from "​Double Cousins" by Ralph Hammersborg,  A Norwegian Family Chronicle, produced in 1996

Ralph Hammersborg had asked his Mother’s cousins to write about their lives.  The cousin's stories are taken from "Double Cousins by Ralph Hammersborg, A Norwegian Family Chronicle, produced in 1996.”   Birth dates of living relatives have been removed from the original text.

1933 - Pearl Esther (Johnson) Carlson   
Daughter of Johnie & Marie Johnson

Written in 1996

The seventh child of Johnie and Marie, I was born in Bellingham, Washington in  1933.  The family was living on the Brown Road, Route 2, Box 36, Ferndale; the road that divided Ferndale and Custer.

I started school with Miss Vivian D. Gunderson in First Grade. Carl, Bud, Lillian, and I walked the quarter mile to Highway 99 where the bus driver, Mickey Oxford, was usually honking the horn, waiting to pick us up to go to school in Ferndale, three miles away.

Early childhood activities aside from school was attending Sunday school and church frequently.  At the age of four, I started Evergreen Sunday School. Vivian Gunderson, her brother Wilfred and sister, Edith Brathwaite were in charge.  My best friend, Helen Henriksen, and I did much giggling between trying to sing duets and memorizing Bible verses.  I owe to that Sunday school the best amount of Scripture still “hid in my heart”.  Usually, mom and dad would pick me up from there in the Model A to go to Custer or Bellingham Methodist Church, the latter being the church in which I was baptized as an infant.

Each summer, we attended the National Holiness Missionary Society Campgrounds in Ferndale.  The family would stay in a large tent put up over permanent platforms.  There, the children attended “Children's Meeting” during the morning study hour with singing and much use of flannel-graph stories. It was there I first accepted Jesus as Saviour of my life.

The rest of my early life was spent doing farm chores: feeding the chickens, washing kitchen chairs, making beds, helping Mom turn the milk separator, hoeing weeds in the garden, and canning hundreds of jars of the produce from the farm.  Mostly I remember cutting up green beans and shelling peas. Mom did the rest.

When chores were done, I loved playing outdoors.  We had a tire swing at the lower end of the pasture near a bridge that crossed a stream to the meadow in the back piece of the farm.  We children would play as near as we dared to the Bubbins Place adjoining our property, which was deserted, and we were sure was haunted.

After haying season and the newly harvested hay was thrown into the haymow, a favorite time was turning flips from the upper level to the lower area where hay was stored (following Bud’s lead), and then bringing bedding out to the haymow and sleeping there.  The older kids usually made tunnels of the baled hay in a neighbor's barn, and we would play hide-and-seek.  The Lord was good, as I look back on this activity. No one ever got trapped under the bales.

Life on a farm brought its share of not-so-happy times as well. When Carl and I were 3 and 4 years of age, we were outside chopping wood. As I pushed the piece of bark to the center of the block, the axe came down, between two of my fingers cutting a tendon. Fortunately, Dr. Hills was able to tie the tendon and I just have a scar.  Other traumatic events were Carl falling from a hay truck, Norm having a full barrel of water rolling on and crushing his leg and my falling on a large rusty nail in Husvik’s chicken yard.  Norm was home on furlough, told Mom he thought I'd be OK, so no doctor or tetanus shot.

Most traumatic, of course, was July of 1947, when Daddy was reported to have fallen from a trap in Alaska and his body was never recovered.  Memories of Daddy are few as he was either in the barn or working elsewhere on the farm after a full day's work at the shipyard in Bellingham.  I do remember his singing and playing hymns on the big guitar with the mouth organ attached and bringing preachers home for dinner. He found time to take us to Birch Bay for swimming and picnics and occasionally a visit to the home of friends.

Our dad's death precipitated the selling of our 20 acre farm along with equipment and goods at an auction and moving to Snohomish, about 30 miles north of Seattle and near to Cece, Marian and Lillian. I was in the middle of my sophomore year of high school and the move was not a happy one for me.  Carl and I attended Snohomish High School, where I played basketball and was on the tumbling team, but the best of all received musical training in the choir and a girl's ensemble called Melodiers.  I owe much to Marguerite Snavely, the director, who frequently took me home after school practices and performances.

After graduation, we moved to Seattle where I worked as a secretary for Anderson Buick Company for a year.  Through the influence of Joe Davis, Sunday School teacher at Ballard Free Methodist Church, I enrolled at Seattle Pacific college the fall of 1952, while continuing to work part-time at Anderson Buick, and later at an insurance company to pay for my education. In the fall of 1953, I took off a term to work and at Lillian's invitation found a job in Butte and lived with her family in the Covenant Church basement apartment.  I was on my lunch hour with Lillian when the minister brought us news of Myrl’s accident.

I returned to college and graduated in 1959. However, due to the need for teachers at that time and the encouragement and guidance of Vivian Larson, head of the Education Department, I began teaching in the fall of 1956 in the Highline School District and completed my degree by taking evening classes and summer school.

My college years were wonderful and many lifelong friendships were made there.  During this time, I joined Seattle First Covenant Church where I sing in the choir, taught Sunday School and enjoyed the singles group activities.  In the fall of 1960, my application to teach in the US Army Civilian schools was accepted and I traveled to Stuttgart, Germany, where I taught first grade for one year.  It was a fantastic opportunity for travel and I spent every weekend possible skiing with more extended travel during school breaks.  During the two-week Christmas break, a Near and Middle East tour took me to six countries and I spent Christmas Eve in Bethlehem.  In May, Mom met me in Amsterdam and from there we drove to the Scandinavian countries, especially visiting Norway and Daddy's four siblings and numerous cousins.  We also stayed with Mom's cousins Asta and Ingrid Susag in Namsos.  Mom’s facility with the Norwegian language certainly made the trip for me.

While counseling at Covenant Beach in 1962, I meant Phil Carlson, who was waterfront director there and also interning at Tacoma 1st Covenant.  We were married June 15, 1963 at Seattle 1st Covenant.  Shortly thereafter, we moved to Chicago, where Phil continued his education at North Park Seminary and I taught in Evanston, a nearby suburb.

Between 1964 and 1971, we worked at Camp Squanto, a Covenant camp in New Hampshire. While there, one of the staff members who taught New Testament at the University of Pennsylvania encouraged Phil to enroll at Penn to do graduate work in Archaeology and Near Eastern Studies which he did in the fall of 1966.  So our next move was to suburban Philadelphia (temporarily, we thought), and I taught full-time for the next 4 years.

Andrea Marie put an end to my teaching career happily for me by making her entrance. Then Linda Christine and Sara Elisabeth. These were very busy years with many miles and camping trips between Pennsylvania and the Midwest and West Coast.

Andrea graduated from North Park College in 1987 and has pursued a teaching career in suburban Chicago and then a move to Seattle where she has continued teaching history at King’s High School.  She was married to Jeffrey Johnson of Woodinville, Washington on July 9, 1994.  Linda and Sara also graduated from North Park, both in 1994.  Linda is teaching in suburban Chicago.  Sara recently moved to Seattle and is working for Starbucks Coffee.  For the past 9 years, I have returned to teaching in suburban Philadelphia.  Phil and I plan to retire in June 1996 and move to the Upper Peninsula, Michigan.

Click on a link below to continue with the JOHNSON FAMILY photos and stories.

Same links as the Home page

Johnson Family (home)  - Kinstories (home)  -  Susag Family  -  Flatau Family  -  Beckman Family
Granquist Family  -  Anderson Family  -  Stout Family  -  Walker Family  -  Peterson Family  -  Morris Family  - Cauble Family