New Land, New Lives by Janet Elaine Guthrie

Author:Janet Elaine Guthrie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Published: 2016-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Thorvald Kofoed at the age of fifteen

I come over to America in 1930. I knew it was hard times all over the world in 1930; I realized that. But I thought, maybe if I came over to a big country like United States, maybe there would be bigger opportunities here. I had to make a special trip over to the consulate in Copenhagen and have my physical and all that, but I got a visa. I was twenty-three years old; I had a birthday aboard the ship.

I came on a boat by the name Hellig Olaf, that was the Scandinavian-American Line. After we left Copenhagen, we went up to Oslo and then from there out in the North Sea and Atlantic. They went to Halifax first and let off passengers for Canada. All the newspaper boys climbed aboard and sold newspapers there. They picked up the anchor again and we proceeded down towards New York.

I was always told that when you approach New York harbor, one of the first things that you see is the Statue of Liberty. Well, the first thing my eyes caught sight of there was a giant neon sign—“Wrigley’s Chewing Gum.” Well, I look at it and I know I must be in America now! I had an old wooden trunk that I had tied together with ropes and I had to open that up in the customs. They didn’t pay much attention and finally passed me through. A Swedish pastor was there and he was receiving the immigrants. He helped me to the train. First we went into a restaurant and had a snack, and then he went and bought a great big bag of doughnuts that I could take with me on the train. I let him have the money for that. That was something new.

I was a little bit perplexed when I got on that train, because everything was so new to me. As the train made stops here and there, it made me so perplexed because there were so many colored people coming aboard. All these colored women come with great big hats and loud-colored clothes and they was blacker than the ace of spades and I shone white and I felt that they was looking at me all the time. I was really perplexed.

From St. Paul [Minnesota], I came on “Galloping Ghost”—small mobile cars that used to run on rails. I got up to Shevlin, that’s a town between Bemidji and Bagley, just a small farm town with an elevator. I got a sinking feeling when I stood off there and there was nobody to meet me. I found a fella, a Norwegian, he was a blacksmith by trade, but also he was the preacher in the Lutheran church there. He got out the small T-Ford and took me out to my uncle. That’s another sinking feeling I got out there on my uncle’s farm. He was a bachelor and he had a little one-room shack with a kitchen and a lean-to.

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