New Land, New Lives. Janet Elaine Guthrie
wrapped in cabbage leaves. And filbunke—when we had a little extra, my mother would clabber milk, make it like soured milk; it was smooth like yogurt. And, of course, Christmas time back there. We would always have lingonberries and rice. You would have before Christmas and you would have after Christmas and you would have so many days. And, of course, herring and lutfisk.* Then they’d have this candy that was on a string, rock candy. You’d go in and buy and they’d break off a little piece of that.
I started school there but we didn’t go very long, just a very short time. Growing up the way we grew up, we had to find out ways for ourselves, how to make things go. I just picked it up. That’s why it’s a bit amusing to me today that we have to have all these classes, because I had to learn on my own.
We did get out into the country. The government would ask people who were of means to take the children into their homes for holidays. And I can remember one time going to a very wealthy family at Christmas time; it really made a big impression on me. The maid brought me a doll for Christmas. It didn’t have its head sewed on, it was tied on with a piece of cloth because the people were busy. They did this as a thing they should do, but that’s all it meant to them. They were away partying. My brother got to go out on a farm for awhile. Otherwise, our life was pretty drab.
My mother had an aunt and uncle in Porter, Indiana, that’s by Chicago. They had a big mercantile store and they had written to her and asked if she’d like to come over here and work for them. They said they would send a ticket for myself and her, and she said she would not come without my brother. So she doubled up on her job. When she had enough saved, that’s when we came to this country, 1919, in February. I was only nine.
This is the passport photo before we left. My brother had borrowed somebody’s chain, it looked like he had a watch fob. This was a friend of mine’s dress. We put on the best clothes for the passport. But mother was very unhappy to go. And in that picture it shows her face was swollen from crying. I can remember her crying so. It was her life back there and we didn’t know what we were getting into. We didn’t know a word of English. We thought this country was going to be a country of Indians, cowboys, shooting—we didn’t know. My mother, the little bit of money she had, she sewed inside of her undergarments to protect.
I remember when we landed, squirming through all the grown-up people to see the Statue of Liberty. I had [bought] my first pair of shoes and they were button-up high shoes and somebody stepped on them and I spit on my shoes. I wanted them to be so shiny. I remember when we were met at the station at Porter, Indiana. It was my first car, a touring car with icicle glass [isinglass] in it. I leaned out, I wanted everybody to see me. I thought, “Are you looking at me? I’m in a car!” And I had a funny little round hat, a little tweed hat, and my long braids. I don’t think anyone realizes the excitement of a new country. Today, of course, I’m very thankful; it’s been my country.
Mother wasn’t very well and we didn’t realize how ill she really was. We were in Porter fifteen months and we came west to Portland [Oregon]. My mother married and then she became very ill. They diagnosed it as quick consumption—tuberculosis. She died then in June of 1920.
I was cut off by my mother passing away; no contact back to Sweden. I can’t speak Swedish anymore because I didn’t keep up that contact. But it’s a very dear thing to me. I remember so well. I remember those streets, and what went on there.
*Located at the southern tip of Sweden, Malmö had 83,000 inhabitants in 1910.
*Lutfisk is codfish that has been treated in a lye-like solution and then cooked. In parts of Sweden and Norway, it is a traditional Christmas dish. In addition, as noted in the interview with Torvald Opsal earlier, it is often featured at Scandinavian-American festivities.
Bergljot DeRosa
“Up in the north, they believe in trolls.”
The daughter of a sea captain, Bergljot Oliver DeRosa enjoyed an urban childhood with many amenities. Then death and hardship touched the family, and individual members began emigrating. Bergljot came to Tacoma in 1922, at the age of twenty. In Tacoma, she worked as a domestic, raised three children, and taught Norwegian folk dancing.
We had our home in Trondheim, Norway.* In the summertime, my mother took us children out in the country, where we could be by the water and live a healthy life. I happened to be born in Melhus. You could get out there by horse and buggy from Trondheim and I was born there in August, 1902. There was already three children; I was a little bit different from the rest of them. They were more red and robust and I was a very delicate, fair-looking baby. “Oh,” they said, “she’ll never live.”
My father, Olav Moxness, was a sea captain. He used to run big English freighters, some of them had a hundred men on them. He could be gone a year at a time. He was in China and all over the world. When he came home, I could smell it—the whole house, engine smell. All the kids got in bed with him and had our morning coffee. My dad always had a big box with gifts and clothes for us. He bought most of our clothing in England—Scotch wool, tall long-button shoes that felt like gloves on our feet. He used to bring home beautiful stuff.
The Moxness family came from Verdalen in Trøndelag, Norway. They moved into Trondheim. My grandfather Moxness was overlærer [principal] at Bakklandet School in Trondheim and they lived right there in the big apartment in the school. It had seven grades and A, B, and C [classes in each grade]. When I started school, we lived across the street from Bakklandet School.
Bergljot Moxness DeRosa (youngest child) with her family in Trondheim, ca. 1903
When grandfather died, we moved up by the university, Norges Tekniske Høyskole. There was what they call “professor town,” villas and private houses. We lived in a big, big wooden apartment house with veranda on each side. We had seven rooms and a balcony. There used to be a lot of students living there. There was a widow upstairs and she used to have kind of a pension for students to have their dinner. We had a bread and milk seller and a shoemaker underneath in the basement. All the houses there, my, they build them so good, tile roofs and everything. This one was just made out of wood. They said it was built by an American, so it would never hold up!
My mother was Sara Kristensen Moxness. She was born in Sortland [northern Norway], 1875. Her father used to have a store and the fishermen used to come there and load up their wares for their trips. When my mother was fifteen years old, her mother died. Then my mother went to live with her aunt and her grandmother Wiklum in Trondheim.
My mother’s grandmother was a great woman. Her name was Sara Wiklum and she had what they call a saloon in Trondheim. Well, it wasn’t rough or anything. She had a grocery and bakery in Lower Bakklandet 25 and beer and wine in Brandsalen, a little more west in the street where they lived. Every year she sailed with her old boat, or yacht they call it there, to Bjørnsmarkedet in Stokmarknes and sold her wares. She was eighty years old the last time she went up there, all by herself in a little boat. So she was really, really strong.
Mother met my father when she was about eighteen years old. He wanted to marry her. They thought she was a little bit too young, so they sent her to an aunt in America for two years, so she would be a little older and make up her mind if this is the way she wanted it. After two years, she went back to Trondheim and married my father. And had six children. Of course she had help when my father was gone. When we were small, we always had housekeepers. And when she went to England to meet my dad, we always had two to take care of us children while she was gone.
We didn’t work at home, but when I was ten years old, my mother asked another captain’s wife if she would have the patience to teach me how to bake and cook and clean and take care of her little girl. My mother wanted us to learn. In Norway, they send their girls to husmorsskole [home economics school] to learn domestic work; but instead of doing that, I got it for nothing. After school, I went there and helped. In the summer vacation I stayed all the time. The lady really was wonderful to me.