Easter, Midsommar and the Hammock

This is Thor Boberg gathering the collection in Kisa church.

I've been thinking about holidays. I've already talked about Christmas. That was the biggest holiday for us, but another holiday we celebrated was Easter. Kids would send Easter cards to each other. I remember one year I got an Easter card that was signed from "Valskungen," The Waltz King. That was a boy who had come to the youth meetings that we went to. He was such a good dancer that all the girls like to dance with him. I don’t even remember his name now and I don’t remember where he lived. I wasn’t really acquainted with him. Why he sent me an Easter card, I don’t know. I never dated him or anything. Well, Dad just about hit the ceiling: “Waltz King! Who is that?!” Dad didn’t really think dancing was much good to begin with and he had only just let me start staying after the youth meetings for the dancing.  Brita finally had to stick up for me and tell Dad that we didn’t really know that boy; we just knew who he was. So then Dad calmed down. I must have been at least 16 at the time.

I know that Mom is on the far left here and her
sister Margaretha is on the far right. I believe
that the three girls in the middle are their cousins
are Karin, Maj and AnnaLisa, from left to right.

On Easter morning we always had boiled eggs for breakfast. That was always a contest between the boys in the neighborhood to see who could eat the most eggs. Henrik and Folke i Sör and Henning, they’d compete. Well, one year Sara said she could eat more eggs than the boys could. I remember that Folke ate 12 eggs once, and I don’t think Sara ever got up to that.

Another big holiday was Midsommar. My birthday is the 19^th of June and Mama’s was the 23^rd of June and Mama’s birthday was often on Midsommar day. She would usually have a party for her birthday and and Maria would come with their four girls and oh how much fun we had then. We didn’t do any special preparations for Midsommar aside from baking for Mama’s party. I remember

This is from one of Mom's albums
and is labeled "Siri" :)

we had our own garden, of course, and almost everything we ate was from the garden. One year Mama had had plenty of spinach, and I always loved spinach; she used to cream the spinach and I thought that was just delicious. Well this year, we sat down to eat and here came Mama with a big bowl of creamed spinach and put down on the table. Siri, Maria’s youngest girl, went to her mother and said, “Do I have to eat spinach here too?!” Her mother laughed and said that before they had left home Siri had said how glad she was to get away from home and all that old spinach. Then we all laughed. Of course, we teased Siri about that for years. Of course Mormor always came to Mama’s birthday and she always gave me one crown. She didn’t do that for the other kids, maybe because my birthday was so close to Mama’s. I remember that Margaretha used to be jealous of that. Her birthday was the 17^th of July and she thought she should’ve gotten a crown too.

Aron and Maria Patriksson, 1917

There's one Midsommar that I particularly remember. We were all excited because Moster Maria and Morbror Aron and the girls were going to come as usual. Well, that year somebody had made a hammock out of some kind of rope but it didn’t have any ends to it. Papa and Aron were in the workshop and they were going to make ends for it. Aron, the cabinet maker, couldn’t make just straight pieces of wood for the ends. They had to be made in a bend and then they drilled holes in those pieces to tie the hammock onto there and then they took the ropes on through to hang it up the trees. Well, then they went to hang it up between two trees and us kids scampered in there, a whole bunch of us jumped onto that hammock all at once. We heard a rrrrrrrip and then we were all bundled down onto the ground! It had split in the middle and we had fallen through! How quickly kids can get up and run you wouldn’t believe. We all headed off as quickly as we could in different directions. Nobody wanted to stay and hear what came after that!