Uncle Otto visits from America

Otto Carlsson, sitting
in the yard at Kjettestorp

"There were eight siblings in my Morfar’s family, and it was only Morfar and Tekla who stayed in Sweden. All the others went to Minnesota and out of all of them, only one got married. That was Fredrick Carlsson. At least that’s what he was called in Sweden. He called himself Fred in Minnesota. His son was also Fred Carlson. The other siblings were John, Otto, Anna, Matilda, and Hanna, all in Minnesota.

One of the women, they used to say, had such a hard time learning English. I don’t remember if that was Anna or Matilda. She used to say, “Jag kan inte förstår varför de kalla en häst a Horse när det är en häst!” (“I can’t understand why they call a häst a Horse, when it is a häst!”)

Uncle Otto came home to visit once. It was in 1947, I think. Thorbjörn was about a year old; I remember him as a little baby in the pictures that were taken. Well, how it happened was one day, with no forewarning whatsoever, they called from the radio station and told Mama, “We have an American here who wants to come up to your place. What shall we do?” Mama asked if they could help him to the bus station and put him on the bus. They said they could. So then I was sent down to the road to meet the bus. 

Lennart carrying Onkel 

Otto's luggage

When I saw it coming, I waved it down and stopped the bus and asked the driver if he had an American on board. I saw a man jump up back there on the bus and he said, “O Elin! Ä’ de’ du?” (“Oh Elin! Is that you?”) He thought I was my mother. Well, we got his trunks off there but they were too heavy for us to carry up the hill.  I thought we could leave them there and someone could bring a horse and wagon back to get them, but he would not leave them down by the fence. He thought for sure someone would come and steal them. So we dragged and fought them up behind some rocks so they were out of sight. Then we walked home and Lennart was home, so he went and took a horse and wagon and got the suitcases.

Mom and Margaretha are sitting on the ground here. Thor, Uncle Otto and Elin are in the middle

and in the back row stand Henrik and Brita, Lennart, and Sara, Ingemar and baby Thorbjörn.

Uncle Otto stayed with us for several months. He was the first person I ever heard speak what now we’d call Swenglish. He didn’t like to walk on the gravel path. He walked on the grass instead. Someone asked him why he did this and he said, “The gravel cutter up skorna.” Meaning, “the gravel will cut up my shoes” but it was some real Swenglish. One day he was sitting outside and all of a sudden he didn’t know where his jacket was. He said, “Ja tenker dos

This picture has nearly the same group as the

previous one but here Astor joins Margaretha

in the back row and Mom must be the photographer.

kidsen tog den.” “I think those kids took it.” But again it was something of a mixture of Swedish and English. And we knew that was Inger and Rune Davidson. They were just little kids; what would they do with a jacket? We looked around and found it, of course. And we called him Onkel Otto, our version of Uncle.

We had many family gatherings while Uncle Otto was home and one time Nisse i Grönede asked him to sing something. Well, he started to sing “Nicolina,” an old old song. (I found a version of this song on Youtube which is sung in a very twangy English -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvyTcoEiSHw ).

I also remember he got sick. I don’t remember if it was a kidney stone or a gall stone. He was in the hospital and had surgery. Relatives went and visited him there just about every day but, nobody called and said that he was ready to come home. Well, one day, all of a sudden I came through the hallway and I saw him sitting out on the porch. He had gone out and gotten into a taxi and come back to Kjettestorp! He talked a lot about Minnesota and Minneapolis, in particular."

Mom labeled this shot, "Klar för återförd i Aug. -47" ("Ready to leave in August '47")