Learning from Little House

Cheri Pierson Yecke has good things to say about TV's latest version of the Little House series.

The original television series, while replete with stories that emphasized a sound morality and reflected pioneer life, sometimes glamorized the stark reality of life on the prairie by showing happy children with perfect hair, frolicking on the prairie in freshly starched pinafores. The new, five-part "Little House on the Prairie" miniseries, a Disney production being aired on ABC at 7 p.m. Saturdays through April 23, sugarcoats nothing.

The hardships and perils of pioneer life are presented starkly. It is agonizing to watch Pa steer the covered wagon, held together with twine and pegs, onto makeshift trails that had to be cleared along the way. What do you do when it rains? What do you do when your wagon wheels are sunk so deep in the mud that they cannot move? What do you do when your children look at you, cold and hungry? What do you do when two cultures clash?

The original series, not to put it too finely, sucked.

When you think about it, the Ingalls family were life's losers. At one point they find the ideal plot to homestead and the government forces them out, having signed a treaty with the Indians to give the land back. Another time, everything's going along fine, the crops are looking great, the weather's terrific, when all of a sudden they hear a loud buzzing, the sky turns black and all their hard work is destroyed by locusts.

Then there's the saga of The Long Winter. The family moves into town to wait out the winter. It's snowed so hard that the trains can't get through to deliver provisions. So each day the family wakes up, Pa goes to feed the animals using a rope to guide him to the barn, the rest of the day is spent sitting in the dark. At some point, Ma takes out the coffee grinder and grinds up that day's portion of food--which consists of the seed corn they had planned to plant in the spring. Will the seed corn get them through the winter? When will the weather clear enough to allow the townspeople to dig out the train tracks. It's probably the grimmest children's story I've ever read. Yet the Ingalls never let misfortune get them down. They keep plugging away, taking life as it comes.

I'm glad to see TV is giving them their due.

Via Powerline.