As I Remember Them

I just finished reading The Distancers:  An American Memoir, by Lee Sandlin, which is an extremely well written account of the history behind his great grandparents' old house in southern Illinois.  The author gradually unfolds the personalities and lives of the elder relatives who lived there, many of whom were a regular part of Sandlin's life as a youngster.  What struck me most was the realistic portrayal of the attitude children often have toward their elders:  not questioning, but simply accepting who their family members are at face value, with all their faults and idiosyncrasies, while any strengths or aptitudes are usually taken for granted.  Questioning, reasoning and approaching an understanding of our elders' choices and actions usually comes later in life, and it often happens too late for us to be able ask the relatives themselves about their experiences or intentions.  And, that is what family history is all about:  piecing together the purpose and meaning of our ancestors' lives in order to better understand them and ourselves.

I was never fortunate enough to experience living with my great aunts and uncles (or grandparents, for that matter), for extended periods of time.  But, I always looked forward to Dad's two week vacation in August when the old Ford Ranch Wagon was packed up with suitcases and a twin mattress in the back for my sister and myself to sleep on.  Almost yearly we traveled from the Bay Area to Salem, Oregon, where we stayed at Aunt Phyllis's house and made the endless round of visits to my grandfather and his many brothers and sisters, as well as a few cousins.

Everywhere we went, modest dining room tables groaned with coffee and milk, sandwiches or pastries, wonderfully diverse jello or pasta salads, and best of all--homemade doughnuts.  As a child, I too was content to observe and wonder, never asking questions of my elders.  If I had, I might have been ignored, or at best, received a thinned-out version of the truth for an answer, or worse--been teased for asking in the first place.  We children knew our place!  So now that these elders are gone, I am left to piece together their lives out of a desire to know how they coped with everyday problems, and where they reaped their rewards.  I also want to know simply because I care.

The following photograph of my grandfather (front and center) and six out of his nine siblings was taken in in 1967, following the funeral of their sister, Thea (Johnson) Humberstad.  Thea was the first of the ten siblings to pass on.   They are all departed now, the last being Oral Johnson in 1996.

(Left to right), Front row:  Cora (Johnson) Moen, Ernest Johnson (my maternal grandfather), and Mabel Johnson.  Back row:  Carl Johnson, Frank Johnson (the youngest of the siblings), Oral Johnson, and Ruben Johnson.  Missing from the photo are Bennett Johnson (the eldest) and Odin Johnson, both from Minnesota, and of course, Thea (Johnson) Humberstad, who was buried that day.  The photographer was one of their neices, either Doris Johnson Wheeler or Phyllis Johnson Rice.  Although the photograph is dated with the printing date of May 1967 on the border, it was taken shortly after Thea Humberstad's death in February of that year.

As Sandlin stated in his memoir:  "all stories of the past are sad."  This photo is sad, too, not just because of the event that created it (a funeral), but because of the shared anguish among close family members after the loss of a loved one, and having to come face-to-face with the harsh reality of their own mortality in the process.  The shell-shocked look on many of the faces--my grandfather's especially--continues to haunt me.  Still, I cherish the photo because it represents my grandfather with most of his brothers and sisters together in one place, with everyone appearing exactly as I remember them during the mid-1960s.

The photograph was shot with a Kodak Instamatic camera, which was all the rage in the mid-1960s.  The subjects posed inside my great aunt Mabel Johnson's living room, on Ellis Ave. NE in Salem.  I cannot fail to recognize the vintage dark red upholstered chair that Mabel always kept by the front door, and I owned it for a time after her death in 1983.  Grandpa must have been given the only seat for the portrait because he was the eldest sibling present.  Most of the family lived in Salem, Oregon or the surrounding area, but three of the brothers, Bennett, Odin, and Oral, lived in Minnesota.  Only Oral Johnson was able to make the trip to the west coast for the funeral.  Thea, the departed, lived in West Salem with her husband Carl Humberstad in a tiny and immaculate white clapboard house with baby pink trim.

The people in the photograph were a big part of the backbone of extended family that I knew and loved as a youngster.  I miss them all, and if I could have one more chance to see them, there would be a thousand questions for each and every one.  All stories of the past may be sad in some way, mostly because they are from a time that is irretrievably lost to us, but that does not mean they should be ignored or avoided.  The reason why some of us spend so much time researching family history is to rediscover the experiences of those who paved life's road ahead of us, winding through all of its mysterious peaks and valleys.  Though their time has passed, there is joy and honor to be celebrated from their journeys.

A Tribute to Great Aunties: The Johnson Sisters




Mabel Johnson, Thea (Johnson) Humberstad, and Cora (Johnson) Moen.  Richmond, California, November 6, 1946.

At times, I have a longing to hear the Norwegian-American brogues of my great aunties again. These women, who have been gone for many years now, were especially important to me as a child, since I did not experience the love and indulgences of a grandmother while growing up.  My maternal grandmother died of tuberculosis when Mom was not yet two years of age, and my adoptive father was orphaned while still young.

My great aunts were among ten children born to Ole and Malla Johnson, who were both of Norwegian-American immigrant families.  The Johnsons began their married life in Chippewa County, Minnesota, and then moved to in Fosston in Polk County, and spent the last decades of their lives farming near Leonard in Clearwater County, where my mother was raised.  The ten children were:  Bennett, Ernest (my grandfather), Cora, Thea, Odin, Mabel, Oral, Ruben, Carl, and Frank.  All lived to a ripe old age;  I'd say that was quite an accomplishment for young parents starting a family in the late 19th century.

One of my cousins jokingly refers to the photograph of the middle-aged Johnson sisters in their winter coats as "The Three Stooges."  I had to laugh the first time I heard that, because there does seem to be something reminiscent of the mock severity of a Moe, Larry, and Curly portrait in their demeanor.  But, perhaps the joke is on us, because both my cousin and I are now older than our great aunts at the time their photograph was taken. How time changes one's perspective!  But, no one can deny that they were once the sweetest little babies, as cute as a mother could ever hope for...

Cora and Thea Johnson, ca. 1893.



Cropped image of Mabel Johnson, ca. 1899.  Granite Falls, MN.

Thea was the first to leave her home state of Minnesota for Oregon, where her husband, Carl Humberstad, a lumberjack, saw job prospects with the prolific west coast lumber business. Cora and her husband, Emil Moen, followed to Oregon soon after. Mabel, who never married, left her job at a hotel laundry in St. Paul, Minnesota, to ride west on the train with my mother, Doris Johnson, in 1945. The pair were following my grandfather, Ernest Johnson, and my aunt, Phyllis Johnson, to Richmond in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Mabel rented an apartment in a Richmond four-plex until she retired in the early 1960s and then moved to Salem, Oregon, to be near her sisters again. After that, it was necessary for my family to go on vacation in order to see nearly everyone in my mother's family, especially after Grampa Ernest moved to Salem, as well.




Cora Johnson Moen:  born July 15, 1891 in Montevideo, Minnesota; died May 28, 1975 in Salem, Oregon.





Cora, the eldest Johnson sister, lived with her son and daughter-in-law in a house that backed up to my Aunt Phyllis's house in Salem.  Cora was my mother's favorite aunt, because she was the most maternal to my mother when she was a girl.  To some, Cora seemed a little too serious, and too much of a disciplinarian.  But, her "no-nonsense" attitude was formed by necessity as the eldest daughter on her parents' farm.  Expectations on her were high, and she was required to take on a heady round of day-to-day responsibilities up until the time she left home as a married woman.  Cora and her husband, Emil, had only one child, Harvey, and she was devoted to both of the men in her life.  Cora had the great misfortune of suffering the loss of both her parents and her husband in the same year, 1948.  In about 1960, she bought a new ranch-style house in Salem, and apparently gave her previous home to her sister, Mabel.  The new home had a large brick fireplace with built-in shelves on either side, all filled with good-sized animal ceramics that she collected.




Cora with her husband, Emil Moen, and their son, Harvey.  Clearwater County, Minnesota, ca. 1930.

Thea Johnson Humberstad; born April 28, 1893 in Montevideo, Minnesota; died February 6, 1967 in Salem, Oregon.





Thea, the next eldest sister, caught people's attention not only because of her short, round stature, but also because of her jolly nature and light-hearted, tittering laugh.  Thea possessed plenty of farm girl sensibility, but it was coated by an overall good sense of humor.  She and her husband, Carl Humberstad, were well-loved by many.  Thea gave birth to two sons:  Curtis, born in 1925, who died four days after birth, and Wesley, born in 1927.  The Humberstads owned a small white house with pink trim in West Salem, and they filled the yard with flowers and whimsical wooden yard ornaments made by Carl--everything from sunbonnet girls and painted tulips, to bird and duck whirly-gigs, and a windmill, of course.  Inside the house, nearly one wall of their tiny living room was filled with a salt and pepper shaker collection that would have been the envy of any antique dealer.  An old spinning wheel, brought from Norway by Carl's mother, took up another prominent corner of the room.  Not one to enjoy anything without a bit of whimsy added for spice, Carl painted his mother's old constant friend a bright shade of peppermint pink.  Thea was the first of her siblings to pass away, in 1967.



Thea (Johnson) Humberstad standing on the porch of her
 West Salem house, early 1960s.

Mabel Johnson:  born February 10. 1898 in Montevideo, Minnesota; died July 23, 1983 in Salem, Oregon.





Mabel, the youngest sister, was never married.  My grandfather thought this sister of his was a little too silly at times, even though she did work hard as a youngster in addition to seeking out friends and fun.  Mabel had to do all of the baking on the farm after her older sisters married, and became responsible for sewing all the clothes needed for her young nieces, Phyllis and Doris.  In late summers, she often traveled to South Dakota to serve as cook for threshing crews.  I felt particularly close to Mabel, because we lived with her when I was a baby, and she occasionally babysat for me in the years to follow.  I liked nothing better than to revisit her old apartment overlooking the railroad tracks in Richmond, and then later, her little bungalow in Salem, which had probably been given to her by her sister, Cora.  She was the only adult I knew who would play endless rounds of "Go Fish" or "Old Maid," and she preferred to distract kids from arguing by using a metal clicker, like in dog training.  After Mable moved to Salem, her only income was Social Security and a little babysitting money.  She was very frugal--buying only at second-hand stores, going without a telephone or garbage service (her brothers carted it away), and retiring for the evening whenever it got dark, in order to avoid using electricity as much as possible.  At her house in Salem, she usually had a dog to keep her company.




Mabel Johnson out riding.  Fosston, Minnesota, ca. 1912.

The long drive from the Bay Area to Salem, Oregon only made our visits with the relatives even more special for me.  We made sure to stop and see each relative from the home base of my aunt Phyllis's house.  This included my grandfather and all of his Oregon-residing siblings, plus some cousins.  My parents, sister and I were so stuffed from doughnuts, cookies, sandwiches, pasta or jello salads (and endless cups of coffee for the elders), we thought we'd never make through the day.  From those summer vacations of decades ago, I have lasting memories of my great aunts and the way they lived, laughed, and coped.  They turned the other cheek at any sign of trouble, and never let on if they felt nervous or afraid.  As capable as their pioneering parents and the Norwegian farmers before them, my great aunts lived each day as if tomorrow could not phase them... whatever the weather.