Out of Somerville

I found an old business card of my uncle Charlie. The card is at least 90 years old and reads: Charles J. Hansen ,Carpenter and Roofer, Jobbing of Every Discription. Estimates Gladly Given, Cambridge, Mass. It’s understandable that Charlie did not catch the misspelling of description on his business card. English was not his native language. My family in Norway had two branches. On my mothers paternal side there were artists and gentle “aristocrats”. The exception was my mother’s aunt who was a rich farmer.

In world war two she gave away free food to her neighbors. My aunt Aud was sent to stay with her during the war and aunt Aud as a little girl was overwhelmed with the size of her new abode. The dining room table was over 20 feet long , suitable for a Viking feast and large silver goblets lay all about. Two large Doberman Pinschers patrolled the first floor.

The maternal side of the family had a peasant flavor to it and was made up of artisans and carpenters. Charlie was my mother’s uncle on her maternal side. My great grandfather was very respected and skilled. He achieved local fame by having a street named in his honor: Carpenters Way

The great arctic explorer Roald Amundsen would visit him at his home and seek advice on how to outfit and build equipment for his explorations. My mother remembers Amundsen standing in the doorway of her grandfather’s farm house by the fjord. Amundsen was tall , eagle like and commanding , the last Viking.

Uncle Charlie came to American to seek his fortune and in large part to escape the dominating influence of his perfectionist father. He built and repaired houses in greater Boston in the 1920s and 1930s , married an Italian woman and lived in Dorchester.

I went to Cambridge to see a house Charlie built on Pearl Street. I stood outside the house and when a renter walked in asked him ” What do you think of the house?” He said “It was a well made house, solid .” and he was pleased to be living in it.

Charlie’s wife died of cancer not long after they were married. They had no children and Charlie went back home to Norway but you can never go home. Charlie was changed by America.

Charlie lived in one room in a large house called carpenter’s shop over looking the farm house by the fjord where he grew up. He worked many odd jobs. I remember sitting in my grandfather’s house by the fjord and seeing an old woman come down to our house looking for uncle Charlie to repair her cooking pot. Uncle Charlie was just around the corner , saw the woman and repaired the pot with his soldering iron.

She offered to pay Charlie but he refused payment. She smiled and went on her way. Charlie had a unique pricing system for his clients: the poor pay nothing , the near poor pay little, and the rich pay retail.

The next day the old woman left a box of strawberries at our house. The good will Charlie received from his business was overshadowed by the opprobrium he received by his courtship of the local “gypsy “woman. The gypsy was without a husband and she had a child that some thought slow witted. My great grandmother did everything possible to come between Charlie and the gypsy woman.

The gypsy was enraged and went to grandma’s house , fought with her and threatened to scratch grandma’s eyes out. Charlie didn’t know how to handle the conflict. He wanted to be obedient to his mother but he felt kindly towards the gypsy and her son.

My aunt Aud told me Charlie was seen by the townsfolk bringing the gypsy food and giving her money. You know how gossip escalates in a small town.

However even before before the Gypsy woman incident Charlie was under suspicion when he returned home to Norway. He was opinionated and spoke loudly because my grandmother was near deaf. She would not wear a hearing aid. He was a single man and I think the husbands in the village were concerned Charlie was coming on to their wives.

There is some evidence that Charlie had relations with the woman in town. As an 11 year old I went with Charlie to visit his woman friends. He would introduce me to the women who were widows and they would give me money and serve me tea. Charlie would flirt with them and they would laugh and then we would be on our way through the woods to see another of Charlie’s female friends.

We spent the entire afternoon visiting his woman friends. I realize now I was the perfect cover for uncle Charlie. No one could question him on being untoward to the woman with a child present. At the end of the afternoon we would walk through the woods to my grandfather’s house by the fjord. Charlie would joke with me and say : ‘It looks like you got a pretty good take today.”

We don’t know what happened to the gypsy woman and her son but eventually Charlie stopped seeing her. That was a mistake and I think he regretted it.

In old age Charlie went ice fishing in the Fjord in front of my grandmother’s house. He fell through the ice and my grandmother and neighbors rushed to save him. He yelled to them that they should stay away lest they fall through the ice and said he was a fool to have gone on the ice, said farewell to his sister, my grandmother, and slipped beneath the ice.

His body was never found and my grandmother would never swim in the fjord again.

There is a large picture book Blylagomradets Historie written in Norwegian that devotes a number of pages to my Norwegian family: a picture of our farmhouse by the fjord and our beach and and pier that juts out into the fjord, a glamorous photo of my mother standing by the fjord dressed in her finery at age 17 and a photo of my great-grandfather and my mother as a child.

The book is respectful to our family however when it comes to Uncle Charlie the local gossipers have gotten their revenge on him. In my rough translation of the book, the author, calls Charlie, the fox, and says that Charlie was like a fox because he could get into trouble with his dealings with people but he had an amazing ability to get out of trouble.

The writer narrates Charlie falling through the ice when Charlie went fishing and says Charlie’s body was never found. The author concludes, “Charlie in death as in life, Charles Hanson, was like a fox and he escaped and was never found.”

The author never mentions the “troubles” Charlie got in but he implies business troubles. However,, there is one concern that Uncle Charlie could not master. He could face death stoically in falling through the ice but he could not break social convention in his relations with the gypsy woman.

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