Osa Johnson and The Wilder Life

today and kbr presents to kansas pioneer women revisited i'm kate mcintyre will meet those said johnson explore filmmaker and aviator who traveled to some of the most remote parts of the world in the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties will also visit with wendy mcclure author of the wilder life about her humorous adventure in the lost world of little house on the prairie but first we'll travel back in time to the year nineteen thirty eight to meet mr johnson bright sunlight by first person historian karen rader speaker ray has portrayed johnson that's a tough one and living history of dance for several decades dustin johnson and her husband martin spent much of the early twentieth century exploring places most americans had only heard about including kenya congo in the solomon islands they're numerous movies and assist but i'm married adventure popularized cameras safaris and generating interest in african wildlife and wildlife conservation oh so welcome thank you

how many young women from shame you come to this life of adventure well as i said in my book it myriad adventure though i didn't exactly know what when i married him and i married martin in nineteen ten i was all of sixteen years old and had he had known him less than six weeks i imagine he came to she needed to show his the film from his earlier trip with jack london are and i met it wasn't particularly impressed with him he was handsome but they were interesting and that i did my best friends mary hears projectionist and she invited me down to independents to delete her new husband and i went there and spent some more time with martin i suppose he was interested because for the next few weeks to get coming up to shouldn't spend time with me in that i was eleven his mother inviting me to independents to meet the rest of the family so it was my

parents' permission i'd been trying to independence and spent a weekend with martin's family and for the eu the weekend he had asked me to marry him without quite knowing what i was doing when i say yes oh when martin johnson made his mind up to do something he did it right and martin and i were married before that weekend was over we called my parents until we had done my father was furious demanded that i return home immediately but rather than do that since i was only sixteen people trying to kansas city missouri to be married a second time then and only then did we returned to shoot and my father's source mr moore well young fellow you're god are you see that you take care of her yes sir martin said we're not sure at that point i had any idea exactly how martin would take care of me tell me about your first big trip with martin let me give you a little bit

of a background in that because we didn't just take off the trip but martin had a dream of traveling he wanted to use so we can leave the rest of our life on this one project wonder that it can't keep showing these tire also uncovered over again we travel and i travel to exotic places and other people don't have a chance to see so that we can bring films of the people in the annals of the landscape back and i could always thought i would sell them like my parents in have a house and raise a family began to realize that my dreams might be a little too small so martin's idea was that we sell everything to have cleaner wedding presents and take off to travel for a couple of years in the united states showing his jack london films so we can make enough money to travel abroad what we did get it didn't pay off exactly as we intended it didn't find quite enough money

only tried calgary canada tried chicago we were in new york is struggling in new york but fortunately martin met a man named martin beck who was with the orpheum traveling vaudeville comedy invited martin to join that way we would have this devolving expanded advertising opportunities or feel as well as the other acts to draw people in the next two years doing that oh it's time for young will rogers couple was with us in cheek sales and his wife were really young people said grange time but after two years we had enough money to try a trip to sales linda sow thousand dollars for enterprise weeds tell the kids is to say goodbye to our families who were less than enthusiastic martin's father lecture him how did you take that title and my father said something of the same but our grandmother my grandmother's it good for young people to get out she was a minority opinion that

we took her opinion took off to california had a visit with jack london and his wife charlene and we were often sell cds in search of temples and did you find out we did indeed if we did indeed get her in ireland and integrity is called home where we had been told panel it was still practiced so much and i hired boat crew take as they are landed and as we landed a ragtag group of natives medicine the beach and told us that their chief would like to do this ok we said sir martin county's camera gear that our bags of trade goods and try to follow these natives up a winding dangerous hot ground trail for what seemed like hours in clearing where there were more meetings and scientists are still there are a few moments in our

of the jungle stepped most magnificent man i ever seen he was tall muscular noble looking clearly a chief and this was not a party chief of the of the big numbers tried i heard the noise behind me realize that the work of the camera martin had phil neither party's interest he said to me but the easier for a spouse or open to take lights so i start opening up by reagan handing him beads and outgrow something that about the rare not the cartel but for me my army straight to my skin color didn't come on that surprising to a greater piece of raw bark weren't supporting surprise return ping me not just my head and look at the roots of my hear billy graham i hear truly a variety look the back of the neck finally at this time are stopped filling in which to rally and grad parties headed a great big

handshake oddly shook his hand and turned to shake my hand and i felt relieved until his other hand close over my big rally in grand report and i thought i was afraid just live in a british frigate sailed into the bay and markets are screaming man oh man or implying that the boat had come to rescue us and they disappeared i turned round martin gradually they can walk slowly without fear hour inside of the indians that we send to run crowell reading through the jumble of priors than vives resting at times like my heart was beating eleven and eight drums finally release date on to the beach just as the party's been emerge behind his there is the practice into the boat i asked lester he'd the bottom of it ah never been so glad to get back to our main ship

and even lauren confessed to being afraid of that in fact he wrote in his diary that night now that i've confronted the big adventure it terrified me were going home never looking for cannibals again which is exactly what we did but we got home and thirty the party was far better than ever and green what made a feature film of a consumer either party's scowling face was looming in theaters all over the united states well with all the glory we forgot about our plates never go searching again and that's the beginning of our nearly twenty years of adventures so us a return to see that tried again we do that we return in search of them and we did we did finally find them and film from afar what we thought was real chemical activity some academics in america questions about that but we were the ones who were there and we think what we saw was

chemical activity but at least we were involved in it when i went to get his this tie you traveled also took you to africa as well oh africa yes their first trip fare in nineteen nineteen to kenya british east africa russo and chanted by that layer animals in the people that wonderful photographs that we were going home dr phil mckinney in return for a long stay and heard of a place called like paradise which was supposed to have been completely unspoiled know like noon over there and so you'd be able to capture the animals and the people in there i'm spoiled environment but to stay for four years would take far more resources than we had had before but we were fortunate to meet karl basically

overnight museum of natural history who believed in a project and agreed to sponsor us and perhaps even more and more fortunate made the friendship of george eastman of eastman kodak company and he agreed to underwrite a trip to provide us with all the film weekend he and the very best our photographic equipment so with the help of those two wonderful man we set off a lover like paradise for four years on the best equipped safari we had never been on it a catchy those years in a book all four years in paradise into it was a paradise for most people back in america this was the first time they'd ever seen such footage of african wildlife absolutely actually some still photos but moving photos yes so excited to travel into a town and to set up our equipment in and to see the look on people's faces in that was martin's

dream martin said we are so fortunate and been luckier than other peak one we've had the opportunity to see things that most other people will never see some people traveled to africa but they were the very rich they travel further personal reasons most often self glorifying trophy hunters that's not what martin and we therefore that we were the experience to be able to share it with others and to help others understand the glory of this world and your career along with martin's yelled and how many pounds but we have nine feature films and a number of short films that we put together with outtakes and of course we were still photos as well we tried to always get two films out of every trip one feature regular film and then one more documentary that it would be shorter and then the photographic exhibitions but let me be clear that although i did take some of the photographs my job really was to care for martin martin was

an artist and he was an idealist martin loved to travel and he loved foreign places and i love martin and my job was to take care of martin so that martin could do his job and that's what i do it despite warnings from people all over reach africa despite warnings from our home people who'd chastised one hundred kg derek take this young and soft woman into those into those places but i said to martin neither of you i intended to go the whole way with you and that's where i'm going the whole way no matter where no matter where and that's what i did any regrets of course i'm a real moment i grew tired of the heat and a humility and in sex sometimes i longed for a soft bed the creature comforts of just having my hair and nails done and little things like ice cream

in the middle of the serengeti in the summer is still images so do you have a bowl of ice cream but i was also takes actually where i wanted to be at my husband's side of sharing his work with him and helping him do his work every day with martin was an adventure the beauty of faraway lands and excitement of working with him was all i could wanted and all the happiness i ever dreamed of it we're just content with hopping in someone else's airplane and going on one of these adventures i understand you also became a pilot yourself morning i bought flew in there they added in an entirely new dimension to our travels in nineteen thirty four we've bought two sikorski aircraft was learned of light enter we made its sixty thousand mile aerial safari over africa lending simply on

planes there were a few airstrips but very few we would just fly into we found a place with a legally and we said ok and sweeping photographs from the air i really liked some of those best when someone we didn't have a pilot with us and i defy with martin and i would keep but i would do the photography well martin was flying boats over the huge crowds throng herds of elephants and willoughby said you can only get from here i'm just fine what a pioneering spirit you must've had and i didn't think of it that way i suppose i was sorry it was the first white woman to go many of the places that i went but you know underneath it all probably there's hardly a woman with a

stronger homemaking instinct i have and hardly a man who needed at home more than one so my job was to take her home with us and make sure that martin had the comfort he needed and the good food he needed to be able to do his work so i suppose from other people's perspective i would be a pioneer but i thought of myself as wharton's partner and an important life work in between all these trips where was home for you ohio was always kansas for both us never lived here for any length of time but between that which we always returned home to kansas my parents and his parents were both here for many years we both had friends who had lived here for many years and we returned to reston refresh ourselves with family and friends in good kansas cooking and so kansas was was always home in so i'm

living in new york now and i don't imagine that however live in kansas again a little piece of me is always in the prairie speaking of family you had martin had no children of your own no no we didn't have perhaps that's one regret i know we didn't have children you know these last few years we've talked of adopting and maybe that we should slow down a little bit sad thing could ever give up or to slow down a little bit and to perhaps establish a home here in the dumps and children but of course that didn't work out either and the past year your life has taken a really dramatic change tell us about the events of nineteen thirty seven and how that changed her life will and flying sixty thousand miles across africa and thirty thousand miles across borneo

martin was killed in a domestic flight landing in san diego perfectly good weather plane crash took martin's life i myself was gravely wounded turn your own home to shooting to bury him when i stayed while to recuperate but we learned the new film so i couldn't let martin's were go and vinnie so i've put myself back to work finishing martin's work and i suppose i'll after think of what life will be without him but i can imagine can without continuing martin st martin's commissioned to travel and photograph most of all the places they've traveled around the world do you have a favorite oh yes kenya whether it's the serengeti whether it's mount kilimanjaro the wonderful native people decide in

particular be fronted us and admired as i listen to their lives sometimes less of this film celebrations that barely been filmed before the magnificent scenery the magnificent animals a part of our hearts will certainly always be in kenya is there another area you're like that you'd like we'd ask you about well i just want to say that morning i we're always driven by two principles and the first of these was there we would always get the truth and we were also intended to give a shot hunters and trappers would come to us and say well we've got a lion in that air travel here and we think we can get some of the natives to but in the spirit of martin would have nothing to do with that resolve to have if we couldn't get the truth we wouldn't have anything at all

and the other thing we've got to do was to travel as observers when we're here to change things and this was sometimes hard for me when i saw the way that women were treated particularly in africa when they seemed to have to do almost all of the work their child a child a child even twenty year olds look twice that old i sometimes would break the taboos and set them free and of course their life need is what seems to be on his own destiny and so i restrained myself from that and we stuck to our principles also in it and they'll photograph animals to have to capture animals not to bring back alive or not to being back his trophies the caption with the camera and we have that we couldn't always stick to that even the greatness was correlated lead to lose you know there are times when amy ellis dangerous

during mating season there are taking their young they're hungry sometimes just when you surprised though and then it's creating case of your life are they yours and you sometimes have to act plus we should realize that when you have your band mirrors and that anger scouts that it's your job to feed them they are forbidden by law to carry guns and you have to provide food and i discovered what had a very hard time with it he could hardly bring himself to see in animals it wasn't charging him and so to discover that i was actually a better shot so i was the phone provider on on safari in the navy sometimes found that a little harbor i thought my job is to take care of that means huge gains there so beat and our own and there're seem to understand that it was an inside even

put me on the table weaver for always of course to be capturing them in photographs is they really were i'd been visiting with explorer aviator filmmaker and share new native posa johnson author of i married adventure oh so that suspense that a pleasure thank you for visiting with us today think it's been a pleasure gaza has been visiting with me in the year nineteen thirty eight through the magic of radio and the talent of historian karen ray topeka karen i ask you to take off your clothes the hat and step out of character how did you become interested in our search and come to portray her our house it is the third character i guess i did for the arctic in this humanities council and do it to perform them as part of utah and a bit of the puzzle for a couple of reasons number one people kept asking me to and number two i remember her stories

as a child and i had loved some of her animals stories there's one about a giraffe that was a big favorite of mine and of one about an elephant called toto and she actually rescued in the wild and stories about their and when i signed with my mother about it my mother actually remembered seeing rosen martin and they were developed rock stars or what an opportunity when i submitted it and that's about all i knew about the manager stories and children my mother remembered them but there's a wonderful museum ingenuity and deliver very gracious to me i spent alone over a year researching there and they would have to win their trust and very protective and video director of the museum admitted to be feeling almost like their mother and they were afraid that i wasn't easily do in there as the mice know this isn't

much raking trip i ever try this character so i'm not going to try someone i think is an idiot but i do need to get at the truth of who oc is a scholar and the reason is the narrow road to walk but i didn't win them over and there's a very generous and very supportive and see manuscripts they are the unpublished manuscripts including one by chick's ailes who was hurt and martin's girlfriend and dung that was good because it provided an exterior view most interestingly in terms atticus humanities council they probably were less interested in the house and in the end that many of the other characters are done because she's wearing a storyteller than a philosopher or a historian on the other hand jazz greats decrees detail end

she probably had certain know certainly had the most interesting life of of them all and just seem to have loved every minute of it so that makes it intrinsically for oh say johnson's life was very different than the women of kansas and the women she grew up around do you think he had a sense of how what a pioneer she was by the time you know it's interesting question and she doesn't really address that i've read so far as i know everything she's written i certain of everything she's published only she has to know no one else has been to africa and no one else is flying planes over uncharted territory but she doesn't you seem to really think about that i know that

she's doing what she's doing because she's martin's wife and she's having a window a lot of fun and she's with the man she loves and visiting a question that i don't know that she's very very philosophical and i don't even know that she's very introspective but she just excess and enjoys and fulfills her mission which he feels is caring for us but legally for her that gives her a lifetime of adventure but i don't think that he thinks well i'm doing what nobody else has done wonderful paul thank you so much for sharing her with health care and it's always a pleasure to do is again i'd been visiting with karen ray of topeka portray air of adventure as the johnson know what we visit another campus pioneer wendy mcclure retrace the life of laura ingalls wilder churning your own butter grinding her own wheat all while wearing a calico bohnet

she's the author of the wilder life my adventure in the lost world of laura ingalls wilder i caught up with wendy at the johnson county public library welcome wendy so how did you come to revisit the whole little house on the prairie scene well first i had to reread the books which i do for you over thirty years i search across the first book accidentally after it turned out that in my parents cry too and they're having a moving sale and so it added i read the rental house the big woods i was really reluctant for years of the book's actually because i'm a children's book editor and i was always are afraid that it wouldn't hold up that you read a lot of historical fiction when you're an editor and you get used to say what the jars are an idea was really worried that it wouldn't be as wonderful they're remembered but the wire and little house in the big woods it really was so i mean seen as telling my report from crescent

spokesman in its focus so great and a couple weeks later he came home with a box set of the reader's digest blue paper backs of the little house books and i was i thought of the time actually well that's nice enough to know i'm not that we read all of them at once but then i did you didn't just read them you became kind of obsessed with yeah how did that happen well i think he was nearby natural you know survival curiosity out at the same time i was reading the books i was also looking things up on the internet they were you know just serve a new world observe opened up to me now i'm liam when you're when you're older and you're able to serve look at things more critically and and also to say it like he ok what we're really is going on and in wisconsin you know it and i go there and then i found out when i stirred new research that indeed in all these places i didn't know that as a kid

so arm that releases are struck me right away and then nine i also just b he really preoccupied with the idea of ok come on to recreate some of the stuff so let's see what it's like to make long where brett ellis it was like to churn butter and i found out soon enough that there was a wonderful book out there called the little house cookbook by barbara walker who also having are really credit her with and that the instinct of going back and re creating all these all these things and that's just such a wonderful way to engage the books so i'm like that that cookbook and i didn't i did lots of things when he can i have you read from the very beginning of the book but i was born in eighteen sixty seven analog haven't work and wisconsin and maybe you were too we live with our family in the big woods and then we all traveled in a covered wagon to indian territory or pa built as another house on highlander the prairie grasses swayed right we remember the strangest things the way robertson well

henson snakes response the cabin to escape a prairie fire or else how it felt when the head of the neil slip through a whole month symbol and stock was hard we want it all but we didn't we moved on to minnesota and south dakota i swear that's true we were grown mr a living grew up and grew old and passed on and then she became a part of that somehow she existed fully formed our heads her memory swimming around in our brains of their own or that's helpful to me at least that have still feel sometimes that i really think about it i mean i don't believe in reincarnation and obviously laura ingalls wilder did either or now with your respectful protestant singing off key it would introduce upbringing is just how real the little house books was for me as a kid they gave me the uncanny sense that it experienced everything she had that i had nearly drowned in the same polluted creek endured the grasshopper played eighteen seventy five and lived for the hard winter it's a classic target delusion i know and am i typically get the way i tend to believe that the fantasy was mine

alone at this magical past life business was between war and me and no one else surely i was the only one who does profound mind meld with her that allowed me to feel her phantom pigtails to get my scout i had to be the only one who's into the books that much and oh my god i want to live in one room with my whole family and have a pathetic corn cob doll on my own i wonder where congress on bonnet or rather i wanted to know where a cow whose son died the way laura did letting it hang down her back by its ties i wanna do chores because of these books carry water churn butter make head cheese alarm dead rabbits brought home for supper i want to go out in the backyard and just i don't know rich stuff of trees or approve things from the ground and bring it on site in a basket and had my parents a month late and what to harvest there are a host of other things from books that i remember i wanted to do to such as they can be by pouring service now make bullets by

point lead so a scene with tiny i'm perfectly straight stitches had a man's hand spam a corset waste which at the time didn't seek creepy at all pristine sticks its salt pork it got pork hippo suckling pig as a pet chase a horse and or arcs into a barn stall right on the back of a pony just by hanging onto its main feel that you know wind it's not but i really want to make bold to race riding ponies it's just that i want to be in more world and do them you just described my own childhood perfectly if i remember reading this book and thinking gosh why don't we have a corn cob dolls anymore and edna wealth something as mundane as making my own better setting the table for our family dinner didn't seem like an exciting so are somehow going out and fetching water did see some some are some urban challenged to seem so unsatisfying after reading those books i don't know really exactly what it is as

someone who writes children's books for a living do you think that there is but this is an indication of how well written the little house books are that it pulls you into this world in how sort of magical way day i think so definitely you know and there's a lot of historical fiction out there a perilous because you it's has it's the literary equivalent of a historical village and you know and even know we're certainly did that in the books by giving these wonderfully detail procedural passages about the churning butter or around or how to make smoke medicine are making cheese burger any those things there is there was also something about the perspective that was so immediate you weren't really reading just about the character you are really with laura that there is it was just a point if you come you really felt like

you were her head and i think that the writing so in your re creation of war world youth churned her own butter you grind of your own a week you bought numerous as the son but i mean you can't go out in a wagon you know all kinds of things that the laura would have died in the in probably a slightly more authentic fashion a day did your family saying you know i'm going to try it should be said that i didn't do you know anything really truly immersive and actually i think that's that was kind of it was never the point it had to do but the sums are off the grid experiments to go live in a cabin without electricity because that would seem like an endurance event and people's family it is legit and in to our you know our worlds are so different and i understand that and to do something like that would

be a guess at about something else but i like to serve doing these little things and they were just like little portals you know into it and to get these moments in the books is so well i think you were pretty supportive of you know chris might they can say you know how could grind the wheat with me and i mean there was always acknowledge that about meant that this was a little a little weirder we're doing ok speaking of chris i have to say in reading this book by the end of it i love it he's great vets are camping out in the why didn't because that's probably right so out in this met south dakota there's a place called ankles homestead which is actually that ingels homestead land and one of things you can do is is spend the night and eight sort of modified sheepherders wagon

that looks like a sort of a viral glass covered wagon with a wooden wagon bed and it's like a very crude camper inside and we spent the nightmare and it was kind of a rainy night and kind of a rainy night of the raid and then and then there was hail you could hear on the hard top and really one of the most spectacular lightning storms ever and we were very aware of the fact that were this little wooden box there's knowledgeable about right beneath us as an ally in the ground right record because there's a little knoll golts you know when the pirate asked how biden anything you're missing really about lighting at it and you know where we're singing someway different things with it for him to die a week i was gonna happen to the wheat because there is a beautiful wheat field out there and then

there was a hail storm it's of course and you know there's something always happens to the wheat in the la sparks so it out and it was you know the lightning struck nearby it was it was really you know it was white and experience and ease you know everyone thinks that you go out of service you know seeking adventure like that that you know we kind of got it in spades that night and they're like this is like this is where i ask for and when it was all over korea said whoa what about the crops usually i think the funniest line in the hope that the first thing the next morning it is we as we we got up and we knew what we went over to it was fine it turned out but it did give you probably a sense of how delicate that balance in a limit any moment that crop could be could be gone again and it is your livelihood of the year one of the things that i think you and i have in common is that we both love these

books as a kid and didn't actually watch the tv show and i'm guessing that many of our one of our listeners did fall in love with a series of books initially i'm guessing that there's also a pretty good contingent of people they came to the book through the tv show glee to me why it is in your circumstances that you didn't watch the tv show is a kid i was really play it when i was looking back on first started doing this research i was wondering i love those books what an ever watch the tv show and i went back and i looked at the tv schedule from something like make at wine and realize that lil house the prairie was in the same time slot as delete here in cincinnati which of the show my family watched so some family friendly programming an alley beside you know we watched why anderson in howard it and it did reveal kind of an

uncomfortable tension between were followers of the tv show ends of the art and history of the book there's always a little dance when you for our first talking to someone and you say you're terrible house in the prairie and they say i'm telling us the prairie two and you still have to feel each other out just make sure you're talking about the same little house on the prairie because if they start saying oh that episode where albert was addicted to morphine and they're very disappointed that that didn't happen in the book said and he had to say are you kidding at the same time i was really surprised at how many people i really love that the books and the tv series equally that was you know they're desperately purists there when people who owe say an hour it had an eye out for the tv show at all but there are people who understand their two different things and i love them both and back the surprise me one thing that really surprised me in reading your book was the attraction that the whole house of prayer work world holds

for people who run school where there is a home school curriculum that's based on little house on the prairie so that's certainly part of it and as far is living history it them in the books are really wonderful for that you know we would all kinds of hands on stuff you can do that really lends itself to a home schools buy it they i think you know there is there's definitely percent of the population out there who have i'd dissatisfaction with the modern world i guess and i'm in the little house books that world becomes really idealized to them and i think you know instead of returning to the outfit to the little house books you know as a curriculum you know it's sort of there their way of increasing that i don't know that she set out to create this idealized way world that there are issues right yes he raises and that maybe in a tv show or in boston or a little better or maybe not actually

watched the tv show big gun do you think the lesson i'm asking you to go out of your head you know do you think laura ingalls wilder would be surprised to certain we see her world in some kind of idealized way or do you think that was maybe her intention in writing the books there was that we all the agenda and that was both on her part and then rose her daughter who helped write the books and you know they'd ever represented a picture of a family always have probably wouldn't last word when in reality he didn't yeah didn't quite do that they they backtracked sometimes sometimes say they fell on hard times and had to live with other family members or give up farming in and do something else there's a whole a period of a couple of years that lowered input in the books where they lived in baroque iowa and he ran a hotel and i have the hate how i am you know having to deal with tyler's there was a bar room there was a saloon

explorer and i don't think the family like it very much but they served it to get by an edge really interesting knowing that many going back to read the little house books overseen a little town on the prairie where there's talk about war going to town and maybe working and mussels not hotel and it's really interesting that you know she has not saying they're considering you know it and in real life she was working in a hotel when she was ten years old and it was not so there is that there was definitely some some glossing over and there is actually also some a little bit of a i think a political ideology just you know the sense of people pull themselves up by their bootstraps also emitted from the series is sound any mention of them getting government assistance when in reality we're a guide funding to attend

i were called to the blind so you know those things worse or deliberate choices and the books are definitely crafted though i think it's i don't know mom would you think about the sort of family family values i mean she might she knew she might not disapprove i guess and it's it's it's a somewhat different agenda than i think what to laura was put out not that much different but a little bit what persons you're in kansas right now the part that will probably be the most interesting to our listeners there's the part where they're in campaigns and i was surprised in reading your book well and clear where exactly they are and to tell us what happens when they get to campus well done it there's what the book tells you and unless there's real life mom in real life past seems to have been very deliberately squatting i'm tom's osage reserve land and probably in the hopes of getting cheap land

anticipating that eventually will be open for how starting so that's the reality in the book they are going out and if there is much much more ambiguous situation where if it's a really interesting for me was a trail by the more so that a lot of people people like to think there's this deadly multiple perspectives there's there are the neighbors who you know who feel the indians just need to be driven out altogether or worse just eliminated and then there's there's part was more tolerant view and then there is there's laura who serve as the obvious question which is why are we on their land anyway why did they have to move west when it's their land and you know it's a very it's a very pointed question and i think you know for all the legitimate criticism that the book has hurt her trail of

native americans i think and it was it was a good bet that you pose that question and then does it the way the book serve resolves this is a soldier comes out and tells part that he does serve happened to be you know over the line and that it's some sort of a government you know bureaucratic mix up and so in the end the governments to blame and because it's a no add to all this there's all this ambiguity but that at the end because when the government which is now because i am in reality i think that they're not quite sure why the ingalls family i left the territory by one thing that is true is that they had sold a cabinet couples can send to go and to missouri and kansas and then the the man who had bought the cabin from and could keep making payments

so they realize that there's a chance to go back and reclaim that happen so there was a lot of reasons why they went back and then there were also death were rumors that the government was going to come and pick them up the land but there was never i think a case of assault are coming and asking them to leave and there was also a little bit of confusion in sort of allan if it is a weird exactly are they and the distances between like how close they are to independence kansas in the book laura says that they sold forty miles from independence reality in reality as they discovered in the nineteen sixties when a research land records and compared them with census records they were forty miles away so they think that laura had misheard the story or misremembered and so it's really just if you look at the earlier additions of the books when you look at the flap copy they say that their oklahoma because that's that would've been forty miles from independence aunts also

where indian territory was so on and that was that was a really sort of interesting little footnote there so you look at that really know where the site was herself as you went looking around oklahoma for at one point in an nineteen thirty or so they don't really know where they weren't really do this but this research the nineteen sixties which actually is also when they when they found out when i began to discover that that the books they were based on an oral appliance but there was love or fiction to them because when they finally add up the years and at the map or would've been two a half three years old at the time and not the older child that she is a reality in the books wendy can i have you create it from the par with are actually in kansas and we're going to visit her site in kansas the little house on the prairie replica captain gets an a for

authenticity a plus really the big woods cabin we'd seen wisconsin had been a tiny splinter was a fair constructed by professionals the kansas capital apply could've been built by while pa the walls are made especially and strip clubs of peeling bark the quarter jurors her rack in the cracks between the lungs are filling with crumbling clay i'd read and then build fallen wars descriptions as closely as possible certainly the door looked like given may provide descriptions of the book with its elaborate let's descriptions to this day i can ever figure out first he hewed short thick piece of oak park says from one side of this in the middle he cut a wide deep notch ipad to stick to the inside of the door up and down and you're the edge he put an outside against that or silver not made a little slot somehow it's so specific it's disorienting one side and a metal up and down a near the edge every time i read this passage i follow along as best as i can and then to completely lost but a look at the door or a facsimile

thereof you'd never guess a good sound so complicated and help a stupid and relieved to see how it works you call the full rope and then this thing goes up the door was low i had a duck a little to go inside the cabin was furnished somewhat there was a primitive bed with a quilt some rough wooden furniture a table with a red checkoff on it just like minded used and a guest but for visitors the mantle held a glass oil lamp and a china shepherd us both of them glued in place and they were coupled enamel ware parts on the hearth and they felt terribly live then something like this could only gesture toward holiness but i liked being there and felt in fact like a playhouse i want to just sit there for a while maybe would reign again and i could listen to the rain on the roof but the rain had stopped for the most part and i could see out the door there to a curtain pulled up along the fence going back to explore the rest the place behind a tiny post office which i found out

when served with a kansas were a couple of little printed signs and smelly cricket posts and beyond them lay the open space of the prairie one sign indicated that george tan the black doctor who treated the ingalls family during the fever in a new chapter of the book and live somewhere off the distance across where the highway now ran in a sign simply said look north and visualize covered wagons coming over the kansas prairie when we do or in locations like that keeps you just look north and to five hundred where you can hear the prairie for the most part one of the wonderful things about seeing these home state says that the landscape is still very much the same and we have to sort of keep our credit for that he really never liked to be anywhere where was crowded and so now these home sites are all up to be that beaten path there's no risk of suburban

encroachment air character like that so it's still there still very much the same so you went to all these different war in those wilder of sites throughout the midwest do you have a favorite or a favorite experience at one of them one favorite experiences when chris and i went to pack in wisconsin that was the very first site we want to and i couldn't wait to get started so you went in the beginning of march else i get out of the courts are cds places and different seasons and we went and he also you know there's not that much there there's a little museum there of course was closed for the season there was a cabinet to go inside to happen but it's a sort of empty inside but then we want to see lake happen which is a lake on the mississippi river and it was still completely frozen and had something like two feet of ice and i realized that it was the same time of year that the ingalls family had driven across

that lake to get to minnesota at the beginning of all house on the prairie land he does this or look across the sea the bank an economist and i just had a sort of feeling that if he does one across you would actually submit be back in the end minnesota it would be on their journey and you know you'd be at seventy and that was that was a really wonderful experience and it was something that i hadn't really expected unite i thought like i'll be nice to be a lot happened that this was something that was that was really wonderful and it was a really great way to start my whole journey of all that laura world experiences that i wish i had had i think at the one that i always wish that i could have replicated was living in a sod house the actual sun house where there's family lived is now sort of just depression in the ground now it's escaped in pellets on the right on the pigs a plum creek and except for the

fact that it's just a dip in the ground it still looks very much like you would imagine that and it's from that from that depression that they can see how big it actually was so as we go into town on a grove and then also in and i'm just mad you can see these replica dugouts and they're tiny village of you like a freight elevator inside an eight hundred changes the story for you would you realize that you know a scene where they're they're making the bottom string for kerry and trying to keep it from her and they just have to turn their backs and in a quarter there was there was no other no other part of the room where they could go and so it exerts a scene kind of absurd you know and a thousand one case where you know i've feel like my my book memories make more sense than the reality when he won passage that i'd really like for you to a close and keep it set up where

you are right now in an md what's about how well at this point we're and in south dakota and we were looking at driving around looking at the homestead land and all places where they'd then and there's a replica shanties were where they lived on the angles homestead land by waves ever seen everything we could that day we were driving around we'd seen the lake where lorne oh man so had had gone riding in their buggy we'd seen the cemetery is in other kinds of things and then we drove a little bit north of town to see the place where a book the first four years of taking place and which was there was really nothing there now but i guess there was such a strange time it are still enlisted a vigilant distracting around and just needing to take it on land and it was really sort of starting to not getting a breakdown

and you know i was i was really really searching after turning back north we finally pulled off the road by the historical marker that designated the low empty hill behind it as rosewater lanes birthplace the site where the water claim shanty had stood we send the car an ear sandwiches sterile s the scrubby cow pasture where lower and al mansour had lived a luckless existence but is also beautiful there are no trees here they look away the country must have looked when the railroad first came through here ever since yesterday would watch the pageant i have a feeling that there are two worlds here one layered upon the other let everyone who came here was always trying to see through one prairie to the other wendy to me they're perfectly summarizes exactly what you were doing in writing this book and going on this adventure hero it was thank you for sharing it with us thank you heard for having me i'd been visiting with wendy mcclure author of the wilder

life my adventure in the lost world of little house on the prairie i caught up with lenny at the johnson county public library in addition to the wilder life when he is the author of i'm not the nummi a columnist for bust magazine and a children's book editor when he also tweets as half pint angles you can find out more at debuted debbie debbie you that wendy mcclure dot net before that we heard from karen ray of topeka portraying explore those to johnson find out more about those search and martin johnson's lives through their many books including owes his autobiography i married adventure you can also visit the martin and olson johnson safari museum in shame to their web site is that you don't you don't you die safari museum if you can answer questions about this or any other kbr president's visit kansas public radio's facebook page and j mcintyre kbr prisons is a production of kansas public

radio at the university of kansas