AVL’s Note: This week, I re-read Farmer Boy to remind myself of the natural wild edible plants that they ate in the late 1800s. I read the last two pages of the story and they hit me like a ton of bricks and brought me to tears, for so many reasons. For background, Almanzo’s father has just been asked by Mr. Paddock the Wheelwright if Mr. Wilder would apprentice his son, Almanzo, to him to be a wheelwright. Here is the conversation between Mother, Father, and nine-year-old Almanzo that evening at their dinner table:
“Paddock makes good money,” said Father. “I guess if truth were told, he banks more money every year than I do. He looks on it as a good opening for the boy.”
“Well!” Mother snapped. She was all ruffled, like an angry hen.
“A pretty pass the world’s coming to, if any man thinks it’s a step up in the world to leave a good farm and go to town! How does Mr. Paddock make his money, if it isn’t catering to us? I guess if he didn’t make wagons to suit farmers, he wouldn’t last long!”
“That’s true enough,” said Father. “But….”
“There is no ‘but’ about it!” Mother said. “Oh, it’s bad enough to see Royal come down to be nothing but a storekeeper!
Maybe he’ll make money, but he will never be the man you are. Truckling to other people for his living, all his days…He’ll never be able to call his soul his own.”
For a minute Almanzo wondered if Mother was going to cry.
“There, there, “Father said, sadly. “Don’t take it too much to heart. Maybe it’s all for the best, somehow.”
“I won’t have Almanzo going the same way!” Mother cried.
“I won’t have it, you hear me?”
“I feel the same way you do, ” said Father. “But the boy’ll have to decide. We can keep him here on the farm by law till he’s twenty-one, but it won’t do any good if he’s wanting to go. No. If Almanzo feels the same way Royal does, we better apprentice him to Paddock while he’s young enough.”
Almanzo went on eating. He was listening, but he was tasting the good taste of roast pork and apple sauce in every corner of his mouth. He took a long, cold drink of milk, and then he sighed and tucked his napkin further in, and he reached for his pumpkin pie.
He cut off the quivering point of golden-brown pumpkin, dark with spices and sugar. It melted on his tongue, and all his mouth and nose were spicy.
“He’s too young to know his own mind, ” Mother objected.
Almanzo took another big mouthful of pie. He could not speak till he was spoken to, but he thought to himself that he was old enough to know that he’d rather be like Father than like anybody else. He did not want to be like Mr. Paddock, even. Mr. Paddock had to please a mean man like Mr. Thompson, or lose the sale of a wagon. Father was free and independent; if he went out of his way to please anybody, it was because he wanted to.
Suddenly he realized that Father had spoken to him. He swallowed, and almost choked on pie. “Yes, Father,” He said.
Father was looking solemn. “Son,” he said, “you heard what Paddock said about you being apprenticed to him?”
“Yes, Father.”
“What do you say about it?”
Almanzo didn’t exactly know what to say. He hadn’t supposed he could say anything. He would have to do whatever Father said.
“Well, son, you think about it,” said Father. “I want you should make up your own mind. With Paddock, you’d have an easy life, in some ways. You wouldn’t be out in all kinds of weather. Cold winter nights, you could lie snug in bed and not worry about young stock freezing. Rain or shine, wind or snow, you’d be under shelter. You’d be shut up, inside walls. Likely you’d always have plenty to eat and wear and money in the bank.”
“James!” Mother said.
“That’s the truth, and we must be fair about it, Father answered. “But there’s the other side, too, Almanzo. You’d have to depend on other folks, son, in town. Everything you got, you’d get from other folks.
“A farmer depends on himself, and the land and the weather. I you are a farmer, you raise what you eat, you raise what you wear, and you keep warm with wood out of your own timber. You work hard, but you work as you please, and no man can tell you to go or come. You’ll be free and independent, son, on a farm.”
Almanzo squirmed. Father was looking at him too hard, and so was Mother. Almanzo did not want to live inside walls and please people he didn’t like, and never have horses and cows and fields. He wanted to be just like Father. But he didn’t want to say so.
“You take your time, son. Think it over, ” Father said. “You make up your mind what you want.”
“Father!” Almanzo exclaimed.
“Can I? Can I really tell you what I want?”
“Yes, son,” Father encouraged him.
“I want a colt,” Almanzo said. “Could I but a colt all my own with some of that two hundred dollars, and would you let me break him?”
Father’s beard slowly widened with a smile. He put down his napkin and leaned back in his chair and looked at Mother. Then he turned to Almanzo and said:
“Son, you leave that money in the bank.”
Almanzo felt everything sinking down inside of him. And then, suddenly, the whole world was a great shining, expanding glow of warm light. For Father went on:
“If it’s a colt you want, I’ll give you Starlight.”
“Father!” Almanzo gasped. “For my very own?”
“Yes, son. You can break him, and drive him, and when he’s a four-year-old you can sell him or keep him, just as you want to. We’ll take him out on a rope, first thing tomorrow morning, you can begin to gentle him.”
– Laura Ingalls Wilder, from Farmer Boy
