A Good Day in the Life of Gustave Ludwig Johnson

Gust knew he was going to have a good day.  He knew it as soon as the train pulled out of the Duluth-Superior train station headed for Minneapolis.  The month since he had left Sweden had been a test of his ability to keep his temper and keep his mind on his destination, North Branch, Minnesota.  He was fifteen and had never left the farm in Eksjo, Sweden before this trip.  He never wanted to leave the farm, but his older brother was to have it and that was not to be discussed or resented.  It was the way it was and land was hard to come by in Sweden  So he saved and his parents saved and his aunts saved; everyone saved a little which became enough to try his hand at America rather than move into Stockholm and have to live a city life.  He looked out the window of this American train as it rumbled along.  The sun was on his side as it moved along its slow arch toward setting.  He was lost in the landscape of lakes and trees and swamps; so much like Eksjo he hardly felt homesick.  He saw oak trees that could have been on his father's farm and the pines were so big he could not see the tops of them from inside the coach he was riding in.  Now and then he saw a small field freshly plowed and humped with boulders, some the size of his trunk.  Another field had a man behind his horse just turning a sod and the earth looked dark like peat as it curled between the farmer's legs.  As the train pulled up to a platform in Askov he had to look twice to believe his eyes.  Was he in Sweden or America?  He just knew it was a good day and he was happily in the middle of his luck.

Since the track was not yet completed all the way to Minneapolis he was transferred to one of many wagons used to continue moving himself and others toward their destination; North Branch, about two more hours south by horse-drawn wagon.  Gust felt his eyes grow heavy and sleep came quickly even if the ride was rough.  His dreams went back to the rough seas he had crossed to get to New York from Stockholm.  The Baltic Sea was not so bad, but once he rounded the Peninsula of Denmark and entered the North Sea everything changed.  He wondered as he fought seas sickness if he had made the right choice.  He was not a seaman.  His home was interior, east of Stockholm.   After suffering the torrential rains of the North Sea and the waves as big as the boat he would learn to hate from below deck in the passenger hold, the rest of the Atlantic seemed like a row-boat ride on his favorite lake, the Runn.  He found the seas of the Great Lakes to be rough too.  Especially the one they called Lake Superior.  It was indeed superior to the other lakes in size, but even the narrows going from Lake Michigan into Superior was rough enough for Gust to want the sea-going part of his month long journey to be over.

Today, May 8th of 1884, just days days short of a month after his 15th birthday, all the ocean Gust would ever see was memory and he felt sleep his friend now as the wagon lumbered its way toward the big cities of Minnesota.   He slept deeply and dreamed too of which way he would turn when he pulled into the Town of North Branch just an hour or two ahead.  He had heard talk of work on the railroad as the company wanted to complete the line quickly.  He was hopeful he could work on the Soo Line as the railroad was called.  He began to hear his native tongue spoken in an excited manner and it woke him like his mother used to back in Sweden.  Although he spoke English well enough to understand the wagon driver,  it seemed no one else did.  He was riding in a wagon full of Swedes all anxious, like himself,  to get on firm ground, connect with Lutherans who would sponsor them until they found foster homes or found their own land,  settled down and farmed or found work their hands were used to doing in Sweden.  The churches in Almelund east of North Branch toward a river named by the French, the St. Croix,  and the Town of Cambridge west of North Branch would have members waiting with wagons to take himself and others to their respective settlements.  There would be much help in these Swedish settlements to teach them American customs and enough English to get by for a while.  In the next minutes he would have to decide which wagon to throw his small trunk into and climb aboard.  All this had been explained in the sponsor letter he received before leaving Sweden.  Whatever expectations he had before arriving on this sunny day in Minnesota were not at all what he was seeing from his bench seat in the wagon he was sick of rumbling around in and bouncing off the his bench mates Olaf and Leif.

The wagon stopped finally in town.  A settlement really and about the size of his hometown in Sweden.  People were rushing everywhere around him trying to be the first one's into a wagon for a last ride on this arduous journey.   He sat and watched for a time.  He felt more curious than hurried like the others.  He was noticing the clothes of the people he saw on the street.  Not much difference  did he see from his clothes.  But, then he remembered most of the people that would meet him today had probably come from Sweden recently too.  He was sure of this when he noticed all the little children in their shaggy blonde hair, blue eyes and pale rosy cheeks.  Everyone was wearing wool jackets.  Gust knew then that early May in Minnesota was going to be like the weather in his far away Town of Eksjo.  Many collars were pulled up around those pink cheeks and the smoke and steam from the train that continued on from North Branch to Minneapolis was blowing south down the new looking track leaving town.  A north wind was not unfamiliar to him.   Gust thought about those big cities a few miles south.  He was glad not to be getting on the train that continued south.  Now he wondered if that middle part of the railroad was where he could hope to find work to connect the track between North Branch and Askov.  There would be time enough to see another big city like Stockholm.  He could not know, of course,  he would someday live in place called White Bear Lake, just a stop or two on the train from St. Paul and Minneapolis.   Today he was unaware of that fate and was instead growing anxious for the men, women and children to move out of the way so he too could try his feet on this place he would call home and Minnesota for the rest of his life.

Through the chaos that followed, Gust didn't have to make a choice which of the wagons or which of the people waiting most appealed to his senses as family.  He soon found himself in the back of another wagon with three other men, two women and two children pulling away from North Branch and headed toward a setting sun.  He realized some of the anxiousness of the drivers was related to that sun setting behind the marshes and woodlots west of North Branch.  It appeared he was headed toward Cambridge and would be joining a congregation belonging to the Spring Lake Lutheran Church.  He was happy enough to have such a place where he could join neighbors and tend to his spiritual needs.  Sundays were days of celebration of more than the Almighty.  They were days to get together with neighbors and plan the coming weeks work and share food just as they did back in Sweden.   He had heard rumors that the Spring Lake Lutherans met in a barn and only hoped to have a church of their own like the Almelund folks had.  If there wasn't a church he'd help build one.

Gustave Ludwig Johnson was safely aboard a sturdy wagon heading for his new home and foster family a few miles west of North Branch.  As he gazed, mouth open, at the shadowed light of the setting sun and tried to ignore the rambling excited Swedish conversations  all around him, he felt a warm sensation deep inside his chest.  A rush of joy he decided it was and it made him feel certain there was nothing to keep him from making a good life in this fine land.  In front of him sat a jovial,  broad-backed man driving his wagon by shouting strict commands at his team while keeping an eye on his overfilled wagon of overjoyed Swedes.  Gust thought of this driver as a Viking sailor moving a ship away from the shore in one of the Norse Myths he had read as a child as they left North Branch fading into the darkness behind.  This Swede's commands to the horses, split between Swedish and  English  already seemed normal to Gust who found himself already thinking of things in English.   What Gust could not detect was the future this man would play in his life in America.  Gust was too filled with happy thoughts of each of the moments ahead in his life to realize he might be riding in the wagon of his future father-in-law.