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| Hildegard and Midi |
"Well, Papa had a sister Hildegard.
I’ve talked about how she was crippled from the time when she was nine years
old. When we were kids, Hildegard couldn’t put on her own stockings and shoes
or do her hair. When she was older, she learned how to do her hair in a
different way. She put it up in a net, low on her neck.
In later years, I think I’ve
already said that Midi and Hildegard moved to Kisa and then later, they moved
to Linköping, and they lived in an apartment there that belonged to the
Pentecostal church. The place was called Läroverksgatan. When you came in the
door there, the place smelled of natural gas. We had never had any experience
with that, and I thought it smelled horrible. They didn’t live there too long
before they moved to Kungsgatan 30.
For a while, in Linköping,
Hildegard got a job sewing children’s clothes for a store, but she couldn’t
earn enough money to support herself. She got a pension for sick people because
she couldn’t make enough. Farfar had given her a knitting machine, so she could
knits socks and things like that for people, and she still kept using that
knitting machine, but she still couldn’t really make a living off that either.
Midi worked as a housekeeper for people. Then it happened that Hildegard got a
notice from the county that she wasn’t going to receive the pension anymore.
Well, Papa went to the next meeting for what we would call the county board of
supervisors, the Lanstinget. They
said that somebody had reported her as able-bodied. Dad found out that it was
the school teacher, Gunnar Brolin. He was in the opposite political party from
Dad, and he could be pretty hot-headed. Well, Dad told them that he would be
back at the next meeting and he was. He demanded that at least two people had
to come with him. Midi and Hildegard lived nearby where this board of
supervisors met. He made these two men walk to their house and see for
themselves. He told Hildegard to walk across the floor. Both of those men said
there was no question that she should have the pension. So she got her pension
back.
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| Left to right, Gunilla, Mom, Brita, Birgitta, and Henrik in Linköping, 1950 |
When they lived at Kungsgatan 30, I
started to have even more admiration for my brother-in-law Henrik, Brita’s
husband. We had gone to school together and had known each other quite a long
time, but it’s still nice to see how people grow up. Well, Henrik worked in the
post office, and the post office was at the end of Kungsgatan. Every day after
a full day’s work -- every day -- he
stopped by their apartment to see how my aunts were doing. He stopped to check
on his wife’s old aunts, and if they needed anything, he’d go and get it for
them before he went home. I always
admired him for that. It showed his good heart, I thought.
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Henrik Kindeskog -- I assume this was taken
when he was doing his military service :)
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Well, Midi died while they lived
there at Kungsgatan 30."
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