More on Tant Midi and Tant Hildegard

Hildegard and Midi

"Well, Papa had a sister Hildegard. I’ve talked about how she was crippled from the time when she was nine years old. When we were kids, Hildegard couldn’t put on her own stockings and shoes or do her hair. When she was older, she learned how to do her hair in a different way. She put it up in a net, low on her neck.

In later years, I think I’ve already said that Midi and Hildegard moved to Kisa and then later, they moved to Linköping, and they lived in an apartment there that belonged to the Pentecostal church. The place was called Läroverksgatan. When you came in the door there, the place smelled of natural gas. We had never had any experience with that, and I thought it smelled horrible. They didn’t live there too long before they moved to Kungsgatan 30.

For a while, in Linköping, Hildegard got a job sewing children’s clothes for a store, but she couldn’t earn enough money to support herself. She got a pension for sick people because she couldn’t make enough. Farfar had given her a knitting machine, so she could knits socks and things like that for people, and she still kept using that knitting machine, but she still couldn’t really make a living off that either. Midi worked as a housekeeper for people. Then it happened that Hildegard got a notice from the county that she wasn’t going to receive the pension anymore. Well, Papa went to the next meeting for what we would call the county board of supervisors, the Lanstinget. They said that somebody had reported her as able-bodied. Dad found out that it was the school teacher, Gunnar Brolin. He was in the opposite political party from Dad, and he could be pretty hot-headed. Well, Dad told them that he would be back at the next meeting and he was. He demanded that at least two people had to come with him. Midi and Hildegard lived nearby where this board of supervisors met. He made these two men walk to their house and see for themselves. He told Hildegard to walk across the floor. Both of those men said there was no question that she should have the pension. So she got her pension back.

Left to right, Gunilla, Mom, Brita, Birgitta, and Henrik
in Linköping, 1950

When they lived at Kungsgatan 30, I started to have even more admiration for my brother-in-law Henrik, Brita’s husband. We had gone to school together and had known each other quite a long time, but it’s still nice to see how people grow up. Well, Henrik worked in the post office, and the post office was at the end of Kungsgatan. Every day after a full day’s work -- every day -- he stopped by their apartment to see how my aunts were doing. He stopped to check on his wife’s old aunts, and if they needed anything, he’d go and get it for them before he went home.  I always admired him for that. It showed his good heart, I thought.

Henrik Kindeskog -- I assume this was taken

when he was doing his military service :)

Well, Midi died while they lived there at Kungsgatan 30."

I almost died of Whooping Cough

Kjettestorp Norrgård

"Another thing I thought about while I’m sitting here – medical care has certainly changed in my lifetime. They used to tell me about the first time I got really sick. When I was about three months old, my siblings came down with the whooping cough. The doctor told Mama that there was no need to isolate me because I was nursing so I wouldn’t get it. If by chance I did get it, it would be so slight that they wouldn’t even notice. Well, that doctor was wrong. I got it real hard. I coughed so much that they said I didn’t take any liquid for 24 hours, and I was limp like a rag. They started to mourn me because they were sure I wouldn’t make it. But obviously, I did. It was pretty common for babies to die in those days.

Another time when I was little, I was really sick. I don’t know what was wrong with me that time. They put me in Mama’s bed. Word got around the neighborhood, I guess, and here came Farbror Fredrick from Gräsvederna. I heard him when he came in the kitchen door and he asked, “Is she still alive?”  Then he came in and stood by the bed where I lay and tears were running down his cheeks. I had never seen a man cry before then. He said, “Oh, poor child. Poor child.” Right then I thought he needed more help that I did.

Later on then, when I was bigger, we got the mumps. Everybody got it one after the other and Mama got it. She couldn’t even turn in bed, it hurt so bad. Papa had already had it when he was a kid and I got a light case, so Papa and I took care of all the rest of them.

Carl Adolf Carlsson

I remember a time when it wasn’t me who got hurt; it was Sara. Morfar had a horse named Stjärna because she had a star on her forehead. She was a peculiar horse. Morfar was the one who got along best with Stjärna. She was fine if someone sat in the wagon and held the reins but he could not tie her up to a hitching post. She would pull and fight until she pulled loose or pulled the whole thing over. Then she would just go home. If Morfar needed to go in somewhere, someone had to sit in the wagon and hold onto the reins. It didn’t matter who it was. One time I remember he had come from the store and then he was going to stop at Mama’s and have a cup of coffee. So Sara and I were supposed to sit in the wagon and hold Stjärna. Well, it was really cold out there. I don’t know if there had been some ice on the iron rod by the wagon seat or why Sara bent down and was going to lick on it. You can imagine what happened next. Her lips and her tongue got stuck and she pulled back so quick that she pulled off some skin on both! She started screaming blue murder! Out came Morfar and Mama and what did Morfar say? “Dum unge!” (“Stupid kids”)

Well, and then there’s teeth. It wasn’t at all uncommon to have most or all of your teeth gone by the time you were 60. Sometimes Morfar and Mormor would come by our place on their way to church. There was no other road to Grönede in those days. It took them at least an hour and a half to get to Kisa by horse and buggy. So sometimes, if it was a week

On the right here is Mom's 

Mormor, Anna Matilda, and

on the left is her sister whose

name I can't find right now :( 

when our family wasn’t going to church, they would pick me up or sometimes both Margaretha and I would go along with them to church. Mormor would meet a friend there and they both had black silk scarves around their heads and tied under their chins when they went to church. They both had ginger root to chew on, so they could stay awake during the long sermons. Well, neither one of them had any teeth, so that’s where Margaretha and I would come in. The whole ginger root was too big to put in the mouth at one time -- ginger root is a pretty strong spice -- so Margaretha and I would bite off small pieces for them to chew on. Then they would give us a piece of candy to get the ginger root taste out of our mouths. Both of these ladies couldn’t have been any older than in their 60s, and here I sit with pretty much all my teeth."

The first time I went to the doctor

Kjettestorp in winter

"The first time I remember going to the doctor was when I was seven years old.  It was during the winter, and the hill right by the schoolhouse was icy. We had our sparks and sleds that we rode down the hill there. I was still in the younger class and I had my sled, and I came pulling it up the hill, and I guess I looked down and the ground and didn’t really look where I was going. Well, here came Stig on a spark, and he had Greta on the front as a passenger, and they ran right into me, onto my right leg. I flew forward and hit my head on Greta’s head, and I bit my tongue really hard. I was bleeding quite a lot. The teachers got a little angry with us for doing it. Greta was a little hurt too, but there wasn’t as much blood on her as on me. The woman teacher sent me with Brita down to the washhouse to wash me off. Then they made me sit for another lesson because there was no-one to go home with me. The teacher even asked me if I wanted to read, but my mouth was so swollen inside that I couldn’t even speak. I just shook my head, and she left me alone then.

Sara and Henrik i Herrefall,

the heroes of today's story

Brita and Henrik were in the upper grades, so they stayed longer than we did. It was left to Henrik i Herrefall and Sara to get me home. I couldn’t walk up that hill. I was too dizzy, and my leg was too swollen to put weight on. They didn’t want to try to put me on my sled because they didn’t think I could sit up, so they borrowed a spark from the girls in Blåsten. Even so, the first hill there was so icy that they couldn’t walk behind the spark and push me up. They weren’t strong enough and their feet just kept slipping. Henrik went into the woods and found a long stick that they put behind the spark. Then they could walk on either side of the road where there wasn’t so much ice, and they pulled me up that way. By this time I was so cold that I was shaking, and they had worked so hard that they had gotten so warm, so they took off their coats and put them on me. Going this way they got up all the steep hills.

This is what a spark looks like :)

Finally when we got home and Mama saw us, she got so upset. She bundled me into bed and don’t really remember any more then. When I got home to Mama, I relaxed and didn’t worry anymore. I heard later that they loaned Henrik a spark so he could take the big road home and go down and pick up Greta and give her a ride home so she didn’t have to walk.

When Dad came home and saw what had happened and then Brita and Henrik came home from school and told their story, Dad was really upset, too. He went right down to the schoolhouse, and he scolded the teachers. He told them they should have sent Henrik home to tell him what had happened, so he could come and get me. Dad was really angry I guess, and my teacher felt so bad that she came to our house every afternoon and gave me lessons and tutored me so I could keep up with the class.

This is Dr. Julius Levenhagen (also spelled

Lewenhagen). He came to Kisa around 1900.

The next day after this happened, Dad got the sled out and took me to the doctor. That was the first time I could remember going to the doctor. Even though I was so miserable, I couldn’t help but feel a bit special because it was just me and Dad. He carried me into the doctor’s office. I was a big kid of 7; I hadn’t been carried in years.  It turned out that my leg was not broken, but there was a crack in the bone. The doctor ordered bedrest for several weeks. To treat the bite in my tongue, he put compresses dipped in some kind of liquid both on top of the tongue and underneath. He sent home a bottle of that liquid to Mama and she was to change the compresses a couple times a day. The doctor’s name was Levenhagen."

More stories from Kjettestorp School

Kjettestorp School 1936 -- if you recognize more of the students,
please let me know and I'll add them in when I update this entry :)

"Our school days always started with a hymn. The teacher played the pump organ and we sang. Then the first lesson of the day was a Bible lesson, bibliskhistoria. We studied bible history and we memorized Bible verses. That was one of the subjects. When we got into third grade, we started to learn handicrafts. Knitting was the first thing for girls. I remember the first potholder I knitted; it got so crooked and looked so bad.

Then we were going to knit socks, long socks almost up to the knee. It went alright until I got to the heel. Then the teacher ripped it up and ripped it up. Finally she said, “You’re getting so far behind. You’ll have to take this home and do it.” I cried all the way home. That was a disgrace to me to have to take it home when the other girls didn’t. When I came home crying, Mama asked what was wrong so I told her and she said, “Brita, you sit down and knit the heel for her.” Brita was five years older than me and she was always really good at handicrafts too. When I came to school the next day, I was scared to death to show the teacher that heel, but she called me up and took one look at it and said, “You didn’t do this.” I said, “No.” She wanted to know, “Well, who did it?” I quickly said, “Brita did but Mama said she should.” I guess the teacher had enough respect for Mama so she said, “Sit down and continue.”  I wanted to go home and give Mama and Brita big hugs. And now that I think about it, I might have told that story already. Oh well.

This is Brita, Sara and Henrik in, I'm guessing, 1922.

I know it doesn't really fit with school days, but I just

found it and it's too cute not to share!

The other girls, especially Greta i Herrefall and Karin i Blåsten, they were very good at handicrafts. I have a pillow still to this day that Greta made for me. She probably was through school then but she gave it to me for my birthday one year. Greta died when she was 22 years old so this pillow means something special to me.

Erik Johansson was strict but he was fair. Everybody liked him. I remember some of the big boys when they were going to stand up and answer a question, they had to stand up and stand up straight. They had a habit of leaning on the desk while they answered, only half standing up, but with the new teacher they had to get used to standing up straight while they answered.

All the parents of course loved this teacher, but in time, he moved and we got Gunnar Brolin. He is a teacher who I did not like very much at all. He thought he was going to be so modern and show the country folk how things were done. He and Dad were on two different sides in terms of politics. Dad was in the Bondeförbundet, the farmer party, which was a very conservative party and Gunnar Brolin was in Folkpartiet which was more liberal. He tried in several ways to get after Dad and at times, it seemed like it was trying to get at Dad through us kids. He didn’t give Lennart the grades that Dad thought he should have, so Dad went and wanted to see the work that Lennart had done and asked the teacher to explain the grades to him. Well, however it went, the teacher said, “Oh, I forgot to count this paper and this paper” and he gave Lennart better grades. He had to erase the old grades. Dad said he didn’t want that on Lennart’s records as he went through life.

I remember one time we were supposed to write essays. Magistern put several different subjects up on the board, and we had to choose one to write about. I chose “Tre Dagar i Uganda.” “Three days in Uganda.” The funny thing, of course, was that I knew nothing about Uganda except that it was in Africa! I had to study up and find out about it in some books.

When Henrik was still in school there and Erik Johansson was our teacher, the kids were going to draw a map of a country and Henrik drew a map of Mongolia. Farbror Folke had brought home several maps and Dad was always interested in maps, so he and Henrik had studied that map. Well, Henrik put in a river that Magister Johansson didn’t know existed. It wasn’t on his map. So Henrik had to bring Farbror Folke’s map to school in order to get graded because he had something that was more up to date than the teacher. Magister Johansson thought that was pretty special.

This is some of Mom's schoolwork from first grade.
It's a little embarrassing that Mom's handwriting
was better when she was six than mine is now!

When I was in the lower grades, the good students sat in the back and the naughty ones or the ones who couldn’t concentrate, they sat in the first row. I had always been in the back row; I had never sat in the first row. Well it happened that I bended over across the aisle to whisper something to another girl. The teacher was helping another student in that row and she turned around and told me to sit up and not whisper. Well, it went a little while, and whatever it was I thought I just had to whisper it to this girl and the teacher caught me again so I was told a second time. I just couldn’t keep it to myself, so it happened a third time. Then the teacher said, “Now you will go and sit in the first row.” I had to trade places with a kid there. Oh how embarrassed I was. I thought I might just melt through the floor.

One time in Margaretha’s class, the teacher was trying to explain something about history. I don’t remember exactly what the lesson was about but it was something in the past. She tried to get the kids to understand what BC, Before Christus, meant and how long ago that was. When she got done, a little girl held up her hand, Brita Forsby, and asked, “Was fröken born before Christus or after?”

Another time, there was a little girl in Lennart’s class named Karin i Grönliv and they were going to write and essay on a subject they chose. Then they were going to stand up and read it to the class. This little girl got up and read, “Once upon a time there was a cow-catcher who went out to catch cows.” Then she sat down again. Just imagine how the class started to giggle."