Nordic American Voices Nordic Heritage Museum Seattle, Washington

Interview of Kari Hauge Allen May 21, 2016 First Lutheran Church Kennewick, Washington

Interviewers: Mari-Ann Kind Jackson; Janice Bogren

Mari-Ann Kind Jackson: [0:00] This is an oral history interview for the Nordic American Voices oral history program at the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle, Washington. Today is May 21, 2016, and we are in Kennewick. We are interviewing Kari Allen from Bergen, Norway. Welcome, Kari. We are delighted you are willing to share your life story with us. Would you please start by stating your full name, and tell us when you were born, where you were born, and then share your life story with us.

Kari Hauge Allen: [0:35] Well, I’ll be happy to do that. My name is Kari Allen. I was born in Bergen, Norway, on the 10th of March, 1948. My parents were Astrid and Olav Hauge. We lived at Paradis outside of Bergen for the first six years of my life. I have two siblings, Liv, who is ten years older than me, and Bjørn, who is five years older than me. I had maternal grandparents, who were Rasmus and Johanna Askeland, who lived at Espeland, outside of Bergen, which was in those days Haus, and is today Arna, which was incorporated into Bergen later on, I think, in the sixties.

[1:25] I had no paternal grandparents, because they were dead before I was born, or any of us siblings were born. I think my paternal grandmother died in 1936. That was the year my parents were married. I don’t remember [which day], but they were married in 1936, and they were actually married for 63 years. My mother lived for 99.8 years, and died in 2013. My father was 91, and died in 1999. I probably should go back and say he was born in 1908, and she was born in 1913. On his side of the family, which is the Hauge side of the family, they have very long longevity. I have one aunt that was 110-and-a-half years old.

Mari-Ann: [2:22] Oh, my.

Kari: [2:23] He was the youngest of eleven siblings. Ten of them grew up. And I think the next one that passed away out of those ten was probably around 79 years old— pretty much everybody else was in their 80s, 90s, or 100. They were like 99, 100, 97, 96. They were very old. My maternal grandmother lived to be 96. My maternal grandfather was 89.

[2:56] One thing about me ending up in the United States was an interesting thing, and very unfortunate that we don’t know more about this. My maternal grandfather was here in the States, and we always joked with my grandmother that she married him because she thought he was going back to the States. We unfortunately never asked, and have no history. We know he was in Montana,

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and probably somewhere in the Midwest, working on farms, and then he came back, and they got married. He was worked for the railroad, and they had a store, the local country store. There was a factory… In Norway, they would put factories on the rivers, because that would give them power to run the machines to create their own electricity. That was very common to do.

[3:50] So, back to me— I was living in Paradis, Norway, outside of Bergen. For those that might be familiar with Bergen, my stomping ground was the old stave church up there, and then at Edvard Grieg’s home, Troldhaugen. That’s where we played a lot, because we moved to Hop when I was six years old, in 1954. I started school in 1955, which then was called Storetveit Skole at Paradis. That’s where I did all my schooling, because the high school was next to it. So, when we were finished with our seven years, we moved over there.

[4:31] I did three years of post study. Five years, I should have done, because I was too lazy of a student. So, I didn’t do the last two. I went off to what we call the folk high school at Voss. I did a year there, because I had the intention of becoming a teacher. Well, I don’t think I was teacher material, but I had a really good time, because you could ski up there.

[4:57] We would go to roll call in the morning, and then we would sneak off and ski instead of going to school, which we thought was much more productive. After I did that year, I came back home, of course. In those days, you either went back to school, or you got a job, because you could get a job. Of course, being a young woman in 1966, we had kind of started on the women’s liberation, so we were going to be independent. So, I went to work in a bookstore, because I liked to read. That was my criteria for working in a bookstore. I also liked accounting, and we had an accounting department, so I got to work in the accounting department.

[5:36] Well, I realized that working in a store was not a future. So, I decided after nine months of that it was time to go back to school. So, I went to business college, and did that. Then I was going to go into banking. Well, I got a job in banking. Well, banking was awfully boring, because you sat in a back office adding up numbers, and you didn’t see people except for your colleagues.

[6:03] I did that for a little while, and then a friend of mine at the bank came up and said, “I have a friend who has a girlfriend who is in the Canary Islands as an au pair, and she needs to come home, but we need to send a replacement. Would you like to go?” I said, “Well, you know, I’ve always been a little different. Everybody else goes to London, or Paris, or New York. Yes, Las Palmas in the Canary Islands— that sounds interesting. It’s warm, has a beach. Sounds lovely.”

[6:34] So, the next thing I know, I’m in Las Palmas with six kids to take care of. I could barely take care of myself. I had a really good time. I did my six months, came back home to Norway again, and had every intention of going back to Spain. Again, you needed a job, because your parents wouldn’t let you just hang around. So, I applied for a summer job at a travel agency, because I was fluent in English and German, and a little Spanish. So, I got a job there, because you’ve got a lot of tourists there falling in the door in those days. They wanted to see this, and that, and that.

[7:14] Well, the summer job actually was a coincidence— it became a career. I ended up in the travel business, because when fall came, they offered me a permanent job. So, I worked there for three years, and I was getting burned out, and I said I want to see the world again. I wanted to go to the States for some reason. Since you can’t really come to the States easily to work, I ended up as an au

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pair in San Antonio, Texas. Again, everybody else goes to New York or L.A. I went to Texas, which kind of suited me very well. There is kind of a coincidence that San Antonio was settled by the Canary people. If you go back in history that’s where they came from. So, I guess it was some sort of fate that I was supposed to be there.

[8:07] I had some very distant relatives, a cousin of my father— his widow lived there with two of her kids. Of course, these were grown people. I had met one daughter in I think 1956. She was married to an Army officer, and they came to Bergen, and they had visited, and they had met me. My father had told me that we had family in San Antonio, and being the typical young… “Well, I’m not going there to see Norwegians. I’m going to meet foreigners, not family.” Well, I found being an au pair in the United States is not the same as in Europe, where they include you in the family. Here, they wanted kind of a maid. And again, I was not good material for that, either.

[8:59] Anyway, after a couple of weeks, I realized this was going to be a lonely life. I called my father’s cousin’s widow, Velma, and explained who I was, and that I was there. They were all excited, and they were so lovely. She told me that they were very busy, but she would call me back. She called me back a couple of weeks later, and invited me to a 40th birthday party for my second cousin. I was requested to wear dark clothing. In those days, when we were young, we thought life started at 40, opposed to today, when it’s over. [Laughter]

[9:40] I show up to this birthday party in, of course, dark blue clothing. That was the darkest I had. There was a wreath on the door. There were skeletons hanging, and things like that. The cake was a tombstone. And it was like a funeral. Of course, being young, I was in shock of this, plus I’m here with all these older people that are 40 years old. There was only one young person there. I kind of attached myself to him. Believe it or not, I’m sitting here 43 years later, and it’s the same guy I’m talking about. That was Robert Edwin Allen. We kind of hit it off, and we dated for a little bit.

[10:27] I was not here legally. I was here on a tourist visa. So, when my three months was up, it was time to go home. So, I always tease that I was the only Norwegian wetback they had in Texas. I willingly went back to Norway, because I had seen enough. I wanted to go home. Little did I know that this young man that I had met… I was kind of in love with him. He obviously was in love with me, because a couple months later, he shows up in Norway, and one thing lead to the other, and back and forth. And he was married. He was divorcing his wife, or his wife was divorcing him.

[11:08] So, we had a lot of paperwork, back and forth. He came to Norway. We decided we were going to get married. Things were dragging out, and he came back for Christmas, and he went back. He was in the military. He was an Air Force officer. In March of 1973, I decided I’d had enough. His divorce was final, so I said, “I’m going back to the States.”

[11:36] One of the hitches in this whole thing… I have to backtrack a little— was that I couldn’t just come back to the States on a tourist visa, because I had been thrown out. So, I was coming back on a fiancé visa. Well, let me tell you, if you’re coming back on anything very official, it takes a lot of paperwork. So, when anybody complains about paperwork where they have to go somewhere, I go, “I have a much better story.” We had reams of paperwork. I would call the embassy in Oslo. I think due to my language ability, they just kind of brushed me off. They were not very helpful. They would say to me, “You sound like you can answer that question.” I said, “This is kind of two-sided. I’m not sure which is what here.”

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[12:27] Finally, all this went on and on, and it dragged on, and it needed to go to the Pentagon. Bob finally called the Pentagon and got transferred down the line, and got some lieutenant there finally to tell him, “Well, you don’t need this paperwork. She’s cleared to come to the States.” This was during the Vietnam War. Part of it was, they were very careful about men coming home with women, and so forth. So, as soon as this was cleared up, and we had done all this, I got on a plane and came back to the States. On the 7th of April, in 1973, we married at a lovely little chapel at Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.

[13:13] We spent four-and-a-half years there, and then he got transferred to Wiesbaden, Germany. I was delighted. It was almost like going home. So, we spent three years there. Then we came back to Washington, D.C., and spent five-and-a-half years there, where he retired. And he got a job at Hanford, in Richland, Washington. And I have been here since April of 1986— 30 years. So, that is the story up until today. Now I can go back and talk about the childhood.

[13:53] I had a very fun childhood. We had it very free. We could traipse around and do anything we wanted. We did have a nanny, Aunt Ruth, who took care of a few of us. But she was great, because she would let us play in the mud, and do everything we wanted, which our mothers wouldn’t, of course, let us do. They would be horrified. When we were old enough, we would bicycle all over the place. We could walk everywhere. We lived by the water, so we were on the water as soon as we could swim. When we weren’t on the water, in the wintertime, of course, we were skiing. We were playing outside all the time.

[14:33] In Bergen it rained a lot, and it was no excuse. “Put your clothes on, and go out and play, because you’re not staying in the house.” Radio, of course, was the only entertainment that you had. We had no TV. That didn’t come until the sixties. We would read books from a very early age. We were very innovative. We played store, and doctor, dolls, everything we could think of. Climbed trees, fell out. Never broke anything.

[15:03] In Norway, we spent a lot of time in the summer in the countryside. My parents were from the countryside. So, Mother would take us, and we would go out and stay with a maiden aunt of hers out on the farm. So, that’s where we would be, from May until August. And dad would come, actually, and stay there, because he could take the train into the city where he worked. So, we got both worlds. We got the suburbs, the city, and we got the countryside, where we had the freedom to roam everywhere. It was just a wonderful time. We also lived on a fairly large property. We had fruit trees, and we even had blueberries on the property. We would pick blueberries, and fruit. It was just delightful. Friends everywhere. We just hung out at each other’s houses, and we were outside, playing.

[16:04] Then we got older, and became teenagers, and we became interested in boys. Then the big thing was pairing up with the guys. But we were still very much a group of friends. That was always it. We were always just groups of friends. There wasn’t really any dating in that sense, where you had to have a date to go to a dance, or a party. It was just young people getting together. Of course, as we got out of school, we made new friends through work, and things like that. Some of them are friends that I still see, 60 years later, that I’ve known my whole life.

[16:39] This is one thing I remember that was so unique with my mother and father, because they

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also had their friends until the day they died, almost. To me, that would be so unique. And I’m looking at myself today, having the same ability, to go back to Norway— I’ve been going home every year. As long as my mother was alive, I would go home two or three times a year. She lived to be almost 100. So, I was lucky in that regard. My brother and sister, of course, are still there, so I still go home to see them. Now it’s every other year, because I don’t have the same desire. It’s not the same thing anymore without a parent there. So, what else can I tell you?

Mari-Ann: [17:33] Tell us the names of your siblings.

Kari: [17:37] Liv is ten years older than me. She married a man, Harry, who was from Narvik, in the northern part of Norway. She has two children, Gry and Bjørn, and she has two grandchildren, Ingrid and Andreas. She still lives in Narvik. Her two children are still there. The grandchildren— one is in Bergen, and one is in Bodø. My brother was first married to a Norwegian, and they had one child from her, Bård, who is in Oslo. And then he married a Japanese woman, because he was a chief engineer, and did deliveries of new builds in Japan. There, he met Mariko, and they have three children, Maya, Sakura, and Thomas. Maya has a child, Nathaniel, who is six years old.

[18:38] I was just together with Bjørn and Mariko and Nathaniel in Japan for a week, because they have a place there in her home area. My middle niece, Sakura, is a Norwegian handball player. She is a goalie. That’s her profession. The other ones have regular jobs, but that’s kind of a fun thing to see, because she also plays on the Japanese [national] team. They were hoping to go to Rio for the Olympics this year, which I’m afraid they didn’t qualify for, which might be just as well, since I don’t know what’s going to happen with that.

[19:20] I don’t have any other nieces and nephews. That’s it. We were a small family. I have no children, but I have an adopted daughter from a friend of mine who lives in Seattle, so I have been lucky enough to have two grandchildren from Brynne— those are Sam and Claire. And I was just there to visit them. That’s always fun. We go the Nordic Heritage Museum. Of course, Ballard has always been a point for me to come ever since I came to Seattle from the eastern United States. I found my goodies over there, so I don’t have to go all the way to Norway to bring back my good stuff.

Janice: [20:09] Did you bring Norwegian into your home?

Kari: [20:12] It’s been kind of difficult for me with no children, but I am trying to maintain Norwegian traditions. I try to do Syttende Mai when I’m here. I’ve been lucky mostly to be in Norway where that has happened. I will usually go home in May, and then come back in June. What I also do is Easter traditions. We have a long Easter tradition of celebrating— we do a whole week of celebration. Of course, in Norway what we did was go skiing. We went up in the mountains to ski. That’s kind of our idea of Easter.

[20:55] The other thing that I do is Christmas— I do Christmas Eve, the 24th, which I try to do formal, the way it’s supposed to be done. I do the Christmas tree. We haven’t done the dancing around the Christmas tree, because we don’t have any children to do that with. But we have pinnekjøtt, which is the tradition from Bergen, which is what we always had.

[21:17] What I’ve done through the years, on the 23rd, which is what we call Lille Juleaften, which is

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when traditionally when I was a child, the Christmas tree went up. Our parents would put up the tree, and then we would wake up in the morning, and the tree would be there. They would even put some of the gifts underneath. When I was little, my brother and I would go down and try to unwrap the presents and re-wrap them. So, my mother learned from an American friend that she should hang up stockings, because that would prevent us from getting down there. That worked pretty good, because then we were busy on Christmas Eve morning.

[21:54] Christmas Eve was a long day for us. We had to go to church at four o’clock. Then Christmas Eve dinner, and then Santa Claus came, which was Julenissen, which was somebody dressed up. For years, it was my maternal grandfather. He would come, and we would of course know that it was him, because we could tell. You could always tell by the shoes, or the voice. But we were usually very good for three weeks before Christmas, because the question when Julenissen came in the door was, “Are there any good boys and girls here?”

[22:34] One thing that was very big about Christmas— they had children’s Christmas parties. All the companies, churches, organizations, had Christmas parties because in the fifties— and this is after World War II— Norway was a very poor country. This was a way that a lot of children actually got Christmas presents. At these parties, they were always handing out Christmas presents. They would include everybody from every layer of society. We thought it was great. It was just delightful. That was a very big thing.

[23:17] The whole week between Christmas and New Year’s was getting together, because we have two holidays— Christmas Day, and some people are familiar with Boxing Day. We just called it “Second Christmas Day.” Those were the two holidays. Christmas Day was kind of a nightmare for a child, because you had gotten your presents, but you couldn’t go show them to your friends. That was a no-no, because you’ve got to be with family on Christmas Day. You were just chomping at the bit to go see your friends so you could tell them what you had gotten. That had to wait until Second Christmas Day. Then we could all get together and have fun.

[23:56] Then, between Christmas and New Year’s, we would just play and have a good time. New Year’s Eve was our Halloween. We would go julebukk, and go door to door, and sing, and tell jokes, and get all dressed up, and hope for candy. We were kind of disappointed, because fruits were rare. So, oranges were a big deal at Christmastime. So, we’d get oranges. That really wasn’t what we wanted. We’d rather have candy. We were kind of long-faced when some people gave us oranges and apples. Candy would have been a much better thing. I’m sure most children today wouldn’t have a clue that we didn’t get candy during the week, or soda, for that matter. That was Saturday. There was a children’s hour on the radio that we would listen to, and we’d gather our goodies and our soda pop. We were very limited, we felt. [Laughter] It was a hard life. [Laughter] We even went to school on Saturdays.

Mari-Ann: [25:04] Oh, yeah.

Kari: [25:05] Yes, we went to school on Saturdays. I wanted to move to the countryside, because there they went to school every other day, which I thought was much better. [Laughter] It was a waste of time to go six days a week. So, that was a very care[free] time. Parents were very strict. We had rules to follow. I think my parents were a little bit more lenient. I don’t know why, but I think it was about responsibility. Don’t do anything if you can’t be responsible for it. Again, it was safe.

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There was no crime, or anything.

[25:48] We had one thing that probably people would be horrified, and that was in the wintertime. We lived in the suburbs. Cars were rare in Norway. Actually buying cars didn’t become available until 1960, I think. You had to buy it with currency, which would be dollars. The area we lived, the fathers had cars, and if it was slick and snowy, you could hang on the back of the car, and slide along. And I remember one time, my mittens got stuck on the back of the bumper.

[26:27] Of course, I couldn’t come home without my mittens. I had to follow my friend’s car home, and then I had to wait behind the hedge, hoping he wouldn’t close the garage door, so I could get my mittens back. [Laughter] I’m sure the fathers knew that we were there. I’m sure they did. But they were going on these streets around our neighborhood. You had to go about 20 miles per hour, because they were humpity-dumpity. You had to get in the tracks, and stay in there to follow it up the hill. That was one of our fun things to do.

[27:06] Of course, we played cowboys and Indians— girls and boys, that was one thing we’d do. And we snuck cigarettes. That was another thing. My parents didn’t smoke, but my mother had a brand called Craven A. She always had a ten-pack in her purse, because if they went out to coffee, or they would go what we called konditori, the ladies downtown, for tea and savories, and things like that, she’d have this ten-pack of cigarettes that she probably had in her purse for six months. And we’d steal a cigarette out of there and light it up, and it just kind of went “poof,” because it was so dried out.

[27:46] We would also make cigarettes out of packing material. They had these shavings that were in packing. We’d take newspapers, and roll it up, and make cigarettes. Well, let me tell you, if we didn’t get cancer from that, I don’t know what we’d get it from, because it was basically just setting fire to newspaper and wood. And we’d sit there and pretend like we were smoking. We also had candy cigarettes. They were licorice cigarettes. I’m sure today that would be illegal, because it would encourage smoking. We had a lot of fun. Another pastime, and this was something that happened in the fall— that was to steal fruit out of people’s yards.

Mari-Ann: [28:35] Go epleslang?

Kari: [28:36] Go epleslang. That was it was called. Epleslang. We tried to do that. We weren’t always very brave to do that, because you had to enter other people’s yards, and when people discovered, they would come running after you, supposedly. Those were the stories that we heard. Of course, the older kids would tell us they probably had guns, too, and Rottweilers. We were younger. My brother and his friends would tell us these horror stories.

[29:05] We had a three-acre property that we could approach from another end of the property. So, we would climb up and steal out of our own yard. We thought we were so brave, we had been stealing apples. That was a big thing to do. That was really the height of crime. That was criminal activity. The next thing was if you wrote your name on the bus stop, that was another criminal activity.

[29:36] School was very authoritarian. In the classroom, you had to be quiet. There was no speaking in class. We lined up outside of the classroom, two and two. When the teacher came out to get you,

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there was no talking, and you marched in quietly. If you talked to anybody else in the class… And I did that a lot, I think. So, I spent time out in the hallway. The school that I went to had pictures of all the classes. I don’t know when the school was started. I think in 1890, or something. So, I pretty much knew everybody that had gone to school there, by the time I graduated seven years later.

Mari-Ann: [30:22] From studying the pictures in the hallway?

Kari: [30:22] From studying the pictures in the hallway, when I had to be sent out there. This, of course, was only handed down to me. We lived right across from the elementary school that I went to. So I could look at them, and it was really hard to see my siblings going to school, and all the kids walking to school. I was dying to go to school. Little did I know when I finally got there, I’d just as soon not be there. I always said that my biggest interest in school was recess. After two years, I could read and write, and I thought that was plenty. Let’s go play again.

[31:01] But the school also was occupied by the Germans during World War II. They made it into a Red Cross Hospital. So, we had a big red cross on the building. During the war, they had to evacuate people to there from places where things had happened. I grew up with… my parents were older, but my peers’ parents were 15 years younger than my parents. A lot of their fathers and mothers had been involved in the resistance during World War II. So, we grew up with people like that. We had a great respect for what had happened during the five-year occupation of Norway, which still is there.

[31:51] Out where my grandparents lived, there was also a transition camp. So, even after World War II, in the fifties, when I was little, there were still guards out at that camp. We saw that, growing up, and in other places around the city. We learned a lot about World War II in our growing up years, because people were so affected by it. Happily, my family was not. Part of living out in the country, they had resources to take care of them. I think my father’s position in the city [helped]. You had it better, but you had to live under the rules. Cleaning out my parents’ house, I found the passes that they had to carry with them to show where they lived, and everything. You couldn’t be outside of the border of the city, because that could have ramifications for you.

Janice: [32:54] When you came to America, did you have any particular challenges, as someone from Norway, or someone from another country that you had to overcome?

Kari: [33:08] I don’t think I had a lot of challenges per se. I think when you’re young, you’re kind of open to everything. Of course, I came from a background that was very pro-American. Norwegians have always been very pro-America. So, what I did find that I had to start looking at America in a different way, because all of a sudden I was here, and I was seeing things firsthand— discrimination against other people, which of course, I had only heard and seen in news reports. The Civil Rights Movement, and things like that— you’re sitting 5,000 miles across the ocean. It’s horrifying to see what they’re doing to children, and people in general. You knew it, but you didn’t realize how ugly it was. So, that was quite a shock in a sense, to see it as a young person, and realize how ingrained this was in some ways.

[34:19] To me, it’s still very shocking. I’m a very outspoken person. I won’t sit still. So, I’ve gotten in trouble through the years. I will not just sit back and play nice. A lot of times, when I would say something, I would kind of get the usual, “Well, why don’t you go back to where you came from,” which I always find is a rather interesting comeback from people in defense of looking at your own

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warts. We all have warts. I don’t think there is a country in this world that doesn’t have warts. There is nothing that is right everywhere. Norway is a wonderful country, but it has its warts, too. People are people, anywhere in the world. That’s the one thing that was the hardest thing.

[35:09] I came, I think, prepared, because I had a good education, I was fluent in the language. In my home, politics was always a big issue, being up to date on what went on in the world outside of this little country was very important. We read a lot. My parents were great readers. And we all were introduced to that in the same way. So, reading started at a very early age. Even when I couldn’t read, every Saturday I got a Golden Book. That was one of my treats for the weekend was getting a little Golden Book. That started probably from three or four years old.

[36:03] So, I would say I was pretty prepared. And I had traveled somewhat. A lot of the family had traveled. So, there was a lot of knowledge. But the domestic side of the United States— that was something else. And the division among the states, and people, and the races— that was a tough one. I think that has been my hardest one, even until today, in this day and age. That has been a hard one for me. I keep hoping it’s got to get better. Hopefully with the younger generation, they’ll become more and more open to it. But again, it’s education, and everything else it takes.

Mari-Ann: [36:54] Would you talk about your travel business, please?

Kari: [36:57] Yes. I got into the travel business because of my language abilities. That was how I got this summer job in 1969. Like I said earlier, I spoke fluent English and German. So, I did that for three and a half years, or four years. We had commercial business to deal with, but in the summertime, we were inundated by tourists. You kind of become a tourist office in downtown Bergen. We were right in the front by the Hanseatic area— Bryggen. We were right next door to that. So, the tourists would fall in the door all the time. They wanted to see the fjords in two minutes, which is kind of hard to do. And with midnight sun, we’re here for half the day. Well, that was another thing— can’t do that.

[37:51] We also had a group department that did a lot of international travel that came over. So, we had that, and we also did what we called transfers. We were young, and we had to pick up people at the airport, and get them to their hotels, or bring them to the Hurtigruten, which was a big draw in the evening. It left at eleven o’clock at night, so sometimes we had to be at the airport at five or six o’clock in the morning, be at work by nine, work until four o’clock, and come back into the city to take these people to the Hurtigruten at eleven o’clock, get home, go back to work… You know. It was a rat race, but we were young. We could do it. Of course, in Norway, the summer evenings are long and light, so we were fine.

[38:34] That was actually one of the reasons I wanted to have a break. I just took a leave of absence from the business to go to the States. I needed a break. The summers were just… For three months, you were just worked to the bone. So, that’s what I did. Of course, when I came back to the States, I couldn’t work, but I started working in San Antonio for a year before we got transferred. So, I worked for a travel agency there. I didn’t work when we were in Germany, because that was hard to do. You can’t really work there, being a spouse.

[39:08] Then, when I came back to Washington, D.C., we were living in the suburbs in Virginia. I worked there for five and a half years. Then, when I moved out to Richland, Washington, I basically

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worked as an outside salesperson for about ten years. I did some groups. I sold travel to friends, and people like that. I worked part-time in the office when they needed help. In 1997, I gave it up. I’d had enough. I probably should have continued, but I didn’t need to. There was no need, all along, but I needed to have something to do, not having children. It’s hard when you don’t have that connection.

[39:54] Since then, I have been leading a life of leisure, which actually has been kind of fun. Out here in Richland where I live, a lot of the women didn’t work, opposed to a major city. I had never been involved in women’s organizations. That really was not my cup of tea. So, I kind of stayed out of those things. But here in Richland, I got involved. We had a symphony guild, to promote the arts. We had a newcomer club. I kind of called it the “old-comer’s club.” We do book clubs. We do “stitch and bitch.” I have a lot of wonderful friends. We go hiking. We go to lunch. We really have a very lovely life.

[40:49] After my husband retired about nine years ago, we’ve always traveled. That’s always been one thing, and of course, being in the business. I would go home by myself to Norway, to spend time with my parents. When I worked, I would go home for two weeks, twice a year. Later on, I’d go home for about six weeks. As they got older, I’d spend two months at home. Again, that was the ability of just having a husband and a dog. That gave me a lot of ability to do that.

[41:21] Bob and I would travel a lot. We’re still doing that as much as we can. Now we’re up to the bucket list— the thing that takes longer time, that you couldn’t do when you only had two weeks of vacation. So, that’s pretty much it. Otherwise, I’m a homebody. I like sitting at home. I like reading. I’m not much of a craftsperson, or anything. I have intentions. The intention usually falls by the wayside. My older sister, Liv, is a very artsy person. Very clever. I don’t think I got any of those genes.

[41:57] I can tell you one fun thing from my childhood. Like I said, we had a nanny. Then we went to kindergarten. We had a very exclusive kindergarten. It was a musical kindergarten, which I got to go to, which was a complete waste on me, because I can’t carry a tune. This was run by Ursula Schultz, who I later in life claimed must have been Hitler’s sister, because she was very strict, and she was German.

[42:31] Also, I had to take piano lessons. After about a year with no talent whatsoever, and no interest, she told my mother in no uncertain terms, “Mrs. Hauge, if you want to get rid of your money, you might as well throw it out the window.” I was so happy when she said that, because I didn’t have to take piano lessons anymore. Part of the problem with my piano lessons was I didn’t practice. The other thing, I had two lovely friends that were natural talents for playing the piano. Sitting and watching your friends playing the piano by ear was just disgusting when you’re eight years old.

[43:19] Needless to say, I was not very good in that department. I was more of a tomboy. That was what I liked. I liked being outside, and I liked getting other kids in trouble. I would come up with ideas of what we could do, and then I would get everybody to do it. Those were kind of the things that would happen. They willingly went along. I was the leader. And I was into sports, of course. That was the other thing. We played handball, and soccer, and of course we skied. I do claim that in Bergen, we had more snow. It never lasted very long, but we would be out there, skiing, ski-jumping,

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whatever. It’s a wonder we didn’t break our necks, because we didn’t have anything to keep us back. But we had a wonderful time. We would fish out on the water, or we would fish from shore.

[44:13] One thing we did, which I remember very fondly— we lived right by Troldhaugen, which was Edvard Grieg’s home. It was originally a summer home. There was a parking lot where the tour buses came. Being children, we didn’t have Juicy Fruit gum in those days. That was the one thing children always wanted. We wanted gum, Juicy Fruit. So, we always would be smiling at the tourists, hoping they would give us gum. I came up with this great idea. When the blueberries were ripe— and blueberries in Norway grow on little low bushes, so you could pick bouquets of blueberries. So, we decided we’d pick bouquets of blueberries, and hand it to them, and maybe they’d give us gum. Sometimes we did, and it was so exciting.

[45:07] My brother was learning English in school. In those days, they started English at the age of 12, which I think was the fifth grade. And I couldn’t go to my father to ask what to say when we wanted gum, because that would be [rude], and of course, that was a no-no. So, I went to my brother and asked him, “How do I ask them, ‘Can we have some gum?’ politely?” And he told me… And this was the first thing I learned in English. “How is your family doing?” Well, I guess I was smart enough to pick up on “family.” That was something that sounded like familie in Norwegian. I said, “There is no “gum” in this. There is not going to be any gum from this.”

[45:59] I went around with this for a couple of days, thinking, “How is your family doing?” I finally had to go to my father, and I said, “What does this mean?” So, I told my father, and he said, “Why do you want to know that?” I said, “Bjørn told me that this would get me gum.” Of course, my father got a big kick out of that. And he did not tell me how to ask for gum. That was the only English I knew until I was 12 years old: “How is your family doing?” But I guess it was nice and polite.

[46:35] The tourists were very nice, because they thought, like we do now when we travel, how cute the kids were. We were funny. And they happily took our blueberries. I think a lot of them hadn’t seen blueberries in that form. And they were delicious, and sweet, right out of the property. We had a good time interacting with the tourists. There were Germans and French, and a lot of Americans in those days. I think people were able to travel more freely.

Mari-Ann: [47:17] When you came here, did you anticipate that you would be going home often, or was this something that just…

Kari: [47:33] For me, that was something that I really insisted on doing. To me, it was something that I needed. I had come here by falling in love. It became more real to me that when you’re young, and you fall in love, you forget all the other practical things. That doesn’t matter at the time. It’s kind of like you can live on air and love. That’s all that matters. It doesn’t matter what he does. I had no idea about the military. The only people I knew in the military were a Norwegian Colonel and a General. They were in the same place pretty much their whole careers. You don’t really talk about this. I mean, neither one of us was sensible enough to talk, “This is what our lives are going to be like.” We’re going to be moving around. We’re not going to be in the same place.

[48:36] It was a rude awakening to realize San Antonio was not going to be [home]. I felt at home there, because I had some family. Through them, I had some of their friends. When I married Bob, I

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wasn’t immersed in the military life. Everything we did with the military was because we had to. We also had a civilian life, and that was a big difference. It wasn’t until we came to Germany, I was in that military pocket. There, we were all together. We were all the same.

Mari-Ann: [49:17] Did you live on the base in Germany?

Kari: [49:18] No. We were lucky enough, we lived on the economy. Somehow or another, we managed to get a house on the economy, which I thought was wonderful, because we had a house that was built in the fifties. The landlord had a smaller house in the same yard. We had a wonderful garden, and it was a gardener taking care of it. We lived almost downtown. I felt at home, and that made a big difference to me. But we didn’t have German friends. It was all the Americans. It became much more, because you shopped at the BX and the commissary because of the economy.

[49:58] We traveled a lot, because we could drive everywhere. But one thing that became very clear… I hadn’t been home for two years… We said we’d wait two years before we’d go home, back to Norway, because it was expensive. It cost a lot of money. Then I realized I needed to go home. It was almost like a vitamin injection to be able to go home, speak my own language, be with my own people, be in that culture. Because I have to admit, I have never really become American. I am still so Norwegian. I still refer to myself in every which way… and I’ll die a Norwegian.

Mari-Ann: [50:50] Did you ever become an American citizen?

Kari: [50:51] I had to become an American, because my husband had a high clearance, a top-secret clearance. I did not do that willingly. I had to do that through force. Really, at the time, I saw no reason for it, but it would have affected his career. So, of course I had to do it.

Mari-Ann: [51:14] What was his top position?

Kari: [51:16] He was a Major in the Air Force. That was what he retired as. He was in counter- intelligence, so he had a top-secret clearance. So, that basically became a thing that you have to get. You have to get U.S. citizenship. And I did that. I went through the motions and did that, and got a U.S. citizenship.

Mari-Ann: [51:41] That’s a tough one to do.

Kari: [51:43] It’s a tough one to do, because you couldn’t have dual.

Mari-Ann: [51:44] Yeah.

Kari: [51:45] It was a hard thing to do. I think it’s harder to do it when you hadn’t sought out to come here, as this is where you wanted to go. I call it being an accidental immigrant, through being young, and falling in love, and marrying a foreigner. If I had had my way, if there had been any way, I would have gone back to Norway any day. It was not willingly. Well, it was willingly, because you make choices. But I think I have been very lucky in the sense that I have been able to go back regularly. You lose out on a lot of things. You lose out on the family connections. You lose out on traditions. You lose out on seeing children grow up.

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[52:38] And it’s probably not very nice to say, but in a way I’m glad I didn’t have children, because they wouldn’t have had the life with the connection to their cousins and aunts and uncles that I was lucky to have. Of course, it was a different time in the fifties and the sixties. We lived close to each other, and saw each other all the time. It was much more of a community then. Even in Norway today, they’re spread around, everywhere. The traditions of the Norwegian culture… the principle that I was brought up with— the fairness, the trying to look at both sides of the situation, of being inclusive— not that I think that Norwegians are more inclusive than anybody else… But I have always tried to be an open-minded person, and look at people openly.

[53:41] I was lucky in the way that I grew up. Where I grew up, it wasn’t a matter of discrimination by race. It was discrimination economically. Where we lived, we grew up with everybody. You grew up with the highest and the lowest. So, in school, we were all together. Parents didn’t differentiate it. The poor kids were included. We were included. Everybody was included. I think if we tried, we were stopped in the tracks— you’re no better than anybody else.

Mari-Ann: [54:20] [Speaking Norwegian]

Kari: [54:21] [Speaking Norwegian] It was very obvious that if anybody tried to pick on somebody, you were told right away. I think I mentioned earlier there was a factory in that little suburb where we lived. The factory owners would build apartments or housing for the workers. [They had] an outhouse. I was lucky to be familiar [with that], because we had cabins out in the mountains, and on the water. We had no plumbing in those days, and no electricity.

Mari-Ann: [55:02] Right. Yeah.

Kari: [55:04] Out at the farms, they were all outdoor toilets. But this was ten minutes from downtown. They lived four, five, six people to two rooms. It was incredible. My favorite aunt and uncle lived in an old barrack built by the Germans. They were four people. There were two children— my cousin, until she moved away from home at the age of 18, her bed was at the end of her parents’ bed. Her brother slept on a couch in an alcove, which was kind of a dining room. And it was my favorite place to go. I just loved that place. It was warm and hospitable. It was a wonderful place.

[55:57] The apartment that we lived in when I grew up— it had two bedrooms. It was a good size for after World War II. I slept in a room with my parents until I was six years old, and we moved to a big house. But I still shared a room with my brother, because he wouldn’t sleep in that fourth bedroom that was up in the attic. He was afraid of the boogeyman. This is what you did. We never thought anything about it. I look at people in downtown Bergen— they were crammed in together. It’s a wonder they didn’t burn up.

[56:39] I don’t know if this pertains, but this is a story from my mother’s childhood. She had an older sister, and they slept in the same bed. You slept head to foot. And my mother had been home sick, and her father had been downtown, and he had bought her new ski boots. These two were in bed sleeping. My aunt Klara is crying, because she’s kicking, and her mother is telling her to be quiet and go back to sleep. And she said, “But she’s kicking, and it hurts.” And grandmother tells her, “Be quiet. Quit complaining.” “But she has ski boots on!” I always heard stories about them. They were two little rascals. I always thought the story of them head to foot in the bed, and her with ski boots

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on was just delightful.

Mari-Ann: [57:39] Yeah. Do you belong to any Norwegian organization here?

Kari: [57:50] I belong to the Sons of Norway. I’m not active. I really never have been. I think with communication and things today, I’m amazed at what has happened in the last 43 years. When I first got here, you didn’t call unless somebody died. You wrote letters. There was a newspaper called… I can’t remember, but it was an air mail newspaper that came in the mail once a week. It was printed on air mail paper.

Mari-Ann: [58:25] Yeah.

Kari: [58:26] Thin paper. It was wonderful to get this paper. When I moved to Germany in 1977, my mother would call me there. Then all of a sudden there was communication, to hear each other’s voices. Then when I moved back to the States in 1980, it had gotten cheap enough. It was like a $1.15 a minute. So, on Sundays, you would call for 30 minutes, once a month. The development with communication and the Internet and the phone… I mean, you just pick up the phone and talk, and communicate. Now you’re talking to each other, seeing each other on the Internet. The development of that is just amazing.

[59:18] I remember talking to my grandmother, who was born in 1892, and had seen the development of airplanes, cars, communications, and how amazing she thought it was. Of course, sitting there in the seventies, talking to her, thinking, “Oh, my God. We had made it. This is just amazing.” And she had seen it all. And then myself, today— boy, we’ve even gone further. That has made it easier to keep your language going.

[59:58] That is another thing that has been very important to me, to keep my language. I find that very interesting, but I don’t know if it’s because I’m good at imitating people. My friends, when I come back to Bergen say, “I can’t believe you’ve been gone for 43 years. You can’t tell the difference.” We always used to joke when people would go to Oslo, and they’d come back from Oslo after two weeks and speak with an Oslo dialect. We’d just laugh our heads off.

[1:00:25] That is a thing that really bugs me about Norwegians, because they have picked up English words, and they use them. And I will sit there and read Norwegian newspapers, and one time I was questioning myself. “I don’t understand this word.” And then I would finally say it out loud, and I realized they were writing it phonetically— English words. And I would be so furious. We have a perfectly good language that you’re ruining, just because these young kids are so lazy. You can still have the English and the German and the French, but you don’t have to [use foreign words] unless that’s the only word for it. That goes to show I’m a little old-fashioned.

Janice: [1:01:15] Are you on Facebook, or any social media?

Mari-Ann: [1:01:18] I am on social media, unfortunately, which is probably not very [smart]. I got on Facebook, because I wanted to be in contact with my nieces and nephews. Needless to say, they are not on Facebook anymore. I think it’s people my age that are on Facebook now. I’m not getting myself on Snapchat and Twitter. I refuse to do that. No. And I should get off of Facebook, because I have no business being there. But it really is nice to be able to talk to friends and talk to family

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members, and do that. Because email in a way becomes like writing a letter. Now I have to answer. I was never one to answer the letter right away. And it’s the same with email. Eventually they’ll call me up and ask me if I got the email.

Janice: [1:02:22] You can easily send pictures.

Kari: [1:02:23] Yes. That’s the other thing. I send pictures. Also with my friends, with the Apple… or Skype, or whatever, you see each other. Some of us don’t really want to see each other because there is a nine-hour time difference. Some of us are dressed, and some of us are not. It’s usually me sitting in there in my nightie, talking. But I find again, that keeps that connection so much more important. I also am not a church person, so I don’t have that. I’ve never been involved in that. I’ve never really been involved in organizations. It’s never had a whole lot of appeal to me, unfortunately. I think that might be because in Norway, we don’t do a lot of organizational work, in a sense. Things have been taken care of through society more. I came out of a generation where that was not much to do.

Mari-Ann: [1:03:25] So, no volunteer work?

Kari: [1:03:27] No, I have never, really. I do volunteer with an arts organization here in town. We have an art gallery. So, I do that. I’m not an artist, but do I that, because I think that’s important.

Mari-Ann: [1:03:38] Yeah. Good.

Kari: [1:03:39] But I’ve never been a volunteer, unfortunately. I never got involved in that. Part of that was because for a long time, I worked. When my husband was active military, I did the wives’ club. I’m not denigrating women, but they get a little [shallow] at times.

Mari-Ann: [1:03:59] You’ve had a good life.

Kari: [1:04:01] I’ve had a great life. I’m still having a great life. And I’ve had fun. I think I know how to enjoy life.

Mari-Ann: [1:04:09] I can tell.

Kari: [1:04:10] There have been ups and downs, like everybody has. But we’ve gotten past those. Marriage hasn’t been easy at times. Life hasn’t been easy at times. But that’s another thing.

Mari-Ann: [1:04:25] That’s normal.

Kari: [1:04:26] Yeah. Everything is doable. But to me, enjoy life. Enjoy life. And be kind to each other.

Mari-Ann: [1:04:35] That’s a perfect statement to end with.

Kari: [1:04:38] Well, thank you.

Mari-Ann: [1:04:38] That’s lovely. Thank you very much for sharing your life story with us.

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Kari: [1:04:43] Well, it’s been wonderful to be able to do that.

Mari-Ann: [1:04:44] Good. Thank you.

END OF RECORDING.

Transcription by Alison DeRiemer.

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