For the retro-Geeks among us (And you know who you are)

Wired has a short piece entitled Pa Ingalls - Pioneer GeekDad?

Somewhere along the line, some folks may have gotten the idea that Little House on the Prairie is “just for girls” and that the plot mostly involves Laura Ingalls running through the tall grass in a calico dress.

But I’m reading the book to my boys right now and there’s a lot more D.I.Y. than dresses.

Much of the book is about Pa building the house. This guy was a serious maker — to the point of being a little crazy: “A man doesn’t need nails to build a house or make a door.” Would it have been that hard to throw a box of nails in the Conestoga before heading West, Pa? {Yeah, I know. Stand by. DWD}

This is life before Home Depot. Basically, he’s got the few hand tools he brought on the wagon. No lumber, just trees. No bricks, just rocks. No cement, just mud. And so on and so on. And if he can’t get the project done before winter, it’s going to be one heck of a cold spell.

But Pa gets down to it. We hear in detail how he split logs into planks using a system of wood blocks, an axe and an iron wedge. We see the house go up log by notched log. And then the chimney stone by stone.

How do you make a door that locks without nails, a lock, a knob, a hinge or any other hardware? “First he hewed a short, thick piece of oak. From one side of this, in the middle, he cut a wide, deep notch. He pegged this stick to the inside of the door….”

The article has a couple of illustrations from the books; many of the commenter talk about reading the books when young boys, and also point out that the "box of nails" crack is unfair--I would have said "ignorant"--as nails were expensive back then, not yet mass produced*. Yet another points out that, while later books in the series did turn into "girl stuff" as Laura aged and started writing more about clothes and boys, one of the later books in the series, Farmer Boy, was about the life of Laura's husband Almanzo (?) Wilder growing up on... Well, you figured that out, didn't you?

And, as I noted before Pa Ingalls was the grandfather of one of the "Mothers of Libertarianism", Rose Wilder Lane. Rose Wilder Lane - Wikipedia; Rose Wilder Lane: Three Women Who Launched A Movement


(Anyone know if buildings were really burned down to ease recovery of the nails? Don't remember where I heard that...)