Little House Full of Big Stories

I remember growing up with ‘Little House on the Prairie’ as a weekly television show that helped form many of my values and beliefs surrounding people who lived and worked in a small pioneer community.

The hardworking, devoted Ingalls family who lived by a strong moral code were some of my childhood heroes. They kept a sense of humor in their poverty and simple lifestyle and worked together as a unit. However, the rich, hen-pecked, shrewd, superficial Olsens with the spoiled, bratty kids were not the type of people to aspire toward.

There was a definite chasm presented between the rich and the poor.

The good doctor who often saw his patients and got paid in chickens was another hero of mine from the show.

The town minister who was soft spoken and largely showed up as a calm force of acceptance and encouragement when a natural disaster struck, death arrived, or people chose to get married was like a background shadow. Neither a hero, nor a “bad example”; the minister was more of a neutral figure who observed events, but who couldn’t stop anything from unfolding.

I remember watching that show and identifying with the main character, “Laura”…possibly because my name was “Lorra” and my parents raised me as a poor child in the Wild West, with chickens, a butter churner, and a mother who canned and hung clothes out to dry on a laundry line. We had running water and electricity in our home, and obviously a television for entertainment, but our bathroom could only be described as a “glorified outhouse”…with no insulation in the walls and a knot-hole in the wooden floorboards where freezing cold air would come through during the winter months.

I spent many evenings in my childhood home wrapped in a quilt my mother had made with my feet soaking in a tub of hot water, just to keep warm. We had a wood stove in our living room as the main source of heat and I learned early on how to start a fire and keep that stove fed with wood!

Maybe, I identified with “Laura” because on the show, her sister was named “Mary,” and my own sister was named “Mary”. Maybe, it was because “Laura” became a schoolteacher and had a feisty attitude that didn’t take any guff off of people if they looked down their nose at her because she was poor.

Maybe, it was because I saw a lot of qualities in my own father that I saw in the character played by Michael Landon. My own father was a hardworking, God-fearing, humble man who would give someone the shirt off his back, or a ride to the hospital, or a family member shelter and help when they needed it, without expecting anything in return except respect and appreciation. Maybe it was because I, too, had memories of going fishing with my dad as a little girl during a time when people didn’t even need permits to harvest local food given to us by our Creator.

My father was full of amazing stories of growing up during the Great Depression in a large family of 13 children and a widowed mother. Our little house was full of big stories. My father sang folk songs to me, read poetry and the Bible to me as a child. I was the youngest of six children, and sometimes, tragedy did hit our family and our small-town community just like it did on the television shows of my childhood.

I carried on the Herring tradition and had a family of eight children. Now, my much bigger, adult house is full of even bigger stories than the ones I grew up hearing. Now, I’m the writer of stories and plays…some of them are tragic and full of dark comedy. Some of them are light and full of innocent fairy tales and happy endings.

Just like real life.

I, too, want to leave good stories with a positive message behind for my children. I, too, want my children to be proud of me for what I have worked on and for what I have done to try and fight the darkness that exists in this world. I, too, believe there is enough darkness in this world and enough negative energy, depression, loneliness, isolation, punishment, sicknesses, illnesses, chemical abuse, poverty, and communication disorders to fill an entire sea full of books and real-life stories of real-life humans.

I miss Michael Landon and those “Little House on the Prairie” days when life seemed so much simpler than it does today. I remember crying myself to sleep at night as a child because I wanted to live during the pioneer days and not be stuck in the 1970’s. For whatever reason, the 1870’s seemed so much more fitting for a poor daughter of a logger, a backyard farmer, and a home-maker turned housekeeper!

Maybe that’s why, when I became a young mother in my twenties, I did my best to raise my girls like little farm girls, surrounded by animals, books, the Bible, and episodes of ‘Little House on the Prairie’. I even have a portrait of my children’s dad and me dressed in costumes from the Wild West, and some pictures of my first two daughters dressed in matching bonnets and prairie dresses.

Was I a nut, a pioneer, a storyteller, a story creator, or a “good, wholesome, Proverbs 31 woman” as a young homeschooling mom? Did I influence my older daughters for the good, or the bad, by exposing them to such an idealistic childhood full of so much good, wholesome innocence and so many good, loving and tender memories in a world that can quickly become dangerous to adults if we aren’t protected from violent dogs, violent gods, and “nice” wolves in sheep’s clothing?

I wonder what kind of stories my children will have to tell when they are my age? I wonder if any of them will become writers or teachers themselves? It might run in our blood!