The first time I went to the doctor

Kjettestorp in winter

"The first time I remember going to the doctor was when I was seven years old.  It was during the winter, and the hill right by the schoolhouse was icy. We had our sparks and sleds that we rode down the hill there. I was still in the younger class and I had my sled, and I came pulling it up the hill, and I guess I looked down and the ground and didn’t really look where I was going. Well, here came Stig on a spark, and he had Greta on the front as a passenger, and they ran right into me, onto my right leg. I flew forward and hit my head on Greta’s head, and I bit my tongue really hard. I was bleeding quite a lot. The teachers got a little angry with us for doing it. Greta was a little hurt too, but there wasn’t as much blood on her as on me. The woman teacher sent me with Brita down to the washhouse to wash me off. Then they made me sit for another lesson because there was no-one to go home with me. The teacher even asked me if I wanted to read, but my mouth was so swollen inside that I couldn’t even speak. I just shook my head, and she left me alone then.

Sara and Henrik i Herrefall,

the heroes of today's story

Brita and Henrik were in the upper grades, so they stayed longer than we did. It was left to Henrik i Herrefall and Sara to get me home. I couldn’t walk up that hill. I was too dizzy, and my leg was too swollen to put weight on. They didn’t want to try to put me on my sled because they didn’t think I could sit up, so they borrowed a spark from the girls in Blåsten. Even so, the first hill there was so icy that they couldn’t walk behind the spark and push me up. They weren’t strong enough and their feet just kept slipping. Henrik went into the woods and found a long stick that they put behind the spark. Then they could walk on either side of the road where there wasn’t so much ice, and they pulled me up that way. By this time I was so cold that I was shaking, and they had worked so hard that they had gotten so warm, so they took off their coats and put them on me. Going this way they got up all the steep hills.

This is what a spark looks like :)

Finally when we got home and Mama saw us, she got so upset. She bundled me into bed and don’t really remember any more then. When I got home to Mama, I relaxed and didn’t worry anymore. I heard later that they loaned Henrik a spark so he could take the big road home and go down and pick up Greta and give her a ride home so she didn’t have to walk.

When Dad came home and saw what had happened and then Brita and Henrik came home from school and told their story, Dad was really upset, too. He went right down to the schoolhouse, and he scolded the teachers. He told them they should have sent Henrik home to tell him what had happened, so he could come and get me. Dad was really angry I guess, and my teacher felt so bad that she came to our house every afternoon and gave me lessons and tutored me so I could keep up with the class.

This is Dr. Julius Levenhagen (also spelled

Lewenhagen). He came to Kisa around 1900.

The next day after this happened, Dad got the sled out and took me to the doctor. That was the first time I could remember going to the doctor. Even though I was so miserable, I couldn’t help but feel a bit special because it was just me and Dad. He carried me into the doctor’s office. I was a big kid of 7; I hadn’t been carried in years.  It turned out that my leg was not broken, but there was a crack in the bone. The doctor ordered bedrest for several weeks. To treat the bite in my tongue, he put compresses dipped in some kind of liquid both on top of the tongue and underneath. He sent home a bottle of that liquid to Mama and she was to change the compresses a couple times a day. The doctor’s name was Levenhagen."

More stories from Kjettestorp School

Kjettestorp School 1936 -- if you recognize more of the students,
please let me know and I'll add them in when I update this entry :)

"Our school days always started with a hymn. The teacher played the pump organ and we sang. Then the first lesson of the day was a Bible lesson, bibliskhistoria. We studied bible history and we memorized Bible verses. That was one of the subjects. When we got into third grade, we started to learn handicrafts. Knitting was the first thing for girls. I remember the first potholder I knitted; it got so crooked and looked so bad.

Then we were going to knit socks, long socks almost up to the knee. It went alright until I got to the heel. Then the teacher ripped it up and ripped it up. Finally she said, “You’re getting so far behind. You’ll have to take this home and do it.” I cried all the way home. That was a disgrace to me to have to take it home when the other girls didn’t. When I came home crying, Mama asked what was wrong so I told her and she said, “Brita, you sit down and knit the heel for her.” Brita was five years older than me and she was always really good at handicrafts too. When I came to school the next day, I was scared to death to show the teacher that heel, but she called me up and took one look at it and said, “You didn’t do this.” I said, “No.” She wanted to know, “Well, who did it?” I quickly said, “Brita did but Mama said she should.” I guess the teacher had enough respect for Mama so she said, “Sit down and continue.”  I wanted to go home and give Mama and Brita big hugs. And now that I think about it, I might have told that story already. Oh well.

This is Brita, Sara and Henrik in, I'm guessing, 1922.

I know it doesn't really fit with school days, but I just

found it and it's too cute not to share!

The other girls, especially Greta i Herrefall and Karin i Blåsten, they were very good at handicrafts. I have a pillow still to this day that Greta made for me. She probably was through school then but she gave it to me for my birthday one year. Greta died when she was 22 years old so this pillow means something special to me.

Erik Johansson was strict but he was fair. Everybody liked him. I remember some of the big boys when they were going to stand up and answer a question, they had to stand up and stand up straight. They had a habit of leaning on the desk while they answered, only half standing up, but with the new teacher they had to get used to standing up straight while they answered.

All the parents of course loved this teacher, but in time, he moved and we got Gunnar Brolin. He is a teacher who I did not like very much at all. He thought he was going to be so modern and show the country folk how things were done. He and Dad were on two different sides in terms of politics. Dad was in the Bondeförbundet, the farmer party, which was a very conservative party and Gunnar Brolin was in Folkpartiet which was more liberal. He tried in several ways to get after Dad and at times, it seemed like it was trying to get at Dad through us kids. He didn’t give Lennart the grades that Dad thought he should have, so Dad went and wanted to see the work that Lennart had done and asked the teacher to explain the grades to him. Well, however it went, the teacher said, “Oh, I forgot to count this paper and this paper” and he gave Lennart better grades. He had to erase the old grades. Dad said he didn’t want that on Lennart’s records as he went through life.

I remember one time we were supposed to write essays. Magistern put several different subjects up on the board, and we had to choose one to write about. I chose “Tre Dagar i Uganda.” “Three days in Uganda.” The funny thing, of course, was that I knew nothing about Uganda except that it was in Africa! I had to study up and find out about it in some books.

When Henrik was still in school there and Erik Johansson was our teacher, the kids were going to draw a map of a country and Henrik drew a map of Mongolia. Farbror Folke had brought home several maps and Dad was always interested in maps, so he and Henrik had studied that map. Well, Henrik put in a river that Magister Johansson didn’t know existed. It wasn’t on his map. So Henrik had to bring Farbror Folke’s map to school in order to get graded because he had something that was more up to date than the teacher. Magister Johansson thought that was pretty special.

This is some of Mom's schoolwork from first grade.
It's a little embarrassing that Mom's handwriting
was better when she was six than mine is now!

When I was in the lower grades, the good students sat in the back and the naughty ones or the ones who couldn’t concentrate, they sat in the first row. I had always been in the back row; I had never sat in the first row. Well it happened that I bended over across the aisle to whisper something to another girl. The teacher was helping another student in that row and she turned around and told me to sit up and not whisper. Well, it went a little while, and whatever it was I thought I just had to whisper it to this girl and the teacher caught me again so I was told a second time. I just couldn’t keep it to myself, so it happened a third time. Then the teacher said, “Now you will go and sit in the first row.” I had to trade places with a kid there. Oh how embarrassed I was. I thought I might just melt through the floor.

One time in Margaretha’s class, the teacher was trying to explain something about history. I don’t remember exactly what the lesson was about but it was something in the past. She tried to get the kids to understand what BC, Before Christus, meant and how long ago that was. When she got done, a little girl held up her hand, Brita Forsby, and asked, “Was fröken born before Christus or after?”

Another time, there was a little girl in Lennart’s class named Karin i Grönliv and they were going to write and essay on a subject they chose. Then they were going to stand up and read it to the class. This little girl got up and read, “Once upon a time there was a cow-catcher who went out to catch cows.” Then she sat down again. Just imagine how the class started to giggle."

Kjettestorp School

This is a photo of a Karl Lindvall from 1919
that I found on kindabild.se. He's identified
as a school teacher from Kjettestorp School!

"My dad went to Kjettestorp School. In those days, it was just a one-room schoolhouse and one teacher. His name was Lindvall. I think it must have been around 1926 that the new school was built and classes started. They were going to try a new form of schooling. They added to another part onto the old school and that became the apartments for the teachers. On one end lived the teacher for the three first grades. That was a woman named Fröken Stenmark. All teachers were called Fröken then. That’s really a name for unmarried women like “Miss,” but all teachers were called that even married ones. All male teachers were called Magister. So on the other end of that building Magistern had his living quarters. The new school had two rooms on the ground level. It was built on a hill so the ground level up there was like the upper story. There was another level below then where the teachers had a washroom and where there was a room for the girls to learn cooking and baking and such and there was a woodshop for the boys.

Karin and Mom

Kids didn’t start school until they were 7 years old, and the two first grades went every other day. The third grade went every day. They went to school on Saturday too. Some kids had so far to walk, miles; there was no school bus or cars to take them to school. That’s why the littlest ones only went every other day. They started up that school system out in these little country schools. Well, Henning i Blåsten had decided that Karin would start when she was six years old and I begged and begged to start then too. Karin was born in March so she was a little older than me, but Dad finally gave in and let me start when I was six. The three first grades went in one room with Fröken Stenmark. In the other room, there first were four other grades and later five. There they had one teacher.

A real big change came about when a teacher came who was named Erik Johansson. He was young and had new ideas about teaching. One of his new ideas was that we should have a play every year. The one I remember the most I think was the first play because it was so completely different from anything we had done before. This play was called “The Princess Who Didn’t Want to Eat the Oatmeal Soup.”

The play was going to be performed out on the playground. The playground was a flat space that they had dug out from the hill; they had leveled it off. That was west of the teachers’ house. Right by the house there was a rather wide ledge and that was going to be the stage. Down on the playground then they set up benches for the audience. They put up canvas around the stage and a set of pulleys so they could pull back the curtain for the different scenes. We got dressed up in our different costumes inside the teacher’s house. His wife was really involved in everything at the school and some parents were in there too helping with the costumes. They put up some steps next to one window and that’s where we could go out when it was our turn to get on stage. We came in on the stage from the side.

Queen Sara and King Gunnar

Sara was going to be the Queen, the mother, and Gunnar Kranz was going to be King, the father. So then we needed to know who was going to be the Princess? Almost every kid said, “Greta! Greta!” “No,” the teacher said, “Greta is too nice, too kind.” Greta was quiet blond girl with a natural wave in her hair and blue eyes. She was a really pretty little girl, but she was too nice and good. The teacher said, “I think we should have Karin for the Princess.” This was Karin i Blåsten, so she was the Princess. Then of course there were all kinds of other characters, butlers and kitchen maids and such, but Greta i Herrefall was going to be a cat and I was going to be a rabbit. I think they had one more animal but I don’t remember who that was.

Tant Tora i Vimantorp and Mama brought their sewing machines down to school and they sat there sewing and making costumes for all these people in the play. They made me a rabbit costume. It had a hood on with big ears so only my face showed, and I had to learn to hop like a rabbit. Greta’s cat costume the same shape as mine, but she was black and white and had cat ears. Even our hands were inside these costumes. Greta had to learn to meow in the right way.

So one scene was out in the forest and that was my scene. The Princess cried and ran out there in the forest and told the rabbit that she didn’t want to eat this soup. This play was so much fun, and people came from everywhere! The whole playground was full of people watching this play."

Ordspråk, Correspondence Courses, and War Knitting

Thor and Elin sit while the kids stand behind them in this
photo which I'm guessing is from the mid 1940s.
Left to right, standing, are Mom, Brita, Lennart,
Sara and Margaretha.

"In those days, people made up all kinds of entertainments for themselves. There was no television. We didn’t even have a regular radio. We didn’t have a radio until after the war. Dad was the king of telling stories in the evening, but Farfar was the king of ordspråk. Farfar had so many ordspråk; I’m not sure what the best English translation of that is: sayings? Proverbs? He always had something to say about every situation. Whenever we had been somewhere, to church or into Kisa, when we came up the hill and we could first see Kjettestorp, he used to say, “Bort är bra men hem är bäst.” “Away is good but home is best.” Another one he used to say when we came home was, “Egen härd är guld värd.” Härd is an old Swedish word for a fireplace or hearth, and to have a fireplace, you’d have to have a house, and gold was always a precious metal, so the meaning here would be “Having your own house is worth gold.” Then there was this saying, “Tala är silver. Tiga är guld.” “To speak is like silver, but to be quiet is like gold.” He might have said that one to me quite often because I tended to talk a lot when I was a kid. He used to say, “Vilken vart du vänder har du endan bak.” “Whichever way you turn, your backside is behind you.” That’s the one that Bill used to call “Herman Enders.” He thought the last part of it sounded like a name. When I would say that around the house, Bill would ask why I was talking about Herman Enders again. I’m sure I can’t remember all of Farfar’s sayings now but I do remember the day that I discovered that a lot of Farfar’s sayings came from the book of Proverbs in the Bible. Some of them he made over a bit or turned around.

Sara Boberg, 1939

When we were growing up, there was no high school in Kisa. Sara and I were the only ones who really wanted to go to high school, but we would have had to board with a family either in Vimmerby or in Linköping. That would have cost quite a bit of money and Dad said that he couldn’t afford to do that for all of us, so then none of us could go. Instead, we studied through correspondence classes. Sometimes Sara and I took a course. We registered in one name and we would both study it. Sometimes Margaretha joined us too.  Margaretha and I took typewriting through a correspondence course. Sara was probably the smartest one of us all. When we grew up, Lennart used to say, “Just think what would have happened to the world if Sara had had the chance to go to college!” 

During the war years, that was something else. Women used to form groups, and we knitted for the soldiers in Finland during the winter war when Russia attacked Finland. There were quite a few Swedish men who formed a volunteer army and went to fight. We knitted special gloves that had a hole on the right pointer finger, so they could take their finger out and feel the trigger on the guns, and then put their finger back in the glove again. It was wartime but still we had so many funny stories and funny times. Ingrid i Gräsvederna was real impulsive. Some of the girls put notes in the gloves they knitted with their name and address. Ingrid didn’t do just that. She put a note that also said, “If you want to, you can write and thank me.” Oh she was teased about that forever."