Mansfield, MO

We finally made it to Mansfield.  Let me start out by saying that I have mixed feelings about museums.  I have always liked museums.  I like listening to docents talk, and enjoy gazing at objects from the past.  On the other hand, I wonder if packing objects from the past into glass boxes and displaying them in air-conditioned comfort really gives you an adequate sense of the meaning of those objects in their original context.  I know it is not an original thought, but it is somebody else's thought that I find running through my brain quite a bit.  (How many thoughts of another person can you have in your mind before you actually become that person?)

I grew up in White Rock, New Mexico, which was once occupied by the Anasazi.  My brother and I would frequently hike in the canyon behind our house, collect pottery (since donated to the Heard Museum), and admire the petroglyphs.  I am confident that I go a better sense of the lives of the Anasazi here, where I could feel the heat and hear the cicadas, than in the nearby museum at Bandelier National Monument.

Mansfield is not featured in any of Laura Ingalls Wilder's books, but the two houses located here are where she did most of her writing.  Almanzo built the first house, known as the "farm house," when they decided to start an apple orchard.  The larger "Stone House" was commissioned by Rose Wilder Lane as a gift to her parents.  It was paid for with profits from Lane's writing.  Mansfield is best know for the houses and for having some of Laura's original possessions.  Clearly the most valued is Pa's fiddle.  

Since Rose Wilder Lane is closely connected to these houses, she is featured in the tours of the houses and the museum. The museum does not discuss the degree to which Rose is responsible for creating the Little House books, but there is quite a bit of information about her writings and life.  There are a couple of statements at the museum that indicate a political purpose behind Laura and Rose's writings.  The first one I noticed was in the video they showed before the farm house tour.  The video included a quotation by Laura about how she portrayed people who exhibited the characteristics that made America great, and who will continue to make it great as long as America is free (I will look up the exact quotation, but I have a super-slow connection here).  The second is the last sentence in the sign in front of the house: "Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane are revered for writings which stress independence, courage and American ideals."  I did not notice anything that explicitly connect the women with opposition to New Deal policies, but there is a message clearly implicit in this characterization.

I find it remarkable the degree to which these possessions are treated so reverently.  I recently helped my brother and father clean up my childhood  home after the death of my mother.  Between this clean-up and an earlier one done by my sister, we threw out three large dumpster units.  It was hard for me to see these artifacts that carry so much memory for me to be dumped, but it was something that needed to be done.  At Mansfield, every original possession is carefully cared for and preserved.  It is essentially a shrine.  Laura wrote simple stories about a way of life that hundreds of Americans knew, and somehow people find these stories so moving and important that the author is elevated.  I wonder why the simple act of writing takes on so much importance in our culture.