Charley and Hilda had three children: Harold, Frances and Dorothy. Harold was the oldest. I am unclear about his education and professional development. He was a milkman at one time, driving a horsedrawn wagon. By the time I came into the world he was an executive for the Lincoln Gas Company. That position influenced much of the rest of his life. Being fairly well to do, he belonged to Hillcrest Country Club and played golf regularly. They lived in one of the really nice houses in Lincoln, a two-story limestone house which always had every gas appliance there was. It was the only centrally air conditioned house I had ever been for many years. Things were gas operated in their house that I didn’t know could be gas. Refrigerators, for example. The house always smelled of pipe tobacco smoke and, while he was alive, Toby, the dog.
Harold (later in life he took to calling himself Hal, which was confusing since that was what we all called his son) and Betty were about as different as two people could be. Harold was a big Swede, introverted, and somewhat gruff. Hal says his friends called him "the Swedish bear." Other cousins agree with me that we were always a little afraid of him. Later in life I learned that people like that are usually very warm and friendly if you break through the outer shell, and Harold was no exception. He demonstrated warm feelings toward me and my family many times in his own way. He was a diehard Nebraska football fan. He attended every home game and many away games, including all bowl games, for many, many years.
Betty was a different personality. She was vivacious, outrageous and cute. She worked her entire adult life, although I’m sure she didn’t need the money, as a secretary at a law firm. She had an engaging and outgoing personality. I’ve often wondered what the reaction of the stolid Swedes was to her when they realized that she was about to enter the family. She expressed every opinion, but did it in a way that it wasn’t offensive. She said to me at least a thousand times, "Well, I just think that’s strange!" It was okay. She had a terraced garden in back of 3220 South 30th that was always close to perfect. She did all the work herself and worked on her tan while she was at it.
Harold and Betty had two children, Hal and Jan. Jan’s oldest son John writes:
My mother, Jan, had both an Art and English degree from the University of Nebraska. She taught high school English classes in Lincoln before my arrival. I always thought that we had what I consider as a well-rounded childhood with my mother teaching us to like art, music, and cultural variety, and my father struggling with the untangling of our fishing line or the agony of taking us kids to a golf course.
The house we lived in on Summit Street was one of a kind. Jan was the designer of the house and a lot of the features or materials that were used for our house were not found in my friends’ houses. The house was made out of unpainted and unstained redwood. The front entry was through the garage, which did not have a garage door. The house had Pella crank-open windows in most locations and a group of floor-to-ceiling picture windows on the south side of the living room. Those picture windows made for some great passive solar heating in the winter, especially since the cork floor absorbed the heat of the sun. It also provided a great place for plants and there were a lot by the window. The living room had a beamed cathedral ceiling. We raised zebra finches in bird cages in this warm and airy room.
We always had lots of art supplies and books to look at when I was a child. Jan used to paint some oils on canvas, but I think a lot of her painting was done before we were around. One area she was going to paint but never finished was at the end of the hallway leading down to the kids’ bedrooms. She started to turn this area of wall, that was maybe four by eight feet, into a mural. I remember the background buildings of an urban setting, but it must not have been turning out to her liking and remained like that until the house was sold. Jan did a lot of sketching and drawing. It was really neat when we were kids to ask her to draw some animal or any kind of thing and watch it magically appear on paper. It set a good goal for our attempts at drawing.
Hal and Betty gave us their piano at some time during my childhood. It was really great to hear my mother play that piano. The best time was around Christmas. Jan would pull out the Christmas music and sing all the popular songs. We all liked to hear her play and sing and would join in. My mom probably thought that Alvin and the Chipmunks had just joined her and were singing the chorus. When I hear Christmas music today, I like it a little more just thinking of hearing it played by her when I was a child.
Our household had an unusual Christmas tree scheme. We always had a natural tree, with the traditional lights, bulbs, and other decorations, but we only had green lights. I don’t know whose idea this was, or if it was both of my parents’, but it was unique. There were a lot of simple things about my childhood that gave me sort of a special feeling.
Another cultural advantage was the diversity of food we enjoyed as we were growing up. The whole family was the willing guinea pig and my mother was the tester, as well as another taster. We definitely did not have meat and potatoes meals only. Even if they were meals that begin with meat and potatoes, they were likely to end up as a very interesting meal that she had found in some cookbook. It didn’t matter how much effort it took or how complicated it was, in fact, those may have been requirements for recipe acceptance. We had all sorts of seafood and rice-based meals. I think our menu motto could have been "Anything goes." Today, this is odd to me, because most kids I have been around are fussy eaters. They wouldn’t have stood a chance of surviving at our house. We loved all these various types of meals and eagerly looked forward to something new. There were never many leftovers, unless the food was being saved for a meal the next day and was removed before we could get all of it. I really think a lot of my mother’s creativity in cooking, piano playing, drawing, or whatever else, may have been to relieve some of the boredom from staying home with us and to keep from going crazy with no one really interesting to talk to. A common scene I remember from childhood is my dad coming home from work and sitting at the kitchen table and my mother and he just talking to each other while she was making dinner. Finally, another adult to talk to.
One of the treats for our whole family was a drive in the country we took on weekends. Our early family vehicles were station wagons, so there was a lot of room. We would hit the gravel roads and look at the scenery. My mother liked to look at headstones in old cemeteries we came across. She also liked to collect samples of roadside plants, like bitterroot, to make table arrangements. Sometimes we would end up at a place to fish. Every member of the family had his own pole, however, my dad didn’t get to use his much. He probably deserves a special master angler patience award for having to untangle as much line as he did. Many of these country road trips seemed to be south of Lincoln, and a highlight of the trips would be the soft serve ice cream that was sold at a stand in Crete.
My mother wanted to get a drivers license and go back to work as we got older and were able to take care of ourselves. I don’t know if she previously had a drivers license and let it lapse or never had one. The family vehicle at the time was a black 1958 Ford station wagon, that had a three speed stick shift. I better mention that it had the optional police interceptor engine, just for fun. For my mother to get her drivers license, she had to learn how to drive this car and use the stick shift. We would all go to the State Fairgrounds where there were some streets to practice on, but no traffic. I cannot imagine a worse situation than learning how to drive a stick shift with a nervous husband and a bunch of noisy kids, but evidently we didn’t make her too nervous. What made her nervous was when she did take the driving part of the license test and the examiner said something similar to, "OK, go ahead and start the vehicle." After all the practice with the noisy kids and the nervous husband, my mother had nothing to worry about, except remembering to push in the clutch or put the gear shift in neutral. The station wagon jumped forward or backward a few times, depending on what gear it was in, and the examiner told my mother that she needed a little more practice before getting her drivers license. I remember feeling bad for her, but you can bet there was no way that would happen again, and she got the license on her next try.
Due to the strain of trying to buy a house and raise four kids on one income, my parents never seemed to do too much in the way of activities on their own, or those that involved seeing their friends. My dad was big on golf, but with three boys around he gave that up to spend time taking us fishing or golfing on the weekends. I remember my mother always went to or sometimes had a bridge club meeting at our house on Wednesday evenings. I think these bridge club parties were once a month. If it was at our house, the kids would have to go to bed early, and my dad would go do something else. I think this was one of her few opportunities to be with her friends.
One of the really fun activities that our family did was vacation at Pelican Lake in Minnesota. This was at two cabins owned by George and Marj Albin. My parents had a great time during this week because of the chance to be with their friends, and we also had a good time because George had three kids from a previous marriage who were our ages. George and Marj would bring their dogs up, and at least one year we brought our cat up. Our cat’s name was Rebecca. it was really my mother’s cat. The story is somewhat vague to me, but I think my dad got the cat for my mother from Chicago. Rebecca was a Persian cat with a bad temper. At least to a kid it was bad, because the cat would not mess around with children at all. It would immediately go into a scratching or biting mode when we got close. Actually, my dad could not even pick it up without being maimed. The only person the cat liked was my mother. She was the only person who could safely handle the cat. Trips to Minnesota were always stressful. The reasons were: a ten hour drive, the heat in the car before we got air conditioned vehicles, plus a lot of whining from four children. But, Minnesota was so great that all of that was quickly forgotten once we got to the lake. But, that one year, we had Rebecca in the car, too. To get as far as possible from us kids, the cat decided the best place to lie down was under the brake pedal. The thought of having to slam on the brakes with the cat under the pedal really unnerved my dad and added some more suspense to the drive. When we made a stop, it must have looked like we were playing some sort of Chinese Fire Drill, the way we scrambled in and out of the car and slammed the doors so the cat wouldn’t escape. At one service station, an unfortunate gas attendant opened the car door to so something, and my mother had to scream at him to shut the door because the cat almost escaped. The attendant must have really thought she was something, and my mother felt really bad. When we got to the Lake, the cat disappeared under the small cabin and was rarely seen the rest of the week.
Jan did get back to work when we were old enough. She became an editor
of some publications for the University in the extension division. To me,
it seemed that she was very excited to get back out in the world again
after being a designated home parent. I also think she was happy knowing
her kids were growing up and would be out on their own, and my dad and
she could do a lot of things they had not had a chance to do together.
I only have good memories of her as a parent and a person. I use both of
my parents as examples of the type of parent I wish to be.
[Palmer’s comment] Sadly, Jan developed cancer while still fairly young. She fought a private battle with it, withdrawing from the public as she lost weight and the disease disfigured her. Betty told me once that Jan would shop at a 24 hour grocery store at 2 in the morning so that she wouldn’t meet anyone she knew. She died at the age of 44.
John continues:
Harold and Betty
My siblings and I were lucky to live so close to one set of our grandparents, Hal and Betty Thorson. We lived at 3215 West Summit growing up, and their address was 3220 South 30th. West Summit was about the equivalent of South 32nd St, so all we had to do to get to their house was hop over the fence in out backyard, run through the neighbor’s yard behind us, cross 30th Street, run through another yard, climb a fence and we were there. Hal and Betty had a cool two story limestone-block house. We loved to play on the inside stairs and look out the windows of this "high" house. It even had a scary basement, at least to a little kid. There are many pictures of us in their backyard swimming in a little blowup pool and generally goofing off as kids like to do. One of the favorite places for play was a large redwood tree in the corner of the backyard. This tree seemed to have grown with kids climbing skills in mind. It branched out in every direction at gentle angles, allowing a lot of kid-sized perches. Quite a few family pictures were taken in this tree.
My childhood memories always seem to picture visits to their house on the weekend when the weather was nice. I always picture Hal golfing with his friends at Hillcrest Country Club in the morning and then watching baseball or football. During the football season, or if golfing had ended, he would sometimes attend what the adults called a shoot. To me this meant shooting bluerock or clay pigeons. Hal never had a gun, so I always thought he either just liked to watch of maybe borrowed a gun from a friend and took part. I picture Betty being home during the day on weekends, working in her lower gardens and getting a tan. The backyard at their house had two tiers with flower gardens and around the entire perimeter and above and below the limestone-block wall in the middle. One of the highlights of these many visits for us kids was drinking Coca-Cola and eating ice cream. I still remember those tall, deposit bottles of Coca-Cola and how much better the coke tasted out of them. Neither of these items would have lasted long at hour house, but Betty always had the Coca-Cola and Hal always had some ice cream. I also remember lots and lots of good food and dinners at their house. Writing about that food brings to mind fried chicken and green bean casserole. The backs were the favorite piece of chicken for both Hal and me, so those were at a premium if Betty only cooked one chicken. I remember the smell of that good food cooking and cigar or pipe tobacco smoke in the air.
One thing that us kids always got a kick out of was Hal and Betty’s Christmas tree. Their Christmas tree was the "put together" type and was bright silver. Every other tree we saw during my childhood seemed to be a natural tree. The tree didn’t have many ornaments, just some ornamental balls. Instead of strings of lights, the tree had a lamp which sat on the ground with a rotating disc of four different colors. To us, the highlight was that rotating lamp that changed the shiny silver color of the tree to various color mixtures. We loved to fool around with that rotating lamp. I have so many good memories of this house and the one I grew up in that I would still like to buy either one to live in.
I was able to take a number of vacations with Hal and Betty. When I was very small, maybe 4 or 5, I went to Houston on a train with Betty and my mother to visit the Thorsons in Houston. I don’t remember much of that trip, but it certainly sounds like fun to ride on a train now. Our two families went on a joint vacation to the Lake of the Ozarks in 1961. I remember the fish that everyone caught, particularly one big catfish my dad caught. Near the end of the vacation we had a great fish fry. I didn’t remember this until my dad reminded me, but to get the air conditioner to work in either of the two cabins, you had to feed in a quarter. You would then get air conditioning for a short period of time. So the trick became to feed a quarter into the unit in one of the cabins and all hang out there until time ran out or the quarters ran out, then go try the same in the other cabin.
One of my two other vacation memories with Hal and Betty was when they took me and my brother, Joe, to the Black Hills of South Dakota. This trip was packed with great memories. We stayed at the Sylvan Lake Resort in cabins. Joe and I thought the Black Hills and Sylvan Lake were great. At Sylvan Lake there was a big rock in the middle of the lake that Joe and I always wanted to get to, but never did. Betty mainly like to sun and do some swimming, but Hal never learned how to swim and did not appear to be too keen on being in any kind of boat. We also got to see Mount Rushmore and swim in a hot spring swimming pool at, where else, Hot Springs, SD. The best memory of this trip, though, was something which happened on the way up there. It happened as we were driving across the sand hills of western Nebraska, which, then, and still, can be very desolate country. Hal and Betty noticed that the gas was very low. This upset Betty quite a bit, but didn’t seem to bother Hal that much. I never saw him get uptight or seem overly worried about anything. Betty kept worrying and worrying about the gas situation until Joe and I started wondering what was going on and getting scared. Naturally, the car coughed to a stop along the highway with nothing in sight but sand. Hal wasn’t worried, or didn’t appear to be. Betty, Joe and I stayed with the car while Hal flagged down a vehicle and disappeared to find gas. After a period of time, Hal came back. He was standing on the running board of a semi, with one arm looped through the mirror frame and the other holding a can of gasoline. My brother and I thought this was so neat that he could have been wearing a cape with a large S on it, and it would not have surprised us a bit. We thought the cool way he rode up on that truck was one of the neatest things we had ever seen.
After Hal and Betty retired, they usually spent every winter in Arizona. In 1966 I got my first flying experience when they paid for all of us except my dad, who had to work, to fly down for a vacation. I also got a day or two break from school. The vacation was lots of fun and is still a great memory. The thrill of going to a warm climate and getting away from the winter weather in Nebraska was something previously unexperienced. There was lots to see and do; palm trees, swimming, deserts, golf, green grass, the Grand Canyon, learning how to ride motorcycle, plus flying in both prop and jet planes. My brothers and I were into beer can collecting as a hobby. Being in Arizona was an exciting place for a kid beer can collector, because many of the brands of beer sold locally were not available in Nebraska. we spent part of our time in Arizona looking for treasures (local beer cans) along the roadways. During this vacation we got Hal to drive down some of the country roadways while we searched the ditches for our treasures. My dad thought this was pretty funny that Hal did this, and kidded him about it when they saw each other again because Hal was a dignified retired businessman, and it seemed out of character for him to poke along those roadways while we scavenged in the ditches. I think Hal would do anything for us, and maybe got kind of a kick out of our beer can collecting. My brothers and sister later took a driving trip to Arizona an to Houston with Hal and Betty that sounded like a lot of fun for them, but I had teenager’s attitude by then and didn’t go.
Hal and Betty sold the house on 30th Street and moved to a condominium area known as Wellington Greens during their retirement. The name was derived from the nine-hole golf executive course for use by the residents. We often played golf and had a lot of dinners and Christmas gatherings at their place. Hal served on the Wellington Greens Association Board as treasurer, and conducted most of the day-to-day business for the Association. Hal got me a job at Wellington Greens after I finished high school, and before I went into construction work. This job entailed mowing the grass around the condos and taking care of the golf course during the summer, and snow removal and equipment maintenance in the winter. I always ate lunch with Hal and Betty and was able to see them a lot while I was at this job, which was a hidden bonus.
One of the places in Hal and Betty’s condo I remember very well was called "the hole" by everyone. That was the basement area where Hal had some comfortable furniture, a desk and a television. Hal conducted business for the condo association from the hole and, if he wasn’t golfing, could usually be found there watching sports during the weekend, or for Monday night football or baseball.
Hal and Betty always provided a lot of support for us. When I was in my late twenties and decided I needed a real occupation instead of the construction work I had been doing, I remember talking about the decision with Hal. He made me an offer to help if any of us wanted to acquire a college degree. He offered to pay for my tuition and books if I was serious about going to school. At that time I had decided that I either wanted to be a geologist or a surveyor. I really wanted to be a geologist, but the schooling to become a surveyor was appealing because it would consume less time and money and, being somewhat lazy, I thought it would be easier. Hal convinced me that I should go with my preferred choice and become a geologist. He said I could at least use the four-year university degree in some other way if I later decided not to be a geologist. I’m very glad that I listened to the advice he provided. His telling me what I really wanted to hear resulted in my becoming a professional geologist, which is now the only profession I can imagine for myself.
End of John’s contribution.
