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? :)