The Short Story of my Uncles

Tuesday, August 16, 2011
The Short Story of my Uncles
This piece of poetry, art and culture has yet not been published. Written in August 2011, today 15 August.
Tyda.se, Google Translate have as usual been a big help in translating. HPscanner has been a good help many times.
© Winterally Olle Johansson

My father Harry was the oldest and born in 1910. Next brother was Lennart, he was born in 1913 and was deaf-and-dumb. The youngest brother of them was Sigurd, born in 1915.

My grandmother Selma was 14 years older than my grandfather Arvid. They were raised on two neighbor ranches. The father of Selma, Johan Olsson, was an engineer and built mills powered by water. I heard he had studied in Germany. Maybe that’s why he bought lottery from Hamburg.. He owned the sawmill in Kückü. He was a farmer with oxen, cattle, horses and hens, of course, they were independent in their household as everybody else farmer by that time. Selma had a brother named Karl who inherited the family farm. Johan Olsson had two female cousins in a neighbor village who were also deaf-and dumb.

Arvid had one brother Gunnar and two sisters, Sigrid and Naemi. Arvids father, Johannes was a furniture carpenter and unfortunately also deaf-and-dumb. The scary thing is that our family suffer from this defect natively on both sides of my fathers family. Probably on account of half incestuous relations in the small villages where they lived hundreds of years ago. Gunnar emigrated to the USA and was a carpenter and participated in the rebuilding of San Francisco after the big eartquake in 1906. He moved back to Sweden probably in the 30-ties..together with his adopted son. He had a house in the village were the church is.

Karl had inhereted the ranch – about 65 ha. Selma and Arvid moved around in the small communities in Smalland where Arvid could find a work. The three kids were seemingly brought up outside the farm. Karl died in 1927 and Selma could take over the land. The family moved to the ranch. Arvid was then a farmer and a carpenter and became a building contractor in the municipality. He built the school house and the dental house among other things we don’t know more of today. Selma was good at weaving, embroidered edging, curdling cheese, producing cheese for the local market and made everything possible to get the family economy running. They were both Christians as most people were in those days, but Selma had a strong faith as I have heard, and it has of course affected my father, even though he went to church, he had difficulty to believe in the saviour – Jesus. I’m sure he doesn’t doubt now..

Some time in the 30-ties, as I have been told, Lennart and Sigurd had been out on the field. I suppose it was after 1937 when Harry had left the farm for the technical school in Katrineholm. Lennart and Sigurd had a quarrel and Lennart was furious and attacked him with a shovel. Later it seems like Sigurd had told the parents what had happened. They left Lennart to be treated by the authorities. He was locked up.

The tragedy: one day in the year of 1939 Lennart was back on the ranch and hanged himself in the barn.

My father had by that time either finished the education or was still studying in Katrineholm. Short thereafter he started working in Stockholm. He became the head of a drawing büro, on the Swedish Defense Factory board. Harry got married to my mother, Gurli in December 1944.

My father died in 1999, 89 years old. My uncle Sigurd died in 1981. My mother is 90 in Oktober this year.

(Bild med de 3 bröderna, hittar dem inte nu)

Text in English or Swedish