The books we read

I don't think I've talked much about our toys and our books. We didn't have a lot of books but the books we had, of course, we shared. We had something called bilderbok which were mostly pictures. Then when we learned to read, we had something called an ABCbok and when we lost a tooth, we put it into the ABCbok and they said that a chicken "laid an egg" in there for us. It was maybe a 5 öre, not much, but for us kids, that seemed like a lot of money.

This is an illustration of Lindgren's Emil by Björn Berg.

Sometimes if the doctor was going to Grönede or somebody we knew was coming through, we would set ourselves out at different gates and sometimes people would throw out a 5 öre. That was called grindpengar. Of course that made it more fun to open gates. Astrid Lindgren has Emil doing this in one of her books.

At school, they brought in a mini-library. I don't remember for sure but I think our school got one of those boxes a year. Then we could borrow these books. That's how I first read Onkel Toms Stuga, Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet.... Harriet Stowe, I think her name was. I also read Den Sista Mohikanen, The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper. I remember one bilderbok that Lennart had that had a moose on the cover. I think that was his favorite because I remember reading it to him many times. I teased him about this later in life when he became the leader of the moosehunt.

There are two other books that I wanted to say something about too.

When all of us Boberg kids were learning to read, we had a book called Sörgården. It was about a farm family out in a little village just about like we were. Sörgården, of course, means south farm and in Kjettestorp, we had a Sör, so we felt right at home in that book. This book was kind of cleverly done. It showed how to write the letters while it told a series of stories. The stories mostly talked about things that we did around the farm. Then there would be some poetry and such worked in too. You could learn on several different levels with those books. When we finished Sörgården, we had another reading book called Önemå. A few years ago, they reprinted Sörgården and I thought that was lots of fun. I got to see my old schoolbook again.

Standing up for Stig, Arne, Alyce and Ingrid

Did I tell you about Stig i Sågstugan? One time he was trying to learn a hymn. Gunnar Brolin believed in learning things by heart and part of our school work, every so often, was learning hymns. Stig had a hard time learning things, remembering them. He asked me once how many times I read a hymn before I knew it by heart. I don't remember my answer and I don't remember how many

Gunnar Brolin

times he had to read it but it was a lot more. One time, Stig got to school first and he walked all around the playground reciting a hymn over and over to himself, trying to have it memorized before class started. When the teacher came out to call us into class, he stepped out and rang a big handheld bell. Well, as we all got into the classroom, first thing, Gunnar Brolin called Stig up to his desk and began to bawl him out. He said there was to be no blaspheming on the playground and Stig had better cut it out. It turned out that the hymn Stig had been trying to learn was "Jag går mott himlen var jag går" (I go towards heaven wherever I go).  The teacher hadn't heard him very well and thought he was saying "Gud i himlen" (God in heaven) and thought he was blaspheming. I stood up and told the teacher that he was wrong, that Stig was just trying to learn a hymn and it was hard for him to do. Then Gunnar Brolin said that was enough of that and we should all sit down and be quiet.

Another time Margaretha and I were sent on an errand somewhere before school and this meant we got to take the bikes. We went down the road by Gräsvederna which was more bike-friendly than the other road and I suppose our errand was over in that direction. Well, when we came back heading toward

Sundsäs, 1938

school, we caught up with two kids who were walking, a boy and a girl who we had never seen before. We stopped and said Hi and wondered where they were going. They said they were going to Kjettestorp school and they didn't know where it was and they didn't know when school started, so they didn't know if they were late. Their names were Arne and Alyce Strömberg. They had just moved to Sundsnäs and they had quite a ways to walk to get to school. Margaretha and I got off our bikes and told them that we were heading to the same school so we walked with them, but this meant that we came a bit late. When we came in the door, the teacher started to bawl us out for being late. He didn't pay any attention to the new kids coming in behind us. When he calmed down a little bit, I told him how it was, that we brought these new kids here, so then he forgot about us anyway and started to ask them their names and age and so forth.

Ingrid Jakobsson from Boås

I don't think I ever told you about Ingrid i Boås. Years ago, these kids who lived out on these little torps and farms that were far away from any others, they didn't get out much and they didn't see much of the world. Ingrid was the only child in the family, and she was very protected. I think she was one year younger than Brita. When she started school, her father Otto and her mother Cecilia came to our house and asked if Brita would look after Ingrid in school because Ingrid didn't know how to go to the bathroom by herself. It turned out that Ingrid had this old fashioned underwear that we hadn't had for a while -- we already had elastic in our's -- but Ingrid's underwear were buttoned onto something called a livsticke, like a strap to hold them up. When she needed to go, there was a flap on the back, but it buttoned up and she couldn't reach to undo the buttons by herself. After they went home, Mother gave us a lecture: as much as we knew it, we had better be good to Ingrid. She did not want to hear that we had ever made fun of her or that we had been unkind to Ingrid in any way and if we heard other kids making fun of her, we were to stand up for her. Well, I guess Brita must've done a good job taking care of Ingrid even though she was only a year older, because when Brita graduated from Kjettestorp school, they gave her a gift for being kind to Ingrid. It was a glass tray with a beautiful floral pattern and it had a little, like a fence around it that was made out of silver. When Ingrid graduated, Sara and I were each given a small crystal glass dish sitting on a silver tray. I still have my dish and I'm sure Sara does too.

There’s two girls I don’t think I’ve said anything about yet. They lived in a big farm in Misterfall. They were named Olga and Alice. Alice was spelled in the English spelling which was an unusual thing. In Swedish, the English name Alice is spelled Allis and it's usually pronounced "All-is" with a very quiet L. We had a teacher once tell her that her name should be pronounced “AL-is” in the English way because that's how it was spelled, but the little girl said, “No, my mother has said it is Al-E-say.” I think this shows the influence that English was starting to have on Sweden at this point. Many people were already heading off to America.

Lunches and field trips

I've thought of a couple things about our little school that I don't think I've explained yet. When we went to school, we kids all brought our lunch with us because there was no kind of cafeteria. I've told you before that on our farm, we mostly lived off what we grew or raised ourselves and it was that way with all the farms around. This meant that it ended up that if your farm had a lot of something, you might eat that every day. My Mother was always good at looking

These three pictures are in one of Mom's albums labeled skolresa so I'm assuming it's the trip Mom describes in the next paragraph.

after her hens, so we often had egg sandwiches. Axel i Herrefall used to do a lot of fishing in Lake Föllingen. He had a big family to feed, and fish is good nourishing food, and it's inexpensive if you catch it yourself! Greta would come to school with fried fish on her sandwiches, and she hated it, and I always like fish so I would trade sandwiches with her.  She got my egg or ham or whatever I had and I got her fish. The only time I wouldn't trade sandwiches was if I had salt cucumbers on mine.

I don't think I've told about the first time we had a skolresa, a school field trip. Erik Johanson was the first one to introduce this idea to our little school. He rented a bus and Farbror Gunnar i Vimantorp and Papa went along. I think my class was the youngest that was allowed along. Henrik and Sara and I were in on this field trip; I think Brita was already out of school then. We went by bus to

Gränna and from there we went on a boat to Visingsö. On Visingsö, we rode something called a remmelard. That was a horse-drawn wagon with seats looking out to both sides, just made for sight-seeing, so that everybody could see the surroundings. I remember we went to an old church that wasn't used anymore, but it was still standing up. We were told that we could climb up to the tower if we wanted to and of course, I had to get up to the tower. We started climbing up inside the narrow, dark stairway and there was a girl ahead of me who got about halfway up and then got scared. She just shook and refused to go up or down. I finally had to back out and let a grown-up go up and rescue her. This school trip was quite an adventure for kids who hadn't been around much and most of the kids in the school had never been anywhere!

Possibly Morfar Thor is the man on the back here holding an umbrella?

On another school trip, we went to Motala. Districts had started to have recreational areas and they had fixed up a beach there. It was called Varamobaden. They had something like a waterslide. It was one high slide like you might have in a regular park but on this slide there was like a little flat cart that you rode on. It slid down into the water and then they had to pull it back up for the next person to go down on. Well, I couldn't swim but I was determined to go down on that slide. Sara kept saying that I shouldn't do it. There was a big kid named Lasse Larson who said he'd ride with me if I wanted to. Henrik, my brother, heard this and he wanted to go to, so three of us sat of the little cart and went down. Of course, when we splashed in, I wouldn't have known what to do, but Lasse grabbed onto my arm and helped me over to a place where the water wasn't so deep. Henrik couldn't really swim much either but he was a big kid and didn't need much kicking to get to a place where he could stand up.

(Note: I'm not sure about the word Mom uses when she is talking about the sight-seeing wagon they rode on. Help? :)

Lennart falls in the mud and recites a poem

The back row left to right are Mom and Margaretha in another pair of matching dresses.
The front row left to right is Brita, Lennart and Sara.
Mom kept this photo in her room next to her bed all her life, even after she lost her sight.

I think I haven't talked much about Lennart. Lennart and I have had a lot of fun together through the years. He was quite a bit younger than me so I wasn't in on all of the same things that he was doing at the time, but I remember some things.

One time all of us girls were going to Eksjö, even Brita, to something they called Marknad. Lennart was going to go along too and I'm not sure how old he was but he couldn't have been more than ten years old. We rode our bicycles to Österbymo, and then from Österbymo to Eksjö, we were going to ride on a narrow gauge railroad. We were used to a regular railroad but this narrow gauge railroad, it shook and it rattled and it rocked back and forth. After a little bit of this, all of a sudden, Lennart stood up and said, "If any of you have false teeth, keep your mouths shut or they'll fall out!" Then you can imagine how we all giggled.

Bernt i Storängen and Lennart had some escapades sometimes. One time they decided they were going to try to shoot the rooster with a cork gun. They had cork guns where the cork was attached to the gun with a string, so when they shot the gun, the cork flew out, but the string meant they'd never lose the cork. The string wasn't very long though so they had to get up pretty close to the rooster. They were pacing after him, and he went around up onto the manure pile. At the bottom of the manure pile, it was always wet. It was set up so there was drainage down into a hole underneath, but it was still always mushy and yucky around the base there. In the excitement of getting close to the rooster, Lennart slipped and fell. I remember seeing him coming walking up through the yard. Mama made him take his clothes off outside; he smelled too bad to come in the house with them on. He had to go straight into the bath. Bernt had followed along afterwards laughing so hard. He just sat in the yard laughing. Even as Mama was trying to look stern, we could see the corner of her mouth turn up too.

I don't know if I've talked about the last day of the school year before summer vacation; it was called Examen. It was exciting because all the girls got new dresses. All the kids were supposed to show off a little bit what we had learned. We had sort of a program and the mothers brought in refreshments, of course. It was like a big party. Well one year, Lennart was going to read a poem about a hazelnut bush. He needed to know it by heart and I was set to help him learn it. As a result, I still remember that poem:

Hasselbusken           

                                               

Har du set mej så fin och ny                                   

då först jag vacknat om våren?                  

Långt för en svalen res till förbi                 

och haggtorns till knoppat i snorren,                                             

Då står jag redan med gula hängen                      

och soliga sippans ser upp i sängen           .          

Jag står och vänter på mina blad               

Och när de komma blir jag så glad.            

           

I believe this is a hazel bush in early spring

I can't remember what I did myself that year, but I can remember Lennart standing up and saying that poem.

(Here's my translation of the poem:

The Hazel Bush

Have you seen me so fine and new

when first I wake in the spring?

Long before the swallow flies by

and hawthornes have budded in their thickets,

I already stand with my yellow tassels

and sunny flowers peek up in bed.

I stand and wait for my leaves

and when they come, I'll be glad.

If you know who the poet is or have other suggestions, let me know :)