Elizabeth Sweder's Blog

I lay down on the sofa one afternoon for enough of a snooze to shut everything out of my mind, falling into a deep, mindless slumber. An hour later I was startled awake by an apparition of Alice Bjornquist, a girl I knew in fifth grade, appearing suddenly in my mind. There was no question it was Alice, although I hadn’t seen or thought of her for more than sixty years.

In our town Alice’s last name was synonymous with “ne’er-do-well”.  She looked exactly as she did the last time I saw her in the flesh so many years ago. Why had she appeared in my  mind so suddenly? When I knew Alice in school she was ten, the same age as I, a dejected little girl with straggly, uncombed blond hair, her mouth perpetually open, a vacant expression on her pale face. A too-big, wrinkled cotton dress hung on her slight frame. I never saw her smile or show expression of any kind. A sad sort of aura hovered around her.

Many of the ten or so children in Alice’s family were two years behind in school. Alice was in third grade, the same class as my brother Jim, although she should have been in fifth grade with me. Her brother Albert, who was twelve, belonged in seventh grade with my sister Katherine, but had been held back, so was only in fifth. I often saw Alice on the playground, but never spoke to her. I had no idea what to say to a girl so different from me.

The Bjornquists lived just outside the city limits, but too close to take the school bus. The  children arrived in their father’s rattletrap old truck, wearing faded, worn out clothing. Their inability to do their schoolwork correctly or on time was more fodder for ridicule. In so many ways, they didn’t fit in.

That fall of 1946, we had returned to Fergus Falls after moving many times during The War. My sister Katherine would attend seventh grade at Fergus Falls Junior High, while my eight-year-old brother Butch and I walked a few blocks down Mt. Faith Avenue to Jefferson Elementary. I had always been the shy one. Before the first day of school, Katherine lectured me: “If  you want to make friends, you need to show some gumption and talk to people!” I listened earnestly, determined to be more outgoing.

It was customary for the children to stay on the playground until the bell rang, waiting for a turn on the long steel slide …… with an exciting bump in the middle. Then we’d run back for another turn. But Alice always hung back, waiting in the background. Too timid to push her way ahead, she seldom got her turn on the slide. When the first bell rang we formed a line outside the heavy school doors until the second bell, when a teacher would direct us into our classroom.

Unfortunately for me (I thought), Albert Bjornquist, Alice’s brother, a tall, clumsy youth who badly needed a haircut and wore ragged bib overalls, had been teasing me on the playground, trying to get my attention. I ignored him. As the bell rang and we began to form a line, Albert pushed in behind me, poked me in the back and gave a yank on one of my pigtails.

Katherine’s pep talk the evening before, urging me to be more assertive, still echoed in my head. I turned around with my fist clenched and popped Albert in the face! When he saw the punch coming he opened his mouth in surprise, my fist hitting the edge of his front teeth, inflicting a wound on one of my knuckles that hurt more than I would have admitted. I regretted my foolish response, embarrassed by such a childish reaction.

What a terrible way to begin the first day of fifth grade, I thought. The gash on the back of my hand from colliding with Albert’s teeth hurt for a long time. Worse yet, I couldn’t get the astonished look on his face out of my head. To make matters even worse, I could tell he had a crush on me. Compounding everything there was a shortage of lockers, and the teacher, Miss Miller, had assigned Albert to share his locker with me. I was mortified. Fortunately, Donna Mae Lundgren, a very nice girl, saw my unfortunate dilemma and came to the rescue, offering to share her locker with me, thus saving me from a year of misery.

All these memories flashed through my head as I lay on the sofa that day, bewildered to find myself thinking about such long ago incidents, and wondering why Alice Bjornquist had suddenly come to mind after more than sixty years. My gosh, I thought, could Alice still be here in Fergus after all this time? I wondered how she was doing and whether life had improved for her over the years. With an aching sense of remorse, I wished I had reached out and been kind to her those many years ago.

I put the matter out of my mind, got up from the sofa and went outside to bring in the mail and Daily Journal. Back in the house, I sat on the sofa, flipped through  mostly junk mail and glanced at the slim newspaper. My eyes settled on the obituaries. Scanning the column, I read about the death of a woman named Alice who was born the same year as I, knowing instantly that it had to be the Alice Bjornquist I had known as a child.

The account began, “Alice was born in Fergus Falls in 1936” (the same year as I)…married in 1954, (the year I graduated from high school), and had four children. The article gave their names, followed by a list of places where she had worked, the church she belonged to, committees she had served on, and activities in which she had taken part, her hobbies, interests, and names of children, grandchildren, and other relatives.

At the end of the article it gave her maiden name, Bjornquist, with information about the funeral service and memorials. I was stunned. I sat there for a while wondering what my sudden awareness of her life could mean.  After long moments of reflection, I found myself wishing I had been kinder, more understanding, and had been able to reach out to her when she was so in need, those many years ago. I regretted my inability to do so as a child of ten.

Pondering the meaning of  my other-worldly encounter with Alice, I could think of nothing except to say in my heart, “Goodbye, Alice. I’m glad you had a good life. I wish you well, and hope we meet again someday.” Tears welled in my eyes as I put the paper down. The tears were for me, not for Alice.

This is a guest post from daughter Meg Hanson. I found this youtube video of my mom reading her story “A Taste of Vanilla” at a writer’s group meeting in October 2013.  A version of this story is also a chapter in her memoir “The Red Cottage”. Enjoy!

It’s April, and winter has lost its icy grip over the past few weeks. A distinct “warming trend,” as the  weather people on television like to call it, is clearly evident. Last week a huge flock of robins, such as I’ve never seen before, alighted in our yard on the lake side of the house, rested  a short time, then continued on their northward journey. These signs, combined with freezing temperatures at night while above freezing during the day, confirm one thing: maple syrup season is here. Time to clean the syrup shed, haul fifty gallon storage tanks to a source of water, wash them, then return them to the wood lot to be filled with maple sap: the first and only ingredient found in genuine maple syrup.

Before I go further, let me share some background. Some sixty years ago, my father first hired a local farmer with a team of horses and an open wagon to go through the woods picking up buckets of fresh sap, and haul them to a cooking shed to be transformed into maple syrup.   Deep snow often remains in the woods when conditions are perfect for sap production: freezing temperatures at night rising to above freezing during the day.

During spring vacation or on weekends in those days, in our one-hundred and twenty acre woodlot, my young brothers helped with the labor. Daddy and the boys would drive  from Minneapolis north to Friberg Township in Otter Tail  County, a mile from our family’s red cottage, heading straight for the woodlot to help with the annual spring  ritual of making syrup. Much of the syrup was sold, but plenty remained for our own use. We never ran out of genuine maple syrup for pancakes or to pour over ice cream. Those days are long gone, my brothers are now in their sixties and seventies, and the old cooking shed  has fallen to ruins, abandoned but not  forgotten.

A number of years ago—I would guess at least ten— one  hot, humid August morning, a severe storm driven from the west by straight line winds, suddenly roared  across Otter Tail  County. Hundreds of acres of hardwood forest which had stood for as long as any of us could remember, were decimated. Dozens of mature oak, maple, and other varieties of trees in our woodlot were downed. For a few years we left them where they fell, until finally my brothers, who now make these kinds of decisions for the family, decided to have the felled trees milled into lumber, yielding an ample supply of oak boards. They hired a local farmer who owned a portable sawmill to orchestrate much of the dangerous work.

As so often occurs, one idea leads to another, and the next thing I knew it had been decided that the newly milled  lumber would be used to build a large shed in which to store all sorts of seasonal equipment: “toys” for grown-ups such as Steve’s John Deere tractor, old snowmobiles used for creating ski trails in the woods, a log splitter, lumber and you name it. Gradually the new building became a reality as a practical storage space for all manner of things. Finally the idea was broached to resurrect the maple syrup operation of long ago; but this time it would be done first class.

My parents, Jim and Lucille Eriksson, in the early 1950s  first conceived the idea of producing maple syrup as a kind of combination family business and hobby. Since then three generations of Erikssons have dutifully made the trip to Friberg Township during the tail end of winter, trekking to the woodlot in late March and early April to help make maple syrup. Has it been worth the effort? That’s a tough call.

I don’t really know what Daddy’s original idea or purpose had been. To generate income and make a profit?  To take advantage of an underused resource? To give the boys something to do during spring vacation? To make sure we always had plenty of real maple syrup on hand? It’s hard to fathom what he was thinking when it first started, but the result has been both hard work and memorable fun times for generations of Erikssons.

On Easter Sunday this year, twenty-nine volunteers from our extended family gathered  at the woodlot, in a small building that had been built in the year 2000 and dubbed “The Millenium Shack”. Warmed by a cheery fire in the wood stove, we shared a memorable meal of baked ham and buns, homemade baked beans rich with bacon and molasses, chips and a variety of salads, topped off with cupcakes to celebrate cousin Dave Sasseville’s 59th birthday. It was a fitting celebration for the longevity of four generations of Erikssons and their families making maple syrup at the woodlot, one more time.

Readers: This post is written by Meg Hanson, daughter of Liz, and also director of marketing and distribution for The Red Cottage :)

Exciting news! The Red Cottage was mentioned in the weekly international news magazine The Christian Science Monitor, in a column called “What are you reading?”. A friend of our family in Raleigh, NC submitted a beautiful summary of the book, which was then published in the February 16th issue. We have been getting some book orders on our Amazon Seller’s account as result! The text of the summary is inserted below, along with a scan of the cover of that issue of the Monitor, with the “What are you reading? column.

I expect that my mother will write more posts after they get back from their Florida road trip.

My earliest memories of living at the lake began in the mid 1940s, when our family returned to the midwest during the War. “The War” meant World War II, which ushered America into the modern era and changed the world forever. When we lived in Fargo in 1943 and ’44,  we were only sixty miles from Jewett Lake, near Fergus Falls, Minnesota.  At that time my dad was in charge of the OPA (Office of Price Administration), for a large district including all of North Dakota; but never-the-less, we were much closer to Jewett Lake than when we had lived in Maryland.

Still, gas rationing limited how often we could make the trip, travelling at the mandatory speed limit of thirty-five miles per hour. Mother and we children settled in at the Red Cottage as soon as school was out in June.  Daddy would join us on weekends then return to Fargo on Sunday evening. We could get along this way because we had a telephone, the only one on the east side of the lake. The hand-cranked wooden telephone was our only means of communicating with the outside world.

Nineteen parties shared one telephone line for a long time after the war, almost all of them farm families, each with its unique ring. At any time of the day or night, one long and three short rings might pierce the air from the old wooden telephone on the wall in the back entry. And in addition to telephone calls, it was our family’s signal to come home, Now.  It was a heads up recognized by everyone in the Eriksson tribe. Beginning early in the morning, the telephone rang with various combinations of long and short jangling blasts.

Mother remembered being awakened one morning at 5:30 by a loud ring, then hearing an unfamiliar voice with a strong Scandinavian or German accent saying, “Haf ya got da coffee pot on yet?” Mostly, we mentally tuned out the constant phone ringing, except on those rare occasions when the operator rang one long and three short, our family’s  unique signal. One long and three short became the universal code that brought children home for dinner, chores, or an important message.

The telephone could be heard outside in the yard, but we could hear the car horn while we were out in a boat on the lake, or on a gravel road a mile from home, on a still day. It communicated the message, “Come home, NOW!”  Who knew? It might have been an emergency, an important message, or time for dinner. But one long and three short blasts on the car’s horn got our attention, and rarely failed to bring us home.

The first week in November, more than two weeks ago now, had been mild and lovely. We rejoiced that it appeared we would have a long, mild fall again, as we did last year. The squirrels were busy racing around our big yard burying acorns, and moving black walnuts like green golf balls here and there around the property to hide over the winter. The leaves had mostly been blown from the trees. Don had picked them up with his John Deere mower and dumped them over the edge of our ravine, wet with springs, to become part of that marshy place with an ecology all its own.

Some of my nephews were scheduled to come to the family cabin that weekend for their annual deer hunting ritual at the woodlot. Dan, my brother Jim’s son who lives in Tennessee, came bringing his ten-year-old son Will. It would be Will’s initiation into the family deer hunting tradition, although he would not be allowed to carry a gun for another year or two.  Another nephew, Chris, my brother Mark’s son and the younger of Mark’s two boys, was also planning to hunt. Chris brought his eight or nine year old son Chase, way too young to hunt, (at least by his mother’s standards,) but he’d get the idea. But it would never again be like the old days, when deer hunting season was like a festive holiday, and the meals the men fixed for themselves resembled banquets fit for royalty.

I remember many years ago, when my dad and uncle Pete, all four of my brothers, some of Dad’s hunting buddies and various other sportsmen friends, came every fall for duck and deer hunting, although probably not all at the same time. In those days, Mother and some of the other wives often came too, and the women did the cooking. Those days are long gone, as are my parents and their friends, and a tradition that is dying.

This year was especially bittersweet, lacking the old spirit of revelry and celebration, with its long tradition of male bonding through the thrill of the hunt. A heaviness hung in the atmosphere. I hate to tell you why. One of the “boys”, my brother Mark’s oldest son, Mark Junior, was missing. Two years ago this fall he was killed in a horrendous, violent car accident.  No need to go into details. He left behind a beautiful wife and two teenage boys, for whom life will never be the same. It will take a very long time for the sadness, the grief, to go away. Ice and snow now cover the ground and there’s a heaviness in the air. And deer hunting season will never  be the same.

Mother loved walking through the wood lot on old established trails that had probably once been used for hauling logs in a horse drawn wagon, to be used for heating a farm house. Mother loved nature and enjoyed finding lichens, bittersweet and other kinds of berries, as well as dried seed pods that she could take home to use in arrangements. Dad used the woodlot for deer hunting in November. But Uncle Pete, who was a forester, advised Dad to start harvesting some of the trees to keep the forest healthy. There would be many uses for the lumber.

When I was about twelve or thirteen, Dad hired a local farmer with a portable sawmill to set up his operation in the woodlot, in the open area near Louie’s cabin. Trees, mostly oak and poplar, were felled and hauled to the clearing. My brother Butch and I, sister Katherine and cousin Ann all came to watch the operation, as the saw mill, powered by a tractor, gobbled up huge logs to be ripped into boards with a deafening scream.

I remember how the saw first sliced off four slabs of bark to square the log, then ran it lengthwise through the saw, cutting it into uniform boards. A steady stream of coarse, damp sawdust, spewing through an exhaust tube, created a mountain that soon became a safe place to sit and watch, as the pile of boards grew.

The first use for the new boards would be to remodel the kitchen and breakfast nook at the Red Cottage with poplar paneling, replacing the original paperboard walls from 1923, which had become warped and stained over the years. The new poplar paneling would be a big improvement. It lasted another generation, until it was time for another remodeling job, which finally brought the kitchen into the modern world.

Guest Post by daughter Meg Hanson:

Most people reading this blog know that my mother has been working on writing a memoir for the last 4 plus years. I stepped in about 2 years ago to help get things organized and move the project along. THE BOOK IS DONE!!! and printed and bound and trimmed and here!!! Or I should say the books are at my parents’ house at Jewett Lake.

Uncle Mark is bringing some copies down to “the Cities” on Monday when he comes home after Deer Hunting weekend. It won’t seem real to me until I can actually hold a copy in my hand. My mother has already taken some copies around yesterday and today to Victor Lundeens and the Historical Society in Fergus Falls, as well as the libraries in Fergus and Pelican Rapids.  Apparently a woman at the Fergus library asked her if she was an author, and seemed very excited about reading the book.  My mom said “well, I guess I am, now that I just published this book”.

More  info about the book can be found on the Red Cottage Memoir tab of the blog.

Down in “the Cities” we are celebrating publication of the book with a “Book Launch and Signing Party” on Tuesday evening, December 2 from 6:30 – 9:00 at The Edina Art Center. Please join us if you can.

There will also be a book signing at Victor Lundeens in Fergus Falls (date TBD).

Since the end of the Great Depression, here in Otter Tail County a certain hundred and forty acres of land have played a special role in my family’s life. “The Woodlot” including Louie’s Cabin, had come into dad’s possession several years before I was born. Dad had been hired to settle the estate of a farmer who had died. When Dad presented the bill for his work, the client had no money with which pay him, so instead offered him a hundred and forty acres of woods and marshland.

Dad would have preferred a cash payment— or perhaps even an IOU— but money was scarce in the 1930s. The three hundred dollars owed him for settling the estate was more than the owners could afford to pay if they were to keep the farm. So instead of cash, they offered my father a woodlot, worthless for growing crops. Being an obliging man, and thinking the land could be used for hunting, Dad accepted the offer. He could not have guessed what a significant role the wooded acreage would play in our family’s life over the next eighty years.

The wood lot included a one room cabin about the size of a single garage, with a couple of small windows, a shed roof and a wood stove, in a clearing in the woods, surrounded by a small grassy meadow. The cabin was furnished with a wooden kitchen table and chair, a cot, some rudimentary shelves and a few other odds and ends. It was inhabited by an old man, Louie, who lived there gratis.

I remember one day when I was about five years old, I went with Daddy went on an errand to Louie’s cabin. He knocked on the door. When Louie opened it, I caught my first and only glimpse of a shabby, unshaven man of undetermined age, wearing soiled old clothing. Daddy went inside to talk to Louie, while my younger brother Butch and I played in the grassy area outside. Later, Butch proclaimed, “Louie looks like a mad horse.”

I never forgot that description, and I never saw Louie again. He vanished into the pre-war, depression era world, managing to get by with only the barest necessities. A few months later the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and our family moved to Washington D.C., where Dad would work for the government. After the war we returned to Minnesota, spending summers at our lake cottage a mile or so from the wood lot. Louie’s cabin, which had held such fascination for me, was empty except for a few pieces of broken furniture, dust, dry leaves, and cobwebs. Louie had disappeared into the past.

One day when my fifties-age daughter said something about my having been born in Fargo, I was flabbergasted. Where did you get the idea I was born in Fargo?” I asked. “I was born right here in Fergus Falls!”

“So when did you live in Fargo?” She asked. Suddenly I realized I had never told my children anything about my childhood—even where I was born— or about the lives of my parents and grandparents and other relatives— or what life had been like during the Great Depression and World War II.

Several times Betsy had asked me to write about my childhood. I had said I would like to—someday. There was so much I could tell my two daughters! But too many other things came first, until I began to realize how fast time was slipping away. I needed to start writing immediately, or I was afraid I never would. “Someday” had arrived. I dropped everything and began writing about my life from the earliest time I could remember.

During my pre-television childhood, kids were responsible for their own entertainment. My siblings and I stayed busy outside, playing together and with other kids in the neighborhood. In winter we built snow forts, skated on Lake Alice and went sliding in the park and on the big hill between Mt. Faith and Summit Avenues, where a cow grazed in summer. In town, my friends and I played dress-up, parading around the block in ladies dresses and high heeled shoes.

During summer, when we lived at the lake, there were endless opportunities for swimming, climbing trees, hiking, building forts, picking wild berries and visiting the nearby farm. On rainy days my siblings and I worked on art or craft projects, played cards and board games like Monopoly, read, and listened to radio programs: The Lone Ranger, Superman, Jack Armstrong, and my favorite, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon and his Mighty Dog King.

Even grown- ups listened to comedies such as Fibber McGee and Mollie, Jack Benny, Charlie McCarthy, and detective shows like Sam Spade. They called it the Golden Age of Radio. But for many children such as myself, it was also the Golden Age of Childhood. We were free to be creative and to use our imaginations to do whatever crazy things we thought up.