A Favorite Love Match

With Valentine's Day around the corner, love is in the air. And here at One Potato Ten, we're all going with some literary love. I've chosen to reveal my favorite love match. Granted, this is an oldie but a goodie. A classic love match, I think, and perhaps the first I can ever remember reading. My favorite couple is from a Newbery winner.



Drum roll please.....





Laura Ingalls and Almanzo Wilder!

What kind of a man was Almanzo? A handsome outlaw. "What?" you say, "An outlaw?"

Here's the proof: He went West at age 19. You could only get a homestead claim if you were 21, but he got one anyway.

Yes, Almanzo was a bad boy. And who can resist a bad boy?

Certainly not Laura Ingalls! Especially during the long, blizzard-plagued winter that left them all hungry and , when the trains couldn't make it with supplies, wondering if they'd last until spring. Check it out:

Pa had come quietly into the kitchen and without a word he laid his shotgun on its hooks. No one said anything; there was no need to. Carrie sighed. There would be no venison, no gravy on the brown bread.

So as the people in town were starving, Almanzo and his brother made trips between blizzards to get hay for people to burn in order to stay warm. And then they discovered that 18 miles south of town a settler had a supply of wheat. That was much too far with blizzards coming, but Almanzo refused to let the people in town starve.

So Almanzo and Cap Garland manned up and headed out. While back at the Ingalls' house there was some pining:

All day, while Laura turned the coffee mill or twisted hay, she remembered that Cap Garland and the younger Wilder brother were driving across the track-less snow fields, going in search of wheat to bring to town.

And then a four day blizzard set in.

All the days of that blizzard, nothing more was said about Cap Garland and the younger Wilder brother. If they had found shelter, they might live through the storm. If not, nothing could be done for them.

The romance was almost over before it started!

But they made it, barely, and gave the wheat to the shop keeper, who then decided to fleece the townspeople. But Almanzo wasn't down with that and talked the price down so Laura's Pa could buy some.

And yes, even though there were no lip locks or dating for Laura and Almanzo over that long winter, the seed was planted...