Hardships, adventures and good times of pioneer days were recounted by Doris Osborn for Delphi Study Club members at their March meeting.Osborn reviewed Pioneer Girl: the Story of Laura Ingalls Wilder, a memoir of Wilder’s life from the age of two to 18 years old. Wilder based her historical fiction Little House books on these reminiscences, which she recorded in pencil on Big Chief tablets at the urging of her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane. A popular television series inspired by her books and starring Michael Landon aired in the 1970s-1980s.Charles “Pa” Ingall’s wanderlust caused the family to move several times from Wisconsin throughout the Midwestern frontier until his wife Caroline “Ma” refused to uproot her children again for a move to Oregon..Laura remembered Pa playing “mad dog” with his daughters and playing his fiddle, restricted to hymns of Sundays. Ma read them stories from the Bible and from Polar and Tropical Worlds. Once Pa shot a bear for food, and one winter when food supplies ran low, they ground seed wheat to make flour. During one severe blizzard Pa tied a rope between the house and the barn so he could find his way to tend the livestock. They ran out of coal and burned hay twists for fuel.Although she enjoyed school, Laura disliked one teacher’s trying to hold her hand, so she held a pin in her fingers to discourage him. She considered Sundays long and tiresome as after church in the morning and lunch prepared the day before, the rest of the day was spent quietly.Before finishing high school, she began teaching a small rural school at age 17 and boarded at the home of her pupils. She met her future husband, Almanzo “Manly” Wilder, who insisted upon driving her home to her family for weekends. He was 10 years older than she and had an established home of his own. She accepted his proposal of marriage but instructed the minister to omit the word “obey” from the wedding ceremony. The book concludes with her marriage. Delphi Study Club has purchased the book Grace from the Rubble for the Tonkawa Public Library in memory of Gayle Kuchera. Attending the meeting in the home of Evelyn Coyle were Mary Allan, Linda Brown, Ann Cales, Doris Osborn, Carolyn Ott, Vivian Pemberton and Marjilea Smithheisler. The club will hold its spring luncheon in April at the Baptist Fellowship Hall.
