The Illegal Immigrant from Sweden

I love the mundane. I don’t find it boring or meaningless. I love all it tells and find what is common to be rich, interesting, and full of life. You just need to look beyond the words, read between the lines.

My Swedish grandfather, my father’s father, was an illegal immigrant who jumped ship in New York. He stayed in New York City for a while before bouncing around Colorado, Illinois, and Nebraska, always one step ahead of Immigration and their attempts to deport him. He didn’t accomplish any great things, but his life tells the story of immigration, or at least one immigrant who came here to escape a circle of poverty.

He came from a long line of tenant farmers who faced bouts in debtor’s prison and the like. It clearly was not a happy life in Sweden and he got out the only way he could, it seems. Worked on a boat and took off when it moored in the city.

He died before I was born, and I never heard much about him when I was growing up. He came from Linköping. His family had lived in that part of Sweden for centuries.

Never knowing him, and not hearing much about him, made me curious. My father had this book of his and it fascinated me when I was younger. It’s funny how much it says about him and his life, but not in words exactly.

To me this book says more about him, and his life, than a diary would have.

Here is the book. A limp leather binding, about 5 x 8 inches. It was not an expensive book, was meant to be an account book of some type, but he bought it to use as a notebook.

The book is filled with all kinds of writing.

He used this book for several years. The earliest writings are from his time in New York City, but on the front flyleaf he’s written his locations as Osceola, Nebraska, and Rockford, Illinois—two of the three cities he ran between to avoid being deported.








Many of his early writings are songs in Swedish. Some religious, some not. He was not a religious person but had attended the state church until his confirmation and I think he just liked music and singing.

One thing that’s interesting is that many of the songs are carefully written in nice handwriting. As the book progresses they are written in pencil without the same level of care and they are more and more in English. Of course they would be.

This one, as you can see, was written 14 months later in Nebraska, in 1911, and is in English.

This page sort of makes me laugh. It is a reference from the Michigan Avenue Garage and says two things that aren’t true. One is that he had worked there since 1902. He didn’t leave Sweden until several years later. The other is that he is a sober and industrious young man. From what I learned from my father we can say that he was a young man. Let’s leave it at that.

That date is either 1912 or 1913.

But he was an illegal immigrant and, after reading this, a fraudulent one as well! Maybe I should be deported because of his actions?

But there are also pages in there with financial records. Hours worked and money received. That’s a lot of 9 hour days and only one day off a week. And a grand total of 29.03 for the month.

I’ve never taken the time to figure out what year this was though it wouldn’t be hard to do based on the dates and day of the week.  And one could extrapolate where his wages fell, was he doing well or barely getting by?

The book also has contributions from my Aunts. I’d like to think they were children when they did this. Hopefully.

Towards the end of the book he wrote this song out. Was it only a song or was he missing Sweden? I understand from his niece, who I met in the 80s, that he only wrote back home a couple of times and then disappeared.

“Last night I dreamed a dream so sweet I thought I saw my home sweet home”

I think the fact that I was so fascinated by this book was an omen that I would enjoy doing what I do now. Preserving the small and seemingly insignificant stuff that can mean and tell so much. And often in a much more interesting way than the broad and “important.”

Folks ask what I’ve enjoyed working on the most and they want to hear it’s all the old stuff, but really it’s the stuff that has a story to tell that’s worth preserving. Even it’s the story of a poor Swedish immigrant who spent years running from deportation.

Eventually World War I began and he joined the army, and in so doing he became a citizen and his problem was solved. He served in Colorado and settled in Denver where my father was raised near Washington Park.

In 1980 I attended college in Linköping and was able to walk around streets that would have been familiar to him. In a way it felt like completing a circle for him.

In the summertime....

Tucson sort of clears out in the summer.  It might have something to do with the heat, which reaches  116 at our place (that's 46 to the rest of the world).  Funny thing is that 116 is hot but not unbearable if you are not doing stupid things.

A smart thing to do in the summer is to take a bookbinding class. Well, the smartest thing to do in the summer is to take a bookbinding class.  I decided to try some one day summer classes to see if there was interest. Summer is the perfect time for indoor activities, after all, and no indoor activity is more fun than binding.  There was interest and we'll have two classes this June.

I work and teach in a barn which was built by my in-laws.  The tall part of the barn, the main room, held their RV, and has a 14 foot ceiling.  Originally it had a 12 foot square metal door.  In this picture it was being guarded by Pete, the dog who was in charge of building the house.  You'll remember if you read the blog in those days.  Pete was the only dog I've ever know that I wished I could have talked to, he was incredible and did such interesting things.

One mistake we made in building the house was ordering a window we had dropped from the plans, but it was perfect to put above the door and fills the bindery with light.  Sort of hearkens to a hay loft we think.

There is a loft in the barn, however.  It's opening is covered with I suspect is the only Linköping Lions flag in any bindery in the world. That's how special we are at PPB.  It's a hockey team, by the way.

It's even fun setting up the class room.

One of the many things that are fun about classes are the reasons the students are taking the classes. Some do it because they've always wanted to make a book, some because they're bibliophiles and maybe want to work on their collection, some are librarians and want to know more about books.  There are almost as many reasons as students, which means they all want different things from the class and that only makes things more fun and interesting.  

The first class this summer was called Simple Bookbinding, the class covered sewing a text block on tapes and then lacing it into a cover, which was in turn covered with decorated paper.  It's a great introduction to binding as sewing on tapes is the fundamental way of sewing hand made books these days.

The consistent thing in teaching are the diversity of reactions at the end. Some are amazed they made a book.  Some see how they can take what they learned and do more and different things.  Some have one more thing to check off their bucket list.  Some just see the mistakes, not knowing that everyone else has made the same mistakes when they were starting out.

But all seem to walk out between happy and thrilled.  It's a great thing to be part of. 

The greatest journey starts with one step.  Bookbinding is a fantastic career, it's creative, challenging, puzzling, satisfying and relaxing.  It might be an even better hobby for those same reasons.  And the greatest hobby or career can begin with one simple one day class.

The second class this summer will be a cloth case binding.  Should be fun, it's just the class I would have wanted to take when I was starting out.