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 :)

The Bike Riding Youth Group

After confirmation then, we were eligible to join the youth group there at church and all the Boberg kids went to the meetings. Pastor Myrgård was such an easy-going man and he made it so much fun. Sometimes in summertime, we'd get on bikes and ride out to see members who lived out of town. One these trips, he was on his bike and he'd have one of his kids on behind him and Tyra would have another one and the two oldest would ride by themselves. That was a very memorable time for me.

This is one of the youth group programs Mom describes. Sara is second from the left and Margaretha is third from the left :)

Every year, in town, the youth group also had a Luciafest and it was always held in the Mission House. In the Mission House, there was a middle set of seats and then there were aisles on either side of those seats and then there were two more sets of seats beyond those aisles. Lucia would come from the front down one aisle and then through the entry hall and back up the other aisle. We'd go up on stage and have a program. Our mothers would have brought in refreshments, rolls and cookies or whatever. The Mission House was full to the brim everytime we had a Luciafest.

One time the youth group was going to sing in church, probably 20 or 30 kids, but Gunnar Brolin said that I couldn't sing because I couldn't hold a tune. I was the only one singled out who couldn't be in on this. I always thought that

Mom is in the middle here and her friend Karin is third
from the left.

that was rather silly. Would it have matter that much if one kid couldn't sing so well? Another time we had a program in church. They were up around the altar and carried different things and represented different things. They sang some songs and read some scriptures. I couldn't be in that one either, but I wasn't the only one left out there. Sara and Margaretha were in it and a little girl named Boyan who lived with us for a couple of years. Her mother had been taken to a mental hospital and I think her father should have been in one too. He was not quite right either. Boyan had a sister who was taken in by a family in

Kisa but that family wasn't sure they could handle both of them. When they got a bit older, Boyan was able to go live with her sister.

Mom is in the middle again and Karin is right in front.

Anyway, as part of these programs, we would ask for donations and whatever we raised was put toward scholarships for synod youth conventions. If you had your own money, you could go, but the scholarships were given to different people each year. I got a scholarship one year to go to the convention in Mjölby, never guessing that later Sara and Ingemar would move to Mjölby and I would spend a good deal of time there.

Mom is second from the right here and Karin
is on the far left.

Another time there were a bunch of us who rode bicycles to Eksjö which is in Småland. It is about 7 Swedish miles from Kjettestorp. Ingvar i Vimantorp was going on a bicycle so then the rest of us could go. Karin i Blåsten was with and some other kids from Kisa and me. We packed blankets on the back of our bikes. We rode to Eksjö and ate ice cream and talked and laughed a lot that day.

(If anyone can help identify the other folks in these Eksjö pictures, let me know :)

Mom climbs a fir tree

Another time that I don't think I've told you about was one day when we

were going home from school. I don't remember why Nisse Palm was with us; he was older that the rest of us. Henrik i Herrefall and Sara were the biggest kids who usually walked home with us that year. Well, Nisse Palm, he took Kalle i Herrefall's cap and threw it up into an old fir tree; then he just went on. Well, Kalle cried and cried. We tried to figure out a way to get it down. Neither Henrik nor Sara could reach the lowest branches on that tree, so we couldn't just climb up that way. Someone suggested we wait until tomorrow and ask a grown-up to come help us. "Nooo!" Kalle cried even more yet. "I can't come home to Mama without my cap!"

So then Sara and Henrik came up with an idea. Together they could lift me up until I could grab the bottom branches and I could climb up into the fir tree and get the cap. They crossed their arms out in front of them and then they held hands and made a little platform. I stepped up there and then they hoisted me up to the lowest branches.

Once I was up in the tree, it wasn't too hard for me because we always climbed the cherry trees at home. We would climb up in those cherry trees as high as we could go without breaking the branches. Then when the wind blew, we would pretend we were birds and chirp like mad.

Well anyway, this fir tree wasn't quite as easy as a cherry tree because it had about a million dry needles and a couple of dead branches up in the middle, but I made it up to where the cap was and threw it down. Then I climbed back down and hung from the low branch and dropped to the ground. The other kids tried to brush me off then because my clothes and hair were just full of those dry needles. Even so, when we got home Mama said, "Child, what have you done?!" Sara stepped in for me and told her the story. Then Mama said, "I'm glad that you looked after Kalle when he needed somebody to help him and Nisse Palm is a naughty boy." She loosed my hair and combed in and combed it until all the needles were gone.

Party stories where the kids steal the show

I think there are several stories about family parties that I haven't told you yet.

Brita is only about a year old here.

I have told you before how neat and clean Brita always was? They used to tell us about when Mama had Henrik and Sara and Brita -- so Brita was about three years old -- Mama would dress Brita first and set her on a chair and she never moved. Mama could go get the other kids ready and Brita wouldn't move until they came to get her to take her along. She always wanted to make sure they didn't forget her though, so she would sit shock still on the chair saying, "Göm inte Brita! Göm inte Brita!" She couldn't quite say the "l" that should come in there: glöm. It means, "Don't forget Brita! Don't forget Brita!" but she didn't move off the chair.

One time we were all invited to Västergården i Grönede; it was when Oskar and Frida were engaged to be married. At one point at the end of the evening when we were getting ready to go home, Frida went and sat on Morbror Oskar's lap and put her arm around his neck. Sara must've been about 8 or 9, and she didn't like the looks of this. She marched up and looked at Morbror Oskar and said, "Now it's time for you to go home to Mormor!"

There was another family party; I don't remember if it was a wedding or what. Everybody was there and it was winter. Karin i Rimforsa had crawled up in the windowsill and sat and one of the young men at the party told her she shouldn't sit there because she'd get cold and get sick. She looked up at him and said, "Don't worry about me. I have two pairs of underwear on!" At this same party, I was about 2 1/2 and getting potty trained and Mama was trying to take me out so I could go to the bathroom but there were lots of people in the hallway.  She said I looked up and hollered, "Move! I have to pee!"

I think I've said before that when they had these parties and it was time

These are Mom's butter paddles; they
hang on the wall in my kitchen :)

for the food, the ladies went first and then the men and the kids went last. Dad used to tell about one party they went to and when he came around the table to get food, there stood a little boy who said, "Just look at it all disappear." Dad thought that the boy was afraid there wouldn't be anything left when his turn came. Dad always thought, "Why not let the kids go first?" But the ladies really went out of their way to serve the food attractively and they wanted the other ladies to see it first. Men probably didn't care as much and the kids didn't care at all so long as they got some!

One thing the ladies did for these parties is they liked to put up butter in fancy forms. Sometimes they made round balls, or balls with grooves in them; other times they made other shapes like stars. My mother had a special pair of wooden paddles that she used to make these; I think Elizabeth has those paddles now.

And I remember one party when Nils-Erik was kind of the life of the party. Nils-Erik looked like a cute round-faced doll when he was little. He had beautiful blond curly curly hair, and Rut refused to have it cut; he looked almost like a little girl it was so long and curly. Curly hair did kind of run in the family. Ernst and Nisse and the girls in Rimforsa all had curly hair. The rest of us had hair as straight as could be. Well, for this party, the whole family was invited to one of my mother's cousins. She lived not far from Rimforsa, so the Rimforsa cousins were there too. Morfar was there and Morbror Nisse and Rut and their kids.

Butter balls with mint :)

Nils-Erik was old enough to talk and notice things but not really old enough to know what he should or shouldn't say. As Nils-Erik was going along the food table with Morbror Nisse to get something to eat and he stopped in front of the butter plate with the fancy shapes and just stared at the little sprig of parsley on the side of the plate as decoration. Then he looked up and said very loudly, "Titta Papa! These people are crazy! They put grass in their butter!" ("Titta" is Swedish for "Look")

Later, a group of us went down to the train station to see off some of them who had come to the party on a train. Us younger ones had ridden our bicycles but we went down to the station to see them off. At the station, there sat a lady with a little dog, one of those where the long hair falls every which way and you don't hardly see which way is front or back. Nils-Erik marched up to this lady and said, "That sure is a mop that you have there!" The lady looked at his hair and said, "Well it looks like you have one too." Nils-Erik laughed and laughed.