When Fredrick Carlson came to visit

I found these three pictures of Fredrick
and Mom in one of Mom's albums and
I'm guessing they were taken during the
time she's describing here, but they're
not labeled so I don't know for sure.

"The next company we had from America was Fredrick Carlson.  Mama had a letter from Fred and Ruby Carlson in Minnesota, and they said their son Fredrick was in Germany doing his military training. They had sent him money, so he could travel up to Sweden and see if he could find us. I went into Rune Davidson and borrowed his English books. He was in high school at the time. On Sunday, I sat reading in those books trying to memorize some more words. Just then, Sara and Ingemar came home. When they heard the story, they said, “You’re sitting there reading like you think he’s coming tomorrow!” I said, “Well, it doesn’t say in the letter when exactly he’s coming.”

It happened that the next day, they called from the railroad station and said they had an American boy standing there. He didn’t speak any Swedish, and they didn’t have anybody at the station who spoke English, but he had a note with Mama’s name and address on it. “What shall we do with him?” Well, Dad wasn’t home, so she asked them to call a taxi and have it bring him up to Kjettestorp. So they did and here came this taxicab and stopped in front of the barn.  Fredrick stepped out, and I was sent out to meet him. I asked him years later, “What did I say when I met you at the gate?” He answered, “Welcome to Sweden!” So we agreed that I had done pretty good. I was the one to try to entertain Fredrick because I spoke more English than anyone else.

Vet någon om dom här är Karin's flickor?

We walked to Grönede, so he could see what that looked like. We visited with Morbror Nisse. He had a lot of guns and Morbror Nisse was a master shot and had won a lot of competitions. Fredrick understood guns so that was something they could communicate about. Then we had all the cousins come to Kjettestorp. Axel spoke some English so that was good. They could visit. Axel’s sister Karin came with her little girls, and one of those girls came up to Fredrick and asked, “Vad säger kor i Amerika?” (“What do cows say in America?”) Axel translated and Fredrick said, “Moooo!” The little girl said, “Kanske kor är klokare än folk om pratar alla dom samma språk!” (“Maybe cows are smarter than people if they speak the same language!”)

The Dala Cow Picture is just for fun :)

Well, I had started to talk about going to America before Fredrick came but my Dad was never very much in favor of it. They always thought of the Titanic. Well, one day we took Fredrick to his grandfather’s birthplace, and we stood there looking at the farm where all of those people had come from, eight siblings and only two of them in Sweden, all the others in Minnesota and they were all born in this little place in the parish of Vist. We had called Moster Maria, and she brought along her daughter Maj and Maj spoke some English. We asked the people in the house if we could be on their lawn and so we had a picnic there in this place. After we ate Fredrick stood there looking around the place where his grandfather had been born, and tears started to

Fredrick and Mom :)

trickle down his cheeks, and he said, “If my Dad ever comes to Sweden, please take him to this place.” When Dad saw this and heard what he had said, Dad said, “Well, these Americans do seem to be good people. I guess it would be ok, Gun, if you went to America.”