100 Years

My dad, Earl Milan Johnson, was born on October 23, 1921. For his hundredth year, I'm publishing some writing of his that I found a few years after he died. Here is the next installment.

 Trips and Vacations

by Earl Johnson

One of my earliest recollections was a trip our family took to the Rio Grande Valley in Texas when I was about 5 years old to visit our grandparents. We made the trip in a 1921 Model T Ford, and it took us almost a week to get there. I can remember driving across the state of Oklahoma on 81 Highway. 81 was not paved at the time. It had been raining and we drove in a rut for a good distance. An air-cooled Franklin was in the rut ahead of us and rolled over, possibly because the different wheelbase did not fit the rut. I remember how proud we (Don and I) were of the old Model T which made it through without tipping over.

Don, Helen, Ida, and Earl on Padre Island

Before leaving on the trip, we went to Wichita in our 1917 Model T with the intention of trading for a better car. I remember looking at an old Dodge with an enclosed cab and disc wheels. We liked it but because of the enclosed cab and disc wheels (carbon monoxide dangers and difficulty installing chains), Dad elected to buy the 1921 Model T touring car.

We spent almost 3 months in the valley with our grandparents that year (approx. 1925-1926) It was a different
life for us with palm trees and citrus orchards, meeting people from Mexico, and seeing the Gulf of Mexico.

I remember one side trip to the Gulf of Mexico where we, including the car, went to an island for a
picnic. After getting to the island, we left the car and took a long walk along the beach. While we were gone, some pigs got into the car and into the picnic lunch, so we had nothing to eat while on the island.

I also remember trips across the border into old Mexico since we at Alamo and McAllen were only about 7 miles from the border.

The Texas trip was the only long trip I can remember during our growing-up years.

We did go to Osage City, Kansas about 130 miles once or twice each year to visit Grandpa and Grandma Nelson, and Mother’s brother Emil and family. Then perhaps 2 or 3 trips to Kansas City, Missouri to visit Mother’s sisters and their families and other relatives.

Family Group at Johnson/Nordling Reunion
Wamego, Kansas 1937

Also, for several years, we went to Wamego, Kansas for the Johnson – Nordling reunion (halfway between K. C. and McPherson). This was Dad’s family. (About 129 miles)

We also went to Wichita perhaps twice per year to visit Edwin Johnson’s. Mrs. Johnson, “Melia”, was Mother’s 1^st cousin. They had 1 son, Wilbur, about our age. The Johnsons were prosperous and owned the Johnson Bros Auto Supply along with two other brothers. Wilbur had lots of toys and often, when they came to visit us in McPherson County in their big Packard, they would bring us toys if Wilbur was tired of them. Years later I worked for Johnson Bros for a few months while in training for aircraft work in Wichita. Theirs was a wholesale and retail business. They even dealt in La France fire engines for a time.

 

100 Years

My dad, Earl Milan Johnson, was born on October 23, 1921. For his hundredth year, I'm publishing some writing of his that I found a few years after he died. Here is the first installment.

Family by Earl Johnson 

Earl Johnson

(written sometime in the 1990s) 

I was born in Osage City, Kansas, on October 23, 1921, at my grandparents’ home in Osage City, Kansas. My parents were Arthur T. Johnson and Ida (Nelson) Johnson of rural McPherson County in Delmore Township. My grandparents were John A. and Ida Johnson, and James and Jenny Nelson. All four grandparents were born in Sweden and immigrated to America. Two of my great grandfathers also lived in Kansas. They were Jonas Johnson and Håkan Mårtinsson and they are buried in Kansas. 

 New Gottland, in McPherson County, is a Swedish community and was settled by Swedes in the 1800s. Grandpa Johnson came to Red Wing, Minnesota in 1869 from Sweden and then homesteaded in McPherson County, Kansas. We still have the original homestead papers signed by President Benjamin Harrison in 1892. 

 Jonas Johnson settled on the next quarter north of John and had three daughters and two sons.  Grandpa Johnson married the daughter of his neighbor, Ida, when she was 17 and he was 36 years old. John and Ida Johnson raised 5 sons and 2 daughters on the homestead. They were Emil, Arthur (my father), Martin, Albin, Mabel, Edith, and Reuben. 

 They also had another son, Arthur, who was the first born and was killed when he fell off a wagon and broke his neck at the age of five. Emil never married and was buried in New Gottland Cemetery. Albin had two daughters, Faith and Hope, and was an Adventist Preacher in the backwoods of Tennessee. Martin had one daughter and lived in Texas. Mabel married Charles Lindblade and lived on the Johnson homeplace. They had three children: Betty, Roger, and Wendell. Edith never married and worked for years at the Adventist Hospital in Tennessee. Reuben married Marge while living in Chicago and later moved to a farm near Arkadelphia, Arkansas. They lived there until retirement. Marge is buried in a cemetery near Arkadelphia. 

 Grandpa Johnson later bought out another homestead just east of the original land. This was very hilly ground and mostly in pasture. He also purchased another quarter and also an 80 on good flat land. At one time he had a full section. 

 The home they lived in started out as a dugout, then a basement, and later a framed two-story home over the basement. It was an interesting house with a porch around three sides and also had a bathroom with a tub and sink. Water was pumped from a cistern underneath the bathroom. The toilet was outdoors. The house still stands but is uninhabitable and in terrible condition. The barn and all the outbuildings are long gone. The windmill tower and two concrete water tanks are still there.  

 They farmed with horses and oxen and raised hogs and cattle. They were fortunate to have 5 sons to work the farm. We have some interesting papers on what grandpa had to put up in collateral in order to buy the land and other things. 

 When grandpa was nearing 60 he was unable to pay anything on the principal for the flat land. He asked the bank to take the land back but the bank didn’t want it. They agreed to excuse the interest and let him try again. In just a few years Grandpa struck oil on his land and he was able to pay off all his debt and retire. Grandpa and Grandma took a trip to the Rio Grande valley in Texas and they bought land and built a house there. They spent their winters in Texas and their summers in Kansas until Grandpa died at 92 years. Grandma died in 1952 at the age of 93. They are buried in McAllen, Texas. 

 All the Johnsons in the McPherson County area had nicknames because there were so many. Dad had the name “Swearin’ Johnson” and Grandpa Johnson was “By Gosh Johnson”. 

 Grandpa Johnson smoked a pipe most of his life. He quit after being bitten by a black widow spider and he also received his second eyesight and did not use his glasses for the remainder of his life. Grandpa was a strong Democrat among many Republicans in Kansas. Someone once asked him in my presence, “Are you as good a Democrat as you always were?” He said, “When I’m in Kansas I’m a Democrat. When in Texas I’m a Republican.” He loved to argue. 

 Grandpa, in his older years, loved to walk and could walk 10 miles a day. If I tried to pick him up when meeting him on the road he would say, “Go on, go on.” When he did ride with me and I took him to town, he would point to 60mph and say, “Put it up there.” He would usually give me a dollar when I took him to town, a big sum in the 1930s. LaDonna, LeRay, Don and I, and our parents visited Grandma (in Texas) in 1947. 

 My mother's parents, James and Jenny Nelson, came to Kansas and settled around the coal mines of Osage City. Grandpa worked in the coal mines and also farmed. At one time Grandpa along with their only son, Emil, operated their own coal mine. Emil was injured in a fall which left him crippled for the rest of his life. 

 They had 6 daughters and one son. They were Anna, Ida (my mother), Emma, Edna, Hilda, Helen, and Emil. Grandpa and Grandma were married in Osage City, Kansas in 1889. They owned a home northeast of Osage City in an area called Dogtown. They also had an 80 which they farmed south and east of the home place. Grandpa had at least one brother and one sister that came to America. John Nelson, and sister Elna Nelson, who married Hans Christianson. Elna was the mother of Melia Johnson who married Edwin Johnson of Osage City. Elna had one grandson, Wilbur, who moved with his family to Topeka. 

 Grandma Nelson had her father and at least one brother and one sister who came to America. Håkan Mårtinsson was her father and had been a tailor in Sweden. Nils Hawkinson, her brother, farmed near Lindsborg, Kansas, and had 6 sons and one daughter. They had a nice bottomland farm on the Smoky Hill River. We visited them often and knew them all. Grandma’s sister Betty went to California, and I know very little about her and her family except that she enjoyed dogs and fed them at her table and mourned them after they went to the dog cemetery. 

 Grandma Jenny and her sister were maids in a castle in southern Sweden. Family stories lend that it was a summer palace. Their father, Håkan Mårtinsson was a tailor and his wife Ingar Nilsdotter assisted him. She was an excellent tailor herself. 

 Grandpa Nelson lived to be 92 and died in Kansas City. He is buried in Osage City. Grandma died at age 66 from diabetes and is also buried in Osage City. Their daughter Hilda died in her early 20s from an illness. 

 Grandma kept a beautiful yard and many flowers and was an excellent seamstress. I attended her funeral. Mother’s sister, Helen, was married to a man who was a spiritualist. As Grandma lay in the living room, he warned everyone to keep the doors and windows closed and to keep the cats out of the house. 

 Grandpa Nelson spent his later years between my parents’ home in Kansas and daughter Edna’s home in Kansas City. He was a handsome old man with heavy white hair. Grandpa always had a heavy Swedish brogue and often got his words turned around. Someone asked him to paint his house and he said, “Alright, I come yesterday.” He liked to drink a bit in his younger life, and we heard some funny stories from Mother about that. 

 We would go to Osage City once or twice a year and always enjoyed going to Uncle Emil’s candy store which was next to the movie theater. Uncle Emil later became Clerk of the City of Osage.

Christmas Travel - Not Always Smooth Sailing

Here are my great grandparents on my mother's side getting
ready for a winter car trip.

Christmas travel has the potential for more mishaps simply because of the weather. When I asked my dad about his experiences with holiday travel, he told about traveling 110 miles, with his family in their model-A, from their house near McPherson, Kansas, to Osage City to visit his grandparents. A couple of hour trip, at the most, for us was an all day journey, wrapped in blankets, for them. He remembered a few trips when the roads were so muddy that Grandpa had to stop the car a few times to take the wheels off of the car and clean the mud out of the spokes. At least during the winter, the ground was frozen and the cold trip was a little shorter.
The memory that sticks in my mind about traveling at Christmas came from a Christmas Eve when my parents, two sisters and I were on our way from Wichita to Boulder, Colorado to visit my grandmother, uncle and cousins for the holiday. My sisters and I were so excited to be going because we always had so much fun with our cousins. Just across the Kansas/Colorado border, on I-70, the fan belt broke while we were passing through a very small town. Dad pulled into a service station, that was getting ready to close early for the holiday, manned by one attendant. I remember the sinking feeling in my stomach as Dad came back to the car to tell Mom that there wasn't a mechanic to help us. Sitting in the back seat of the dark, cold car, my sisters and I looked at each other and felt sorry for ourselves. I watched people walk by and hoped someone would come to our rescue. It was such a helpless feeling. Mom tried to remain cheerful amid our questions that seemed all too important to us. "Would we miss Christmas? Will we have to spend Christmas in this little town? In this car? Would Santa know?" Mom answered our questions calmly. Finally, Dad returned to the car with an announcement. He would have to do the repair himself but the attendant had offered the light and warmth of the garage to do the work. I'm not sure how long it took him but I do remember the sense of hope that settled inside me. We got to Boulder that night, albeit later than planned. My only other memory is feeling relief and happiness at arriving at Uncle Duane's house, lit welcomingly with Christmas lights, before Christmas day. It made it that much more special.