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, Nordic American Voices Page 1 of 16 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 Nordic American Voices Page 2 of 16 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.