A year ago, my husband and I were visiting our daughter, and the three of us made a quick trip to the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum in Walnut Grove, Minnesota. My daughter may have read one or two of the Little House books as a child, but didn’t have much association with the author, so she found it amusing when my husband and I vocalized our excitement as we drove over Plum Creek.
At the museum, Roger and I rushed through to the exhibits about the Little House on the Prairie TV series. We gawked at the prop fiddle that Pa played on the show, lingered in front of the photo displays, stood transfixed watching a scene play out on the TV in the corner, the scene where Pa has to complete his job of moving heavy sacks of seeds despite his broken ribs.
We recognized, of course, thanks to the bemused look on my daughter’s face, how incredibly corny that scene was (what with the overacting and the swelling dramatic music) but Roger and I didn’t care. We were back in our living rooms in the 1970s, lying next to our siblings on our respective green and gold carpets arguing over who had to get up and turn up the volume.
When I was a kid, they used to take my elementary class to the nearby “old folks’ home” to sing for them songs like Bill Bailey, Won’t You Please . . . Come Home? and My Blue Heaven. I’d watch as the residents’ faces lit…
