Walnut Grove, Minn.-Residents Joseph and Trudy Coulter wish that their neighbors had started being nice to them before they packed their entire house in preparation of their relocation in light of the mistrust they recently experienced.
Area farmers found themselves upset when Joseph’s return from Minneapolis with seed corn was delayed. Unbeknownst to them, Joseph had suffered a terrible accident as he headed back to Walnut Grove with the wagon load of seed. With their fields plowed and the unforeseen delay, the men found themselves with no choice but the obvious: hang out outside the mercantile and bully Joseph’s pregnant wife.
“You can’t tell me you wouldn’t have done the same,” Mr. Kennedy remarks. “Life is nothing if not a string of rash overreactions. We can all be high and mighty like Ingalls.”
As Trudy Coulter recovered from the fall she suffered as a result of running away from the farmers’ bullying remarks, Charles Ingalls, area man who is known for solving everyone’s problems, found Joseph and discovered his horrific accident. Once Joseph returned to Walnut Grove and recovered, he declared that he “wanted nothing to do with Walnut Grove or this part of the country.”
“I had just remarked to Trudy that everything was packed and ready to go,” Joseph remarks, “and then Charles Ingalls shows up and asks me if I want to change my mind. Well, no, I didn’t think so. He said he wanted to show me something, Trudy and I step outside and find our neighbors plowing our field. I guess we’re friends now.”
While the Coulters are willing to forgive the impatient farmers, Joseph notes that the timing could have been better.
“It’s not that I want to complain after they’d plowed my field for me, but it just would have been really great if they had decided to be nice to us before we packed everything up,” Joseph explains. “It’s nice that the field is taken care of, but who is going to unpack all of our stuff? And what about Trudy’s doctor bill?”
At press time, Mr. Kennedy was impatiently awaiting the next time he could behave rashly.