Midi, Thor and Ivar

Ivar, Midi, and Thor Boberg, taken somewhere around 1900 

"Then there was Midi. Midi was the oldest one. She was a quiet, unassuming person, very kind, but she had had some kind of childhood disease, measles or something like that when she was little, and she lost her hearing. 

She did have some hearing but you had to talk loudly when you talked to

Midi, Hildegard and Mama, mid-1940s

her. At one time, she had a boy friend who wanted to marry her, but Farfar said no. She had to stay home to help the family. There were all those other little kids, and he couldn’t handle it all with Farmor sick and then Farmor died, so Midi stayed there. She offered her life for her siblings. She worked hard her entire life as I was growing up at Kjettestorp.

Then there was dad. We always called him Papa. Papa was a strong, kind

Thor Boberg in 1912, at 20 years old.
In Sweden, all men are required
to do some military service.

man. I can’t remember ever him spanking any of us, and I’m sure we deserved it sometimes, but he had order. He just needed to raise his voice a little bit and look at us, and we calmed down, and I should know because I was probably the liveliest one of them all. Papa was a smart man too. He had six years of schooling in Kjettestorp school before he took over the farm.  He wanted to take a job at the postal service but Farfar said no. He was the oldest boy and he had to stay home and help with the family. Dad had sometimes also thought he wanted to go into the cavalry but that was no too, of course. Dad liked animals. Well when Papa and mama were married in 1917, dad said when he had been married for seven years, he had less than when he got started. That was those hard years when there was not much money around and his equipment started to need replacement and he had a family to feed.

Well, then I should tell about Ivar. Ivar was a jolly, happy man. He married a girl name Adela. She came from a farm named Ö. It’s the shortest name of any place I’ve ever known. Ö means an island, but Ö that’s an O with two dots

Ivar and Adela Boberg

over. She had a brother named Enar and he had a wife named Ella and they were not too far from Kjettestorp so they used to come and visit. They had two girls around the age of Brita. The oldest I think was Brita’s age and the other a couple years younger and then when the girls were 17 and 18, around there, they had two little boys, one was SvenErik and I don’t remember the name of the other one. Anyway Ivar and Adela had three kids. I don’t remember where they lived when they were first married.  But later they bought a farm named Sjökumla close to Motala. They had three children: Ingegärd, Torsten and Åke.  That whole family was Pentecost; they belonged to the Pentecost church in Motala when they moved to Sjökumla. Åke was a missionary to Congo at one time."