A Savar Boy

written by Walfrid Anderson, my great-grandpa in 1956

Saw day light the first time on May 27, 1878. I remember so well; Dad told me about it. He game the first kiss through the window when he was playing the potato fields outside the house. Since then 78 years have now passed. At the request of relatives and friends, I would like to write down what has happened since then. I am very grateful to God for a Christian home where I and a younger bother and sister learned to kneel at the wood bench and say “God who has the children dear,” and so on. Deep spirituality in the home had been a tradition since m grandmother’s (father’s mother) time; she prayed, sang and read in the home. As a result she ended up riding in the prisoner’s carriage down to Harnosand to be tried by Bishop Franzen. He told grandmother, “Go home; continue singing and reading.” This was during C.O. Rosenius’ time in Savar. The Konventikelplakatet was then then law (edict concerning revival meetings outside the State church).

My father, who spent most of the time in bed during a period of nine years because of illness, died at the age of 46. At that time I was taking a confirmation class. Our economy was not too good due to illness in the family. I was taught to take care of myself at home in those early years. The little homestead game us bread and porridge and fodder for the horse. The meadows and swamp gave us hay for three cows. We had to scrape everything together. Hotel Forsberg in Umea often had commercial travelers that I drove to Skelleftea or Nordmaling, which gave us a small income during the long cold winter. In the summer between the busy times there was work at the brickyard at the Ume River or employment at Holmsund building the charcoal kilns. This was before my fifteenth birthday.

During the days to come, I began to suffer from America fever, and it would not go away. I prayed to God to help me remain there for five years in order to get money to pay the debts on our home here in Savar, but it turned out to be 47 years in U.S.A.

We were three Savar boys who left in 1901. I separated from my family and young friends, especially one. My destiny was shaping up and everything was going well for me. Everything seemed to be so exciting and fun for us 22 year olds; yes, even the Atlantic was exciting. It’s different when one has crossed it eight times. The trips have, however been successful for me. In new York harbor we friends separated, ending up in different trades. My goad was Seattle, Washington and I came there after probably five days of traveling through Canada. I had a cousin who worked in a family, but she had no time for me and didn’t even know about my arrival. However, I had my Swedish ears with me and met a Swedish-speaking person on the sidewalk, so things worked out.

My cousin Alma Ronnberg had some property in the city and I had $27 left of my travel money, so I bought some lumber and within three weeks I was a home owner, and my cousin taught me to cook oatmeal on the little stove of sheet metal. It was lonely for me at the house in the beginning since I had no friends. A little mouse came down the wall to see me at night, but no one from my home district was there; however, after half a year I got a roommate when John Karlsson from Savar arrived. The Covenant Church in Seattle became a help to us. Daily wages at that time were two dollars. Someone mentioned that one could do better at gold digging in Alaska; this commanded attention and became my music from 1902 for four summers and a winter to come.

The distance between Seattle and Nome is probably not quite as far as between Europe and America, it took two weeks the first trip and there was ice in the way. At that time the Yukon River brought a lot of ice down to the Bering Sea and the Americans were coming; we could see four boats with prospectors stuck in the ice and drifting out to the ocean. Alaska has a lovely climate during the summer. The sun shines and forgets to go down; the birds and flowers are the same as in Sweden. It seemed like I was at home.

It happened on a Sunday morning as I sat among the flowers at the mountain after completing a night’s work. The thought came; I wrote a few lines to the one who had caught my attention as a youth. It was 1905 and I did not know what had happened to her since 1901. Well, everything turned out to be as before. I came home for Christmas 1906 and stayed for two months, and then she accompanied me back to the States. At the end of May we were married in Seattle, and on June 2 we left on our honeymoon to Nome. But then something happened, I had to make a trip 100 miles inland for the work I wanted and saw my wife once during the entire summer; it was difficult. But Augusta had almost learned the language by the time I returned in the fall.

During the cold period in the fall and winter, I was out prospecting for gold. To friends and I dug 100-foot holes in the frozen ground for quite a distance without finding anything worthwhile. During the summer I worked for larger firms; I was a hydraulic man, using a waterhole to find the gold. There has been plenty of hard manual labor for me, but I always liked it. I have been in on many buildings in Seattle. Many accidents too, but the Lord has held his hand over me; things have happened to me, but they’ve taught me good lessons.

In 1908 we bought a farm, we wanted to move out to more quietness, a little nook among the mountains. Well, it wasn’t so little, 100 acres. Still don’t know if it was God’s will for us but he permitted it, and we experienced the good and the bad. My mother, sister and brother, who came to Seattle, lived in our home, mother since 1906, when all three came. Everybody was happy in a Christian environment, but mother, who moved with us out in the forest to stumps and loneliness, became unhappy. I felt more and more guilty; there were no dollars hanging in the trees, but encouragement came when our first daughter Linnea was born there. Later we moved back to Seattle after having sold all but 20 acres of the farm. This became the place for our picnics and was also a lot of work for many years to come.

I continued as a builder and longshoreman. In 1940 we built a house outside the city limits, where there was plenty of pasture. We bought several cows for milking, calves which were fattened up for the market. During the last years in the U.S.A. I worked as caretaker at the University of Washington. Now the five children - Linnea, Ruth, Alice, Wallace and Effie-Armida- were grown up and had their own families and had left home. One son, Walter, died of the Spanish fever in 1919 at the age of 1 1/2. At this writing, we have five children and twelve grandchildren in America. I believe everybody is happy to have lived in a beautiful city with all the possibilities of getting a good education.

Then came the calls from the eternal world. Mother died at the age of 92, and on October 19, 1944, my Augusta passed away, my faithful companion. Now everything was empty and lonely; I felt homeless. The summer of 1946 came, forty years after 1906. I returned to the old country to visit. It was nice in Goteborg and the entire way there. There I met my old friend, the blessed Gustafson, who meant a lot to me. I went up to Holmsund, where I wanted to relive old memories as a longshoreman, loading up boats. Then I returned to my home town Savar and Savarberg where I felt at home. After all I had experienced, the time had come to return. During the visit home a lot of things had tied my heart to the old country, and as an old American saying goes, “What gets your attention gets you.” Well, I thought, there is a good wind on the Atlantic and the whims will blow away. During my stay in Savar I had made the pleasant discovery that the same quality which existed during my youth was still there.

Back again in Seattle I was together with my dear children and their families, and had enough to do with that which was mine, but the the feeling of loneliness was still there. And so it was that with the blessings of my children as well as the parish where I belonged, I returned again to Sweden to live there an join my first bird’s niece Marta Johansson (sister’s daughter). Everything has gone well, for which we thank and praise God.

In 1951 Marta and I made a four-month visit to my children and friends in the U.S.A., which was very interesting, especially for Marta. Besides the World Pentecostal Conference in Stockholm which we visited, I had experienced a similar event in London three years earlier. I had longed to see Palestine, and this became a reality when I had the privilege to make a pilgrimage there in 1954. There was an experience and a chapter by itself.

Many elements of everyday nature during the past would probably give more color to the same. I remember the tall mirrors on the walls at Forberg Hotel in Umea; they mirrored the grand sight of a boy in seal skin shoes and a worn calf skin coat; but it was all right as long as the boy from Savar had the promise of driving a commercial traveler. It was fun but hard work for mother and me in the meadows of Savar. We cut horsetails under water which reached to the waist, then floated them to shore so that they would gradually dry for hay. Mother never wanted to return to Sweden when she was asked.

My earlier-mentioned attempt at farming in Port Orchard now provided a lovely experience for us. A church which for a long time had been unused and had the windows nailed down came to use once again. Windows were washed and the old organ was checked; everything was cleaned. We advertised services with preaching by a good friend of ours, Mia Jakobson. She was a former missionary to China. Revival broke out and many believed and were saved. How good to belong to the Lord in the ups and downs of life.

We were going to celebrate Christmas together with my sister and her family. After a few hours of driving, it got dark. There was a rain storm and the car with its seven passengers started to skid and rolled over down into a large ditch filled with water. Think how glad and grateful to God I was when everybody was standing on the road, alive and not too badly injured. It happened in a curve with a railroad crossing, the same place where a doctor and nurse had been fatally injured a short time before.

Please understand that nothing I have written about that has worked out well is due to my own works, but is due to the fact that I chose to count on God and am therefore very grateful to Him. I started my life in 1878 and have now lived 78 years. In truth a long time, but still I feel quite young sometimes, still I know that my body is of earth and shall so be. But God was particular about forming the soul, which is immortal, and put it in our breast. I live here in that hope. I have a mansion just over the mountain in the land where we never grow old. There we can sing: O mighty love, so rich, so warm that no one can measure; the purpose is for all to sing around God’s throne one day.

TRANSLATED BY: Lennart Akkerland, March 12, 1975