dear miss webber

Portion of a 1962 letter from Rose Wilder Lane to Clara Webber, the Pomona (California) Public Library's children's librarian from 1948-1970, in reply to questions about the Frank Cooley family from On the Way Home:

...George, the younger [Cooley son], was his mother's pet, pride and joy. Paul and I found him hard to bear. Once, when the Cooleys were spending the day (Sunday) with us on the farm, I was about eleven and we had moved from the log cabin to a one-room and attic frame house (now the kitchen...); we children were playing by the cabin beyond it, as seen from the house, and for some reason which I now forget, George was unendurable. I picked up a piece of 2x4 left from the building and hit him over the head. He fell and lay motionless. So Paul and I went down by the spring and had a happy time wading in the little creek, catching crawdads deftly behind their big claws and looking closely at them before carefully letting them go again; watching snakes and frogs, etc. etc. all that morning. When we were called to dinner we went happily in, and when asked, "Where is George?" I candidly replied that I had hit him and he was lying out there behind the cabin. Paul and I were astounded by the grown-up reactions to this simple--and, to us, satisfactory--fact...
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:04 PM