Benjamin Cohen-- Percival (issac's) father essentially he is the make version of harriet oleson-- loud, obnoxious,opinionated, always has to have things his way at be right. devoutly jewish, doesn't like anyone who isn't... he is also proud.
he and his wife come to walnut grove to see percival, meet nellie and be their for the birth of nellie's baby he and harriet constanly butt heads. he gets mad when hears that his son is going by percival.. starts ranting and raving... the parents are constantly fighting made nellie cry and pissed percival off.
Harriet wanted the baby to wear nellies christening dress but, he had a fit saying the baby would be raised jewish.. he chastised harriet for allowing willie to have milk with his dinner.
finally a crazy compromise is reached where if the baby is a girl the baby will be raised christian, and if a boy the baby will be raised jewish..(techinally speaking tis is wrong as the child is the religion of the mother, so either one would have been christian.)
he openly prays at sabbath service that the baby be a boy.. has he and Percival finish prayers willie runs over and tells them the baby is coming.
as the four grand parents and percival wait in the restaurant for the baby to come-- finally a cry is heard and they are happy to be grandparents Doc baker comes down and tells everyone the baby is a girl! Benjamin looks disappointed as everyone starts to celebrate Caroline yells for Doc baker to come quick ! Percival starts to follow him up the stairs and he tells him "stay here!"
everyone freaks out that something has happened to the baby, benjamin blames the praying for a baby boy. then a cry is heard- they are relieved and harriet freaks out against nels shoulder that something must have happened to Nellie!
Caroline comes down and tells percival that its a boy, and that nellie is fine, everyone is confused and asked why dr baker said a girl.. and Caroline tells them that Nellie had twins!!
The babies are name Benjamin and Jennifer and Percivals dad fawns all over the baby boy and barely acknowledges the baby girl. and of course when they toast the new arrivals Harriet says to Jenny and Benny- which sounds cute and he has a fit and yells loudly - BEJAMIIIN!!!!!!
The young "men" in this episode. were teenage boys, that were unruly, mean, tried to disrupt school, picked fights with students, the teacher, the towns people. one even gave Mary a black eye! a couple of the others tried to put their hands on Ma, and when Pa found out he was livid and crying angry tears.
they we rude and disrespectful to adults, and their Pa's were proud of their behavior. they changed their tune when Mary fought back and took one of the punks out with her lunch pail and her fist if im not mistaken.
at sunday service things came to a head when they boys and their pas showed at church and someone took a swing at Rev Alden! he put the guy in a chicken wing and he and the menfolk led them all out of the church.. i don't remember if they were taken to nels"s ice house to wait for the sheriff or if they were marched out of town completely, but they definitely got what they deserved!
Miss Rachel Peel... oh lordy, was she something else! Mary was brought into teach in a very small communtity in the backwoods called- Willow Run.. Miss Peel was the community leader, and she was overtly religious, opinionated, and vehemently against there even being a school! she claimed to make people well with her "potion" and had such a hateful attitude towards school that she made Mary's life a nightmare.. convincing the man of the family she was staying with that she was evil and no good, so he wouldn't allow his daughter or wife to talk to Mary, she claimed Mary also has "the stench of the devil"(in reality what she smelled was the clean smell of Mary's soap and water)
she even took to calling Mary a jezebel! (which means a shameless, immoral woman) and Mary was definitely not either of those things.
it also seemed like alot of the people in the community feared miss peel.
Nancy Oleson: the nasty, EVIL, adopted daughter of Nels and Harriet.. she is awful from the word go-- running from the orphanage, biting nels, lying about her birth mother(who i believe actually was said to have died in childbirth)
and she was no better when they got her back to walnut grove, Harriet turned her in to a mini Nellie, dressing her and doing her hair just like Nellies. She was nasty to her classmates, lying, using an overweight classmates naivete to her own gain, locking a female classmate in the ice house, so she'd get the lead in the school play over her..
she dumped a pot of ink on willies head after he called her out for not standing in the corner for throwing spitballs like the teacher told her to do..
she got pissy when she couldn't read her sunday school essay at the schools commencement night (her essay was entitled- "why jesus loves me more than most" )
she sucked up to adults any chance she got, if she didn't get her way she would throw epic tantrums where she would scream and break things.
When Nellie came home to visit(it was her 18th birthday i believe) nancy was rude to her, wouldnt change the sheets on the bed and got mad cause she had to share her bed, then she got jealous of the attention Nellie was getting when she came home and the fact that they were having a party for her(um, hello, it was her birthday!) Nancy ran away from home.
once she was found she lied about how scared she was , and other things and harriet wanted to reward her bad behavior with a new doll... at the end she still lied about how much she would miss Nellie and flat out told willie she lied.
Peter Lundstrom: Nels Oleson's nephew if i remember correctly. lives in the city, his father is very wealthy and has little to no time for him.. he is kicked out of school numerous times for various reasons including stealing chalk.. so, his father sends him to stay with Nels and Harriet... almost immediately Harriet tries to coddle him and get her kids to act like him.
he gets bullied and causes problems at school, and even uses a chair to break all the windows at the mercantile! (at this point nels should have taken the strap to his backside in the shed repeatedly)
Nels decided that Peter had to earn the money himself to pay for the new windows, so he sent him to stay with the ingalls and help them with farm work- which ultimately taught him a valuable lesson, and helped him reconnect with his dad, but not before harriet had a fit because he had blisters and callouses on his hands, and he told her that "uncle charles" said "better blisters on your hands than on your behind!
'
Brenda Sue longsworth: an old flame of Almazo's retturns to walnut grove and has an air about her just cause she has had a song published.. she flirts with almanzo, but, he tells her he's married. after meeting laura briefly, she makes a snide remark to him about her. Laura fears the worst and jumps to conclusions that Almanzo is having and affair with Brenda.
Brenda for her part does nothing to deny the accusation and set the record straight and Laura snaps and they get into a fight in the middle of the street. eventually everything gets sorted out, and Brenda and her song are never mentioned again.
Christy Norton-- Almanzo's snooty stuck up date to the circus in the episode "annabelle" she acted though Laura was beneath her when laura was working on a dress for her to wear for the date. she treated laura very badly, and even stiffed her on part of the money she said she would pay just because she arrived 2 minutes late with the dress.. " said something about not playing with her and called her a little girl"
Laura gets her revenge at the circus, and it is AWESOME!
Hester Sues beau... a funeral director who's first name escapes me, but his last name was hertzell.. he was a real JERK!! he didn't like the blind school or the blind children, he didn't want Hester Sue to work after they married.
None of this was known to Hester Sue, till they were at the altar, and farmer Joe keegan who also did handywork at the school, walked over to the church with the children to sing for Hester Sue and her Beau.
her Beau had a huge fit and everything came out into the open from his own big mouth - and Hester Sue.. well, lets just say she was madder than a wet hen! she shut him up real quick, gave him his ring back and left him standing at the altar as she left to go back to the blind school with Joe and the children.
Mr Applewood: a fill in teacher in walnut grove-- he was AWFUL! he always spoke harshly to the children and whipped their hands with his pointer stick for the littlest thing, just because he could .
some how he was convince laura was the ringleader of the troublemakers, and treated her very poorly-- when Pa found out he confronted him and had a few choice word for him and snapped his pointer stick, and told him he should be thankful it wasn't his face! throughout the whole episode i don't think he ever smiled or had one nice thing to say to the children.
Miles Standish-- he was a deceitful, nasty hotel owner in Winoka.. Charles and Caroline worked for him and he treated them poorly... the poor school children were putting up fliers for a 4th of july celebration.. and he treated them kike dirt because the were poor, ripped the fliers down and said it was his town.. then lied to Charles and Caroline about what happened so they punished laura. anyone with money could do no wrong in his eyes.
When a recovered Alcoholic(played to perfection by ray bolger) won a large some of money( a huge amount in those times) he and his cronies got him drunk and then standish cheated at poker to win the money from him.-- he also stole the fireworks for the children's 4th of july celebration..
karma got him in the end when his own son and a friend inadverantly lit the fireworks off in the room in his hotel he stayed in and the hotel caught fire..
the fire dept was short funds which was his fault for being cheap, and the whole town including the garveys, and ingalls laughed and watched the fireworks show.
Nellie Oleson-- She was definitely the "mean girl" of her time- she was forever lying to get her way, stealing candies from the jars in the mercantile, causing trouble with laura and her classmates, being horrible to students that were "different"(olga who had a leg shorter than the other and anna that stuttered)
she along with her mother tried to weasel in and take almanzo from laura(backfired horribly-- cinnamon chicken anyone? LOL) she purposely made laura fail her first attempt at he teaching certificate as well.
anytime she didn't get her way she would throw a fit! she was even caught cheating on a test after other students she tried to get to cheat alerted the teacher.
she even faked paralysis after horse riding accident! she definitely should have had a few more trips to the woodshed!
She spread gossip and rumors, about everyone, when walnut grove got a telephone, she eavesdropped on the private calls of everyone in town.
When the town of walnut grove had its first attempt at an actual newspaper she of course made herself a reporter and lurked around looking for gossip and untruths to report, even going so far as to insinuate Charles ingalls had been unfaithful to caroline(he hadn't) and trying to claim a new german family was completely illiterate after their son beat Nellie in school spelling bee.. (it finally came to light that they could speak english and german if i recall correctly and charles called harriet out on it.)
when the blind school burned down, she wanted the new school named after her rather than the victims of the fire..
she as definitely "one of a kind!"
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