The ‘Little House’ books gave me a place to escape. This New York farm took me there for real.

The ‘Little House’ books gave me a place to escape. This New York farm took me there for real.

Holding a crystal prism up to my left eye, I moved the glass so that the image gave me the illusion that the furniture in the room had disappeared. It was just light refraction, but I hoped it might help me slip through a wrinkle in time. I was trying to leave 1984, trying to escape to 1870.My house in 1984 was full of screaming, thrown dishes, and beatings. A Victorian-age farm in upstate New York, or another in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, sounded…