Is This Seat Taken?: It's Never Too Late to Find the Right Seat

By Kristin S. Kaufman

“Now, what do I do?!”

I dare say, there is not a single person who at least once in his or her life has not faced an unexpected situation, a newfound reality, a daunting challenge, or veiled opportunity and not wondered what to do. You may feel that you have made poor choices, that your opportunities have passed you by, or that you’re playing musical chairs, the music has stopped, and all the seats are taken. 

This book is for those individuals like you who have come to a fork in the road, chosen a path, and found themselves twenty to thirty (or more) years later in a destination they didn’t quite recognize. But the stories are relevant for anyone, at any age, at any station in life who has awakened and wondered what they are going to do next or how will they move forward. I want to offer hope, inspiration, and applicable lessons as derived from the lives of well known, and not-so-famous men and women who found new and unexpected success—by many definitions—late in life.

My hope is that these remarkable transformational stories will light a spark—whether you are twenty-five or sixty-five—to take back the reins of your life and become clear on exactly what you are going to do now and how you wish to contribute to the world. The music has not stopped, and there is still time to find your seat.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group
• Release date: Jan 13, 2015
• ISBN: 9781626341661

Book preview

Oliver

Laura Ingalls Wilder

Published Destiny

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It is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all.

—Laura Ingalls Wilder

Most of us know of Laura Ingalls Wilder through her best-selling series of books, which chronicled her pioneering childhood in the late 1800s. The books were so well loved that they were ultimately made into the television series Little House on the Prairie , which was a staple in most households from 1974 to 1982. What you may not know is that Laura’s life was not always the charmed childhood depicted by actor Melissa Gilbert.

Her seemingly idyllic life began in 1867, in a rural area of Wisconsin, where her first book Little House in the Big Woods was centered. In her early childhood, her father, Charles Ingalls, settled in Indian Territory, on land not yet open for homesteading. This experience formed the basis for the Little House series. In the subsequent years of Laura’s childhood, her father’s restless spirit led them on various moves. From Wisconsin, they moved to Walnut Grove, Minnesota, and then to Burr Oak, Iowa. In 1879, Charles Ingalls accepted a railroad job, which took him to the eastern Dakota Territory, where he and his wife, Caroline, resided for the rest of their lives. There the Ingalls family watched the town of De Smet literally rise up from the prairie.

Once the family was settled, Laura was enrolled in school, worked several part-time jobs, and made many friends. Two months before her sixteenth birthday, Laura accepted her first professional position, teaching three terms in a one-room schoolhouse. She did not particularly enjoy teaching, but from a very young age, she felt a responsibility to help her family financially. As one can imagine, wage-earning opportunities for women in those days were limited. She not only taught school but also worked for the local dressmaker and continued her own studies in high school.

When she was eighteen, Laura met and fell in love with Almanzo Wilder, a bachelor pioneer, who was ten years her senior. At this point, she stopped teaching school and continuing her own studies. This was a pivotal juncture, as she never graduated from high school. They married and achieved great prosperity on their homestead claim. Their prospects seemed bright. They moved to a new home just north of De Smet, and began their life together. A year later, she gave birth to their first child, Rose.

Though their married life began with great promise, the first few years came with many trials. Almanzo became partially paralyzed from a life-threatening bout of diphtheria. He eventually regained nearly full use of his legs, but he needed a cane to walk for the remainder of his life. This setback, among many others, began a series of disastrous events that included the death of their unnamed newborn son, the destruction of their home and barn by fire, and several years of severe drought that left them in debt, physically ill, and unable to earn a living from their 320 acres of prairie land. Many of these trials were chronicled in Laura’s manuscript, The First Four Years, which was discovered and published in the early 1970s, after Rose’s death.

In 1890, Laura and Almanzo left De Smet and spent time resting at his parents’ farm in Minnesota before ultimately deciding to move to Florida. They sought Florida’s climate for health reasons, yet they were both used to living on the dry plains and ultimately wilted in the heat and humidity. After a very short time, they returned to De Smet, rented a small house, and began to rebuild their lives. Almanzo became a day laborer and Laura became a seamstress at a local dressmaker’s shop. Their hope was to earn and save enough money to once again start a farm.

A few years later, the hard-pressed and financially strapped young couple moved to Mansfield, Missouri, using their hard-earned savings to make a down payment on a piece of undeveloped property just outside of town. They named their homestead Rocky Ridge Farm. It consisted of forty acres and a windowless, ramshackle log cabin. The couple’s climb to financial security was a slow process. Initially, their only income came from wagonloads of firewood that Almanzo sold for 50 cents in town, the result of the backbreaking work of clearing the trees and stones from their land. The apple trees they planted did not bear fruit for seven years. Barely able to eke out more than a subsistence living on the new farm, the Wilders were forced to move into nearby Mansfield, where they rented a small house. Almanzo found work as an oil salesman and general delivery man, while Laura took in boarders and served meals to local railroad workers. Their future was uncertain on many levels.

Not too long after the move, Almanzo’s parents paid their daughter-in-law and son a visit and surprised them with the deed to the Mansfield house they had been renting. This was the economic jumpstart the young couple needed. They sold their house in town and used the proceeds from the sale to complete Rocky Ridge Farm. They moved back to the farm permanently. What began as about forty acres of thickly wooded, stone-covered hillside with a small log cabin evolved into a two-hundred-acre, relatively prosperous, diversified poultry, dairy, and fruit farm and an impressive ten-room farmhouse.

The Wilders were active in various regional farm associations, and they were greatly respected as authorities in poultry farming and rural living. This recognition led to invitations to speak and share their knowledge to various groups around the region. They had achieved a great level of success, by many