Nordic American Voices Nordic Museum

Nordic American Voices Nordic Museum Interview of Robert Palm ID: 2017.126.001 September 23, 2017 Seattle, Washington Interviewers: Saundra Magnussen Martin, Lindsay Ravensong Saundra Magnussen Martin: [0:09] This is an interview for the Nordic American Voices oral history project. Today is September 23, 2017, and I’ll be interviewing Robert Palm. We are at the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle, Washington. My name is Saundra Magnussen Martin, and my co-interviewer is Lindsay Ravensong. Good morning Robert— Bob, if I may call you Bob. Robert Palm (Bob): [0:36] Hi. Saundra: [0:38] Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed for the oral history project. Would you like to tell us a little bit about yourself and your family? Bob: [0:47] Yes. My name is Robert Gunnar Palm. People call me Bob. I was born October 3, 1942, in Chicago, Illinois. My parents were Gunnar and Nancy Palm, Swedish immigrants. I’d like to talk about my father’s life in Sweden before he emigrated. My father, Gunnar Palm, was born on September 16, 1904, in Karlskoga, Sweden. Karlskoga is about 100 miles [west] of Stockholm in Örebro province. But my father always claimed that he was from Värmland province. I guess it was cooler to be from Värmland. There were two boys and two girls in the family. My dad was the youngest. His father, Karl Gustav Palm, worked at a sawmill. His mother, Emma Otilia, died of TB when he was 11. TB was rampant in Sweden at that time. [2:07] They lived in a very modest house called a stuga. It had one room. To create space in there, they hung sheets from the ceiling, to create bedrooms and living rooms, and whatever else they needed for privacy. Dad had six years of formal education, which ended when he was 13. He was an avid reader. I remember him telling me he read all of Jack London’s books in Swedish, like Call of the Wild, for instance. [2:52] He worked in a sawmill after school— the same mill as his father. At age 19, he was about to be drafted in the Army. He decided this was a good time to immigrate to the United States. So, that’s a summary of my father’s life up until the time he left Sweden. Saundra: [3:14] Do you know what year he came to the United States? Bob: [3:16] 1923. Nancy Elizabeth Aune was born July 22, 1905 in Öjebyn, Sweden. Öjebyn is just [west] of Piteå, which is a fairly large town on the Gulf of Bothnia, and it’s about 100 miles south of Nordic American Voices Page 1 of 12 the Arctic Circle. So, it’s way up north. Öjebyn is in Norrbotten province. Her mother, Hildur, died at Nancy’s birth. Her father, Art, died two years later. He committed suicide. [4:04] My mother’s maiden name, Aune, is Norwegian. She had relatives in Trondheim. She never met these people until she was in her fifties. My mother got shuttled around from different relatives. She suffered from a lack of confidence because of her upbringing. Her relatives were farmers, although later on, one opened a reindeer skin tanning factory in Öjebyn. After her six years of school, she worked as telephone switchboard operator in Sweden. Mom immigrated at age 18 to the United States. Saundra: [4:51] It seems like your parents had quite a bit in common, both losing their mothers at such an early age. Bob: [4:57] Yeah. Right. Saundra: [4:59] And also having the same education. Bob: [5:03] Yeah. That’s all you got in Sweden was six years if you were a peasant. You couldn’t afford to send your kids to school after that. Saundra: [5:12] Did your mother have any siblings? Bob: [5:14] No. She was an only child. Saundra: [5:20] Why don’t you tell us now about how they came to the United States? Bob: [5:35] This next page is their early life in Chicago. That’s where we’re going. Both my parents, Gunnar and Nancy, arrived in Chicago in the fall of 1923. They did not know each other. My father was 19, and my mother was 18. My dad’s sponsor was a Mr. Eckblum, who he knew from Karlskoga. I don’t know my mother’s sponsor, but she had quite a lot of friends and relatives from Öjebyn in Chicago. The names were Oland, John Oland, and Judith Oland, and the sisters Astrid, Alma, and Hanna Sandlin, and the sisters Iris and Ruth. So, they were all in Chicago. My mother had a big support group for her, which was good. [6:35] My parents met several years later at a Swedish dance. My mother still had her Norrbotten province dance costume. Each province has their own costume. It’s somewhere in my garage. I have to find it. Mom worked as a domestic at first. She went to night school to learn English, of course. She became a citizen in 1930. Mom picked up her beautician’s license around 1930, also. The Sandlin sisters, Astrid, Alma, and Hanna, were also beauty operators. Mom often roomed with the Sandlin sisters. [7:25] Dad worked as a construction laborer at first. He also went to night school to learn English. He became a citizen in 1929. Dad eventually purchased a carpenter’s union card in the late twenties. I guess you didn’t have to serve as an apprentice; you could just buy a union card, which worked out well for him. Saundra: [7:44] May I interrupt just a moment? The man who sponsored your father— did he help Nordic American Voices Page 2 of 12 your father find a job, do you know? Bob: [7:54] He probably did, because my father didn’t speak any English. I don’t know much about this Mr. Eckblum. I met him once. He was a real old man, and I was a little kid. My father spoke very kindly about him. I don’t know. The construction business was going gangbusters in Chicago in the 1920s. They were building lots of three-flats. It was the roaring twenties. They came in a boom time, 1923. [8:34] Getting back to my father purchasing his carpenter’s union card— I think at one point, every other Swedish male immigrant became a snickare. That’s Swedish for “carpenter.” Working with wood is natural, since wood is plentiful in Sweden. I’ve also read that even today, every other Swede thinks of himself as a carpenter, even if he just does projects on the weekend. [9:07] Dad liked to wet his whistle after work. He lived near the Cubs’ park, where there were an abundance of speakeasies. One of his drinking buddies was Eric Olsson. Eric went back to Sweden during the Depression, and returned after World War II. My father bumped into Eric again in a Lutheran church pew in the 1950s. Eric was Ann-Margret Olsson’s father, the movie actress. Ann- Margret is a year older than I am. She was in my Sunday school. She had and has a beautiful voice. I remember my father tearing up when she sang Nidelven. [9:50] Are you familiar with Nidelven? You ought to check it out. It’s actually a song about a river that flows through Trondheim. It was written during World War II. I think it was kind of a Norwegian nationalist song during the German occupation. It’s talking about how beautiful the river is, and at least that hasn’t been ruined by the Germans. Nidelven was also popular in Sweden, and there are Swedish lyrics to it, also. [10:26] The Depression was very hard on my father. He delivered fliers at one point. Finally, he and his friend, Hjlamar Blod, scraped together a living shingling roofs. My parents married in the thirties, but I’m not sure what year. It was probably around 1935, give or take a year or so. They, with Hjlamar and Hjlamar’s wife, bought a rooming house in the thirties. This worked out well, and both couples were able to save some money. [11:09] My parents’ first house was at 6147 N. Lawndale in Chicago. Dad did as much work as he could, and contracted the plumbing, masonry and electrical. They paid cash. My parents were frugal. They were savers. One Swedish phrase that I heard over and over again was mycket pengar, which means “a lot of money.” So, if they were talking about buying something, mycket pengar went back and forth between them. Dad joked that if everyone spent like they did, the country would be in a permanent recession, because they were saving so much money. [Laughter] Saundra: [11:53] Did they speak Swedish in the home to you children? Bob: [11:57] I’m an only child. Yes, they did. Often, it was just to keep a secret from me, but I was a very nosy kid, and I was able to pick out cognates. If there was a crucial word I didn’t understand, I would ask my mother two days later, “What does blah-blah mean in Swedish?” Then I was able to put together the story sometimes. Something like, “Ragnar came home drunk, and Elizabeth made him sleep out on the porch.” That was the story they told in Swedish. And I didn’t get the Swedish word for “porch,” so I would ask my mother two days later what the Swedish word was, and that Nordic American Voices Page 3 of 12 turned out to be porch.

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