Dear Family, I added a couple things: Antecedents and Social Stuff.

It is 4 am. I have been thinking about writing a book, it is about what I actually know best, my own family. My plan is to submit it to the Messenger Index in Emmett under the Opinion menu and we will see if anyone reads the thing.

My name is Royce Ilene Berglund, first daughter of Ralph and Virginia Berglund. I was born September 1947 in Emmett, Idaho at the old Mary Secor Hospital. The hospital was named after the mother of the doctor who built the hospital. The physician lived in quarters to the north of the lot and the remaining two story building was on the south part. It sat in what is now the Fire Hall. It had an elevator, pretty nifty for the times. There was a surgical suite and hospital beds upstairs and down. All medical records were filed by year and month. There was a very accurate file with names that noted the dates so retrieval was not completely impossible.

Immediate antecedents were Charlie Berglund and Nellie Rose Berglund, Uncle Albert Berglund and their sister Dorothy. They came to America in the late 1890's or so by way of Charlottenburg, Sweden. Charlie taught himself English by reading the Funny Papers. Great Grandpa came as well but returned to Sweden without being renamed Berglund by immigration. He had another whole family and whose descendents presentlylive in Sweden and who discovered us around 2008 via the internet. Cool beans. Dad was born in Minnesota. The family came to Emmett about 1920 or so. Charlie Berglund specialized in large heavy equipment and was a crane operator for Morrison Knudsen during the depression, usually part time work. The rest of the time he farmed and milked cows. He worked on some of the canals feeding from Black Canyon Dam. That is one of the reasons the road going past their place is called Berglund Road. It was misspelled for many years as Bergland, very common spelling. Grandpa Berglund, who we called Big Grandpa, milked a few dairy cows. Us kids were not allowed in to watch as he did not use hobbles on them. So we noisy bunch were banned from the barn. Another wonderful thing from which we were banned was the haystack. It was loosely stacked and had a small wooden derrick to move the hay. We would have totally destroyed that wonderful haystack by jumping all over it. Big Grandpa smelled wonderful. He chewed snoose and he kept some in his pocket, we never saw him chew or spit but oh that smell. He also kept a lovely old pocket watch in one his many pockets in his cover all's. We would beg to be allowed to listen to the tick of that pocket watch.

Big Grandma was not tall but built like the proverbial brick outhouse, well corseted. I remember she used a pressure cooker a lot for quick meals, the sound of that thing always rather terrified me. She was very social and she and Charlie enjoyed Canasta parties. When she died Mom cleaned out hundreds of party favors made of hand crocheted mini baskets that had been starched to hold mixed nuts and such. I really wanted one of those. Nelliee drove an old blue Studebaker, usually like a bat out of H E double hockey sticks because she was in a hurry. She passed the school bus once that I was riding in and her car was a blur of blue. She was Seventh Day Adventist and Charlie had been raised Lutheran in Sweden and swore off religion.

My mother, Virginia Horn Berglund was born in Brush, Colorado. One of the uncles bears a resemblance to Tom Horn, we do love us the occasional outlaw. Our further antecedents are documented in an old vanity press book that, if proved, links us through the women all the way back to John and Priscilla Alden. Then a bit further back we seem to have a Scottish cowboy helping out William Wallace. Grandma Horn (Little Grandma) and Riley (Little Grandpa) came to Colorado by way of Missouri. They dry land farmed until 1939 or so and sold out and moved to Emmett where the land was much more productive. They lived on several small farms and finally settled on a 40 acre farm out on the slope. There were orchards of prune trees (yes PRUNE trees), cherry trees, some nectarine and some fruit packing sheds. I loved staying at their farm when I was a kid because I was the first grandbaby and was SPOILED ROTTON Mom tells me I went around after my baby teeth fell out smiling widely and people would give me pennies. She wanted to smack me so bad. Grandma Horn made the worlds best pies. She had zig zag fingers from a very high fever when she was a young girl. I think it was rheumatic fever. At any rate they did not know to brace the fingers and the joints deformed but she used one of her fingers to skim the cream until it was blue. The eggs and butter money was hers. Riley was a nearly deaf old man when I knew him. And he was crabby. Grandma always called him “Daddy” which I thought sounded a little weird. They had a storm cellar in the yard that held the hot water tank and the canned goods and smelled of cool dirt. A gooseberry bush grew on top of the storm cellar and one of my favorite pies was gooseberry. I would pick a bunch, Grandma would bake and shudder and shake just watching me wolf down a piece of that pie. Grandma Horn attended First Christian Church and Grandpa Horn farmed. They would keep the occasional bummer lamb and we would get regularly butted onto our bottoms until the little darling went to the sale barn.

Dad first saw Mom be-bopping down main street in Emmett. He thought she was pretty. She just ignored him for a bit. They went to a lot of dances and were jitter bug diva's. I am told they cleared the dance floor regularly with an energetic boogie woogie.

Now, I need to backtrack a bit to tell a little history about my Dad, Shorty. He reached full growth right at 5 foot. He had a sunny disposition and joked with lots of folks and got along well with many people. He decided he had gotten along enough with Charlie Beglund and at age 13 he rode his bicycle to Ontario and sold it for some cash enough to purchase a train ticket that eventually got him back to Minnesota. He worked as a haying hand for some relatives. He wandered to New Orleans and got into some vagrancy trouble and had to work off some time with a local judge. He also wound up in Mexico with Uncle Al and there may have been a tramp steamer involved somewhere along the line.

Dad was a bit of an adventurer and a bit of a rascal. He came back to the farm after some time and worked. He got into some trouble when he and his brother accidentally set a farmers field on fire. As punishment Charlie made the boys work for the farmer. The boys decided to take revenge. The farmer owned a gentle old bull. The boys stacked hay bales up high enough to coax the bull up onto a barn. They put the hay bales back and skedaddled for home. The farmer found the bull and just knew those Berlund kids had done it. They steadily denied it for years as the Sheriff got involved.

When he was a little older age 30 or so he worked for the Little's on one of their houses. He cut his thumb rather badly and had to go to Mary Secor to get it stitched up. For years he teased us kids that that was what happened if you sucked your thumb. Years later while working for the local hospital I happened to come across those old records of his and the bill for then was something like $37.00. The Little's very kindly paid the bill.

During WWII he signed up and went into the Army. At one point he was being transferred from point A to point B somewhere on the West coast. He checked in at Point B, paid a buddy five bucks to answer to his name at Roll call and he came home for several weeks. Once he was through with his visit he went back to Point B, let his buddy know he was there, answered to “Berglund” the next morning and told the Sarge here were his transfer papers, he just forgot to turn them it. I believe he got a little stink eye for that. He eventually served in Alaska and learned all about cribbage in Kodiak.

In the mean time Mom was only sixteen or so when Pearl Harbor was attacked. She said she was painting her bedroom when they heard the news. About that time she decided she had had enough of high school and did not finish her sophomore year. She began rooming with a family in town and worked at various places. Her last place was at a bakery. She has told me that she never wanted to taste frosting again. So Dad was 10 years or so older than she. They met shortly after the war. They eloped, everyone they knew eloped and got married in 1945. Mom was very anemic and I did not come along for a couple of years.

They lived in a tiny little trailer house. I have seen pictures, it must have been all of 15 feet long and 6 feet wide. They traveled following jobs that dad took here and there. The moving theme held up pretty well until there were several more of us and we finally settled more or less permanently back in Emmett when I was in the fourth grade.

From time to time during summers we would get moved when Dad worked different places. One of the more interesting places was then Dad worked for Idaho Power on the Hell's Canyon Dam. It was a three or four year project. We started out living in Cambridge, Idaho. Richard and I would place doubled headed nails on the rail road tracks, wait for the train to run over them and gleefully pick up our miniature swords. We never told Mom, I think she would have screamed a lot.

We gradually moved closer into the canyon as the commute got further along. We loved Dagget's Creek. Twenty or so trailers parked along a creek, that once it was partially dammed by the men with some old doors, we could swim in it. You had to be careful where you dived there was a big fat rock just there so don't hit it. At one point some of us developed sores on our skin. Mom kept us out of the creek after that because the sewage from the trailers emptied into the creek. There were wild apricots and Elderberry bushes that grew in the canyon. We picked the fruit indiscriminately. Had to watch out for rattle snakes though.

The one thing we begged Dad for was a UKE inner tube. The giant trucks were from the UK and had massive tires. They were solid and had no inner tubes but we were sure that Dad could get one for us. Nope.

Richard and I spent part of the summer with friends who lived in Haines, OR, so we could take Red Cross approved swimming lessons. That was at Indian Springs hot springs, which has since been renamed with something more culturally sensitive, Medicine Springs I think. I got the worst sunburn of my life that year oh and a gnarly set of blisters from playing on monkey bars. Ugh. Yeah we got our certicate. That gave us tacit approval to use the pool in Emmett and no squealing if we swam in the canals.

Speaking of swimming, a year or so earlier we lived briefly in Cascade. There was a small swimming pool there. I remember Mom taking us and we used paddle boards and I am sure that is what prompted the later Oregon swimming lessons and probably prevented a drowning or two.

During the summers we would travel to Petaluma, California to visit Uncle Carl and Aunt Rosalee. Due to the heat we crossed the desert at night. I remember counting ant hills one time and rabbits. Dad would tell us that we could watch TV at night. The TV at home went off in the early afternoon.

When I was a junior or so in high school we spent the summer in Riggins, Idaho. Mom enrolled us in Summer Bible School. The church had a bus that picked us up. That was six kids. I had the three girls. I dimly remember one of the teachers asking when I had all those babies. I was scandalized! I'm they're sister!!! There was a goodish sized river running in back of our cabin and the otters would play there. There was no TV reception so we learned how to play Nertz. It was a team of kids playing a reverse Solitaire. The goal was to get rid of all the cards you held and yell “Nertz!”. Noisy and fun.

One summer Dad took off from working for Idaho Power. He told us he got two-checked. What's that, Dad? He got layed off. Oh, so he hitched up a small camper trailer and we drove to Arizona by way of the Grand Canyon. We begged to stop, but no we had to get to where we were going. Rats! The summer was gloriously hot. We stayed in Mugoyan Rim country. Dad was a shade tree mechanic. We camped next to some Idaho friends and a local took us kids to a hidden swimming hole. We climbed up a cliff an down a cliff and the swimming hole was actually a gigantic boulder worn smooth from flood etc. We ran into a little trouble driving back. The steel leaf spring on the trailer came apart while we were driving on a back road. It was early in the day. He assured us that someone would be along soon. Mom panicked and bawled. I had never seen her so scared. About fifteen minutes later a truck came by, JUST happened to have a welding rig on it, Dad spot welded the spring and got us on our way. It broke again when we got to Flagstaff but that was okay, we were near repair places. And we sailed right by the Grand Canyon going back, didn't want to chance another breakdown. Rats!

When we were younger Dad showed us a weird piggy bank shaped like dodecahedron thing, it held dimes. He told us that when it was full we could go to Disneyland. This involved a bit more planning than the usual purely spontaneous Berglund family trip. We planned on staying with some family friends who lived in Orange County. I just the three oldest kids and the folks went to the Magic Kingdom that day. We walked down mainstream through the castle and oohed an ah-ed. At that time the House of the Future was there and we walked through. We went to the Pepsi-cola review at a saloon and drank Pepsi of course. Stood in line for a couple hours to ride Dumbo, it was broken. We rode the tea cups. We looked at the driving thing but we were too short! We went to Knox Berry Farm and it was pretty dull because the folks would not let us go on any of the rides. Crud. The next time I visited Disney it was with one of my work roomies. Some guy tried to pick me up and there was literally a fly in my soft drink. Reality SUCKED!!

SOCIAL STUFF: Social life at the time in a small town usually consisted of going to dances in Ola. THE WHOLE FAMILY went to the dances. When Mom baked a sheet pan of Raisin Spice cake with white icing it meant we were going out and that was dessert. There was usually a supper break. Music was a few people playing piano, guitar, violin. The dances consisted of the Waltz and the Schottiche. Everyone kept their liquor bottles outside in the vehicles. The one time there was an alcohol fueled fight, Dad stepped in between the men who were a foot taller. They exchanged three or four lightning fast face punches and then they were escorted out the door. After supper the hat was passed to pay the band and everyone went home about midnight. It was purely fun.

SCHOOL IN EMMETT: Both Richard and I attended grade school at Wardwell. It was a gigantic semi condemned school that sat on the block where the bank, credit union and library are now located. When Wardwell closed, the Catholic Church purchased the block, kept part for a parking lot and sold the rest. The school had fire escapes consisting of enclosed metal slides with a locked door at the bottom. We wanted to slide down those so bad. But the third floor was closed and we always walked down and outside for fire drills. The kitchen was in the basement. Parkview kids walked over to Wardwell for lunch. I worked for free lunch for a year or so.

PARKVIEW: Was the Junior High School. I went there fifth grade through eighth grade. It was located across from the city park. The lawns on the school on the West side were worn down usually from kids playing marbles. Steelies were considered superior. My Fifth grade teacher was Alice Brownfield, she taught art and read to us after lunch from Black Beauty and Beautiful Joe. We were also required to do book reports and one of her requirements was to be able to find the title of the book within the text. It is a habit that has gone unbroken. I wonder if teachers read books to students anymore. Parkview was actually the old High School. I looked at some old annuals from the 40' and 50's. They actually had a post grad year for seniors who wished to repeat or get extra credit. I thought it was the oddest thing. It was at my eighth grade graduation that I first noticed my five foot even father. He had always been a giant personality, just short in stature.

BUTTEVIEW: Grade school, my youngest siblings attended there.

There used to be country schools, the kids who went to those schools were very smart. When they showed up in the ninth grade they did very well compared to the townies. Better grades, better at sports. Sheesh. All those smaller class sizes.

LETHA SCHOOL: Both Richard and I attended the grade school there in the first and third grade. There were four rooms with two classes in each room, first through eighth grade. I remember listening to some of the fourth grade English and thinking, hey I can do this. Letha was closed a few years ago and is now either empty or a museum or something.

There was no such thing as Home Schooling back in the day and while I am sure that my Mother was smart enough to teach the courses I shudder to think of the possibility. O The Humanity!!