Some Memories from My Early Years

December 3, 1915 - Chicago

I was born at South Shore Hospital in Southside Chicago on December 3, 1915. Our home was in a section of Chicago called 'Beverly Hills,' near 99th and Vanderpool. When someone would ask me where I lived I would say, '99 Pool.'

It was an attractive neighborhood, and I have many pleasant memories such as toddling along with my father to a nearby store where I was fascinated by the toys in the window - especially some colored marbles. I remember the snowman my father made with pieces of coal for the eyes, nose and mouth; the Christmas tree with presents from 'Santa Claus' who came bounding in the front door with his bag full of gifts for me and my cousins. (One of the gifts was a stuffed pig that rolled along on wheels. I enjoyed it for two or three years.) I remember my first automobile ride out into the country where a new municipal incinerator had been built. ('Incinerator' was one of the first big words that I learned.) The only unpleasant early memory is that of our next-door neighbor named Cook, whose son scared me by saying there was a lion under their porch and I better be careful. One of the most impressive memories was watching a parade in downtown Chicago and waving a small American flag as World War I soldiers marched by.

Finally, the day arrived when we had to move. I was two years old at the time. I didn't seem to be too upset watching the movers carry the furniture out, but I distinctly remember wondering why they left the telephone. [In those days the phone was owned by the telephone company, so when you moved, you left the phone for the next resident.]

Ross

The reason we moved to a small community in Indiana, called Ross, is that Mormor [literally in Swedish mother's mother, i.e., grandmother - Nellie Mae Holm], Uncle August, and Aunt Esther (my mother's brother and sister) already lived there. Uncle Carl, Mom's other brother, also lived a few miles away, in Gary, where he worked for Carnegie-Illinois Steel Company both before and after serving in the Navy in World War I. In fact, he was there when at a very young age he helped with surveying of the land for the new town of Gary where the steel-workers were to live. I liked to hear him tell about it. (Note: For an excellent description of life in Ross at that time, see Aunt Esther's 'Memories of the Past' which she wrote in 1981.) I share some of these same memories of the community of Ross.

One of Mormor's friends from Sweden was a man named August Olson. His house was fairly large, and we rented the second floor. August Olson's brother, Aaron, lived down the road. Again, I was happy there, playing in the yard; riding in Mr. Olson's Model T-Ford to the nearest store in Glen Park where he would buy me an ice cream cone; petting our cat in the dark to see flashes of static electricity; meeting and playing with the Petri boys, Mike and John, who lived next door, and with Cecil Jensen, another neighbor boy. Other neighborhood kids were also friends including the Ooms girls.

It was at this time that I first recognized a major difference between boys and girls, when we took off our clothes in Jensen's barn. Mrs. Jensen caught us and scolded us, saying that was a naughty thing to do.

in the Army Air Corps in the War, and he had a number of pictures of horribly-burned German pilots who had been shot down. Those gruesome photos are still with me.

My brother, Bob, was just a baby then, and just beginning to crawl. One day he got under the dining room table and took a terrible bump on his head. I felt sorry for him.

Perhaps my first memory of brother Bob was when my mother was nursing him, and I wanted 'my turn.' She shoved me away rather forcefully. Most of the childhood diseases got taken care of during the year or so at Olson's house. The one I disliked most was measles because I was kept in a dark room even during the day with the shades pulled. When my mother somehow lost a ring while working out in the yard, I felt badly, along with everyone else. We all searched carefully, but never found it.

It was unfortunate that my father contracted lead poisoning. He was a printer and worked in a poorly-ventilated printing shop in Chicago. That's one of the main reasons we moved to the country where the air was cleaner. Through the years that followed, I always felt sorry for him because he had to take a leave now and then from his job, which paid well, in order to recuperate.

After a year or so, we moved into Mormor's house for a couple of years while my parents had a house built on a l0-acre plot about a mile down the road.

Mormor's house was not large, but somehow we all squeezed in, including her Spitz dog, Sippa. I ate a lot of mulberries from the tree in the back yard. We had a cow, pigs, chickens and a garden. One day one of the hogs got out and ran across the field into the woods. It took several people to capture him finally in a nearby ditch. Alongside the ditch were a lot of wild grapes. My father called them 'fox grapes.' Later, we butchered the hog - a vivid memory.

It was here that I learned the names of many wildflowers because Dad (we called him 'Daddy') took us flower-picking and taught us the names of all of them. We found most of the flowers in the nearby fields and along the Nickel Plate Railroad tracks. Gentians were my favorite, with lady slippers a close second. Beyond the track was a path leading up to Sterba's store (we pronounced it 'Sterby'). I guess the Sterba's were Czechoslovakian because my parents said they were 'Bohemian.' The freight trains ran rather frequently, and it was fun waving to the engineers. We often walked the tracks and sometimes put stones on the rails to let the trains smash them. Also, it was fun to put our ears to the rails to hear an oncoming train. The trains rarely stopped at the tiny station in Ross where Ms. Porter was the telegraph operator.

Life was rather spartan at Mormor's house - no inside plumbing, Saturday baths in a washtub, drinking water from a bucket with 'everybody's dipper,' not too much to choose from in the way of clothing, and no paved roads for our Model T. But the good news was that we always ate a healthful, balanced diet thanks to my nutrition-conscious mother.

My parents taught me a lot before I started school. (I already knew my numbers and could read some when I entered first grade.) My first-grade teacher, Mrs. Olds, was not one of my favorites. In fact, I found the whole experience terribly boring, and I was a disruptive pupil.

For a short time, Uncle Gus bunked in with us and then left to study at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. He also had a crystal set, and this was my introduction to the whole new world of radio. Sometimes Uncle Gus would come home for the weekend and bring along a school-mate named 'Simms.' We enjoyed their singing accompanied by Gus hitting a pan and Simms holding a broom which he pretended was a guitar. Actually, my mother had a guitar which she often played, but apparently Simms didn't know how to use it.

At the age of six I developed bronchial pneumonia and almost died. Aunt Ruth Holm, who was a registered nurse, kept constant watch over me and I'm sure it was she who helped pull me through. A bronchial cough stayed with me for many months.

We were constantly inundated with company from Chicago - mostly Mormor's former patrons at her boarding house at the time that my mother, and her sister and brothers were children. Friends of my parents also liked to come to the country to see us. The visitors always brought an abundance of delicious food, including many Swedish dishes, so 'smorgasbords' were routine.

Grandpa Holmquist [Johannes Holmquist] also liked to come to see us. He was a man we all loved - and not only because he always carried a lot of dimes in his pocket which he generously handed out to each of the kids. He was a kind man. For an immigrant who arrived from Sweden as a young man in his early twenties, he had done well, and with his frugality owned a farm near Grovertown, Indiana, as well as a house at 6613 Green Street in Chicago. There is much to write about Grandpa Holmquist, but I shall skip that for now, except for one event. he was a rugged individualist who enjoyed using his snuff.

One day my father [Waldemar Holmquist] said, 'You have never seen a mountain and Grandpa and I are going to take a trip to Colorado. Would you like to go along?' I shall never forget even the details of that trip, stopping along the way near Hutchinson, Kansas to visit Grandpa's relatives with their huge wheat fields, watching the prairie dogs, of which two came back to Ross with me as pets, going up Lookout Mountain to Buffalo Bill's Museum, riding the Santa Fe passenger train across the wide open spaces and learning a lot of geography along the way. Thank you, Grandpa, for treating us to the trip. [Note: we haven't been able to figure out yet how this Nelson family was related to the Holmquist family.]

Perhaps our closest friends in Ross were the Johnsons and the Bottenfields. The Johnsons had a large farm and raised watermelons and cantaloupes which we ate extravagantly - like breaking open the watermelon and eating the heart only. Mrs. Johnson (Inez) sent a Christmas card to me even after I had graduated from college. All of their six children worked hard, and the whole family was highly respected in the community. The Bottenfields (Carl and Hildred) had three children, and it was a great treat to stay overnight at their house with Baird and Kent. I looked forward to having breakfast there because Mrs. B. served grapefruit which we couldn't afford at our house. Carl had a big job at the sheet and tinplate mill where he was Plant Superintendent. Mrs. B's parents - the Funks-lived next door to them and one of my chores was to deliver fresh milk in the evening after the milking was done. I carried it to them in a small, shiny milk pail. (More about the Bottenfields later.)

Quite often Mom and Dad would take us into Chicago to the Zoo in Lincoln Park, to the Field's Museum, the Adler Planetarium, Shedd's Aquarium, the Chicago Art Institute, and so on, or to visit with friends and relatives. One trip was a very sad one. Grandpa was dying because of an infection in his leg because gangrene had set in. As he lay on his death bed, only semi-conscious, he kept moving his arm down to his side. Uncle John said, 'I know what he wants. He wants a dime to give to Richard.' So he put a dime in Grandpa's hand, and he reached over and gave it to me. I still have the dime in my safe deposit box.

Many other memories are from Mormor's house:

- her Spitz dog named 'Sippa'- and her puppies.

- the Model T getting stuck in the mud in our long driveway.
- my first day at school in first grade (no kindergarten).
- dipping fresh cool water from our spring.

- catching barn owls and cooping them up as pets.

- overhearing a neighbor man asking Mormor to come live with him, but she forcefully declined. They didn't know I was listening.

- picking hazelnuts and gooseberries.

- visiting 'Uncle Kauka's' fruit farm near Benton Harbor, Michigan. We called him 'Kauka' because he always brought us 'kaukas' (Swedish for cookies).

- riding behind Dad's car on my sled in the snow while holding on to a tow rope.
- going to Grovertown to pick blueberries.

- watching them take my father off in an ambulance with a ruptured appendix.
- going to Lake Michigan, near Miller, to go swimming. On one occasion, there was an undertow and we saw two girls drown.

- listening to the foghorns from the ore boats on Lake Michigan.

Our trip to the beach turned into a tragic event for the family. Uncle Gus was driving and didn't see an oncoming B&O train. The watchman had fallen asleep and hadn't put down the gates. The train, traveling at about 60 miles per hour, hit our car and carried it on the 'cow-catcher' for quite a distance down the tracks. The newspaper stories reported that it was an absolute miracle that everyone survived. I banged my nose pretty hard and a man in the corner store gave me a lollipop to make me feel better. Brother Bob was thrown next to the rails and my father pulled him away while the train was still moving. I rode in the ambulance to the hospital in Gary where they patched up Aunt Ruth's broken ribs and treated various other injuries. (Note: In today's world, sixteen law firms would be on the phone to represent the family in a $100,000,000 lawsuit, but at that time it was not a litigious society and we never collected anything.)

Our New House

We finally moved to our new home, and it was really attractive. The sidewalk leading in from the road parted around a circular flower bed that was always full of flowers. Iris of all colors rimmed the walk. A rose trellis covered the walk by the front steps. Dad had a very strong aesthetic sense. He planted lots of flowers and fruit trees - pears, apples, plums, cherries - and always kept everything painted and neat. The flagpole was a tall one and the American flag was always properly flown. He hired a horse and scoop and dug a deep swimming pond for us which the frogs also enjoyed. Leah Morgan, a neighbor girl, also came over to swim.

When I think about it now, it amazes me that we didn't have more illness, because no one seemed to be particularly conscious about living with the soil and its insects and weeds of every description. At the same time, I did know something about the naturally-growing plants. Mormor had told me about which ones were edible and which were poisonous. In fact, she knew which ones could be cooked -and not only dandelion greens. There were others. She probably learned the hard way when she first came to America and lived in a sod hut in Iowa where one winter some Indians stole all their potatoes.

Mormor was a wise woman in many ways. I remember one time when one of my father's cousins was in Mormor's kitchen. Kit was attending school at the University of Michigan, and I heard her say to Mormor, 'I think I'm in love with two boys at school but I don't know which one to choose. What should I do?' Mormor replied, 'If that is the case, you aren't really in love with either one.' Again, one should read Aunt Esther's, 'Memories of the Past,' for a characterization of Mormor and life at that time.

For some reason, kids in school were much more conscientious at that time. For example, I remember once when a term paper was due the next morning and we had run out of ink, so I got up about four o'clock in the morning, walked a mile to Mormor's house and used her pen and ink to get my paper in on time. It wasn't like the 1990's when every house has twenty fountain pens.

In those days we walked a lot - and we really didn't pay much attention to the weather. One morning when Mormor walked in the back door with frost all over her face (she had walked from her house), my father said, 'Do you know how cold it is?' She said, 'No,' and he informed her it was well below zero. It seems as it grandmothers and grandfathers were much tougher in those days. For example, Grandpa Holmquist would ride his bicycle from Chicago to Grovertown on weekends - about 60 miles as I recall.

In the basement of our new home my father had a lot of tools, including a jig-saw.

One day he got a very large piece of plywood, drew a map of the United States on it, and cut out all of the states. He would then hold them up, one by one, until I could recognize each one by its shape, tell him where it was located, and name its capital. He was not a highly educated man (went to trade school in Philadelphia where Grandpa Holmquist sent him to learn to be a printer), but he had a very high regard for education. Straight A's for the grading period earned me a banana split sundae, which at that time must have cost at least 15¢. His respect for education was exceeded, perhaps, only by my mother. I was always proud of my mother's smartness, and that's one of the reasons we kids always tried to get good grades.

School then, of course, was a lot different than now. No computers. We did it all the hard way, but I still don't think that was all bad. And I still think phonics is the way to learn to read. And I still think it was constructive for our teachers to force us to memorize and memorize and memorize. All of us learned to play a musical instrument. Dad paid for some piano lessons with a dozen eggs a week to Mrs. Pfiefer. After about six or eight months I was on my own and with practice kept getting better. My cousin had a friend named Tyco Nord who needed some money badly. I bought his trumpet for $15 and taught myself how to play it so I could join the church band in Griffith at the Methodist Church. Fortunately, Mr. Price was very patient and kind until I got on to reading the music and playing. Mom played the guitar and sang in a community quartet.

Another thing about school back then was that nobody seemed to make excuses for not going. I don't seem to recall having 'Snow Days,' for example. We would walk through a foot of snow to get there. And Sunday School was mandatory. I still have my pin with gold leaf and six bars on the chain for eight years in a row without missing.

But there was more to getting an education than books. I thank Mom and Dad for teaching us to be self-reliant and thrifty - to be trustworthy, charitable, courteous, and proud of our family. Perhaps most important, Christian principles were an absolute part of life. One of Mom's favorite Bible verses was the one that says to be content, no matter how hard the life.

And we did live in some tough times - the depression days! We all pitched in. One of my first jobs (age 11 or 12) was weeding for 10¢ an hour and picking cherries at Granger's fruit farm for $2.00 a day. But then, that's when a new pair of shoes at Tom McAnn's cost $3.00 and we wore them until we put cardboard in the soles. Dad was handy, however, and he bought a cobbler's tool set and resoled our shoes. He also bought a barber's kit and cut our hair. Mom let hers grow long and braided it. 'Cosmetology' was not a familiar word in our house.

We were lucky. We lived on a plot of land where we had a cow, lots of chickens - and ducks and guinea hens - plus plenty of vegetables - and flowers for the table. There were a lot of Ball jars in our basement with jam, jelly, and fruit. Fresh potatoes, beets, onions, carrots, and other vegetables were carefully preserved under a mound with many layers of straw and dirt to keep them from freezing in the winter. Butter and sorghum covered our breakfast pancakes and Dad was an expert at making sponge cakes and angel food cakes.

The main thing that was lacking was money, and what little we had was carefully hidden in the removable head-piece at the foot of Mom and Dad's brass bed. Dad couldn't work anymore as a printer because of his lead poisoning so he painted houses (inside and out), hung wallpaper, sold eggs, sold rich, black loam from the land - and Mom ran the school cafeteria where I served as cashier. I'm sure a few leftovers came home. Somehow we survived and remained healthy, except for my sister, Dorothy, who contracted 'sleeping sickness' (I think it was really meningitis) and died. The funeral remains a vivid memory.

But then the depression got worse - and there wasn't any work for anyone, it seemed. I remember a neighbor man saying he was looking forward to the day when they could put milk on their cereal instead of water. What finally did us in was when the Glen Park Bank went 'belly-up' and Dad lost 400 precious dollars. That was it! The bank in Griffith foreclosed on our house, and we had to move back into Mormor's house.

Things picked up when Dad got a job as a painter in the Gary steel mill. It was hard on Dad because he was violently opposed to labor unions and he was finally forced to either join up or quit his job. He joined. Dad was a strong individualist. Most everyone in our community belonged to the Klu Klux Klan - even the minister in the church in Ross. The Klan put heavy pressure on Dad but he absolutely refused to join, even when they burned a cross in the field in front of our house.

Both Mom and Dad believed in tolerance, yet they also recognized a 'need' in their minds for separation of races. One of the lessons I learned about race relations occurred when one day I talked to a black man who was doing some work in our yard. I asked him why he was so dark and I so light. He said, 'See those chickens over there. Some are gray and they are called 'Plymouth Rooks.' Some are red and they are called 'Rhode Island Reds,' but if you pull all the feathers off of them, they are all the same underneath.'

The area around Gary at that time was a complete mixture of races and nationalities. Although our community out in the country was predominately Dutch, the expanding steel mills kept bringing in Russians, Yugoslavians, Armenians, Poles, and every other nationality you can name. I still remember many German, Polish and other foreign words. Hispanics and blacks began to dominate the inner-city of Gary. At one point when times got better and the mills began to need more laborers, my Uncle Carl (who was in the employment office) arranged for several boxcar loads of men to come up from Mexico. When they were no longer needed, most of them were shipped back. When they needed a principal for the new 'colored' high school, Uncle Carl hired a man from the Virgin Islands. It was really strange to hear a black man with a Danish accent.

Some of the memories as a young boy still remain indelibly in my mind: One big change for the family was when my folks changed churches. The new minister at the Griffith Methodist Church preached what Dad called the 'Social Gospel.' He seemed to believe that it didn't matter so much what one believed so long as you did good by helping others. But Mom and Dad were much too fundamental for that, so we switched to Central Baptist Church in Gary. The minister there was William Ward Ayer, an evangelistic type pastor who later headed up Calvary Baptist Church in New York City. He was a converted Boston Red Sox player and a very fiery type of preacher.

The congregation at Central was made up of wonderful people who centered their attention around teaching the Bible, knowing full well that if a person is saved in the old-fashioned way, they automatically did what the Methodist minister advocated anyway without having to 'join the Socialist Party.' Dad hated Communists and Socialists and never voted anything but straight Republican. And so did Mom. One day he took us all to Chicago to see a demonstration of Mussolini's Air Force and he said Mussolini was so bad he must be the Anti-Christ. Anyway, I have many fond memories of Central Baptist Church and the friends I made there.

Here are a few memories from those school days in Ross:

- Celebrating Christmas. Dad gave us 1O¢ each to buy a present for the sibling whose name we drew.

- Lots of athletics - baseball, soccer, basketball, track. I was on the school baseball, basketball and track teams. I ran the half-mile, but never won a race. Sometimes second.

- Thanksgiving dinner in Chicago with the Blomquists .

- Ice cream socials.

- Hunting in Grovertown with Dad and Fred Keck.

- Boy Scouts, with many camping trips to the Dunes near Chestertown.

- Chasing the pony who kept running away.

- The Capone Gang and the raiding of a huge still, not too far from where we lived.

- Tobogganing and playing hockey.

- The trip to Kentucky to visit a cave.

- Swimming at the old gravel pit.

- Sleeping out on the lawn on hot summer nights (no air conditioning then).

- The County Fair at Crown Point.

- Sunday School at the Griffith Methodist Church. Dad was Superintendent and put

on great picnics.

- Getting up early to sell produce at the Farmer's Market.

- My first driver's license which cost 50¢ and did not require any test.

- Buying my first car for $15 (Model A Ford).

- Lots of music. Once Sousa's band came to town and Dad took us to hear it, of course.

College

Mom and Dad simply assumed I had to go to college. But the question was, 'How?' As I left home with a friend, Russ DeReamer, to attend Indiana University I had $40 in my pocket, so naturally, we hitch-hiked to Bloomington, in southern Indiana. It cost $37.50 to register for classes, so that didn't leave much for food and lodging.

As I departed from home I still wasn't sure what I was going to sign up for, so my father advised me to take all the mathematics courses because, as he said, it would teach me to think - and then sign up for all the English and Journalism courses because, as he said, it would teach me to express myself. That's what I did and it was good advice. In fact, I earned much of my way through school by tutoring math and recalculating Hyashi's Astronomical Tables for the Math Department. I also worked at the J. C. Penney store on Saturdays.

Fortunately, a very kind lady at the Baptist Church in Bloomington named Bea Chitwood really helped me. The school Administration office directed me to her. She got me a place to stay for $3.00 a week, a job washing dishes to pay for my lunches and dinners, (I skipped breakfast for a couple of years) and a job at the Student Union building washing windows and polishing floors for enough to pay for my room and some second-hand books for my courses. I sent my laundry home in a laundry bag every other week for my mother to wash.

I roomed at a house owned by a Mrs. Johns. There were four bedrooms with two students in each room. We called it the 'House of Johns.' It was a very congenial group of students. We even had our own intramural basketball team. The 'House of Johns' was also an eating place for students - lunch and dinner - and I earned my meals by drying the dishes while Porter Williamson washed them. Porter became a successful lawyer and is now retired in Tucson, Arizona. My roommate was Paul Banks from a small town in southern Indiana. He spent his entire career working for the Social Security Administration. We still keep in touch. Others were Bob Blue, a chemist with Dow Chemical; Herb Chattin, who flew 'The Hump' in the War and became a surgeon (he earned part of his way in school by pickling cadavers for the Medical School and selling the gold from their teeth); and Sam Miller, who in spite of early physical handicaps, became a WWII pilot and flew the first jet plane across the Atlantic. He became Vice President of Pan Am. (I believe his picture still hangs beside Charles Lindbergh at the Wings Club in New York.) Almost all of the boys at the 'House of Johns' became highly successful in one way or another. Kaom Ando eventually became head of Fujitsu, the huge Japanese computer firm. We still keep in touch.

During summer vacations every effort was made to earn enough money to continue the next semester. During the first two summers I worked in a lumber yard and on Chester Clark's dairy farm. Getting up before 5:00 a.m., milking cows, making hay, cultivating soy beans, hoeing the corn field, etc. was not the easy life, but I remember never feeling better physically than when I returned to the campus. Chester Clark was well-educated (U. of Illinois), hard-working, and a good manager-type dairy farmer. When the summer was up, he handed me a $50.00 bonus! That was like $500.00 today, literally.

After my sophomore year, my brother and I tried to get a summer job working in the steel mill. In those days everyone lined up by the gate, and the foreman came out and randomly selected whomever he wanted to hire that day. A miracle happened! He walked up and down the line and finally picked two - my brother and me.

Although it was still a time of depression, when I graduated in 1937 I did receive three job offers - one was to go with Standard Oil to become manager of a trading post in China where kerosene was the primary product (another graduate was also offered the same job, he took it, and barely escaped over the Himalayas when the Japanese invaded); one was with Devoe and Reynolds Paint Co., which paid the most; and one was with General Electric Company, which my Dad recommended over the others because it would give me the best business training. He was right.

After Graduation

My first assignment with GE was in Bridgeport, Connecticut. I knew no one there, but Uncle Gus knew a couple of people - Lucien Warner, a well-known person in the area who greeted me very hospitably and took me to his club swimming, and Willie Miller, a printer who introduced me to Black Rock Congregational Church. From that point on I made many friends in the Bridgeport area, but the best friend I made was Sally Jennings, who is now my wife.

I could go on from here with the next 50 plus years, but this is a recorded in six large leather-bound volumes in our home library.

[See also Johannes & Johanna Holmquist & Family.]