Where I Wore It: Little House on the Prarie

After yesterday's post I decided to share some of the photos from my actual trip to Ma Ingalls place. This was August 23, 2010 and the weather was somewhere in the high nineties. It was almost two weeks into a cross-country road trip my friend Alyssa and I took from our hometown of Cumberland, Rhode Island to her brother's place in Reseda, California. We zig-zagged up and down the East Coast and through the Midwest seeing some of the most random attractions and couch surfing wherever we could. If you're interested we blogged our way across America, with me writing and her taking the pictures in the blog Subjects and Objects . I did most of the driving, she read trashy romance novels out loud to keep me entertained. I behaved inappropriately every chance and venue I got, she kept me from being arrested/killed and dumped in a cornfield. I've been a lot of places all around the world, I've never had quite so much fun or seen such amazing things. I cannot take any of the credit, for Alssa is the photographer extraordinaire, I just mixed the drinks at night.

One would think the biggest attraction in the area would have a bigger sign
announcing it, apparently not in that part of Kansas.

As far as I know there is no "Little House"organization and all of the sites across
the Midwest are owned and operated separately. Obviously this
one is the best known because of the television show, but it
was actually one of the places they spent the least amount of time.

This farmhouse houses the information center and gift shop,
on the day we were there this consisted of one friendly but lonely lady.

I made a friend, apparently he was astray they had adopted and started to feed
(you can see the food dish behind me) luckily we still
had over a thousand miles to go on the trip otherwise I would
have hidden him in my purse and taken him with me.

We never saw Dr. Tann's grave, strange because as a bit of a taphophile
 I dragged Alyssa to just about every other historically significant cemetery along the way.

Me enjoying the view from the outside of the home-sweet-log cabin.
Fisher and Sons Tee Shirt: HBOStore
Shorts: Ann Taylor Loft
Scarf: Jessica SImpson via Marshall's
Flip-Flops: Old Navy
Purse: DeDe via Anthropologie 

With me next to the cabin you can geta better idea of the scale.
It was really, really smalland the ceiling was low enough that I
 had to duck going in and out and I'm only 5' 4''. The wagon
on the other hand was to tall, I guess I'm no Goldilocks on the Prairie.

The smaller building is the post office, the larger the school.
 There was also a well original to the Ingalls period on the land,
which was how they identified the original homestead.

Keep in mind this building was actively used until 1978, that's right clearly Watergate, wage freezing and gas rationing, and the Vietnam war were all very far away from this little hanger on from the 19th century.

Great photo right? That's the secret of Alyssa's genius, I'm off playing with stray cats and she's capturing the beauty of a 19th century post office.  40 Berkeley where the Swapaholics hold their soirees has a similar bank of mailboxes and one night I saw people photographing them, clearly we were trendsetters in Independence, KS.

I it just me or does that post office look like the type of place
where you'd expect Horace, the telegraph operator from Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman
to wander out from behind the counter?

Not the most flattering picture of my ass, but it gives you
 a good idea of the dimensions of the post office.

This school was still in use after WWII, not a huge surprise to me. Most of the modern elementary schools in use in North Attleboro, MA where my mother and grandparents grew up and I have taught were built in the early 50's. Before that it was all one room school houses, three of which still stand, two on the corner of Holmes Road and Hoppin Hill Avenue still stand side by side and are maintained by volunteers. The Little Red or Adamsdale Schoolhouse is adjacent to the  Woodcock Garrison building on the North Attleboro-Plainville line is open for tours and is a frequent field trip destination for modern school children.

The class of 1910-1911

The schoolmarm, I hope I never photograph like that in the yearbook 

In the back was a display done by local school children to display at the site, I think at the time Alyssa just  took a photo because it was so random. Ironically once we got to Reseda we actually we had some issues with a troupe of possums that kept setting of the motion sensor lights in the backyard and waking us up at night. Guess we should have read the posterboard more closely to find out what to do.

As fascinating as the Little House on the Prairie was we had to hitch up the wagon and move on, continuing in the literary trend by stopping in western Kansas in the tiny town of Holcomb, made famous by Truman Capote when he chronicled the grisly murders of the Clutter family in his infamous nonfiction novel, In Cold Blood.