Forest stories

Birgitta Kindeskog Sturve and
Christina Kindeskog Andersson

Growing up at Kjettestorp, we spent a lot of time in the forest, walking through it down the path to go to school, driving through it on the wagon to go to church, going around picking berries and things, playing out among the trees. There is one very old tree with a hole in the middle that's big enough to stand in. In my albums there are several pictures of  different kids standing in that tree.

Most of the income for our farm, I think, probably came from forest products. They felled trees almost every year, but the farmer couldn’t go out and fell any trees he wanted to. They had something like a forest ranger who came out and marked which trees should be felled and which ones should stay. One year Dad hired two young men to do the felling of the trees. Henning i Storängen was going to drive one of Dad’s horses. While they were doing this, I would walk down to where they were with lunch every day and when Bernt and Lennart

Top to bottom-- Magnus Boberg, Jim Moore,

Elizabeth Moore Powell, Henrik Boberg

were out of school for a day or two, they would go with me. One day when I came down there by myself, I heard a cry for help from the direction of the young men who were felling trees. Henning and Papa rushed over there to find that one of them had cut himself with an ax right on the knee, and it was bleeding terribly. Dad pulled off his own shirt and tied it around tight so then it didn’t seem life threatening but he couldn’t walk home the way it was. They loaded him on one of the forest sleds, and I was supposed to drive him home and have Mama call an ambulance or taxicab or whatever to see that he got to the hospital. Then I took the horse back down again to Dad again.

Amanda and Mom in a hollow tree in 1990

Another year, Dad got hurt. He hurt a hand on a rusty nail. It got infected and carried his arm in a sling. He had to go to the doctor every few days and have the wound cleaned because they were afraid of blood infection. Well, Sara and I were supposed to be barnmaids that year, but then we had to do the stable too so we had to get up extra early. Sara got the hay down for the cows, and I got the hay down for the horses. The horses had to be fed and watered, and they needed a feedbag packed for each one of them, and they had to be brushed. It all had to be done by 7 am before Axel i Herrefall came to get the horses. He had some other man with him – I don’t remember who it was to drive one horse – because Dad couldn’t drive that winter. Once Axel had come to get the horses, then I went into the barn to help Sara milk. So we were busy that winter, Sara and I.

And did you know that out in the forest you can sing to your heart's content and nobody cares whether you can carry a tune or not? One time Dad was down på Gropedalen which is halfway down to the schoolhouse. He was cutting grass and I was going down the hill to rake it up into patches so it could dry. I had my rubber boots in one hand and the rake in the other and I went singing down the lane. It felt so good walking in that loose dirt and grass

Amanda and Elizabeth in 1990

in my bare feet. Then all of a sudden one foot smashed and slid on something that felt yucky. I jumped and looked behind me and there lay a viper in the lane. I had stepped on a viper! I put my boots on and then I killed the snake with my rake. When I went on down to Dad and told him, he didn't believe me. "You can't step on a viper and not get bitten!" Well, I took him up there to show him. Looking at the snake, he figured out that the viper must have heard me coming and gotten ready to strike. They feel the vibrations in the ground and they roll up and put their heads in the middle, and I must've stepped right on the head. It must've been just a bit too cold for the snake to move quickly.

The Weight of Being Confirmed

The weekend we were to be confirmed was a big deal. We gathered on

Friday and picked wildflowers and decorated the church. The stone walls in that church were very thick so the window ledges were very wide and we put the flowers in those ledges in the shape of the year, 1937. Some of our dads had cut young birch branches and these were put up along the aisles and up around the altar. Then on Saturday, we all went into church because that was the day of our examination. As usual, we sat boys on one side and girls on the other side and the girls wore white, long-sleeved dresses, white stockings, and white shoes and the boys wore dark suits. The pastor called up half a dozen of us at a time and asked up questions. Everybody was asked at least one question, sometimes more. I don't know that anyone was refused confirmation because they couldn't answer the question correctly but that was the fear. After this question period, the pastor gave a speech to us. Amongst other things, I remember him saying that now people will look at us as adults and from now on, we were responsible for our own actions. I thought that was pretty severe and I wasn't sure I was ready. We had the neatest pastor; his name was David Myrgård. He was smart and had

charisma; he liked people and there wasn't one person who he couldn't talk to. He simplified things and put himself down in other people's position, rather than talking over people. His wife Tyra was very well liked too. She took part in all activities in the church. They had four children too, Bengt, Karin, and twins, Crister and Cristina.

Well, then we come to Sunday. Of course I was all dressed in my finery and I had my new summer coat on. All the Bobergs were going to church and for some reason it was decided that I was going to ride in on the church bus. I had to walk down to the school to get onto the church bus. When it came, Gunnar Brolin got onto the bus too. We had to go up to where the road goes up to Vimantorp because Gunnar Carlsson's mother AnnSofie was going to go on the bus. Then we waited and waited and waited some more. Then the driver said, "If I'm going to get there on time, I can't wait any longer." Then we heard the rattle of wagon wheels up the road and here came Gunnar driving the horses as fast as he dared with the old woman hopping about on the wagon seat. "Vi var ente fäärdig föör," she said in sort of a dialect way. ("We didn't get ready on time.") So she got on and the bus driver went as fast as he possibly dared.

When we came around the bend where we could see the church, there were the confirmands all lined up, girls first and then boys, and they were waiting for the pastor to come and lead them into church. Gunnar Brolin did me a favor that time because he told the driver, "You stop right here and let Gun off! Then you can go park and let all the other people off." I rushed up to my place and just as I got there, they started to march into the church. First it was a regular service and then we had our first communion, girls first and then boys.

After that, we sat back down and the whole experience started to get to me. It was such a special moment. I felt so inadequate to make my own decisions and be responsible for my own things. I started to weep where I sat. Tears just rolled down my cheeks. The girl next to me said, "What are you crying for? It's almost over!" Well, to me, it wasn't an ending of something. To me, it was a new beginning and something I wasn't 100% sure I could handle. But I put my shoulders back and pulled myself together and stopped crying before we walked out of the church.

I don't know why Mom looks so unhappy in this picture, whether it was the weight of new responsibility or her continuing dislike of photographers!

Book, Coat and Cross

This is the hymnal that Mom got for confirmation. It's the 1937 revision of Den Svenska Psalmboken and it's tiny! The photo with my thumb shows how small the print is.

When I was a kid, the church didn't have hymnbooks in the pews like they do now. You had to bring your own. All the other kids in the family got their own hymnbook when they were confirmed. When I was confirmed, the church was in the process of making a new version of the hymnal, so Dad said, "We'll give you one when they get it done." I did get one about 15 years later for Christmas. I still have it and it's a beautiful book.

But at the time then, because I was being so responsible and getting to confirmation and to church, Mama thought I should have a summer coat, so she and I went on the bus and we went to a store in Kisa called Fabriksboden. They

This photo shows the dress Mom wore when

she was confirmed and the cross that her

parents gave her :)

had clothing for all ages at a little lower price than other places. Well, we found a coat that was supposed to cost 25 crowns. It was a little too long though. Mama said, "I can alter it myself if you give it to me for 23 crowns." The clerk said ok. This coat was off-white with brown top-stitching, double-breasted with brown buttons in front. The pockets had brown top-stitching too. We came home to Papa and showed him the coat and told him the story. He said, "I'm proud of you Mama. Du har judat med en jude." I didn't understand what this meant at the time but later I realized he was saying, "You have jewed down a jew." Well that was the first coat that I ever had that was mine from the beginning. I had always had hand-me-downs before that. That winter Mama took me to a woman

she knew who did difficult sewing and she had this woman make a winter coat for me. That coat was green and around the collar and on the pockets,

Amanda still has the cross :)

there was fake leopard fur. Mama had the lady make me a muff too because that was the style right then for teenage girls and that was also out of the fake leopard fur.

When I was actually confirmed, Mama and Papa gave me a cross; it was a very plain silver cross. I gave that cross to Amanda when she was confirmed, a little more than 60 years later.

Mom says "du" to the Pastor

The Pastor insisted that all of us students had to be in church on Sunday. If someone missed a Sunday, he always singled them out at the next confirmation meeting and asked, "Why weren't you in church?" One time a boy stood up and said, "I had to stay home and cut wood." The Pastor said, "Well, Jesus was a carpenter." We thought this was a funny answer because usually no excuse was valid except for sickness or something like that in the family.

When it came time to go to church, I usually had someone with me but one time, I was the only Boberg who was at church. I've told you before how I always wanted to be as good and as big and as clever as Sara. There were times when I tried to be smarter than her, so on this one Sunday I came home from church and told Sara, "I said du to the Pastor today. " Her eyes got wide and Oh, she was horrified: "What did he say?!" I was so pleased to have surprised her and felt really proud and clever when I said, "It was in the liturgy."

So now let me go back and explain this some. In Swedish, there are different kinds of "you;" there are formal words like ni and informal ones du and dig. And in those days, a kid would never say du to a grown-up. You had to call them Mr. or Mrs. or their title and in any kind of conversation, it would be up to the person who had the most education or age or was however a little higher up on the scale, it was up to that person to suggest to the lower person, "Can't we say du?" Otherwise, it just wasn't done. And here I had told Sara that I had said du to the Pastor. And I hadn't gotten in trouble. My trick was that as part of the liturgy, the Pastor said, "Herren vara med eder" and the whole congregation responds, "Med dig vara ock Herran." And dig is a form of du. This is the same as when we say in English, "The Lord be with you" and the congregation

Mom and Moster Sara in Mom's kitchen in March 1997.

answers, "And also with you." Of course, I don't remember anything else about that service, not the sermon or the scriptures because I was so busy thinking about the joke I was going to tell Sara when I got home!

That reminds me of one other time when I thought I was clever. One spring morning Dad said, "Now, as much as you know it kids, you cannot go across the lake anymore. The ice is getting too loose around the edges." As I was riding home from confirmation, I kept thinking about what Dad had said. When I got home, I said to Sara, "I rode across the lake today." She said, "You are crazy! Dad just told us we can't do that anymore!" I grinned and said, "Well, I rode across the bridge." Oh I thought I was so smart.

Confirmation, Hermes and Shoplifting

On these confirmation class days, we all rode our bikes and there were

Arvid and Jon Hermansson, obviously a bit
before their confirmation days :)

kids from everywhere. For a lot of us, confirmation was really the first time we got out on our own, away from our part of the forest, meeting new people. The kids who had gone to school in Kjettestorp, of course, I had known before, but there were a lot of new kids from other areas who I got acquainted with. Astor had two friends who were twins, Arvid and Jon Hermansson. They were good kids and we got to know them real well. There was also one boy named Stig Berg. In later years here, he and his wife have been real good friends with Lennart and Annika. There was also one girl named Harriet; I had never heard that name before and thought it was so lovely.

When I was going to start confirmation, Mom and Dad gave me a new bicycle, a Hermes, and Oh that was the Cadillac of bikes! I was so proud of my bicycle. In my albums somewhere, there is a picture of me standing in front of the house holding a bicycle and I have a white summer hat on. That's one picture I actually wanted to take because I was so excited about that bike. It served a practical purpose too. It was almost necessary for everyone to have wheels when we lived 7 kilometers out of town. (That's something over four American miles, I think!) So I rode my bike to confirmation lessons once a week and to church on Sunday. 

Mixing with kids we didn't know didn't always turn out well. One time when we were going home, it was just Brita i Grönliv and I walking out at the same moment, and she wanted to go next door to the little store next to the Mission House and get a candy bar. This little grocery store was owned by an old man but he was kind of modern because he had a vending machine outside the store. I said, "I don't have any money." She said, "You don't need much money" and showed me that she had a couple of copper pennies which was not the right kind of money for the machine. She showed me how to do it: you put a penny in the machine and it would get stuck. Then you went into the store and said to the old man that the machine didn't work. He came out and said, "Oh look, someone has put a penny in here. No wonder it doesn't work." He opened up the machine and gave us each a candy bar. Well, I knew this was wrong, but I went along with it. We ate our candy bars while we were going home but it didn't sit well in my stomach. I knew I had stolen a candy bar and I had fooled an old man. I felt so bad about it that I never did anything like that again.

Here are a couple of ads for Hermes bikes from around the time when Mom got one -- their slogan is "cycler med delar av rostfritt stål" or "bicycles with parts of stainless steel"