Reality was not black and white, not even a hundred years ago

With her eyes, Disa followed the clock pendulum swinging back and forth as the smaller hand neared the hour mark and, although she saw with her own eyes that time was ticking by as usual, the device seemed designed to prevent time from working here with Grandma. She felt like time stood still, or at least that seconds lasted longer inside Grandma’s door than outside. Tick ... tock ... tick ... tock ...

The hour arrived, the grandfather clock struck.

Peacefully, the sound spread through the room.

Disa sipped on her coffee and listened to Grandma describing her childhood. She told about her able father who had built all the buildings on the farm: a storehouse for the grain and where he had a workbench. A large carriage house for wagons, spring wagon, and hay cart, all pulled by horses. A smithy with its own forge and wrought anvils, where he made things needed for the farm and sometimes for neighbours as well. Where sometimes Grandma had to give a helping hand. A woodshed, chicken house, and pigsty, a barn building with stables, barn, and hay loft, and geese and outdoor lavatories in the yard. In the stable were the horses, Vera and Blenda, in the lower garden were six or seven cows. The chaff was stored in the barn and the hay in the hayloft. Her father was used to working hard. In his youth at the end of the 19^th century, he had been a navvy on the Roslagsbana rail line. The railway opened in 1901. He earned 10 cents an hour and had a ten-hour working day. At most, he earned up to fifteen cents an hour. Before that, he worked as a coachman with a family in Jutland in Denmark and was dressed in livery and white gloves, but it had not lasted long.

‘He fell out with the owner and then there was nothing for it but to leave,’ said Grandma. ‘He was not always easy to deal with, my father. Sometimes he was mean and barked at us children even though we hadn’t done anything. I remember once getting a dressing-down and a half. People used to buy milk from him and he had a milk diary to keep track of it. He had been sitting there doodling with his ink pen, but blamed me for doing it. I ran to Thea for comfort. She was my favourite cow. She had a white mark on her forehead, which looked just like a big old-fashioned T and that’s why she was called Thea. The cow lay her head down with the muzzle on the floor and I put my arms around her neck and wept. And the tears flowed from Thea as well. We cried together.’ Grandma’s eyes glittered. Over ninety years later, she was still moved by the memory. Grandma stood up. ‘Nimble as an elephant,’ she groaned and went stumbling on stiff legs to the kitchen counter and picked up the coffee pot. ‘More?’

‘I could have got the coffee so you could stay sitting,’ objected Disa. ‘But yes, thank you, I could take a small cup since you are already up.’

‘Well, I sit still all day. It’s only good to move the limbs a bit, so they don’t freeze solid completely,’ said Grandma and poured more coffee into the delicate cup and then put the coffee pot back on the stove. ‘Now take a cookie for the second cup,’ said Grandma.

‘OK, the last one, but that will be enough,’ said Disa as though telling herself.

Grandma went on talking about everything that had to be done on a farm. ‘The cows were milked by hand every morning, and the animals mucked out. The grain was harvested and taken to the mill. The rye and wheat was shelled by machine, the hulls going to the hens, and the rest ground for bread. For the pigs, we made groats.’

That was a word Disa had never heard before and when Grandma realized this she spelled it out aloud, ‘g r o a t s’ and seeing Disa’s confused expression, she explained it was made of potatoes, barley and oats.

‘The calves were brought up on whole milk for eight weeks and then sold to the slaughterhouse. Butcher Andersson just had to take a look at the white meat to see if they were raised on whole milk. All farms had pigs and a butcher went around to everyone and slaughtered the pigs at each. From the neck of the pig, blood ran directly into a bowl and mum stood with a wooden spoon and stirred in rye flour so the blood would not clot. Then we made blood bread cakes from it, to be hung up on a pole in the kitchen to dry. The ham was reserved for smoking. All food had to be prepared and whole days could be spent on cooking and preserving. Firewood was carried to the wood stove in the kitchen used for cooking and to heat part of the house. Above the wood stove, wet socks and gloves were often hung to dry. A couple of beehives provided honey. Fruit and berries around the house could be picked: apples, raspberries, strawberries and currants. An underground cellar kept the food chilled, since there were no refrigerators at the time,’ said Grandma with a slight twinkle and smiled.

You could call it self-sufficiency, thought Disa, Michael would have liked it.

‘Everything else was bought from two different stores, which were a few kilometres away. One in Stenhagen, where the poor house, which is now a museum, was.’

Grandma seemed to want to finish her story quickly so that they could then start talking about other things. But Disa was not ready to give way. She didn’t want to pass up the chance, now that Grandma had started talking about it.

‘I understand what you mean by saying it was tough in the past,’ said Disa. ‘And how much time it took just to put food on the table.’

She considered how much time she herself spent on cooking and shopping. Not very much compared and there was never any question of cooking all day-long. She was happy if she had time to cook dinner at all. Soon, she might not have time even for that. You never knew, it might be prioritised away to deal with tiling the bathroom. 

‘Life was hard,’ said Grandma. ‘But mum was used to it. Already at the age of nine she went to her cousins to work as a farm maid. There, she got to go to school every other day. After that, she moved from one family to another. One of them, the Bergmans in Åkersbro, let her go and attend school up there with Pastor Lindén. She learned to sew with Mrs. Bergman, who worked as a seamstress while still helping with all the regular household work. She earned 12 kronor a month. The family was also in charge of the telephone exchange and she got to help with that as well. There were eighteen subscribers.’

Eighteen, thought Disa, only eighteen subscribers. She pictured how an operator connected callers together as she had seen in a black and white documentary on TV some time ago. She tried to imagine the same scene with her Great Grandma. The film’s distorted voice that sounded so polite, brisk, and restrained made her think of her own Great Grandma’s probably pretty normal voice. And in colour. Reality was not black and white, not even a hundred years ago.

‘Then she ended up here when she married in 1902.’ Grandma placed another sugar cube on her tongue and produced a loud slurping sound that started just before her lips touched the coffee cup. She smacked her lips contentedly as the sugar cube dissolved in her mouth and continued. ‘Mum told me that on their wedding day Grandpa took them by horse and cart to the priest, who married them with two maids employed in the rectory as witnesses. Grandpa went into Stenhagen’s store and bought some buns and coffee. When they got up to go to their homes, my grandmother said to my mother: ‘I have nothing more to give you than God’s blessing dear child and hope that you will be satisfied and happy with your marriage and never forget God in difficult moments, because He is the only thing you have to turn to in times of trouble.’ It was my Grandma and Grandpa on the photograph that you took with you the last time you were here.’

Once, Grandma had come with the black and white photograph and asked if Disa wanted it. The photo was fitted behind a thick glass pane and on the back it had an elaborate copper frame ingeniously put together and attached to the glass. Rustic art.

‘I put the picture in the cabinet where I have my valuables. It has been given a place of honour,’ said Disa.

‘Oh my, is it there, in the cabinet?’ said Grandma.

Disa nodded.

‘In the place of honour?’

Disa nodded again.

‘Oh my,’ said Grandma.

They sat silent for a short while. Disa drank some coffee and Grandma ate a cookie carefully with one side of her dentures. They didn’t always want to stay in place when she used the front teeth. Disa wanted to hear more about Grandma's life and asked about her school days.

‘I started school when I was six years old, and went for six years, Monday through Saturday. All the children would sit two by two, boy and girl. It was probably so to keep the girls from sitting and giggling together, I think. It was about four kilometres to school, we had to walk back and forth every day. I had the company of two or three other girls and my brothers went by themselves. In winter, it was extra hard to trudge through the snow along the long road, when it was only ploughed by horse. When we arrived, our feet were always wet. Once I was told: ‘Little Gerda made it, but the big boys had turned back in the snow.’ My teacher, Miss Johansson, was wonderfully kind and she didn’t hit you for punishment – just a few slaps of course.’

‘Slaps?’ asked Disa surprised.

‘Yes, slaps, yes,’ said Grandma with over-explicit articulation. She had interpreted Disa’s surprised question to mean that she had not heard. Not that there was anything strange about ‘slaps’. ‘Later, when I was in grade five or six at a larger school with Mr Nykvist, there was a boy who got such a slap in the face that he hit his head hard on the desk cover. The boy had opened the desk cover and Nykvist probably thought that he was cheating or something. But otherwise there were no beatings for punishment, even though it was allowed.’

They drank the last coffee from their cups. Disa felt privileged to be the one who got to listen to this story of days gone by. To think that she knew a person who was so old and could tell her about what it was actually like living in those times. Disa sharpened her ears and wanted to soak up everything Grandma said. She had never managed to get this much out of her before.