Celebrations

It was very common, in our clan, to have a celebration that included all of the relations.  All of the aunts, uncles, children, and their children were in attendance.  Celebrations would involve hundreds of people, typically hosted on one of the farms owned by one of the relatives.  There was always plenty of room to relax and enjoy the day at these family reunions. There was, typically, no particular reason to have a family reunion, however it seemed that they would occur about once a year.  The turnouts were fantastic.  Attendance on the order of one hundred folks was not uncommon.  I have a photograph of all of the folks that attended a reunion that I think was taken in about 1935.  I remember being at those reunions, but I don’t remember much about them.  The one thing I do remember is that we ate GOOD.  We were of Scandinavian background so it was basically a smorgasboard dinner with everything from soup to nuts, with a lot of meat, venison, beef, and all of the things that are available on the farm.  And all of these wonderful pastries that the Swedish people would make.  At those celebrations the women did all of the work.  I can remember watching my aunt cooking at the big oven.  This was a very big oven which was fueled by wood.  She would work from dawn to dusk preparing the menu that would be served at the reunion.  I remember once being amazed, seeing her  standing in front of that oven, cooking away, sound asleep as she stood there!  Might be hard to believe, but I saw it.

Favorite Sayings

Some of the sayings that I remember involve a Swedish accent.  From the time I was 6 years old to the time I was 18 years old we were often visited by relatives at our house in Minneapolis, and they were all Scandinavian.  Most of them had very heavy Scandinavian  accents.  The Swedes did not worry about protocol and whether or not they should say this or that.  If it was in their mind, they would say it.

We had an aunt that used to come and visit us from time to time and she would sit in the front room of our house, usually referred to as "The Parlor", which was reserved for special guests.  My aunt would sit there all day and just talk and talk and talk.  One of my sisters, Hermione, was there on this one occasion and she did not have stockings on.  Correction, she did have stockings on but they weren’t nylons.  At that time, the expression was “chiffon”.  I remember my aunt taking one look at my sister’s legs and saying “How iss it den, Hermione, dat you dares to wear chiffon stockings ven you have such hairy legs!?”  This sort of thing went on all the time in those days. Whatever those Scandanavians thought came right out of their mouths.  That’s how those folks lived.

Pets

The only pet that I recall having goes way back to when I was about  4 years old.  We had a rabbit and I recall my sisters telling me to go down in the basement and inform him (the rabbit) that Easter was next week.  And that’s what I did!

Easter was big.  It was always big.  Every Sunday was big.  And here again was tradition.  Every Sunday after church was a big meal.  My mother always had a roast, mashed potatoes and gravy, and the dining room table was set with white table cloths and she would put out her silver that she had for years and years and years.   We never ate in the dining room except on Sundays.  We had pot roast on Sundays and on Monday night it was ground up into hash.

Celebrities

When I was in middle school, one of my classmates was Robert Vaughn (of "Man From U.N.C.L.E." fame).  He and I used to run around together.  In middle school, I hate to say it, but we were smoking.   One time, I recall, he had a pack of cigarettes and he was hesitant to share and so I sat on him and helped myself.  His parents were in the theatre and were living in New York.  He lived with his grandmother on West Broadway.  One day he said "We’re gonna go and get some money from my grandmother and then we’ll go have a coke".  I remember going with him to his house and he asked his grandmother for some money.  He was 13 or 14 at the time.  We went on to the same high school together.  He’s still going today and I’m probably one of the only ones who knows how old he is.