Little House in the Big Woods

Sometimes after I finish Luke's bedtime story and turn out the lamp, I lie there beside him and read my own book by a little battery-powered light. And now and then Luke asks me to "Read it, Mommy" and whatever it is, I do... for the five more minutes it takes him to fall asleep. It always reminds me of how my own mother used to read The Faraway Tree aloud to me while I lay in bed.  Perhaps, I imagined, Luke was ready for  a chapter book of his own, one without pictures, for those times when he just wants to roll over and close his eyes. I wanted something very plain and easy, though, something he'd be able to understand.  I didn't think he was quite ready for fantasy. So, because I have fond memories of the heart-warming stories of a simpler time* that make up the Little House on the Prairie series, I picked up a copy of Little House in the Big Woods and read the first chapter of it to him the other night. 

It was all about the animals Pa hunted -- or raised in order to slaughter -- and just exactly how their meat was prepared. Here's a snippet:

Pa owned a pig. It ran wild in the Big Woods, living on acorns and nuts and roots. Now he caught it and put it in a pen made of logs, to fatten. He would butcher it as soon as the weather was cold enough to keep the pork frozen.

Once in the middle of the night Laura woke up and heard the pig squealing. Pa jumped out of bed, snatched his gun from the wall, and ran outdoors. Then Laura heard the gun go off, once, twice.

When Pa came back, he told what had happened. He had seen a big black bear standing beside the pigpen. The bear was reaching into the pen to grab the pig, and the pig was running and squealing. Pa saw this in the starlight and he fired quickly. But the light was dim and in his haste he missed the bear. The bear ran away into the woods, not hurt at all.

Laura was sorry Pa did not get the bear.

And do you know why our heroine Laura was so sorry? It was because:

She liked bear meat so much. Pa was sorry too, but he said:

"Anyway, I saved the bacon."

That first chapter is full of stuff about the proper way to smoke venison and what to use to grease traps and exactly how to butcher a pig and a rapturous description of the delicious treat that is a fire-roasted pig's tail. All pretty disgusting for a woman who starts to retch if she tries to cook the hamburger meat that comes in a styrofoam package. And all pretty incomprehensible for a little boy who has been raised, so far, on little more meat-ish than chicken and fish. Who has no idea what a gun is. And who is particularly fond of Bear, too -- but because of his charming personality,  not because of the way he tastes.

*Yeah, right.

Comments

[Mary]

Reading the Little House books as an adult, and as a parent, is a totally different experience than reading them as a kid. They are obsessed with food, probably because LIW spent a lot of her childhood half-starved.

Wait until you re-read Little House on the Prairie and you realize that Pa was a total wackjob. He left that sweet little house in the Big Woods, which was near family, and had a thriving farm, because he wanted to be where there were no other people. He dragged a young wife and three tiny children across a frozen Mississippi river into Indian Territory. They had very little food and it was totally unsafe. And then the army made them vacate their homestead. Pa ended up dragging the family from one god-forsaken place to the next, until he finally caved and lived near the horror of other people so that his children could get an education.

Why, yes, I do live in a big city.

[Steph]

Mary! I thought you might comment on this one! I remember you saying something about reading the Little House books to M, way back before Luke was born...

[Darice]

Oh, I reread Little House on the Prairie and was in shock. Every other page, they are nearly dying. Pa nearly dies digging the well. They all nearly die of malaria. Pa leaves them for weeks at a time to go to town to get stuff. And so on.

And they live on cornmeal mush, salt pork, and whatever Pa can hunt. I made cornmeal mush just to see what it was like, and it was the most awful, bland stuff you can imagine. (Maybe I should have fried it like polenta...)

[elizabeth ellen]

i read these to andie when she was little and loved them just as much then as i had when i was little...i really love the time pa went out to get a deer and then, when one approached, didn't have the heart to kill it. so they survived on bread and whatever else they had. no meat. a while longer. that and the story about the cows becoming frozen in place during the big blizzard. i can't get enough blizzard stories...

[elizabeth ellen]

i was also continuously in awe of their resourcefulness...pa making all their furniture new when they moved, for instance...building them a house while they lived temporarily in a dug-out...i found it all completely fascinating. we're such babies now, you realize, reading these books.