By Don Corrigan
Missouri’s Indian Summers are the perfect time for Ozark daytrips. My family visit to “Pumpkins Aglow” at Branson’s Shepherd of the Hills was followed by a journey to the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum in Mansfield.
Extreme heat this summer was not good for pumpkins. However, you would never guess it when walking among the ghouls, goblins and thousands of glowing hand-carved pumpkins on the full-moon evening of Oct. 24.
Branson’s scary pumpkin festival, complete with skeletons playing jazz on saxophones, put even hardened skeptics into the Halloween spirit. The spectacle inspired spooky questions at a morning stop at the Wilder home and museum.
Among the inquiries: Did Wilder write any frightening Halloween stories in her historical books and memoirs? Did she include any Ozark monsters or devilish spirits in her Little House on the Prairie Series?
Nope! Laura Ingalls Wilder did not do Halloween, at least in her books.
Wilder’s stories like Farmer Boy (1933) and On The Banks of Plum Creek (1937) were pretty tame. They were all about prairie farm life and the hardships and triumphs of living off the land.
On the other hand, Wilder’s calm, original works did not stop modern TV producers from taking liberties with her writing. The classic television adaptation of Little House on the Prairie with actor Michael Landon, featured several Halloween episodes.
Later television adaptations of her work would have probably dismayed Laura Ingalls Wilder. Nevertheless, TV audiences always demand more excitement than the pages of a book can offer.
The Monster of Walnut Grove from the TV series showed a young Laura Ingalls out soaping windows on Halloween night. She peeks into the Olesons’ house and mistakenly thinks she’s witnessing Nels Oleson decapitating his wife, Harriet, with a sword. It turns out to be a mannequin.
The Halloween Dream is another television yarn in which Laura Ingalls and Albert Ingalls dress up in Native American costumes, which results in a chaotic dream for Albert, involving capture by Native Americans, rescue by “Pa” (Landon), and then an awakening to a Halloween party.
Television sensationalism aside, the original Wilder books have sold tens of millions of copies worldwide and been translated into dozens of languages. Her stories have given generations a warm, detailed, and realistic look at pioneer survival and challenges of 19th-century American life.
An Ozark trip to the Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Rocky Ridge Farmhouse, where she wrote many of her stories for children, is well worth the effort. Laura and her husband, Almanzo, started their life on the 40-acre Ozark farm in a one-room log cabin.
After living in the log cabin through the first winter, they built a room onto the side of it in 1895. The next spring in 1896, they moved the new room to the present historic house location. A tour of the house reveals what life was like in a little house on the Ozark prairie.
With its many attractions, music and entertainment, Branson is a tourist magnet with lots of lights, traffic, and the hubbub of ticket lines and noisy crowds. It seems so very far away from the homestead of Laura Ingalls Wilder.
For a glimpse of a quieter and more serious time, consider touring the historic homes and museum depicting the life of Laura Ingalls Wilder in Mansfield. A drive from Branson to Mansfield is roughly 73 miles and takes about 80 minutes.
(Ozark Daytrips Part II will take a look at the monsters and beasts roaming the hills and woods surrounding the Jacks Fork and Current Riverways. Legends of such creatures were recounted at the recent “Haunting of the Hills” festival at Alley Spring, but you can seek out Ozark monsters on your own most any time of the year.)
