The last beginning was so long ago that I don’t really know where to begin, and I think the beginning has passed if I ever really have beginnings that I notice as such.

So, the beginning. The real one that I remember was in the 1970s with the commercials for the pilot. I remember the wagon crossing the river and Caroline declaring “my home is where you are, Charles.” My brother and I mocked that endlessly as only children can. How old was I? Six, maybe? Yes, probably in first grade, awaiting the birth of our other little brother, five years younger than the brother who mocked Caroline with me.

Maybe I remember the fording-the-river scene from the pilot’s airing. I came in from playing, or my grandparents’ house, or something. I seem to remember darkness outside, so before Easter and the time change. The television blared its usual background noise and I think my grandparents, who lived not a mile away, hovered somewhere about. What I remember was all of this activity, movement, noise, bustle, but a quiet bubble arose around me as I sat close to the television, suddenly drawn into this story that had drawn my disdain only a few days, perhaps hours, earlier, beginning with the scene when they crossed the river. My memory may not represent anything accurate beyond our living room with the multicolored yellow shag rug, the television, and me sitting close enough to the television that my eyes would surely be damaged. Still, that was my entry.

I probably did not see the first episode of the series. Indeed, I have no memory of how the series sucked me in. By Christmas, however, I desperately wanted the book, once I had learned that a book existed to want. My aunt, who always gave books, gave me Little House on the Prairie. The yellow cover, the soft illustrations, the author being the same person as the protagonist, all began to create a world of escape for me; and she had written more books, before and after, this one.

Somewhere along the line, I parsed out that the t.v. series was its own thing, separate from the books, and that the real Laura who wrote the books was probably not exactly like the Laura in the books. I don’t know how. I just did. Maybe On the Way Home helped sort some of the history from the fiction to some degree; but early on I knew that I dealt with three separate, yet intersecting concepts of a historical Laura, a Laura in a novel, and a television series. I loved them all, of course, uncritically, and without anyone to help me through any criticism.

My neighbor friends and I ransacked the library for all of the copies, checked out multiple times. My mother forbid me to check them out any longer. She wanted me to expand my reading. I did expand my reading, but I also continued to check out Little Houses and hide them. We build Little Houses in the backyard. We wore bonnets. Our grandmothers sewed us Laura dresses. I begged to visit the Mansfield, Missouri, site, even after I lost interest in the books.

I did, eventually, lose interest. Blame Star Wars, blame Agatha Christie, blame growing up, blame the declining quality of the t.v. show.  Still, your childhood loves plant something.

Imagine my surprise as I grew to become a historian and discover the Homestead Act, that Pa settled in the Dakotas on the Homestead Act, that the National Archives displayed his application in an exhibit. Imagine my surprise at learning that the grasshopper shower was an actual event, the Long Winter, too. At one point, in the 1990s, I encountered a scholarly article on Wilder and was shocked that she was the subject of real academic interest. I wished I had known that. I wished that I could pursue that. I wonder now why I did not. After all, she was a burgeoning field at the time. That trip to Mansfield finally came on my own steam in 2000. Still, there were other roads to travel.

Now, well, where to begin? This time, I guess it began when Pioneer Girl came out, and now Prairie Fires. In the meantime, out of curiosity, I read swath of other studies. What it all comes back to, really, are the novels and the t.v. show.

So, that’s where to begin.