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!

The Veterinarian Came to Kjettestorp

Now maybe I’ll tell some funny stories about the vet. Our vet wasn’t anything like James Herriot but funny things did happen. All the time there were new rules and regulations, just like today. The rule came that all cows had to have a small sign above their stall, like small blackboard. On that sign, it was supposed to say the cow’s name, the day it was born, when she had her last calf and when she was bred. If she was the daughter of another cow in the herd, then the mother’s name needed to be on there. Our cows had names like Vesta and Rose and Brunella. Well, this was no problem for Papa. He was always orderly so the signs over our cows were always up to date. Some farmers had a bit of a difficult time with this rule; some couldn’t read and write very well and such.

Well, the old vet was pretty easy going on the farmers; he knew their cows and their history. Then he retired and a new vet came. He was named Ankarklo. He was pretty stuffy and thought he was a little better than the rest.

I found this photo of "Veterinär Nils Ankarklo"

on kindabild.se. The caption there says

he was the vet in Kisa from 1935-1959.

One day he was going to vaccinate cows at Fredricks i Gräsvederna. He didn’t have any signs up; he hadn’t gotten around to that yet. The vet asked, “What is the name of this cow?” “Oh that’s Rulla,” Fredricks said. Then they got to the next cow. “What’s the name of this cow?” Fredricks said, “Well that is Big Rulla.” The vet said, “Ok.” Then they got to the next cow and the vet asked his question. Fredricks answered, “Well, that is Little Rulla.” The vet sort of shook his head but wrote it down. When they got to the fourth cow, the vet asked again and Fredricks said, “Oh now that is the real Rulla.” I can imagine the vet sputtering at this point.

There were times when he came to our place too and put Mama down a couple of times. Once he brought along his red-haired little girl; he called her Kikan. Mama brought up a basket of pears that were ripe at that time and gave one to Kikan. When the vet was done and came out of the barn, he wanted a

Here is Veterinarian Ankarklo with his
daughters :) 

pear too. He happened to get ahold of one that I guess had been dropped on the ground because it was a little soft in one spot. He said to Mama, “How dare you give my daughter rotten pears!” Mama got a little angry and said, “For your information, the pears are not rotten and if they’re good enough for my children, they’re good enough for your’s too!” After that she refused to go to the barn if the vet was there.

So one time there was a cow and she’d had a calf and she didn’t get rid of the afterbirth. That couldn’t wait more than a few days. Dad called the vet but he didn’t come and didn’t come, and Dad had to go to a meeting in Kisa so there I was left to go to the barn when the vet came. He looked at me and asked, “Var är Papa?” (“Where is Papa?”)

I said he was in Kisa at a meeting.

“Var är Mama?”

I said she was in the kitchen.

“Well what are you doing here?”

“I was going to show you the cow.”

“Aw-o. Show it to me then.”

So I took him in the barn and showed him the cow.

He said, “That cow has thrown her calf!” (Cows sometimes got some kind of disease that made them have their calves too early and often the calves were dead when they were born. People were kind of afraid of this disease.)

I said, “No she has not.”

“How do you know?”

“I can show you the calf.” I showed him the calf and it was plain it was only about a day old, so he gave in.

The next time he came to our place, he asked Papa, “Where is that girl who was here last time. I like to talk to her. She has spunk.” Papa asked me later what I had said to him and said I had done a good job. I was thinking that it wasn’t so much spunk as it was that I was afraid of him.

Julotta and Dancing Around the Christmas Tree

"The trip to julotta."
This is an Ilon Wikland illustration for Astrid Lindgren's Jul i Bullerbyn. 

We had to go to bed kind of early on Christmas Eve because in the morning, on Christmas Day, we had to get up at 3 o’clock so we could go to julotta. Julotta was something special too. The service started first thing in the morning on Christmas day.  Before we left, everybody got some hot chocolate and sandwiches. I guess the grown-ups maybe drank coffee. Then we got all bundled up in regular outdoor coats, and on top of that we something they called overcoats. They were thick big coats because it was cold to sit in a sled for an hour. Then we piled into the sled and wrapped up in lap robes. Those lap robes had wool on the inside. Margaretha and Lennart went in front with Mama and Papa. Mama probably held Lennart on her lap, so he could get under the lap robe and get some warmth from being next to her. The rest of us sat down in the bottom of the sled. We sometimes crawled down underneath the lap robes and got warm. We had to get to church an hour ahead of when the service started if we wanted to be able to all sit together as a family. The church was always full to the brim. They had to put in extra chairs. Everybody around, even those who otherwise had nothing to do with church, everyone came to julotta. There was only candlelight at julotta. In Sweden, it’s called levandelus, living light. I think that’s a real good name for it because candles do look more alive than electric lights do. At the start of julotta, the organist who had a beautiful tenor voice would sing, “O Helge Natt” (“O Holy Night”). Then everyone stood up and sang, “Vår hälsad sköna morgonstund” (“We greet you beautiful morning”). I’d often get shivers down my spine. I thought it was so beautiful. Of course, there was other extra music too.

From right to left: Mom, Sara, Margaretha, and 
Maja Karlsson, the girl who had the Christmas 

Well, we had fun going home from julotta too. It was a tradition to have sort of a race home against the Anderssons i Mellangården—The saying was that whoever made it home first after julotta would get their harvest in first next fall. Well, one year Dad had a new horse called Mandel, and Mandel was such a runner. He loved to run, so Dad thought he was going to win that year. Going home, as usual we had the horses up at Samuelson’s, so we walked up there. When we were getting in the sled at Samuelson’s, the Anderssons went by, Henning and Tant Anna and Lydia and Farbror Andersson. You can imagine how they waved going by us, thinking they were going to win. Well, that year Dad had Mandel, and he pulled a little trick too. We took a short cut across the lake. It had been really cold that year before Christmas, so the lake was frozen solid. So it turned out that as we were getting out of the sled by our barn, here came the Anderssons thinking they were first home, but really we had won. Oh how us kids giggled and thought that was fun. And Henning said, “How did you do that?!” Dad smiled and told them.

Sara Boberg Bäck

Well, after julotta, on Christmas Day, all we did was eat and take care of the animals. It was a really holy day, so there was no big play or making noise. You stayed inside and you kept still. There were two days in the year like this: Christmas Day and Good Friday. In Swedish, Good Friday is called Long Friday and when I was a kid I thought that was a good name for it. It seemed to be the longest day, like it would never end. At least on Christmas, we still had good food and you had some kind of presents to look at.

The next day then was the Second Day of Christmas when we celebrated Saint Stephen, the first Christian martyr. There was a church service that day too, but when we were little kids, we didn’t usually go. We went when we were older. That was a time to visit relatives or neighbors. Somebody always had a party to go to that day.

Then we also celebrated Trettondagjul or thirteen days after Christmas. That was also a holiday. After that then, kids sometimes had parties. They were called julgransrisning. You took all the decorations off the Christmas tree. Maja Karlsson always had a big Christmas party, a Julgransrisning, they used to call it. It was like a final party for the Christmas tree. They would hang baskets made of paper with candy or nuts in them. Her parents had the store, so they had those kinds of things available. Even oranges. All us kids and more, they had quite a few kids invited. We had refreshments with cookies and all good things. Sometimes the kids came from Herrefall and they had so far to walk so their mother came with them. Tant Ädla was such a good singer; it was so much fun when she came. We would dance around the Christmas tree, and she was running around and singing. Then we could pick down one basket of each kind and take home. That party was one of the highlights of the Christmas season as far as we were concerned.

Left to right -- Maja Karlsson, Mom, Margaretha, Sara, (I don't know! Hjälp!) and Lennart

When Christmas Presents Were Sleds and Skiis

I think this is Mom and one of the Florman girls on a spark on the road up to Kjettestorp.

One Christmas Eve, I remember the door opened, and a paper tag was thrown in attached to a string. The tag was addressed to Henrik, and it said to pull the string. He pulled and pulled and pulled, and eventually in came a special sled that Morbror Kalle had made. It was a copy of those that they had in the forest in wintertime. There was a front sled and a back sled and they were attached with a chain in-between and that’s what they put logs on to bring them back up to the house. They could make the chain longer or shorter depending on what the logs looked like. Morbror Kalle made several things like that for us for Christmas. When Henrik got a little bigger then, he made a sled for me one year. Of course, Papa helped him. Then we were going to have a race on our

Kjettestorp in the snow in February 1958.

sleds on the hill down to the schoolhouse. Folke i Sör had a red sled that would go so fast. We had an old sled that Henrik was riding. The wood across the runners was cracked but it was still holding together because there were the steel runners. Sara said to me, “You’re crazy if you’re going to race with them.” But I was determined, so I laid on my stomach on the sled. We didn’t have any steering, so we dragged the toes of our shoes in the snow to turn. There were many turns in the road. Well, lo and behold, I won the race. Henrik’s old sled had gone to pieces on one turn, and Folke hit a patch of loose snow and got slowed down. You can imagine how good I felt about that.

Mom on skis.

There was another Christmas when Ragnar gave me skiis. It was when it was first becoming popular for everyone to ski. I was the first one then to have skis. Why he gave them to me I don’t know. Maybe the same reason why he gave me a book once called En Liten Yrhätta.  I think that was the only book that I had from my younger years that was really mine. It was about a girl who was really lively, kind of a tomboy. I think maybe he thought I would be the first one to take the skis. Well, you can imagine going out and getting on skis with skirts and a long coat. It didn’t take long before it became popular to have skiboots. We called them pyäxor. They were big heavy shoes, so you could wear heavy socks in them and keep warm. Then soon after came ski pants. That was a big step forward for girls. We could wear pants. My, that wouldn’t have been thought of before. I, of course, had to share my skis so everyone got to try to ski. It didn’t take long them before on another Christmas Mom and Dad gave Sara a pair of skis. Brita had said she didn’t want any. Of course, in time, Margaretha and Lennart had their own skiis. We used to do a lot of skiing in the neighborhood. The neighborhood kids would arrange competitions in skiing. I

I think these folks are standing among the haystacks at Kjettestorp. The back of the photo
says 1952. Left to right they are Nisse Karlsson, Astor Karlsson, AnnCathrine Karlsson and Lennart Boberg. 

was never very good at fast skiing but we were in on all that. We had a hill down by Storängen where we did downhill skiing. At the bottom of that hill there was an opening in the fence where there was a summer gate. Those gates had no hinges. Instead there was just an extra length of fence that they removed during the winter when there were no animals in the field. So this hole in the fence stood open at the bottom of that hill, and we ran down that steep hill and through that opening and onto the field on the other side. I think it happened once or twice that somebody missed the opening and got hung up on the fence, but it’s amazing that none of us ever really got hurt.