the Internet, fax machines, or the telephone, telegraphed messages were the way people communicated over long distances.

Rose picked up the skill easily. She got a job as a telegraph operator in Kansas City, Missouri, for $2.50 a week. That was enough money to support herself and to help her parents, too, so at the age of 17, Rose left home.