The store and Blåsten

"A little further down the road, there was the store. It was just a little country store, but it had about everything we needed most of the time. It wasn’t so easy to go to Kisa and shop. They’d have to take a horse and wagon and it took an hour to get there. There was a bus in later years. It started in Tranås and went over Österbymo and Tidersrum and Kisa and then it went back later in the afternoon. So even when there was a bus, it look quite a while to get into Kisa. This is why the little store down the road was important to us. It was owned by a man called Anders Karlsson. His wife was named Lily. She came from Vidingstorp. They had one daughter named Maja. She was a year younger than Margaretha but sometimes both Margaretha and I were invited to come play with Maja. And it was so fun. She had everything! And we used to say, “Oh to be you!” and she would say, “I would give away all of this stuff to have some siblings.” She was a lonely child.

Next to the store, in the other house further over, there lived a family

Isidor Lönn, 1938

named Lönn. They had one son; he was named Isidor. They used to say that Mrs. Lönn had been a cook on a ship so Mr. Lönn was not the father of this Isidor. He sort of had the look of a black person: black kinky hair, darker skin, and large facial features. When I was little, I was scared of Isidor. We didn’t see him very often, but we were sometimes sent to the store. I made sure that I didn’t go out of the store at the same time as Isidor was outside their house. I didn’t know any better at the time.

Then when they had drawn in the telephone, they had built in a place there for the switchboard. There was a Fru Andersson who was hired to run the switchboard, and of course, she soon knew everyone around. She even knew where everyone was going. If you called up and said you wanted such and such a number, she would sometimes say, “Oh they’re not home today; they went to Kisa” or somewhere else. Our number was Pinnarpsbaden 3. I don’t know why they called the switchboard Pinnarpsbaden. Maybe that was easier than Kjettestorp, I don’t know. Well, that was just about all of Kjettestorp.

On the other side of this valley, there was a hill, just about like the hill where part of Kjettestorp was on. That hill was called Misterfall.  On the way up to Misterfall, there was Vidingstorp. That was a little bigger farm. In Vidingstorp, the lady’s name was Anna; I don’t remember the husband’s name. They had boys; there was Rikard and Alvar and I think one more, but I don’t remember right now.

Mom and Karin, 1936

When you came up to Misterfall, you first came to Blåsten. That’s where one of my best friends all through school lived. Her name was Karin. I wrote to her as long as I could write.  Her papa’s name was Henning. I can’t remember her mama’s name right now. And they had a gamla Mormor who lived in the kitchen. That kitchen was so dark. There was only one little window. It was so dark in daytime that a kid could hardly see. I don’t know how they saw to cook in there. They had a lamp on all the time, I guess.  Well, in Karin’s family, there were Margot and Ulla who was the same age as Sara, then Karin, then Ingvar who was in Margaretha’s class in school, and the youngest was called Vivian. Vivian was a few years younger than Ingvar. We

Left to right: Ulla Andersson, Gunnar Kranz,

Sara Boberg Bäck, Henrik Johansson Kindeskog

This is their 6th grade photo from 1936.

used to think she was so spoiled because she got everything her way. If she wanted something that the other kids wouldn’t let her have, she screamed. The kids in Blåsten had a lot of toys, but they sat up high on shelves and chests of drawers and they didn’t play with them. Maybe they did play with them when nobody was there, but whenever we were there, the toys were all put up high. We couldn’t play with them, but when Vivian wanted something, we had to give it to her. Papa Henning said, “Låt flickan göra som hon vill. Det de båsta.” (“Let the girl do as she will. That’s the best.”) Interestingly enough Vivian grew up to be a nice person too."