I remember the first camera I ever saw

This is Faster Hanna Carlsson and one of the playhouse pictures she took.
The photo of Faster Hanna says it was taken in Minneapolis :)

"The first camera that I ever saw was Faster Hanna’s. She was my

Mother’s Faster and she had come to visit from America. She took a picture or two of us in front of the playhouse. I think I’m about four years old there. AnnaLisa and Karin, our cousins from Rimforsa, are in those pictures too.

Tekla Carlsson

They must have come along with Faster Hannah. Hanna had come to visit her sister who lived in Turnvik outside of Rimforsa. She came to prepare herself to move home. When she got back to America, she got everything packed and came back and lived the rest of her life with her sister Tekla. Neither Tekla nor Hannah had ever been married. And what a treat it was when Margaretha and I were set on the train to go to Rimforsa and they met us at the station and we walked to Turnvik. We spent a whole week with Faster Tekla and Faster Hannah. They waited on us like we were princesses. Coming from a big family, we were used to waiting on ourselves or doing things to help others out.

We almost didn’t know what to do with ourselves. And Faster Hannah let us look at things from America. She had one of these viewers that you put two pictures in side by side and through the viewer they look three dimensional. Oh we thought that was the greatest thing.

One of Farbror Folke's pictures.
Left to right on the bottom step are
Margaretha, Mom and Henrik.
In the middle is Karin. The back
row has Brita, AnnaLisa and Sara. 

The next camera I saw was Farbror Folke’s. He brought it with him when he came home. It amazes me now that I think about it how he was able to afford a camera. And he had a car! Someone must have given him the car in one of the congregations that supported him. He took a picture of us kids on the front steps once. Henrik and I are sitting on the lowest front step. Of course it was hard for me to be still long enough to take a picture, so I’m sitting crinkling my skirt in my fingers and digging with my feet in the sand. He also took a picture of the older folks, Mama and Papa, Midi, Hildegard, Ragnar and Farfar. And there stands Margaretha in front. She wasn’t supposed to be in that picture but she was curious and just a couple of years old. I think Henrik snuck in the middle there too somewhere.

Somewhere in my photo albums I have pictures that were taken by a photographer who went around the neighborhood and took pictures of people. So there lined up in front of the barn are Ragnar who’s holding Grålla. She was a grey mare and grey is grå in Swedish so that’s how she became Grålla. In his other hand, he holds a horse named Bläsen. The white mark on a horse’s face was called a bläs and this horse had a big white mark so there he got his name. Then there was Farfar holding Gulli. Gulli was a golden mare with a black mane. She was a brood mare and had foals ever so often. She was such a gentle nice horse that any of us

kids could ride on bareback. We did this even before we were big enough to get up on her back by ourselves. Someone else would lift us up and we would hold onto her mane. Then there's Henrik holding Flora which I think was just a nice horse name. Then there’s Dad with Ayax. Where he got his name I don’t know but he was a son of Gulli. Then there stands Mama and she’s holding Lennart on her arm, and he can’t be more than a year or two old. Then standing a little in the front her, there is Margaretha and I. And I’ve laughed looking at this picture so many times because as a small child, I was always pretty shy. I didn’t like to have to stand still and look up at some man I didn’t know with his black box, so I look so troubled in these pictures. Then next to me stands Margaretha and she smiles and poses even though she was only three or four years old. I thought she was such a pretty little girl. I’ve laughed at that picture over and over to see my frown and her smile.

We also have a picture from that same day of the family in the yard in the front of the house. Ragnar and Papa look like they hadn’t shaved that day. Hildegard and Midi are in it. Mama is sitting holding Lennart in her lap. Brita and Sara are dressed in black dresses with pearl necklaces. They must have been going somewhere or coming home from somewhere; I don’t remember all those details. I think that might be part of why I was somewhat unhappy that day; I was stuck at home as one of the 'little girls' not old enough to dress up and go along."