Linnea Gord's Diary, July 23rd and July 24th 1930

Auntie went to Narpes.    Click for an earlier blog entry about the visit to relatives.   On July 24, 1930. Linnea Gord writes that her aunt went to Närpes - Photographs Marie Malm took that day were saved by her and by her family.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 23RD, 1930 – MALAX   -   This morning when I woke up I found an enormous box of jordgubbar on the table, and the card on the box said "Många gratulationer på Olga dagen."  They were from Edward Ahlskog on "Olga" day.  He always calls me "Olga" although I've told him  time and time again that my name is "Linnea".

I helped dip, pump and label in the factory in the afternoon while Auntie went visiting.  In the event Arvid came after me and we went to visit Edward Ahlskog.  There we had much to eat and nothing much to do but talk.  But we had a good deal of fun.  We went for a walk and when we came back we proceeded to eat.  That evening we each had candy, three cups of coffee with coffee bread, two dishes of strawberries, and a cup of chocolate.  We didn't get home until around 12, because Edward's sister was bound to show us that she could make chocolate.

THURSDAY, JULY 24TH, 1930 – MALAX    -    Auntie went to Närpes this morning and I didn't do a darn thing all day.  I just sat around and wrote letters.  In the evening we had a soare, as we called it.  The boys came in our room and we just talked and sang, read stories, etc.

Seven Different Cookies on the Tray

Vegetable Chopper 1940s

On Facebook is a feature today about Seven Different Cookies - a Swedish Tradition.  The lucky number is supposed to appear on the Cookie Tray.  Somehow I signed up to do the Treat at church.  And am faced with a challenge like that.  I have to bake cookies.  Can get out the old Nut Grinder. 

Shown, actually, is a Vegetable Chopper, used often when I was young for chopping Onions. 

Piano Accompanist Linnea Gord Diary July 21st and 22nd, 1930

Wilma, Tyra, and Olga at coffee at Malax
John Malm's Mother, age 90, is the lady far right

MONDAY, JULY 21ST 1930     -     Today was the girls last day in Malax, so everybody was running hither and there.  The Malm girls were planning on taking a 3 weeks' trip to America, where they would visit relatives.  Ha!  ha!

At 5:30 Gunnar Herrgard came for us in the big Malax bus.  By the time we left, there was quite a bunch of us.  When we were a little way from home Wilma began to search for her passport.  She grew excited and said that she must have left it behind--then after Gustaf had taken off his coat and sped away on a velocipide which we had with us, she remembered where it was--in her coat pocket.  Then Paul followed Gus on another bicycle to catch him.  It was funny to see them both drive up, hot and red in the face.  The rest of the trip went off fine, with all singing and making merry.  Upon arrival in Vasa we went direct to the station.  We all inspected the girls little tiny room in the train and then began saying goodbye.  After the train pulled out someone suggested coffee, so the fifteen of us drove to the torget and left the bus standing there. We walked to the Elite Cafe.  They made one great big table for us--and ho! what fun we had!  The coffee and cakes were fine, the music wonderful, and we all enjoyed ourselves.  We played a game in which we all wrote on a piece of paper, folded it over and passed it to the next one.  The result was funny.  However, at 10:30 the orchestra stopped playing, so we immediately went in search of more music.  Meantime, some of the men had reserved a table at Sandvik's villa for us, so we went there. It is the most American looking place I have seen in Finland.  It is a sort of cafe with a dance floor-a very small dance floor. The music was also American.  We danced and ate until the very last minute--in fact, until they turned out the lights.  Then the bus- load went away for Malax and Molly and I were ably escorted home in a taxi by Arvid and Helge.  Molly and I slept in the one room apartment where she stays.

At the Railroad Station

TUESDAY, JULY 22ND, 1930 - VASA AND MALAX    -    Woke up at 8:30 and met Molly's step-dad's sister and two other women.  Molly was invited to a wedding while we were still in bed and immediately began giving away all of her clothes.  By the time we were dressed she had given the bride-to-be promises of her white dress, her shoes, a handkerchief, a boudoir pillow, and the bridal bouquet.  At 10:45 we piled everything on the bike and went down to the boat, where Molly left her things.  Then we went to town.  We woke up Helge and Arvid by ringing their doorbell, and then we went for a ride and took Arvid home.  Later Molly and I went shopping, and so to home.

That evening, at home in Malax, we played Touring for a while and then went to bed.  I was sleepy anyway, although it seems funny to go to bed while its daylight. 

The Polson Museum and Amelia Hendrickson

From the diary autograph section, Amelia Hendrickson is Molly, and Linnea Gord in her diary calls her Molly. 

On the U.S. Census for 1930, Amelia Hendrickson’s work is listed as Cook.  Her job is with Alex Polson and family at 1703 Riverside in Hoquiam, I recognize this as the Polson household, the historical presence for the Polson Museum in Hoquiam.   The present Polson Museum is not this building at the 1703 address, but the building next door.  The 1703 address no longer exists.

1703 Riverside Avenue, Hoquiam WA
From the Collection of Polson Museum

In 2012 I visited the Polson Museum to view the records held there of the Runeberg Lodge at Hoquiam.  There are photos of the trip at a 2012 entry here at this blog. Again the 1703 address where Amelia Hendrickson worked as a cook no longer exists.   A resource for the Polson Museum is a video which I want to share here with a lot of enjoyment – a music video which takes place inside the present Polson Museum. 

From 1930 Census Amelia Hendrickson

 

 

July 19TH and 20th, 1930 - MALAX - Diary of Linnea Gord

From the Program of the Choir

Molly I believe was in the Choir, the Molly in Vasa is the same Molly.  In a diary entry from their railroad trip, on May 28, 1930, they were in St. Paul:



"At St. Paul we amused ourselves by walking around town, buying souveniers and candy from our friend Woolworth and paper hats from one of the department stores.  (One of our crowd  bought a little kewpie doll about an inch high, and Mr. Carlson wore it on his watch chain at every one of our concerts.)  After our shopping trip we all went different ways.  Molly and I went to see the "Cuckoos" which was playing at one of the movie houses..."



Linnea and Molly - Minnesota

SATURDAY, JULY 19TH, 1930 - MALAX       Auntie and I cleaned up our room this morning, and I also mended some of my clothes.  I guess they needed it!!  Molly and Helge drove into the yard in his Pontiac sometime in the afternoon.  We went to the länsman to have our passes stamped and it took almost an hour for him to write a few words.  (The passes had to be stamped before we could leave Finland).  We drove up to Helge's house later.  Here we had strawberries, good ones, coffee and lots to talk about.

When we got back home again (it was about 11 o'clock) we sat around talking for awhile and then we all piled in the car and went to a "short" ride.  As it was, we went to Aminneborg, got a boat and went out to Norrskär.  We got out there abut 12:20 and went to Klockars' villa.  Gustafson's party was camping there and they were just going to bed when we came, so we decided we had better move.  Then Edward Ahlskog invited us all over to his place for coffee.  We got the coffee and also very hard cookies.

We had great fun there.  When we decided to go home Lars was no where to be found, so we all made up searching parties.  After we got cold and miserable, with wet feet, we finally found him, sleeping behind a rock, and we went home.



Malax Church - 1990

SUNDAY, JULY 20TH, 1930        After 31/2 hour of sleep I got up at nine and went to church with Auntie.  Molly was supposed to go too, but she didn't show up.  The church service was very nice.  Most of the service is singing, and I like that.

It was a very nice day that day, and it was sport day.  We all went to the Ungdoms Hus and watched the sport--running, jumping, javelin throwing, etc.  Bror took part in some of these events, so it was that much more interesting to us.  Whenever he would make an especially good play we would call to him "Pretty good" (which was about all the English he knew) and he would holler back "Not so good".  After the sports were over we sat down on the grass and played cards for a while, and we had a big crowd watching us.  Later Molly, Helge and I drove up to his house, where we ate strawberries and more strawberries.

 Dressing for the dance that evening was kind of interesting, because the kids were all under the window laughing and singing.  The program at the Ungdom's Hus that evening consisted of a selection by the band, a welcome speech, a "declamation" and an organ selection by Miss L. Gord of Tacoma, Wash., U.S.A.  After the program there was dancing.  I enjoyed myself immensely, dancing every dance but two--one when we had coffee and one that I sat out with Bror.  At the dances we had been to before everybody was so quiet and prim and didn't make any noise at all.  We decided that we wanted to pep the dance up so we all started hollering "Whoopie" after every dance.  We got a great kick out of it, because before the evening was over, we had almost all of the "natives" hollering "Voopee".  Going home that evening, from far and near you could hear "Voopee".  So the evening was saved!

 At the dances here in Malax, all the boys stand on one side of the room and the girls on the other.  When the music starts the boys all make a rush to the girl's side of the room.  It's so funny.  It looks like a stampede or something. 

Went To See Paddington, the Movie

Books About Children and Memory

1.    The Holocaust Conference this year at Pacific Lutheran University happens to have a focus on The Children’s Transport.  I think it is typical that the Conference takes a focus like that as a theme – it increases the idea, so the theme of children becomes general within the conference.

Just now I have been looking at a new book, Everlasting Lane, by Andrew Lovett, about a ten-year-old who moves to a house with his mother and finds that memories reawaken.  They lived there before and the story is about reasons why his parents hid his earlier memories from him.  The narrator is present in the now, 2015, and recounts his experience at ten in about 1975. 

2.     Also, I have re-read some of the VI Warshawski stories.  (I began reading the series at Tunnel Vision, a book I discovered on the shelves at the building where I live.  I had not known of the author or the series.)  Presently I am re-reading again Total Recall.  Warshawski and her friends trust the truth told by a claimer of Holocaust origins, even though the details come from reclaimed memory under hypnosis.  When the hypnosis subject endured the holocaust, he was a very young child, perhaps three years old.  Another character in Total Recall was brought to England in the Children’s Transport.

The trusted psychologist-hypnotist in Total Recall meets another character who wants to publish a book about her work with the subject.  She envisions a successful movie made from the book and thinks Dustin Hoffman would be a good actor to play the character.

3.   I went to see Paddington, the movie, it put me off to watch Mrs. Brown and the Brown family glorified at the expense of non-parents as the villains.   (It seems in one chapter of a Paddington Book Paddington, taken to a play, heads toward a villain actor to complain about his treatment of an actress.  He has taken the story all too seriously.  Perhaps I take the offense to non-parents too seriously.)  But, Millicent, Ms. Millicent, who does not seem to deserve more than a child’s name, seems to be a non-parent working woman.   She is Devoted to Taxidermy. 

From the Michael Bond Books

Paddington probably was not appropriate for me in 1958, but after graduate school I read a few children’s books.  I did not remember a story about skinning and stuffing Paddington.  That story seems to be borrowed from A Hundred and One Dalmatians.   Maybe I have forgotten.

Paddington is celebrated as being inspired by the Kindertransport.  There is an article that refers to this and to the London Opening of the movie.  There are movie references to the Kindertransport and the Taxidermy references are meant to compare the plight of animals to the Holocaust, that seems very honest.  The movie has a lot of very pretty moments. 

Diary of Linnea Gord, piano accompanist, July 17th, July 18th, 1930

The train they took was the Kurinen.  I wonder if Kurin, or Kurinen, refers to a destination as far away as the Ukraine; or if it refers to a Northern point of origin, in Northern Sweden.  If you click, there is here a short video of an old Finnish railroad locomotive at Porvoo.
 
THURSDAY, JULY 17TH, 1930 - ORAWAIS, VASA, MALAX     We took the 8:30 Kuriren to Vasa.  It was hard to leave Orawais, because I had had so much fun there and had so many good friends there.  We saw Blanche as we were passing through Vörå.  She was waiting for the bus.  When we arrived in Vasa, we went shopping for a while and then sat on a bench in the Esplanad to rest.  Molly came along with her sister while we were sitting there, wo we had a grand "gab fest".  That is, Amelia, Auntie and I did.  Molly's sister only talks Finnish.

We had dinner at the Elite Cafe and then strolled down to our bus.  Met the girls there, and we all went home on the same bus.

The evening was spent in writing letters, talking and playing the phonograph.  Very exciting evening.

FRIDAY, JULY 18TH, 1930 - MALAX     It was raining all day, so we had to stay in the house.  I went to the hall to practice the organ in the afternoon—all by myself.  No, not by myself, either, because there was a little mouse running across the floor, to keep me company.

After dinner we all pitched in and washed and dried the dishes.  Then we sat on the floor in our room and played "Cootie".  It was fun, and I guess it was funnier to see us all sprawled over the floor.