Our mustard yellow phone on the kitchen wall

A few years ago we got rid of our land line. There was just no need. I have a cell phone now that does just about everything. Yet I constantly forget my own number. My childhood phone number is burned in my brain however. Independence 3-6835. IN 3-6835. I could not tell you what numbers I and N were off the top of my head. Independence signified the switching station and you could tell what neighborhood a person lived in by his phone number. This was very important in the neighborhood oriented Chicago of the 50's. Everyone in Chicago and the surrounding suburbs had the same area code - 312. Early on we had a party line and we had a double ring. One ring, you don't pick it up because that meant it was for someone else. Two rings, the call was for us. Our blabbity neighbor was always talking on the phone so my Mom convinced my Dad that we should have a private line "in case we get an emergency and that awful woman won't get off the phone". It seemed that everyone had a telephone, one telephone with a rotary dial. I don't remember knowing anyone with more than one phone as a kid. Ours hung on the wall in the kitchen. In the early 60's Dad remodeled our kitchen and we got a new wall phone. My mother was very proud of it because it was "Harvest Gold" which was sort of a sick mustard color and she thought it was quite up to date and bought some potholders to match.  The same mustard phone hung on the wall for years but the cords had to be replaced now and again.  For privacy we would take the receiver into the bathroom or pantry stretching the cord across the hallway almost to the breaking point. If my Dad was home it would infuriate him to see us on the phone. "Go outside to talk to your friends, the phone is for important adult business and for emergencies".

When I got married we now had a phone not only in the kitchen but in the bedroom. When we bought our first home a friend, who worked for the phone company, wired every room in the house with an outlet for a phone. Even the bathroom. We were living large now. After that it went to having an answering machine, then wireless phones and now the cell phones. I really like all the gadgets on todays phones but I often forget to charge it or just forget it at home entirely. And the sound? I really enjoyed chatting on the phone a lot more in the day when I had something substantial to hang on to and the voice on the other end was nice and clear. As long as I am complaining...It is hard to think someone really cares when you can tell  the other person who called you is also driving a car or eating or worse yet in the bathroom. Don't even want to bother to waste any time to speak with me? Just text. Yeah that takes a lot of effort.

Yes, I confess I sometimes miss that ugly mustard yellow phone. I miss even more those under $10 monthly phone bills.

My Dad obviously discussing "important adult business or emergencies"

Death of Ole Helleksen

Ole Helleksen was born in Bø, Telemark Norway on the farm Indlæggen, the son of Hellek Olsen 1817-1898 and Helga Hansdatter 1809-1847. He was my great great grandfather. 

This is the parish record of deaths and burials in Eidanger, Telemark, Norway where Ole and his wife Hanna Matea Gunuldsdatter 1848-1902 lived and raised their family. Farm worker and widower Ole died 21 October 1904 on the farm Røra and was buried 30 October 1904. He died of cancer at 62 years of age.

SAKO, Eidanger kirkebøker, F/Fa/L0013: Parish register (official) no. 13, 1900-1913, p. 196

Quick link: https://media.digitalarkivet.no/en/kb20051004050972

my great great grandfather

Ole Helleksen

b: 12 February 1842 Indlæggen, Bø, Telemark, Norway

d: 21 October 1904 Røra, Eidanger, Telemark, Norway

**click on document to enlarge for easier viewing**

The TV generation

As a baby boomer I do not recall not ever NOT having a TV in our home. My parents married in 1949 and one of the first things they bought was a TV. The year before, 1948, only one in ten Americans had even seen a TV. Our TV was in a blond wood cabinet with doors that closed over the maybe 18-20" screen. I'm guessing it was not a cheap investment. A brand new TV,  that size, in a piece of furniture no less, probably cost them around $250 in a time when the average person only made $2500-$3000 dollars a year and gas was 17¢ a gallon. 

This is my baby brother with a good look at my parents first baby, our TV. By this time our old reliable TV is already a dozen years old. You can't see the "rabbit ears".and the knobs, to turn on, change channels and adjust the volume, you can see are gone. They must have fallen off and been lost early on because I remember a pair of pliers laying permanently on top of the TV to change channels. The black and white picture was often fuzzy especially when the weather was bad. My Mom was particularly adept at making fancy tin foil creations on the "rabbit ears" to get better reception.  2(CBS).5(NBC).7(ABC) and 9(WGN) were the Chicago stations. 7 always came in the clearest. Soon we had channel 11 (PBS) and 32(WTTW).  TV went off at midnight with just a test pattern until the morning. As the TV went down they played the "Star Spangled Banner" and if awake my Dad would stand at attention with his hand over his heart. 

The shows were pretty tame by todays standards but my parents monitored what we could or could not watch. No "3 stooges", "it's not funny to teach kids to poke each other in the eyes", no "Alfred Hitchcock" or "Twilight Zone", "I'm not staying up all night with kids who see monsters in the dark". At lunchtime they sent us home from school for one hour for lunch and we would have bologna sandwiches and twinkies while watching "Bozo" the clown. My grandmother did not own a TV until I was a teen but she would make a point to be at our house on Saturday night. While she furiously knitted she, Mom and I would watch "Gunsmoke". She herself was afraid to touch the TV. Often when she was watching us she would sit down with her knitting and say in her thick Norwegian accent "Ranae turn on the Gunsmoke". She never got the idea that it only was on Saturday at 9 and I could not bring it up at will. My Mom became a soap opera fan. Her favorite was "The Edge of NIght". Dad watched fights on Friday nights. Initially on Sundays we were not allowed to watch TV on the Lord's Day but I remember in later years my Mom loosened up and "Lassie" and "Family Classics" became Sunday night favorites.

We must have had that TV for at least 15 years. In time the doors loosened from my baby brother banging them open and shut and my Dad decided to just take them off. Periodically a "tube would blow". Dad would remove any suspicious looking tubes and send me to the local hardware store. They had a big machine like thing to test the tubes and then you bought another if the test failed and hopefully now your TV would work. In 1968 or so we got a color TV. Some friends on the block came over for the first showing. It was a big deal. When my husband and I married our first TV was a black and white on a cheesy, wobbly, metal stand. I don't think a day has gone by that a TV hasn't been on somewhere in our home. Even if I am not actively watching, it remains a comforting friend blabbing about something or other in the backround of our lives.

My childhood home

My childhood home
I never lived in a single family home until after I was married. My Dad owned our home but it was a two flat or three flat. With the income from the other apartments it was easier to pay the mortgage, maybe we even lived technically rent free. Saving a dollar was always a priority for my Dad, probably from living through the Great Depression.

My parents bought our first home when I was 1 year old.  It was a wood frame two flat with asphalt shingles in a working class, north side, Chicago neighborhood. We lived in the second floor apartment. It was small. There was a living and dining room combination with a small kitchen separated from the living area by a peninsula we used as a kitchen table. There was one bathroom and only one bedroom. After my sister was born my Dad renovated the attic into two bedrooms. You went up these very steep stairs to reach the first bedroom and then you had to go through the first bedroom (my parents room) to get to the front bedroom (my and my sister's room). The bedrooms were so small an adult could only stand up in the middle of the room as both side walls sloped inward at the angle of our steep  roof. It could be cold in the winter but we had down comforters my grandma had brought us from Norway. We had a space heater in the living room that gave some heat from a hole my Dad had cut in the ceiling of the living room/floor of the bedrooms. He liked to turn the heater off though at night to "save money". That was okay but in the summer? Whew, it was hot and I mean hot. I don't think anyone had air conditioning then. Only bowling alleys and movie theaters were "air-cooled" and as fundamentalist Christians we never were allowed to go to any of those "sinful places". On steamy Chicago summer nights we would drag our mattress into the front room and leave the front and back doors open. Dad would put a fan in one door blowing in and another sucking the hot air out of the tiny apartment. Mom always warned us "don't let the fan blow directly on you or you will wake up paralyzed" and Dad insisted "if you put your finger in the fan it will serve you right if it cuts off your fingertip, that's what happened to Cousin Arthur you know." I was always real careful about my fingers but it was often so hot I tried to get as close to the fan as I could. It was totally worth the risk of paralysis.

 1953 Chicago - Grandpa & Grandma, Mom and Me

We had a washing machine on our back porch but no dryer. My Mom hung the laundry on a pulley line that went from our porch to the top of the garage in back. Boy, those sheets and towels did smell good. Our front stairs went directly to the second floor. I remember them well because of my grandfather. He would whistle from the outside when he arrived and I would run to the front door. He would do a little fancy tap dance up the stairs and when he reached the top I would get a kiss and a piece of candy he had hidden in his pocket. We moved to the suburbs when I was entering the fifth grade. We moved to a nicer apartment building which my Dad bought in a nicer area but I always felt that little house on Monticello ave was my real home. Life was good then. Mom and Dad were young, happy, healthy.....and Grandpa could dance.

1865 Norwegian National Census - Three generations of family

The Norwegian National Census of 1865 was a lucky one for me in finding ancestors. Census records are the first go-to source for the family researcher. Unfortunately, in Norway, the earlier countrywide census was taken in 1801. From 1801 to 1865 is a long time and people could die fairly young back in the day. Often a whole generation was lost and the gap could be hard to jump.

Værdalen (an older spelling of Verdal), Nord-Trøndelag, Norway.
This is the family farm, Stubskind østre, of my maternal grandfather's family. Three generations of the family!

my great grandfather

Anders Sevaldsen 

1863-aft 1915

my great great grandparents

Sevald Andersen

1818-1900

Karen Maria Oldsdatter

1828-1896

my great great great grandparents

Anders Jakobsen

1787-1875

Anne Martha Sevaldsdatter

1795-1870

A great find in just one census record. Another reason to love the Norwegians? (and there are plenty) Norway digitizes, transcribes and posts their archival information on the internet, available to all and for free, Much is available in an English translation. ↓ 

THE DIGITALARKIVET - NORWEGIAN NATIONAL ARCHIVES (English version)

Thank you Norway!

Kindergarten Days

When I first got the genealogy/family history "bug" some years back I was determined that my children and grandchildren would have roots. They would know from who and where they had come. I have worked hard on my family tree collecting and preserving photos and documents, writing down memories and stories told to me by my parents and grandparents.

One of my grandsons bears the middle name Dionicio. A tribute to his paternal grandfather who died way way too young. Another grandson bears my husbands name as his middle name. A grand daughter was given the middle name of a treasured aunt. My oldest grand daughter's middle name is Ranae. You know what? I am now one of the ancestors. What do my descendants really know about me?  The three oldest know my first name. The youngest thought my name was papagramma and none knew my maiden name. I showed them this old photo. Who is this I asked? The oldest two knew mainly because they are mature enough to envision me 40 years younger and 30 lbs. lighter. Plus they remembered me being a nurse. When I am gone will anyone be able to tell the others that this was their grandmother? Who will tell them the story of how I became a nurse? The story of me? I never thought I had a very interesting life but I will bet neither did my grandparents.

That's me, second row, third from the left, in Kindergarten. I can't say that I really remember much at all about Kindergarten. We each brought a small blanket from home because we all took a daily nap and I threw up most every day before going to school. There was no preschool in my day and I probably don't remember much because I don't think much was expected from us. We colored with big thick crayons and we napped. Learning to write our name was probably as far as actual education got.

I do remember very clearly the first day of Kindergarten though. The dress I am wearing in the picture was bought for me by Grandma for my first day of school. It was organza, printed with little lavender flowers and a lavender ribbon for a belt. I had a stiff crinkly slip underneath and my Mom put my curly red hair into "dog ears" tied with lavender ribbons. I looked gooood. My Mom, wearing a hat and gloves, held my hand tightly and we walked into the auditorium of the Patrick Henry grammar school on Cullom and St Louis in Chicago. I know there were boys there but I must not have paid much attention to them because I only remember the girls. Most had their mothers with them and I, very conscious of wanting to look my best on this very important day, noticed that not all the little girls had dresses as nice as mine, or their hair fixed with barrettes and ribbons. Some girls wore clean but plain or obviously hand-me-down, sometimes ill-fitting dresses. Some girls didn't have their mother with them but perhaps an older sibling. A little girl who would later become my friend Karen came with an older sister that frightened me. She had a heavy steel brace on a leg that was withered and much shorter then the other. She limped decidedly. My mother must have sensed my fear because she whispered to me that Karen's sister had had polio but I did not have to worry because our Dr. Tunestam made sure I got a shot. On the stage, a stern looking lady in glasses and clunky black shoes read names from a piece of paper. When my name was called I kissed my Mom goodbye and followed a Kindergarten teacher out of the auditorium and into the school. I do not remember what her name was.

I think I especially remembered the first day of Kindergarten because at five years old it suddenly became clear to me I was entering a new world. A world sometimes very different from the love, security and safety of my home.  A world where not everybody had a Mom or a new dress from Grandma. Perhaps that's why I threw up every morning?

**click on photos to enlarge for easier viewing**