Storängen and the schoolhouse

"Then there was Storängen. That was a farm a little further away. When I was a kid, there lived Farbror Svensson. His wife had died. I don’t know if she died when one of the kids was born or what happened to her. Living there, there was also a man named Johan. I don’t know if he was a brother to Farbror Svensson or if he had been a brother to the wife. Svenssons had two children Edvin and Gerda. Gerda cooked and cleaned for all those guys. We didn’t know the Svenssons too well. They were so far away from our farm. Us kids didn’t run that far. Edvin later married Lydia Andersson i Mellangården.

Mom and Henrik, about 1926

One thing I remember about Farbror Svensson – one time when I was little, maybe four or five, and it was dark, and I didn’t dare go to the outhouse by myself so Henrik was sent to go with me. The outhouse doors had a hook and hasp on the inside so you could lock the door after you went in, but when Henrik opened the door, a gruff voice hollered, “I am in here!” We got so scared that we ran back into the house. Dad was on his way to figure out what was going on when in the back door came Farbror Svensson. “Scrämde jag barnen?” he said. (“Did I scare the kids?”) He had been on his way home, and he needed to go, so he went in our outhouse. I remember being even more scared to go to the outhouse alone at night after that. And Gerda later got a job as a housekeeper for Stinsen in Kisa. I don’t know what the guy is called who clears the train when it comes in? He meets it with his flag and waves it off again? Maybe the stationmaster? Well, that was a fine title when the railroad was new to be the Stins. The job included an apartment up above the station house and Gerda worked there.

Later, when I was in fifth or sixth grade, the old man had died, Gerda had

The front row left to right are Mom, Gertrud Dahlgren,
Karin Andersson and Astor Karlsson. The back row is
Greta Johansson, Brita Lennroth (probably) and Brita
Nilsson. Tack Moster Sara för ditt hjälp :)

a job and Edvin had married Lydia, so the Karlssons moved into Storängen. Astor’s family bought the farm. It was Astor’s papa, his mama Adel and he had three brothers. There was Arne, then Astor, then Bernt and Nisse. Bernt was about the same age as Lennart and they had a lot of fun together those two. Astor was the same age as me; he was in the same class at Kjettestorp school. In our sixth grade picture, we’re both in that picture. Of course, this is the Astor who later married Margaretha.

This photo is in one of Mom's albums and she's labeled it
"Skolresa," in other words, field trip. 

On the other side of the schoolhouse, there was a house for the teachers.  There were two teachers when I was in school. There was Greta Stenmark.  She had what we called Småskolan, school for the little ones. We went three years in Småskolan. Some kids had so far to walk and they went every other day. There were no school busses of course and not many cars. When a car went by the schoolhouse, we all ran to see. They didn’t go very fast then, so we had time to run to the window and look. They used to say when people came with horses and wagons that some horses were so scared of cars that they’d jump into the ditch that’s next to every road in Sweden. Well, anyway, in the other part of the house lived the teacher for the older kids. When we were in school, there were four upper grades. We went every day and we went Saturday too, six days a week. When my dad went to school there, the teacher’s name was Lindvall. Then came another teacher named Erik Johansson. Then Gunnar Brolin. We’ll talk more about school later."