Walnut Grove, Minn.-Recent reports from the small farming community indicate that Albert’s morphine addiction had a silver lining: getting Charles Ingalls a better job.
“Now, I don’t want to make it sound like I love the fact that Albert had an addiction,” Charles clarifies. “I just think that there was a good thing about it, and that is that when I brought Albert to Walnut Grove when he was having problems–mind you, I didn’t even know it was because of morphine at this point–I lost my job at the clothing store. I never really feel like I fit in there, you know. Ha, fit in at a clothing store!”
Charles laughs uproariously at his pun for several minutes before continuing to explain the benefits of Albert’s addiction.
“Well, after I lost that job, came to Walnut Grove and picked up working at the mill like i had never left, well of course I knew that wasn’t permanent,” Charles comments. “So when we go back to the city and I was looking for work again, I landed this gig that led to me being this buyer for this agriculture company. This really is the best of both worlds–I can do work that is related to farming, without actually having to do the farming myself.”
Among the numerous benefits of his new employment, Charles is delighted that he can still employ the occasional “dumb farmer” speech as needed.
“I’d like to think I can be persuasive without it, but it’s nice to have that option in my back pocket,” Charles confirms.
At press time, Albert’s impending death was uniting the town of Walnut Grove to form a co-op, rendering the dumb farmer speech Charles had prepared useless.
