The End of an Era!

Let's all get together and hold hands, come on, come over here, because this is the last post for Little Town on the Prairie. I can see why so many of you say it's your favorite. There were mice eating Pa's hair while he slept, Mary fulfilling her dream of studying higher mathematics and bead work at the blind school in Iowa, Nellie Oleson looking dumb, and most importantly, Almanzo's horse flesh, which first made us feel funny - down there - on Independence day.

While, I think we can all agree that Laurmanzo is the best thing since fighting over a red hot pig's tail, the sad reality of Prairie is that even though Laura's never been kissed, the end of this book means the end of her childhood. At 15! The frivolity extends no further than name card exchanging and awkward walks home with local heroes.

Really it was over when Mary lost her vision to scarlet fever way back On the (deathly, plague infested) Banks of Plum Creek. Since then there's been a lot of responsibility on poor Laura's malnourished shoulders. It's all come to this...sniff...our girl's leaving home.

Before Almanzo could finish his cutter and take Miss Wilder out for a brisk ride behind his horses some January afternoon, Mr. Boast stopped by the Ingalls' house with his friend Mr. Brewster from the town over. Since there's absolutely nothing else going on for 600 miles they saw Laura reciting Washington's resume and impressively diagramming sentences ("'Scaling yohnder peak' is a participial phrase, adjunct of the pronoun, 'I,' hence adjectival") at the School Exhibition. Brewster liked what he saw and decided, non-existant child labor laws be damned, he wanted Laura for his town's school marm.

This is no day laboring in a sweatshop people. The hamlet of Brewsters Settlement is 12 miles away! That's the equal of approximately 1 million miles on a modern highway. It's too far to come home while school is in session, but they're prepared to offer Laura $40 per term. That's 80 kittens at the top of the market! With that money they can bring Mary home for a visit, and who's heart wouldn't be warmed by that reunion?

So before you know it hands are being shaken, sealing legally binding verbal contracts, and the county superintendent is signing Laura's teaching certificate. When say "before you know it" I mean this all happens in an afternoon, including the recitation of Marc Antony's oration on the death of Caesar. In other news, Laura's making me feel woefully under-educated. On Monday they're coming to pick her up and take her to her new life in a new town. Gulp.

She could not think what it would be to teach school twelve miles away from home, alone among strangers. The less she thought of ti the better, for she must go, and she must meet whatever happened as it came.

That's right girl, think of it as an adventure! Also, don't worry, I both looked at the cover and read the blurb on the back of the next book and like Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, there ain't no mountain high enough (or Pairie bleak enough) to keep Laurmanzo apart.