It was a different time, yet the same somehow. Simpler, slower, smaller--but still with its full share of fear, disappointment, inconvenience. And also the brutality of an epidemic.
I always felt that my grandmother, Grace Carlson Beardsley, was aptly named. The bent, little white-haired woman epitomized to me quiet grace. I can still can see her bent form clipping roses in her garden gloves, and hear the tone of her contented laugh as she sat on her wooden, three-legged stool at the kitchen table.
Grandma Grace lived a sweet, unhurried and beautiful existence until her death at age 93 in 1985, but grace came as a choice. Her life, like yours and mine, held plenty of disappointment and pain, yet it was the humor and beauty that lit up the stories Grandma told. And it wasn’t until her daughter (my mother) passed away in 2021 (like grandma, at the ripe age of 93) that the story I now share, scrawled in Grandma’s familiar handwriting, surfaced among my mother’s things.
It was a different time, yet the same somehow. Simpler, slower, smaller--but still with its full share of fear, disappointment, inconvenience. And also the brutality of an epidemic.
The title she gave to her handwritten words, which I offer here with the occasional clarification, was the name of her baby brother:
Hjalmer John Carlson
By Grace Carlson Beardsley
My second brother was born May 10th, 1895. He was born on the homestead. Mrs. Andrew Christiansen, wife of a neighboring homesteader about two miles back in the woods from our place, officiated.
I just awoke one morning and there was a strange woman in the room. After I was dressed she gave us breakfast. Later we had a chance to see the new baby in the clothes basket, which later gave way to a homemade crib in the corner of the living room.
He was quite fair in coloring, had large blue eyes, and as he grew bigger and I could take him to Sunday School, I was so proud of him. I was sure he was the most beautiful and sweetest child in all the world. Lester and I could tease and fight with each other, but [Hjalmer] was special. We loved him and he had a sunny, loving disposition.
Perhaps we just remembered the finest things about him because he died.
Perhaps we just remembered the finest things about him because he died at the age of four, but his bright face and loving ways became legend in our home. He had a rare insight and love for all things and such imaginative ways of expressing his kinship with all life. Even as a child when I first read or heard the poem “All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful, he made and loved them all,” I associated it with my little brother, as if the words were his.
. . . . . . .
I started school February 1898, nearing seven years of age. They took mid-term beginners at that time, but we had moved into Tacoma the 1st of November, too late for school opening in the fall. Lester began a year later, February 1899.
Hjalmar would watch for us at the front gate when school was out, and as we came up the last block his face would beam. I don't think I've ever known a happier welcome than I received from him. He had so much to tell us. Every butterfly, every bug in the yard was his special playmate and friend. Everything to him not only had personality but sympathies, loyalty and love.
I felt so proud that last year he lived when I could take him to Sunday School. Everyone watched him and greeted him. Most of all, I think, he enjoyed the singing.
We had two large cherry trees in the backyard, and on nice days mother would open wide the dining room window toward the back, the blossoms “bursting like snow” so close you could reach out and touch them, so fragrant and full of bees humming. Hjalmer watched them, then came running into the kitchen.
“Come and see, Mama! The bees are having Sunday School!”
. . . . . .
I think that had been a happy year for our family. Our house was an old house with plenty of room, at least compared to the homestead cabin and to the little three-room house we rented our first winter in town [Tacoma]. It had a parlor (we called it the front room) with four windows -- three of which formed a pleasant bay window. [There was] one bedroom on [the] first floor, a long hall and stairway up to three bedrooms upstairs, a kitchen and dining room at the back on the first floor.
The dining room was especially pleasant as I remember it, perhaps because of associations—the evening meal together, my father telling us stories about his boyhood--and more space than we were used to. Occasionally we got a new piece of furniture, badly needed, I am sure.
We had a good-sized yard by city standards, and several fruit trees in the yard, although the two cherry trees were by far the largest and heaviest bearing. The lot west of us was empty and so my father planted a garden there and also had a little fenced place for chickens.
Everything became interesting when my father was along.
Wages were low in those times, but our family was accustomed to stretching the dollar. Mother was happy to be among people; the loneliness of the homestead oppressed her. I remember especially our Sunday afternoon walks together. Everything became interesting when my father was along.
. . . . . . .
This was our second spring in that place, and it had become home to us. Old John Erickson had joined the family again and had a room upstairs. He still worked away during the summer season but came back in late fall during bad weather when some work closed down. I suppose he paid a little for board. He used to split wood and kindling for the stoves and piled it ever so neatly in the woodshed. He was very neat and particular about everything and did not make or use tobacco in any form—which my mother would never tolerate. And he was especially fond of my little brother, Hjalmar.
I had friends my age. Most of the families in our part of town were working people, raising their children, a few older, of course, whose children were grown.
We lived eight blocks from our grade school, about the same distance to my father’s work, two blocks from the streetcar line, five blocks from my Aunt ida’s home. [The] grocery shopping center on 30th Street (about five blocks’ walk) was a busy place. There were five thriving saloons, but we ignored them.
I think my folks paid $6 a month rental to begin with. It was raised later, but on the whole was a modest rental.
. . . . . .
In the late part of that spring—June 1899—there were rumors of an epidemic of scarlet fever in some parts of town. It was thought to have been brought in by sailors who had “jumped ship” when they reached Tacoma, but it had not reached the north part of town as yet.
One day Lester told us that a little boy in their room (he was in beginners’ class—one semester before taking first grade work) had died after a few days absence. His classmates were shocked and awed by the news, and decorated the empty desk with flowers.
It was the last week of school. The final day came, but Lester was running a high temperature that morning and was definitely not able to go to school. He may have been sick the day before, but no one wanted to miss a day so near the end, especially when there was an extra star for perfect attendance reward in sight. In the morning mother told me Lester could not go and I should stop at his room when school was out and pick up his report card and explain to his teacher.
The last day was short. I went to his room and talked with his teacher. Some other children had missed the last day, too.
Something was wrong; I could sense it without knowing what the sign meant.
I walked on home alone; others had gone on ahead. I was full of plans for summer fun: building play houses in my special places on the hill at the end of 28th Street. I walked happily on home, turned in at the gate, and there, staring right in my face, was a bright red sign: “Quarantined—Scarlet Fever,” and a lot of fine print.
No one [was] at the gate to greet me! Something was wrong; I could sense it without knowing what the sign meant.
Mother said the doctor had come. Lester was very sick. But on no condition could I go out of the yard or talk to other children til that sign was off.
I did not get out of the yard that summer.
. . . . . . .
Lester was quite sick. Mother took care of him. My father could not come home. He fixed up a bed of sorts in a barn behind the place and continued working, getting his meals out. At night mother would leave prescriptions from [the] doctor and [a] list of groceries needed. He would bring them after work and place them on the back step, but could not come in nor get things from the house. I suppose they spoke to each other in the back yard after dark but could not touch anything each other used. He took care of his garden in the long evenings, but we could not go near. He left vegetables on the back step.
After two weeks Lester began to recover, but about that time I came down with it. A brother of the little boy who died in Lester’s room was in my class. There were five children in that family, all were sick. Three of them died of scarlet fever. It was an especially virulent strain and [there were] no medicines yet to combat it. [There were] many, many deaths throughout the city, several on our street before the summer was over.
When I began recovering somewhat, Lester had a relapse. It had settled on his kidneys and he was very ill--more serious than before. After two months of it, Mother could not hold out alone, and my father stayed home to help.
As the light of life burned low, Hjalmar asked Mother to light the lamp.
They had kept Hjalmar out from the sick room as much as possible, but at last as Lester was getting better the second time, Hjalmar came down with it.
Poor little fellow—it was far too much for him. He burned with fever and choked with diphtheria. The doctor came daily, but could not save him. As the light of life burned low, [Hjalmar] asked Mother to light the lamp; things looked dark to him.
He was so tired he asked to be carried. My father picked him up from his bed in his arms, and began walking the floor with him for comfort, and he died in my father’s arms.
[The] next morning he came upstairs to tell Lester and me that our little brother was gone.
. . . . . .
Being still in quarantine, we were not allowed to go to the funeral. Somehow, my uncle and aunt were notified, and they arranged for a funeral service. In the meantime the casket, body and all had been thoroughly fumigated and sterilized.
The service was held out on the street one morning with their minister taking charge and perhaps a dozen or so people from their church standing out in front. Neighbors watched from behind drawn curtains. They sang a song or two.
We sat by an open window upstairs facing the street so that we could hear and all. Then the people left and the horse-drawn hearse drove off, and we gave way to weeping. What a blessed relief there comes with unrestrained weeping! Every time I think of that morning I am overcome with emotion.
. . . . . .
She came to the door and called her children into the house and closed the door in my face.
The next week or so was taken up with fumigating—the whole house and everything in it, all bedding washed in it and boiled, one section at a time because the fumes were so terribly strong.
Our hair had to be washed with disinfectant that nearly took the skin away. In fact our skin did peel off after the high fever, but that was quite well passed now. I was left partially deaf, Lester had troubles that lasted through life from it. My father went back to work as soon as possible—now [that there were] doctor bills and funeral expenses to pay.
At last everything had been boiled and cleaned or burned up that could possibly contaminate. The authorities checked everything and took down the sign, and in the late summer we were at last free to go out.
I went over to my friend Mabel Johnson’s who lived two houses from us. The mother came to the door and called her children into the house and closed the door in my face. I had looked forward to freedom and play, but the mothers were afraid there might still be contagion—of course no one could blame them. But I was humiliated! Like a criminal released from prison I felt I had “paid my debt” and could not understand why others were not as happy to see me as I was to be out. So no one forced the issue.
Les and I stuck around home till school opened. My hair fell out, and they thought I had eye trouble; the doctor evidently had warned my parents that I might have eye trouble. I wore glasses for a while, but my eyes have always been a little nearsighted and on the whole my eyes have served quite well.
. . . . . .
My mother had the roughest time. She had been brought up in the church, but losing a sweet, innocent child shook her faith. She became almost bitter. Not that we as kids realized it, but her sisters and brother were quite concerned about her.
God’s love and care are greater than life or death.
Since we grew up she has spoken of it quite openly, that she had to learn, as we all must learn, that God’s love and care are greater than life or death and [He] is with us in suffering and loss as in times of work and happiness. What we in carefree youth think is faith is often health and well-being, the exuberance of youth and good fortune.
As a wise man put it, “To suffer passes, but the lessons learned through suffering become treasures forevermore.”
Three years later Elmer was born and he filled the void, and life and growth went on for my Mother.
. . . . . .
AFTERWORD:
I am so grateful to hear my grandmother’s voice again through her written words. I imagine her laugh and see her gnarled hands folded demurely as she rocks slightly in her chair. I wish I could sit and ask questions, listening to her stories, now that I’m old enough myself to understand the treasure of wisdom and life perspective.
It is rumored that Grandma loved her final years, and claimed her 80s were the best decade.
“Nothing shakes you," she said of that time of life. "You’ve lived enough life to know it will all work out in the end.”
And then with a chortle, “And no one expects you to be responsible for anything!”
ONE FINAL NOTE FOR THE CHILDREN WHO MAY HEAR THIS STORY:
As devastating as scarlet fever was in another generation, this highly contagious disease is now fairly easy to treat with antibiotics. It is characterized by a very sore throat and a red rash, thus the name “scarlet fever.” Today we understand more how hygiene can help prevent the spread of diseases such as scarlet fever.
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