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Saturday, December 8, 2018

Coming to America, Otto's saga


Mosby and Høie Fabrikker

Started working in the middle of February. It was cold and a lot of snow on the ground. Went skiing a couple of times. We first got a one room apartment with kitchen. I took the bus into Kristiansand to buy some kitchen and cooking utensils. In the basement there was a shower, but you had to heat the water. We used it every Friday night. After a month or so we got a bigger apartment. We made good friends in the neighborhood and Jacquie joined a sewing club. 

Mosby is a little village. Everybody worked at the mill. There was a small grocery store, but you had to go to Kristiansand for greater things such as hardware, restaurants, movies, library, dentist, doctor, barber, hairdresser.

The mill was family owned. The old man, Oscar Jebsen, was a fine old gentleman. My father knew him from the old neighborhood in Bergen. Two sons at the mill, one in the office, the other, technical, had spent some time in the U.S.A> He was a first class SOB, and was a significant factor for me wanting to go back to the States. He wanted me t stay longer. “You know we can’t get another man like you”. Although I only worked there for a little more than 10 months, they gave me a month’s salary (bonus) when I left.

There was nothing to do in Mosby. The only social affair was the “badehus” (prayer house). We, the engineers and upper office workers, belonged t a group that was called “the upper fifth”. Everybody knew your business, even my salary which was 25% more than Norman Anderson got. He was the head dyer before me. He was 58 and had worked in the dye house since he was 13.
Our best friends were the Hvattums, Ole Jakob and Ellen. Mike’s [my brother] middle name is after their oldest son Ivar.

Jon was conceived here on October 26, 1950 on Ellingson’s sofa. One of the pieces of furniture we had given to us.  [Note: this is the beginning of the legend that is me! ]

All in all it was not a bad time, thanks to the many friends we made there.

Bergen to New York, January 1951
It was an unimaginable feeling going on board the Oslofjord. All Norwegian was behind me: taxes, military service (I was in the Guard). My cousin Henry, who was in the police department, was a tremendous help getting through all the red tape.


When leaving port we play the Norwegian and American National Anthems. Edith Hausvik and friends were at the dock. Her brother in law was in charge of the linen department on the ship.

It was a rough passage. Smooth the first day as we passed the Faroes, but then storm and bad weather hit us. That was probably more the Shetlands or the Orkneys. The bad weather continued almost until we hit New York. I was the only one at our table for about 5-6 days. We docked in the harbor Monday morning and cleared customs, no problems. Nana and Grandpa John [Jacquie’s mother and step father] were there to meet us. We checked the old steamer trunk to Baltimore, but all of the rest of the stuff, including our skis, we loaded on to Grandpa John’s old Pontiac convertible. Stopped on the way to eat and it was great to be back in the good old USA. Remember crossing the Delaware at Chester, and in the evening we were in Baltimore.  

To be continued again…

23 comments:

  1. Conceived on a sofa, eh? Now that's a lot of information to have!

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    1. And a borrowed sofa at that! Maybe that is why I always test the quality of a sofa by lying on it.

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  2. Loving this continuing saga.
    And blown away by how precise your knowledge of your beginnings is.

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    1. I do not, however, know the time of day it happened.

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  3. if the sofa's a-rockin'...how weird must it have been for you reading THAT!

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    1. I knew about it for quite some time as my father was a very good story teller. I am sure I was of an appropriate age when I found out, but I could never remembered the name Ellingson." Now it is indelibly etched on my mind.

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  4. Poor Jacquie, stuck in Mosby for a winter. And in those years. Did she have any Norwegian then, do you know? (“Bedehus”?)

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    1. She must have been developing a working knowledge of Norwegian being with my father, but he spoke a lot of English in order to assimilate while in the U.S. Jacquie was British and, therefore, spoke the King's English. Her mother never entirely lost her British accent and my father never entirely lost his Norwegian accent. Interestingly, the Norwegian he spoke was mostly from the first half of the century. The idioms he used when we would go there were a little outdated as noted by my cousins.

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  5. Interesting family history, keep it safe. You will be adding yors to it.

    cheers, parsnip and badger

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    1. My brother and I each have a copy as do my cousins in Norway as it is partially their fathers' history, as well. Thank goodness for copy machines!

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  6. So, Jono, are you keeping a journal or writing vignettes to keep the story going?

    The couch info is incredible.

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    1. Sioux, I am not. While I have a few interesting stories, many of which I have put on this blog for the last seven years or so, I have no one to pass it on to.

      I suppose it is a bit unusual for people to have that much detail about their conception. Kind of fun to know, though!

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    2. Conception stories are common where I come from; we all know where on the farm...

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  7. Now you have me wondering just where I started my life's journey.....
    I love the fact that you have this information about your dad's early life. I know a lot about my mother's growing up years but not my dad. But I do know that my dad was married twice and had a child with his first wife, but the child died, I don't know if it was a boy or a girl, or how old, might have been a still birth. No way to find out now, so many years later.

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    1. Yeah, there are always some questions. My father and his brothers never knew they had a half-sister. They would have loved her, I am sure.

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  8. Ah, it's always good to know one's beginnings! ;-) I don't know the details of mine; only that with a mid-August birthday, it's likely that my parents were, um... 'keeping warm' in their tiny house at the onset of winter.

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  10. Enjoying the saga of your parents' young days. I am a sucker for good family stories, and this is one.

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  11. On the couch, huh? I started out in the woods. LOL.

    Funny what you say about your father's Norwegian - I feel the same about my German, like it's stuck in time a few decades ago. I'm sure my sisters and brothers laugh about some of my outdated expressions (or when they have to explain new-fangled expressions to me)!

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