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Retirement Talk for Boomers, Seniors, and Retirees

Frog Spit

Jackie Spinks

                                                   Chapter Two


              “Dad, there’s some guys over there watching us.”

              Men in black suits, in that year 1906, standing at the end of the pasture, quietly watching, frightened impoverished men like my Grandfather Lars, who worked for one third of the crop he raised, two-thirds of his crops going to the owner.  That year was an uneasy time in the backwoods area of Sweden, where the remnants of a medieval economic organization still remained, a time of whips, chains, dungeons and hefty taxes.  His neighbor’s twelve –year- old son had been executed for stealing the master’s cart.   These men in dark suits were especially disconcerting when they stood silent, unmoving, watching him plow.

           He tried to ignore them, yanked on the reins of old Blue, then knelt and attempted to pry a rock loose from the soil, finally leveraged it out with a branch, all the while surreptitiously studying the two men, who seemed like statues as they leaned against the fence post.

           He tried to place them.  Had he seen them in the village?  Where did they come from? What did they want?  They obviously weren’t standing there to pick up pointers on the technology of plowing.

           His small sons, Waldemar, Wilfred, and Walter helped him pile the stones he leveraged from the ground.

           “Walter,” he said, “you help Wil with that stone.  There’s a good boy.”  What kind of trouble was it this time—if not immigration gendarmes (he’d immigrated from Russia to Sweden) was it creditors, eviction notices, warrants, taxes, arrest.  Men in black suits were bad news whichever way you shaved it.

           He pretended to be unaware of their presence.  “Come on, old boy,” Lars yanked on the reins of his horse, knelt, attempted to pry a rock from the soil, again with the help of Walter, then ripped it out with an excess of worried force (such poor soil) all the while secretly peeking at the men, dressed in those bad-news black suits.  What did they want?

           His mind raced—he had a tiny amount of money, carefully penny-pinched and hoarded by Brita (my Grandmother).   Was he going to lose it, or were they all going to be evicted?  Had one of his sons stolen something from Sir Eric and there was a warrant out for his arrest?

           “You boys done anything bad you want to tell me about?” he inquired of his sons.

           “No, Pa.”

           “You’re sure.  You wouldn’t lie to your old Dad, would you?”

           “No, Pa.”

           “Your sisters been good girls, too?”

           “Oh, sure.”

           “You heard anything about your Uncle Leo getting in trouble?”
           “Nope.”

           “You’re sure.  I know you don’t want to get your Uncle Leo in trouble, but I’ve got to know.”

           “No Pa.”  The boys looked anxiously at the two men.   “Do you think those guys over there want us?”

           “Nah.  Giddiup!  Why should they?  We haven’t done anything wrong?  Right?”

           Lars dragged the plow through the rocky soil.  Maybe, the men would get tired and go away.  He was fairly certain they wouldn’t trample through the lumpy, half-frozen, muddy field to get to him—not in those duds.  They’d either wait or give up.

           These past years had been tough for Lars.  The weather had been bad.  The crops had been meager. He wasn’t the best farmer around.  He had six kids.   It was a crop which was thin even in periods of good weather, partly because Eric rationed the manure.

           The kids were constantly hungry.  Back at the house, the youngest one, (my mother Selma) constantly pulled on Brita’s skirt, whining for food.

           “Dinner’s soon,” Brita patted Selma on the head, worried, trying to substitute kindness for food.  “You not spoil your appetite, jah, Honey?”

           “Please Ma, just one piece of bread,” Selma (my mother) would plead, “It won’t spoil my appetite.”

           “You run along and sweep porch.”

           “Please Ma, I’m so hungry, I can’t wait.”

           “Yes, you can.  Look at big sister.  She can wait and maybe Pa will bring us home something good.”

           “No, he won’t.”

           “Ah, the baby is such a pity-pot.”

           “He’s in the field.  How can he bring us anything to eat?”

           “Well, maybe Eric will come by and give Pa some candy for you.  Now wouldn’t that be nice?”

           “That’s only at Christmas, he does that.”

           “Now, how did I get such a Gloomy Gus for a daughter and at such a young age?”

           “Please Ma, just one little slice of bread?  You don’t have to put anything on it.”

           Older sister Adina (my aunt) whispered, “Go outside in the garden and dig around and see if you can find a potato or some dandelion greens.”

           “Thanks, Adina.”

           Meanwhile, back in the field Lars kept sneaking peeks at the two men.  What punishment awaited all of them?

           Well, they weren’t going to give up, it seemed; he was merely postponing the inevitable.  Might as well get it over with—whatever was waiting for them.

           “Good afternoon Sir,” they smiled.  We’re here to save you.”  They held out their hands.  (What kind of scam was this?) Lars examined his callused hand for mud, wiped it on his pant leg and shook their hands.

           “Save me?  From what?”  A person accustomed to being exploited could never tell.  This was the first time anyone had offered to save him from anything.

           “We’re from the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints in America and we’ve come to save you,” they repeated in broken Swedish.    The men were young—twenty or twenty-two.  Missionaries, they said, Lars waited, head bowed.

           So they continued, stopping and starting, novices at their work, at their calling, hunting for words, trying to explain, to convert, in broken Swedish the good news of Christ, as seen by the Mormons, going into details about the Angel Moroni, the Golden Tablets, America, the Celestial Kingdom.

           Lars relaxed, smiled at their eager faces and told them he was more worried about today then forty years down the road.  The terror oozed slowly from his tense biceps.

“Brita now,” he said, “she worries about when we die.  I don’t.”

“Mr. Larson, you say you’re not worried about the after life, but there is nothing more important then your soul.’

“I don’t expect much from the Almighty.  He’s not too crazy about me.”  

“Well, we’re here to change all that,” they said.  And you’re wrong that He doesn’t care.”

“Well, I’ve got to get back to work.” And he walked away, relieved.

The missionaries drifted off but returned the following day, this time wearing boots and work clothes.  Tagging along, heaving, straining, piling rocks, pushing the plow, but always with the Book of Mormon in their pockets and  waited until Lars stopped to eat Brita’s rye bread and pickled herring before they began on the Saints.

“Let us explain to you what joy you’ll have in your conversion.”

“You better talk to Brita about that.  I’m not much interested.”

But day after day they came and they told him about how on Judgment Day his soul would be reunited with his body—every limb and joint and hair restored.  And how Jesus would return and lift all the Mormons out of their graves.

“With my luck some bear would come along and make a feast out of my body before Jesus returns.”

“We ask God at the burial to protect the body from the elements.  God was once a man, you know, just like us, with flesh and bones and we believe—no we know—humans can progress into Gods themselves.  Wouldn’t you like to be a God, amongst men?”

Not only did Lars not want to be a God, he didn’t want to be anything more right now than a good farmer with his own fertile soil.  He also belonged to the pessimist class as was ninety percent of his friends and brother, so this idea of becoming a God waltzed right over him.

The missionaries were getting nowhere with Lars, until by chance they hit pay dirt.  They told him about America, this garden of Eden, where he didn’t need to fertilize or irrigate, as the soil was so fertile and the warm rain so abundant, everything flourished without any help.  And they told how they would help Lars and his whole family, not only avoid the pits of eternal damnation but would help him become rich.

Of course, Lars had dreamed this impossible dream of owning his own land, but it was only a dream.  He had lived an unremarkable life, struggling to survive, first in Russia, than ending up here in Sweden, tending the fields in this Godforsaken Feudal country side.  He’d die young and lie in an unmarked grave.

Brita’s family did own a small plot of land and she was trying to save up to buy a small piece, too, but if their lives proceeded as it had—well--it would be one thing after another and they would grow old never having saved up enough money to buy that plot.

Then the missionaries visited Brita.  Both Lars and Brita were young; they had married when Brita was in her teens and Lars, twenty-two-- timid, polite and diffident on the surface, Brita sat with downcast eyes when the missionaries paid their call.  She’d been expecting them so everyone was dressed in their best.  Brita worked at home as a seamstress, sewing, when the kids were down for their naps, and during the evening when they were asleep.  Lady Cemoria said she preferred Brita’s work to the seamstresses in Stockholm.

Brita shyly peeked up when the missionaries spoke directly to her never knowing when attention was called for.  She behaved with diffidence to everyone, until she knew them well. Her three daughters, Laura, Adina and Selma (as I already told you, my mother) lined up behind her.  The boys, Walter, Waldemar and Wilfred, were outside pounding, digging, chopping and piling rocks. 

The little girls clutched rag dolls, their eyes wide, their hearts pounding, concealing their faces behind their hands, peeping out between their fingers.  Nothing so exhilarating had ever come into their routine and arduous lives.  Watching, when they dared, they nervously giggled at the men’s bad Swedish.

At night, curled up together for warmth, in their straw cribs, the kids discussed details of the exotic foreigners.  And when one would doze off, another would remember something they hadn’t discussed and the dozing one would be jerked awake.

“Did you notice their eyes?  They were brown.  Wasn’t that strange?”

 “ Nobody has brown eyes?” Laura said.

 “I wish I had brown eyes.” Adina said.

“Maybe they were blue and they changed.  Do you think our blue eyes could change?  I’d love to have brown eyes, too.” (Mama’s greatest joy at my birth was that I was going to have brown eyes. She continuously, even when I was older, had to comment on my brown eyes.  My good grades and good features were nothing.  It was just my brown eyes that mattered. ) 

“Maybe they were struck by lightening.  Or maybe God struck.”

“Or do you think, Satan?”

“Nah—they’re too beautiful.”

The missionaries returned and brought ever more and better news.  “Mrs. Larson I can assure you, your daughter will marry rich husbands, if you settle in the West.  Women are scarce and men have money there.”

Brita turned to Lars, “Did you hear that, Lars?”

“I did.”

“And Lars,” they continued, “We have a Homestead Act that will give you acreage of unoccupied public land on payment of a small fee, but you’ll only have to pay it back after five years, when you are making money.  Or you can buy land at a dollar an acre, after six months residence on the land.”

Residence in the Celestial Kingdom would be nice—but LAND AT A DOLLAR AN ACRE! Now that was something to stand up and shout about.

Could they do it?  Convert.  Move to America?  Lars and Brita talked for hours, late into the night-- everyone excited and anxious.   They could talk of nothing else.  But America was as far away as another galaxy.  And Brita’s family had always lived in Sweden, some shirt-tail relative said for a thousand years and always they’d worked and died in these hills of Sweden, each generation barely scraping by.  My grandparents lived in a two room house, about 20 by 12 feet, with 2 windows.  As the Swedish days were long and dark Brita painted the walls, with her seamstress money, bright orange, yellow and red.  At night they usually fell asleep quickly as they were so tired—and also to forget their hunger.

During the summer Lars worked in the fields, while in the winter he chopped and sawed trees for Eric’s mill.  During the day Brita also worked during harvest in the field, as did all the kids, in return they were allowed to pick up the gleanings.  Grandma Brita also washed clothes in the lake, carried water from the lake and heated it over the fire to drink and bathe.  She preserved whatever food she could find in the summer for the winter months, but often had to ask her family for something to keep the kids from starving.  And on several occasions, desperate for her children, she begged Sir Eric, for some food for the kids.

He refused, telling her if he gave it to her he’d have to give it to everyone in the village.  Three of her children starved to death.  Selma survived a particularly bad year because she was on breast milk.

Brita curtsied to the great Lady Cemoria and bowed her head when the great lady spoke to her about her sewing, thrilled to be near and in the presence of someone so important.  She moved quickly to do her lady’s biding, sometimes working all night to get a pleat, a gusset, a seam, just the way the Lady wanted it.

Were the missionaries making America sound too good?  Was it true-- all this stuff about the wonders of America?  They’d been tricked before.  Lars believed them, but then Brita’s extended family insisted Lars was dumb, and if that wasn’t bad enough he was too trusting.  “Too much so,” Brita’s sisters claimed. “Yeah, dumb as a stump,” her brothers said

Lars wasn’t stupid, but worked so hard, he never had much time to sit down and ponder the world, hence gave the impression of being simple-minded.  He wished he could roll a smoke and think, but these missionary fellows held that smoking was against their beliefs and he didn’t want to jinx the whole shebang before it started.

Had the missionaries exaggerated?  Brita had to be a realist, the intelligent one, someone who kept their wits about them.

“We’ll help with the passage,” the missionaries offered.

“No. No!” Lars said, “We couldn’t let you do that.”

“Our pleasure, the church’s pleasure.  Repay us later.”

He had left the thinking up to Brita, but this was a major happening and must be thought through.

“Lars, we should go,” Brita said firmly one night after the missionaries left.

“Halfway around the world, Mama.  We can’t even speak American.”
”We go where Swedes are and we learn American.”

“But the kids?”

“They good kids.  Deserve better.  Only poor relatives here.  We have to be brave sometimes, Lars.”

Then they would sit silent, considering all the ramifications.  And the next night the tables would turn and it would be Lars who would wax enthusiastic and Brita who would drag her feet.

“We can start a new life.  Become rich, Mama.”

“I don’t know, Papa.  Leave all the family.”

“We’ll bring the family over, when we become rich, then they can become rich, too.”  Brita bit her lip and stared out the window at the murky Swedish evening, at the ice cycles dangling from the eaves of the roof and dripping with the spring thaw.

“Okay Lars we go.”

Another reason for going—and probably a greater reason than they realized was the glasses. 

Brita took to the idea of Mormonism more than she might. considering her lifelong Lutheranism, because she identified with Joseph Smith’s need to wear spectacles in order to translate the Golden Tablets.

“See, Papa.  I told you spectacles were magic” she said, when she heard about the giant spectacles.

Brita, as a little girl, was extremely near-sighted and viewed the world through a cloudy blur, until one unforgettable day a salesman gave her some glasses to try on.  Was that what the world looked like?  She couldn’t believe it.  She was transformed.  Ever since then, she’d been convinced that glasses held magic.  Now, it was easy for her to understand Joseph Smith’s apotheosis with glasses and his ability to read the Golden Tablets with them.

Lars couldn’t get over “a dollar an acre for land!”  (Actually it was $1.25 an acre, but why quibble.)  And he could homestead and keep all the crops.  It was better than coins dropping from Heaven.

They converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the dead of winter.  Many of their relatives in the small village also converted.

In order to be baptized Lars and the missionaries had to break the ice on the lake, as they had to be completely immersed.  They were dunked in the icy water until completely covered and afterwards walked home in their wet clothes with their clothes freezing to their bodies.

And after endless problems, they sold everything, boarded steerage, lived in the hold, got through Ellis Island, traveling across the U.S. on the Great Northern and from Seattle, Washington, they made the trip by ferry to Bellingham. 

Then the terrible shock!  What was going on?