I turned six in 1941, so I finally was able to attend school. I loved first grade—and every grade thereafter, though I have to admit, it was the “extras” that I loved the most—decorating the windows, straightening the books in the library, cleaning the chalkboards. I thought I was the smartest in my “four-member” class, because my name, “Carol Ann Christoffersen” was the first name listed in Miss Walters’s attendance book that lay open on her disk. Imagine my comeuppance in third grade when Kenny Abrahamson moved to town—my introduction to alphabetical order!

On September 29, 1941, Arthur joined the family, and brother Paul, then four, was no longer the baby. My parents were concerned that Arthur did not display the same developmental characteristics that the rest of us had shown, and after a number of appointments were informed their baby was, in the terms used in those days, “a Mongoloid idiot,” and should be “institutionalized, you have other children to rear.”

That didn’t happen, but needless to say, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, it hardly made a difference to me and my world.

What I do remember is…

  • Rationing—my dad’s work out of town was affected by gas and tires, often a topic around the kitchen table
  • Coupon books—everything from sugar to shoes (one pair per person each year)
  • Bananas –almost never available, but if they were, we (us kids) could add bananas to the groceries at Art Larson’s grocery store
  • Our neighbor, Mrs. Norlin, planted a large plot of green beans, giving us kids an opportunity to earn a nickel to pick a large bucket that would go to a local cannery. Other neighbors planted “Victory Gardens” for their family’s use.
  • I can remember “meeting the train” on summer evenings, seeing khaki uniforms through the train windows, tearful departures of local men and their girlfriends and families. It seemed glamorous and surreal at the time, as did the red, white, and blue banners hung in windows of homes. The banners, with a blue star representing a son or daughter in service, or the blue star replaced with a gold star signifying the ultimate sacrifice of a son or daughter.

By the close of the War in August, 1945, I was nine years old. I was in fourth grade, still in the lower elementary grade room—Mildred Bjorklund, my teacher. The windows in our classroom faced west where our house stood.  I remember looking out the window and seeing my father helping my mother into the car.  They traveled twenty miles south to Medford, where a healthy baby girl, Ruth Marie, joined six older siblings.

Miriam was seventeen, a senior in high school and Carl a sophomore – John, a sixth grader, me a fourth grader, Paul in second grade. Unfortunately, there were no programs available for Arthur, but there is a happy ending for him. From the age of nine until forty he became a resident of Bethphage Mission in Axtell, NE. Though denied a formal education, he received a wonderful social and vocational education. In 1980 I became his legal guardian and  husband Paul and I moved him to Opportunity Village, Clear Lake, IA, where he could be closer to family. He spent twenty-four good years in a cottage-like atmosphere with vocational opportunities—his favorite, delivering mail. He passed at age sixty-four.

Back to the end of World War II. Our little town, like every other town and city in the country, was ecstatic. Both the Lutheran and the Baptist churches rang their church bells, and I remember a joyous church service with an impromptu kool-aid and cookies party in the church basement.

Soon the boys would be coming home, rationing would end and our world would be whole again.