Mari-Ann: [0:00] This is an interview for the Nordic American Voices Oral History Program at the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle, Washington. Today, we are at the Nordic Heritage Museum. We are interviewing John Sjong, originally from Norway. Today's date is May 4th, 2015.

[0:25] Welcome, John. We are delighted to have you here. You will be interviewed by Gordon Strand and Mari‑Ann Kind Jackson. Would you please start by telling us your full name, where you were born, when you were born and, then, share your life story with us?

John Kasper Sjong: [0:46] My name is John Kasper Sjong. I was born in Horten, Norway, 3rd of December, 1936. The reason we were there...my dad, he was in the navy, and Horten was the base for the Norwegian navy at that time. My sister was born a couple years earlier and so it was the four of us there.

[1:19] I don't remember much of what was going on there. In 1939 my dad, he went on a patrol up in Finnmark, a fisheries patrol, and they decided then that my mother and the kids, we were going to move back to Skotet, which was my mother's farm where she grew up. That was a mountain farm in Storfjorden on the way to Geiranger.

[1:56] We ended up living there in two years, or a little bit more than two years, I guess. My dad came back on leave in the Christmas of '39, and that was the last time I saw him, although I don't remember much of that. I was barely three years old. But I've been told that he built us a snow hut and that we were playing in that for the rest of the winter.

[2:31] When he left right after Christmas, we never did see him again. He went to England and he was part of the war troops. He became a navy officer and they were supporting a convoy that was heading for the Mediterranean when they got bombed by the Germans. That was in '41, we were told. We lived in Skotet for two years until my sister was going to start school. When my mother was growing up, my grandfather had to row them across the fjord to Dyrkorn every Sunday and then pick them up again the next Saturday. That fjord can be pretty snotty in the wintertime. My mother didn't want to go through that or want us to go through that, because I got seasick many times going across there.

[3:44] We moved to Sykkylven. That's where my mother was working from she was about 15, I think, until she got married. She was 22 or 23, I think, when she got married. So she was familiar with the place and we moved out there and got a small apartment in the fall of '41, I believe.

[4:19] I spent most of the time before I started school in Skotet, because I love that place.

[4:27] Then, of course, we were there every Christmas and every Easter until they moved away when I was 15 or 16. Of course, I've been back a lot of times since also.

Gordon Strand: [4:40] Could you describe the farm for us?

John: [4:43] It was a mountain farm, 310 meters over the fjord, and no road, of course, going up. We had four or five cows and about 20 goats and I think 10, 15 sheep and a horse, and chicken. Later on my uncle got into raising blue fox.

[5:20] One summer, I was going to feed them and for that I was going to get a baby fox. I never got that one. I was asking my uncle about it for a number of years, but that never happened. I don't think I missed it much either, so it was OK.

Gordon: [5:47] You had experience with the goats.

John: [5:55] I happened to see a film about bullfighters, and I thought this must be great. That's why I got the male goat out there, I got a red tablecloth, and I was going to be a bullfighter or a goat fighter, I guess. That goat, he hit me so hard I went flying, and that was the end of that! [laughs] That was the end of my experience with that one.

[6:39] It was a good learning experience to be there. There was my grandfather, he expected me to be part of the crew who worked there. I guess in the earlier years, I was more in the way than doing any good, but you had to be there.

[6:57] I think it was a good experience, and it put good work ethics into me. I think I maintained that the rest of my life.

[7:15] I went through school in Sykkylven. There was a three‑room schoolhouse. We went to school only every other day, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, or Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

[7:39] We had about half the school time as the kids today, but I think that maybe we learned just as much or a little more maybe, sometimes.

[7:55] I was always driving something, or trying to, anyway. I started to drive a motorcycle when I was about eight. I couldn't reach the ground on both sides.

[8:13] My mother's cousin, they had a little motorcycle. They had it through the war, because nobody could drive during the war, because they didn't have any gas, so this was right after the war.

[8:28] During the war, I can't remember anything. I remember when it was over. There was a big celebration at that time, and so on, and then I was six or seven, or something like that, eight maybe.

Gordon: [8:46] Could you tell us about your uncle who went into the mountains? Do you know anything about that?

John: [8:51] No, not really. He never wanted to talk about it. Only one instance he talked about. There were German troops, the paratroopers came in, and one landed in a tree. I asked him, "What did you do with him?" "We shot him," he said. He never wanted to talk or elaborate about it.

[9:18] That was the case with most of the people at that time. They didn't advertise that they had been in the service or been in the war, or anything. They weren't bragging, I guess is what I should say.

[9:43] I was going to school. I was, on the day off, I was running the...I got a job at...they were building a new kommunehus, which is the city building, I guess.

[10:00] I was running the elevator there on the day offs, and I made a couple of krones an hour or something. That was my first paid job, anyway. I think it was 17 when I got a job on a cruise ship, one of the Brand boats. They had several. There was Brand Three, Four, Five and Six.

[10:36] Then I went on Six down to the Mediterranean. We had taken tourists down there, and that was the first time I went to Israel. That was just a few years old at that time.

[10:56] But it was all green, and then you got to the border and it was just like it used to be thousands of years before, I guess. They had some goats there and tents and stuff they lived in there, the people.

[11:14] But I must say the Israeli, they cleaned the place up and it was green and they had water. They had parks and nice buildings and stuff. I thought it was very impressive just in a short few years they did all that.

[11:34] I was working in the engine room. I was going to become a ship's engineer was the plan. So, after about a year on the boat, I started working in a machine shop in Sykkylven. That was to get my shop time. At that time, I don't know if it's still the same, but there was a four years of sailing time and four years of time in the machine shop and four years of schooling to become a chief engineer. It's quite an education.

[12:16] Anyway, I started working in the machine shop there. Nyborg Vitte Fabrik it was called. They made fans, of all kinds.

[12:32] I worked there for...oh, I don't know...a total of just about four years total, but in between, I was in the Norwegian army. There was mandatory draft at that time. I spent 16 months in the army.

[12:59] About a year or so after I got out, then this friend of mine that I grew up with, went all through school with and so forth, he had two uncles in Seattle. "I have now applied to emigrate to Seattle," he says, "so why don't you come along?"

[13:19] I had an aunt down in Oregon that came here a few years earlier. I wrote to her and asked if she would guarantee for me. And sure, so I applied also. I got the visa and then, I think, the weekend before I left, he got married and he never made it to United States. I was going to be here for two years. That has now turned into 55. I must have liked it.

[14:06] I came to Oregon, to North Bend in Oregon. That's where my aunt lived. I stayed. He was a builder, building houses and so on. And stayed with them for about a month, I guess. I worked with him and dug some ditches by hand just to keep busy.

[14:31] Then I got a job in the sawmill there, so I worked there for three or four days when I quit. That was not the reason I came to America.

[14:43] In the meantime, I had bought a '49 Plymouth. I took my one suitcase in that one and I was heading north. My aunt's husband's brother, he was working in Tacoma. He called earlier and said if you can't find anything down there, we can find you a job up here.

Gordon: [15:12] I'll just ask, what year are we talking about [indecipherable 0:15:14] ?

John: [15:16] I came in January of 1960. This was in February of 1960 I came to Tacoma. I got a job in a machine shop there. I worked there for about six months, until they went broke, but that was not my fault.

[15:44] Also I met another couple. She was from Sykkylven and her husband was from Stranda and he had a machine shop in his garage. I got to work with him on the weekends and in the evenings.

[16:03] There I got making parts for Boeing airplanes. There I got piecework. I was making 10, 12 dollars an hour, and that was a lot of money at that time. But then when they went broke, that machine shop...of course, every weekend, we drove up to Seattle.

[16:38] The first time I went to the Norway Center I ran into this Norwegian guy from Melhus, Ole Grosset, and he also lived in Tacoma. After that we hooked up and drove together up to the Norway Center, which was a dance hall, dance every Saturday night.

Gordon: [17:01] That was the Sons of Norway, too, right?

John: [17:04] Yeah. Then I moved up to Seattle and I got a job in Magnolia in a machine shop there. I got myself an apartment down on 15th and 53rd, I think it was. It was a little apartment house there and had a little kitchen and a living room or a bedroom, and a bathroom across the hall. There I thought I was doing OK.

[17:46] Then on Saturday, when Ole came up, he usually stayed with me until Sunday and so on. And we're still hanging out together. That fall I got...at that time you had to sign up for the draft, because there was a mandatory draft in the United States at the time. You had to sign up within six months, so I did.

[18:24] A few months later that year, I got a letter from Uncle Sam that I was elected by my friends and neighbors to go in the United States Army. So, before I was here a year, I was drafted into...I was in the United States Army. On my birthday, on the 3rd of December, I was on the way to Fort Ord in a Greyhound bus, I think, at the time.

[19:01] I had played soccer. I hooked up with the Viking soccer team, which was a bunch of Norwegians down in Woodland Park, and so I was in pretty good shape, and for the basic training that was pretty easy.

[19:22] After we were done with that, I was sent out to Norfolk, or close to Norfolk, Virginia, where I was assigned to a maintenance company there that was maintaining helicopters so we were attached to a helicopter company there.

[19:46] We were there until July or August, I think, and then we were told that the company, the whole company, was going to move up to Fairbanks, Alaska. I was rather happy about that, because in July in Norfolk that's pretty hot.

[20:09] When we were loading the helicopters and the trucks and all the equipment aboard the vessel there, it was about 110, 115 degrees, and I didn't know about Fairbanks, but I knew it's got to be colder than this here.

[20:29] It took about a month, and we sailed through Panama Canal and up to Anchorage, and then the officers flew the helicopters off, and this friend of mine and I were asked if we would drive their cars from Anchorage up to Fairbanks, which was about a 400‑mile trip in August or September, or whenever it was.

[20:57] It was really a nice drive. We got up there a couple of days before the rest of the people came up. We had a chance to look at the city and so forth.

[21:06] Fort Wainwright was right in town. You walked out of the gate and you were in the middle of town. Fairbanks at that time had about 15,000 people or so, I think. Not very big.

[21:24] There also I ran into a Norwegian couple, and he was from Stranda. That Thanksgiving, I was invited for dinner with that family, which was very nice.

[21:52] I had a machine shop in the back of a van, and I was parked outside a hangar, and I was supposed to make parts for the helicopters if they needed it, but I don't think I made any parts. They just took it off the shelf and put it on so I didn't have much to do, really.

[22:23] The only thing I can remember doing for the military was when a machine gun they had, when it was firing blanks, they couldn't...there wasn't enough back pressure to shoot more than one round at a time.

[22:42] I put the contraption on the front of a barrel there with the restrictions on it so it took me a while to come up with the right combination there, but we did it. After that, they were shooting with blanks, and it worked like a machine gun.

[23:03] Also I ran into another Norwegian. It's funny how they were all over the place. You couldn't get away from them. He was...there was a ski area outside of town, and we were up there as soon as the snow came.

[23:29] I got some skis sent from Norway that I was using, and, "Jeez," he said. "I haven't seen skis like that since I left Norway," so, "Oh, you're Norwegian?" "Yes." "So am I."

[23:44] The night before he got engaged to that year's Miss Alaska. She was a stewardess with Alaska Airlines, and hanging out with them, she had a lot of friends, and we had a great time up there.

[24:02] Then on the base there was a small ski area there with a rope tow to take you up. I was a ski instructor, and whatever they needed there for about three months that winter.

[24:24] Then the general, he had a daughter, about 18 or so, and I got the job of teaching her to ski. She was a slow learner so it took a long time, but she was a cute little thing from down south, you know.

[24:47] That Christmas I went back. We got a month leave, and I went back to Seattle and spent Christmas with those people in Tacoma. Then I had a car that was stored here, and there was two of us, this guy from Tacoma, or from Puyallup, I think he was. He had a truck, and I had a '53 Chevy at that time. We drove back up to Fairbanks. That's 2,700 miles.

[25:34] Anyway, we had three or four kids that rode with us that was going to go back there. I had a car the rest of the time in the service, which was nice. I got around a little more.

[25:57] We went out on maneuvers and stuff, and it was pretty cold. There was for three or four days it went down to 72 below up there, and that was pretty nippy.

[26:12] We got the card. We belonged to the 72 Below Club. I was looking for that now. I had it for many years, but I couldn't find it now. I have to look some more, I guess.

[26:31] There wasn't much to talk about for the...that summer I got leave again, and I came down here, but then I had made arrangements with the car dealer up there to get a car that he had bought down here and drive it back.

[26:53] But I couldn't get it before seven days before I was supposed to be back in Fairbanks. He didn't want me to put a lot of miles on it, I guess.

[27:06] Anyway, I picked it up seven days before and, well, I don't need to go today so the next day and the next day, and I was down to three days. Twenty‑seven‑hundred miles and that was a long trip, but I made it.

Gordon: [27:27] Was that the one where you rescued somebody on that trip?

John: [27:30] No, that was that Christmas when we went back up. There was the two cars, and we drove by. It was cold, 45, 50 below, and we went by this car in the ditch.

[27:52] It was eating at me so we stopped and turned around, and here was a lady with a kid in there. The husband he had gone to find, to get some help. We took them in the car where it was warm and took them up to the gas station where he was, because you never know when it's your turn to need some help.

[28:20] Coffee is getting cold.

[28:31] Then that November then I was getting a discharge, but that was down in Tacoma, so the two of us, the two cars, we drove together and down to Tacoma, and it was really nasty weather up there, and, of course, in those days you didn't have snow tires, and studded tires, and so forth.

[28:56] I don't think we were over 35 miles an hour before we got down to the Canadian border, the Washington/Canadian border so that was about 1,700 miles of...no, that was 2,300. Well, it's about 200 miles, I guess, about 2,000 miles so 35 miles an hour. That was a long trip.

[29:23] Then I got my discharge in Tacoma, and I was a free man again. Then I went back to the machine shop in Magnolia where I worked before I went in, and you were supposed to get your job back after you served in the Army or in the service.

[29:45] But he said, "Well, I can hire you for the day and then fire you, because we don't need more people," so that wasn't going to work.

[29:54] I went down to Harbor Island, and another guy from Sykkylven he was working there or off and on for several years, and he was fishing off and on so he was there in‑between. He was just quitting at that time to go on that boat, on a crab boat to go up to Alaska, and I guess I more or less took over his job there.

[30:32] That was a nice job. I was running a milling machine at the time, and I was there for a couple of years, I guess. When I quit to go fishing the owner, he said, "Well, if you don't like fishing, you don't have to call up. Just bring your toolbox and come on down. You have a job."

[31:02] For many years, whenever we needed something machine‑made I took it down to Harbor Island Machine Works.

Gordon: [31:13] You mentioned in your book about the role that Norway Center played for the immigrant like yourself, finding jobs.

John: [31:27] Well, I think it was...it didn't hurt you to be a Norwegian. Right after...I think people that was here when somebody new came, they helped him to get a job or a place to stay and stuff like that so that was...it's just how it was.

[31:56] Later on, I helped several people to get their jobs or they were working for me. That continues.

[32:10] In '63, then four of us went back to Norway that summer. Coming back here, that's when I got this sweater. I employed some ladies there. One knitted it. One embroidered it. One sewed it together. They didn't charge very much. That was a good purchase.

[32:45] Anyway, I came back. Back here one night, I had this sweater on and we were out to a dance, I suppose, and heading home. I always had a little heavy foot, so I got stopped by a cop. He came up and looked at my sweater, "Are you guys Norwegian?"

[33:13] "Yeah."

[33:14] "Well, you ought to slow down a little bit and take it easy." He let me go. Like I say, it paid off to be a Norwegian.

[33:34] I think we bought..Reidar Tynes, who is also from Sykkylven. Him and I, we also bought a house up in the north end here.

[33:50] Towards Christmas, we were going to have a combination housewarming and Christmas party. One of the people that came there was Sam Hjelle. He was also from Sykkylven. We went to the same school house. He was a few years, four or five years, older than me. He was from there. He'd come some years earlier. He was running a crab boat for his uncle at the time. He was just home for Christmas vacation.

[34:28] We were talking that night. I said, "If you have a job, let me know. I'll go with you." I didn't think any more of it, but the second or third day of January ‑‑ well, it would be the next year then ‑‑ he called up. "I got a job for you in Kodiak, but you have to leave tomorrow." Well, I got one extra day there, so I went and bought some oil skins and boots and things and headed north.

[35:05] When I came up [to Kodiak], we had a lot of work to do on the boat to put the tank in, the pumps and circulation system.

Gordon: [35:14] What was the name of that boat?

John: [35:15] That was the "Robert M." It was a cannery tanker.

[35:24] Then, they got the steel for the crab pots and I welded up every pot. Of course, there was a 30 pot limit, so it wasn't that many. The rest of the crew, they put web on and cut the lines and stuff. When we had those done, then we went out fishing. Of course, we didn't have any lights, so we left the harbor about eight, then headed back in about four. They were short days then.

Gordon: [35:54] How big a crew?

John: [35:55] It was four. That was the norm at the time.

[36:02] I was the engineer. We had a cook, a deckhand and the skipper. It was pretty cold. When I was looking at the skipper, he was in the pilot house, drinking coffee and stuff, so I figured, well, that's where I want to be. I was working towards that. Less than two years later, I was running a boat.

[36:37] I was there for the season and I made $3,500. That was more money than I had seen in one place ever. I figured this looks good, so now, I've got to go find a better boat. I ended up on the "Victory" that summer. We were packing salmon in southeast end. Then, we went to Kodiak and fished the crab that winter.

[37:08] In the meantime, Sam Hjelle was running the "Foremost," which was his uncle's boat. Pete Myhre, who was also from Sykkylven, he was the engineer with him. He was the one that also worked at Harbor Island Machine Shop. Sam had a chance to buy into the "Viking," which was a bigger boat. He went over and skippered that one. Pete moved up in the pilot house of the "Foremost." I got a job as an engineer on the "Foremost."

Gordon: [37:55] There was something unique about the "Foremost," right? It was the first boat or something?

John: [38:03] No, it was about the same as the "Victory." They were built in the 40s for the fishery down the coast here.

Gordon: [38:23] Maybe I'm thinking of the "Deep Sea." I'm sorry.

John: [38:27] Well, the "Deep Sea" that was a different one. Anyway, I ended up as an engineer on the "Foremost." That following summer when we came to Seattle and Sam asked if I would go as an engineer on the "Viking" with him. I had to quit Pete and go on with Sam there.

[39:00] That following Christmas, I got a chance to run the boat, when Sam went home for Christmas. I called up a few friends and came up and that was my crew. I ran the boat there for about five weeks. We had about half a million pounds. Of course, we only got ten cents a pound, but that was still good money.

Gordon: [39:24] Who was on your crew?

John: [39:26] That was Reidar Tynes, Alf Sorvik, he usually fished halibut in the summertime with his uncles here. Kalle Karlsen he was from Bergen. He was a tug boat guy. He was used to boats. That was my crew. We did pretty good for greenhorns.

[40:04] I was off and on on the "Viking" for the next two years. Then, Sam and Harold Hanson, who was also a partner in the "Viking," they asked if I'd like to go in with them to build a new boat. That became the "Olympic," which was the first crab boat that Marco over on the ship canal here that they built.

Gordon: [40:40] Can you describe for us...At the time, there was this big growth in the crabbing business? Is that what was driving a lot of this?

John: [40:50] Yeah.

Gordon: [40:53] ...Why that was?

John: [40:54] These older boats, they were OK, but not all that efficient, so then we started to look at building new boats and bigger boats. They could carry more pots, more crab, and more fuel and everything, so we built the first one, a 94‑foot by 26. Very nice boat. I think there were a couple of boats ‑‑ they were steel boats ‑‑ that were built earlier in Tacoma.

[41:46] That was the start of the big boom that we had here in the 70s. There was a new boat coming off the line just about every Saturday.

Gordon: [42:00] Was there just a big supply of crab or what was the...?

John: [42:02] Yeah. There was a lot of crab out there.

[42:09] On the "Viking" and also the first couple of years on the "Olympic," we had over three million pounds delivered for the year. At ten cents, that wasn't all that much. Then, it got up a little higher. I paid for the "Olympic" in about a year and a half. Three‑hundred twenty‑two and a half thousand.

[42:39] Then, we had that for about 10 years. We sold it in about '78, '79, just before the crabbing stopped or got slowed down. That was a good boat, moneymaker all the way. We sold it for about four times as much as we bought it for. It was a booming time. You had to have a little luck, too. You had to be in the right place at the right time. Like I say, when you have luck, you don't need any sense.

[43:25] [laughter]

John: [43:27] Of course, it helps a little bit to work hard, too.

Gordon: [43:35] Why is crabbing more dangerous than other kinds of fishing?

John: [43:38] I don't think it is. When you're out on a boat, you can get into some nasty weather at times, but I don't know, it's not any worse than anything else, I don't think. You've got to give the boat a chance and be a little cautious, and stop fishing before you start losing the crew overboard.

[44:18] I have to say I liked it. It was a great few years.

Gordon: [44:27] You had a near miss though on the "Viking," didn't you?

John: [44:31] That wasn't a miss. That was a hit. [laughs]

Gordon: [44:34] Tell us about that.

John: [44:35] Well, we filled her up and we were heading in to offload. The deckhand that I had at that time, he was going to steer, so I got a couple of hours rest. I was not aware that he was an alcoholic. He had a few snorts I guess and went to sleep and we ran right into the mountainside. Luckily, the "Viking" was very heavily built and it was a buoy tender. It had half inch steel in it. It knocked a big hole in it. It filled some tanks up forward there.

[45:31] I called ADAK. We were out in ADAK at the time. That's a big military base out there. I called ADAK Search and Rescue, so they were standing by there. Once we calmed down a little bit, I pumped out the crab tanks and the boat lifted up. We ran in with that, unloaded it.

[46:00] There was an old dock out in Finger Bay, a little arm next to ADAK. There was an old dock that had fallen down. I ran the Viking up on that one.

[46:18] When the tide went out, it dried up the bow and we found a four by eight steel plate, then we wrapped that around the bow, welded it best we could, and put concrete in between the old and the new steel, we went out back fishing. We lost three days. Then, it was blowing. The rest of the fleet, they were in harbor also, so we didn't lose anything really.

[46:55] We made it back to Seattle in the spring. I think it cost like $3,800 to fix it at Pacific Fishermen, so it was cheaper labor in those days, I guess.

Gordon: [47:13] What about the tidal wave? That one was the one I was thinking of.

John: [47:15] Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that was Sam. Sam and I, we were both on the boat at that time. We were standing in a pilot house as we were going through Akutan Pass. It was a dark night. All of the sudden, this huge wave came over the boat, and just buried it. We didn't see anything. In a little while the boat starts shaking and got rid of the water and came back up again. It had to be a tidal wave. We just hit it at the very wrong [place], where the bottom came up in the pass and it shallowed up. The wave built up there. If we'd been out in the ocean, we probably wouldn't have noticed it even.

[48:15] That's one of those times where we were in the wrong place. If it had been a lesser boat, we might have had some problems.

Mari‑Ann Kind Jackson: [48:31] During all of this time on the boat, you were in your late 20s, weren't you?

John: [48:37] Yeah. Well, we used to make three‑month trips. Then, we came home for a couple of weeks. There was ‑‑ not always, but a lot of times we had ‑‑ an extra man that rotated around with the crew. There was actually five people, but one was home all the time. It worked out really good, if you could keep the same crew. That worked out good.

[49:20] Of course, in the mid‑60s or so, then, I think that's when I met Berit, that is today, my wife. She was from Alesund. She came here when she was 11 with her parents, of course. She went through high school here. She went through the University of Washington and so forth. I met her at the Norway Center at a Saturday night dance. We hooked up there.

[50:09] Of course, I was gone quite a bit in '65, '66 and so on. She was a good writer, so she wrote a lot of letters. Every time we came in, there was one or two waiting. That must have been...I got married in '67. That must have been November of '66, I guess, we got engaged. Then, I went back up and ran the "Viking" that Christmas. Then, I came home sometime in January, and then we got married in February. Then, we went on a three‑month honeymoon to Norway and stayed with my mother most of the time.

[51:18] That's when they found a trumpet for me. I went back and played with a local music corps there. I also played for the 17th of May in the parade. Then, we left the next day or two and were heading back here. That was February, March, April, May. It was a good three months.

[51:52] Then, I took the "Viking" again that summer going north. Then, that was the only Christmas that I spent in Alaska. On Christmas Eve, we hooked up with another boat, so the two of us there, we had dinner together. That was eight people. I think we had brought lamb ribs with us. Of course, I've always had lamb ribs every Christmas in my whole life, so we had that for dinner that night ‑‑ dried, then we soak them out, oil them, steam them, and then I put them in the oven and crisp them a little bit before we eat them.

Mari‑Ann: [52:47] Pinnekjott?

John: [52:47] Pinnekjott, yeah. [foreign words] , they say.

Gordon: [52:58] Back then, you're fishing nine months out of the year? Is that correct?

John: [53:01] Yeah. Pretty much.

[53:04] July, go up in July and then come home in April or so. But I always tried not to stay more than three months, because it got much more than that, you know? You could feel it. You needed to get off. Instead of taking it out on the crew, I just went home. [laughs] Relaxed.

[53:40] I don't know. Where are we?

Gordon: [53:43] Which boat was it for you? The Olympic, you put lights on the mast.

John: [53:47] Yeah, yeah. It ruined the whole fishery.

Gordon: [53:51] It ruined it?

John: [53:52] Now, all of sudden you're fishing 24 hours a day. Before that you only went there seven, eight hours, from daylight until dark. When the light came...if one puts it on, then the rest of the fleet has to have it, too. Now, of course, everybody has it. It looked like a big city out there during the season.

Gordon: [54:25] What were the regulations about the fishing? How long you could...

John: [54:31] We had quotas. At that time, it was total quota, so the Olympic system. You'd go out, you do the best you can, keep going as long as you can, and get as much as you can. That's part of the total quota.

[54:54] Now, and a few years ago, they got the new system in here where the boats have their own quota, and I don't think that is right. The new people that are coming up, they can never get into it. They can get a job on one of those boats maybe.

[55:16] Then just because some people happen to be at the right place at the right time, they got this forever, so it stays in the family. A lot of these people, they don't go fishing anymore. They just lease out the quota. I was against that from day one, but they didn't listen.

Gordon: [55:43] Was it a year‑round season, or did they ever change it?

John: [55:48] In the early days, it was open all the time, but in the spring, they got soft. Then the canneries didn't want to buy them. You just had to quit there for a few months. Then of course, out in Adak or out west, there was later in the spring, and then they hardened up again earlier in Kodiak. So a lot of times we started fishing in Kodiak and then moved on to Dutch Harbor and then out to Adak, usually after Christmas. So we had the whole thing.

Mari‑Ann: [56:31] Did you only fish crab?

John: [56:35] In the early days, we did. Then in the '70s, there were, like I said, a lot of boats coming on. There was no way it could last, because there was just too much pressure on crab stock. We started looking around. What else can we do?

[57:03] I knew in Norway, they had some factory trawlers, big ones where they fished bottom fish, codfish, and so on and processed a board and they had a finished product. We started to look at that and we took the trip over to Norway to see how it was done and so forth. We got hooked up with Erik Breivik. He owned at that time the largest fishing boat in Norway.

Gordon: [57:42] A processor?

John: [57:43] A fishing processor, yeah. It was a factory ship. We arranged with him, the boat. He lived in Alesund, and his boat was up in Tromsø, fishing off of there.

[58:03] So, we flew up to Tromsø with Erik and we went aboard "Atlantic," was the name of it. We went out for four or five days there with him, on his boat.

[58:21] We went to Tromsø with Erik and went out on the boat. Then we checked out the factory. They had, I think, about 40 people aboard ‑‑ 45 people or so.

[58:39] We made arrangement that he would come with the boat over to Seattle. The rules was that somebody that was not a citizen could not own more than 25 percent of a vessel, so he was going to keep 25 percent, and we'd buy 75.

[59:07] We were negotiating this here, and then one night, he must have told his skipper, or his cook, that he made potato balls for dinner with caramel pudding for dessert, both my favorites! So, we had a deal right there!

[59:31] We came back here, and there was an attorney we had in Washington DC, and told him, "How do we want to get the boat in here now?" and stuff like that. They came up with something. I can't remember now how it was, but anyway, we were told that that cannot be done.

[59:57] You cannot bring a foreign vessel into the fishery in the United States, so that was out. Then the US government built two factory trawlers in '68 and '69, and that was going to be the US answer to the Russians and the Japanese fishing fleet. One was fishing in the Atlantic, and one was fishing in the Pacific.

[60:35] They both fished for a couple of years at the most, and they had something like 13 or 14 unions aboard. You can't have a union on a fishing boat, so they went broke, and I tied up the "Sea Freeze Atlantic." That one was tied up in Norfolk, in Virginia, and been there for several years. It was a Greek owner, or something.

[61:05] We went out there and looked at it a couple of times. It was a big boat, 296 feet.

[61:19] I talked to Erik. He came over to look at that, and he even brought his chief engineer, a really good engineer. I looked at the boat, and then we went to New York. That's where that Greek owner...he was living up there.

[61:48] We negotiated the price, and we bought it. That must have been the summer of '79. Then I sent some of my people out there, and they started to work and clean it up. Of course, it's been lying there open, so people could go aboard and so forth.

[62:19] I had one guy working for me there, Bert Dahlstrom. His parents were Norwegian. He was my right hand man. I sent him out there to lead the group, and then he hired some locals there, laborers, to come down. They weren't fast enough, in his opinion, so one day, he took a hundred dollar bill and stuck it between some mattresses, and then he found it. "Oh, look what I found!" he said. Those guys went to work! You wouldn't believe it! [laughs] He was really a character.

[63:05] We had the engines gone through, overhauled. We had a German engineer come over, and we went through the propulsion system. Of course, this was a diesel‑electric. There had been some boats here, but it was new to us.

[63:31] He went through all that stuff, and he got it going, and we had Sig here. He sent a couple of guys out, and he did the electronic stuff.

Mari‑Ann: [63:48] That's Sig Eriksen?

John: [63:48] Yeah, at Lunde Electric and Marine Electronic. As a matter of fact, we stole an electrician from him that he sent out there. He ended up staying on the boat, and he works for Erik today. He's been at this for many years.

Gordon: [64:10] Who were your partners besides Erik?

John: [64:12] There were Konrad Uri and John Boggs. While it was in November, it was done and ready to go. I had an agreement with John Boggs he was going to be there and see that everything was OK and check it out.

[64:39] They went for a trial run and everything worked. Then I flew out and I took the boat around throughout the Panama Canal and then up to Seattle here. We got there just before Thanksgiving in 1979.

[64:58] Then we went to work with tore out the factory and put in a whole new factory, and so forth.

Gordon: [65:08] Was this the first boat of its kind going into the fishery?

John: [65:12] Yeah. The government had them operating for a couple of years, but they didn't make it work. I don't know what they were doing. It was the first factory trawler that went to Alaska for the cod fishery.

[65:31] I think it was in May of 1980 we had it going, and they went on the first trip. Of course, [laughs] in those days, frozen fish didn't have a good reputation.

[65:52] But these boats that fished off the coast here, up along Canada, they put a little ice on it. They didn't gut them or anything. They just threw them down them whole and put a little ice on them.

[66:07] After fishing for a week, they came down here and delivered. In the summer time, you could smell them from some ways off. Anyway, the buyers, they filleted them and sold the product as fresh fish. Then, when it started to smell, they froze it.

[66:29] So frozen fish was not very good, and it had a bad reputation, obviously. We had an uphill battle there to get people to eat frozen fish. We had taste tests and stuff. We brought in Norwegian codfish, and Canadian, and Icelandic, and the Ray’s Boat House, they were great. I don't know how many [taste tests] we had down there.

[67:04] This was good stuff, but it had been frozen. Tell them afterwards, so then they change their mind. [laughs] [indecipherable 1:07:12] It took a long time, and, like I said, it was an uphill battle.

[67:19] But, finally, people, Skippers, they were a big buyer, and also Ivar’s. They were pretty good, although they were quite cautious to start with. Then there was the question. This is only one boat. We can't tie ourselves to just one supplier, and so forth.

[67:45] Then we got hooked up with an outfit in Nashville, Tennessee. They had a bunch of restaurants, and they came out. They wanted to see the operation, so they came out there, the private or a personal plane. The president was there, and the head buyer and the vice president were there also.

[68:17] They came to Seattle here. The boat was up in Dutch Harbor, so we were flying up there. I went with them. We had a lot of head winds going out there. They were a little short of fuel, so they thought they'd better land in Cole Bay to get some fuel.

[68:43] Just before we came there, there was a 474 that came from Japan, so the whole place was full of Japanese. Then the president opened the door and he looked at. "Oh my God," he says, "we went too far!"

[68:59] [laughter]

John: [69:02] Anyway, they fueled up, and then we went on to Dutch Harbor. They went on a boat, and they became a big buyer. Shownees. Shownees was the name.

[69:16] They had a lot of restaurants in the southeast, around there. We had a little problem finding a lot of fish to start with the first couple of months, but then, finally, we caught on to them. I think Konrad and Erik were on the boat then.

Gordon: [69:45] So it was just a matter of being in the right place.

John: [69:47] Yeah. It's a huge area, and you've got to find...

Gordon: [69:52] Where are you at? The Bering Sea?

John: [69:54] No. They went out west, out toward Sequim. I think they fished in Sequimq there, so a lot of tide and stuff. But they just about filled the boat and came down.

Gordon: [70:09] You are talking about cod now.

John: [70:09] Yeah. That was close to two million pounds of fillets. Frozen fillets. Now, what do we do? [laughs] We also hooked up with Wilbur Ellis company in San Francisco. They were handling a lot of the sales for several years there.

[70:51] Also, before that, we built quite a few boats. We had, I don't know, five, six, seven boats, I think. I think we had 14 crab boats all together ‑‑ not at the same time, but over the years.

[71:11] Then, in '75, I think, we bought the Deep Sea, which was the first boat that was built for crab in America. That was built in '47, and that was Lowell Wakefield.

[71:31] They were going to fish and process, because, at that time, they were dragging up in the Bering Sea. That was just the start of the king crab, and he had problems selling too. He went door to door and sold, but he finally made it.

[71:49] But then we bought it in '75, I think, so we were going to process our own. We had three or four boats that was fishing for the Deep Sea.

[72:05] Of course, then we found ourselves in a little bit of a pickle there, because we were...now we weren't just fishermen. We were also processors so we were sort of kicked out by the fishing fleet, and we were never accepted by the processors so we were floating out there in the middle.

[72:24] Then everybody started to increase their production of crab, and then all of a sudden freighting was a big problem. Sea‑Land went to Dutch Harbor, and then we also had a couple of freight companies here. Western Pioneer was one, and Coastal. He started up, but they couldn't handle it.

[72:58] We had a hard time getting rid of the product so we chartered this boat from Foss that was a supply boat, and we could put 10 containers on that one, and we had an arrangement then with Sea‑Land in Kodiak that we can pick up the containers in Kodiak.

[73:18] Then take them out and fill them and bring them back to Kodiak, and they lift them off and take them on the big ship down to Seattle.

[73:28] For several years that thing went shuttling back and forth between Akutan and Kodiak, and we finally ended up...the guy that was running it, he ran aground, and we lost the boat, and there was containers floating around all over the place.

[73:47] But we lost two people on that one. The boats can be replaced, but the people that's different.

Gordon: [73:55] Were those freezer containers?

John: [73:56] Oh, yes, oh, yes. It was frozen. Then we had a...we also brought a big freezer barge that we split that one with Chuck Bundrant, Trident Seafood. He was just starting at that time, also.

[74:15] He had one processor on one side, and we had the Deep Sea on the other side. Then we put the product into the freezer barge. We worked together for several years.

[74:42] In about '80 or '81 that's when the crabbing, they just couldn't find them.

Gordon: [74:50] Was it overfished or was there …?1:14:50] .

John: [74:52] Overfished, yes, definitely. They tried to keep a limit on the quota, of course, and tried to...but I think between overfishing and maybe natural things, too...anyway they disappeared.

[75:16] Then we started in on the bairdi and opilio, which was a lot smaller crab and not as good a price and so forth, but beefed it up. Today opilio is the mainstay of the fishery, the crab fishery. They have a small king crab quota, and they also have a bairdi quota that has come back now.

[75:47] But now it's a limited amount of boats, and they have their own quota set. Now, it's just like bus drivers. They go out and fill the boat up and go in and deliver, and that's it. Not the fun it used to be. Competition, that was the big thing.

[76:13] We had the Deep Sea there for many years, into the '80s, I think. Then we split up with Boggs. Then he took the Deep Sea, and Konrad and I took the...and Erik took the...well, we named it the Arctic Trawler, the Seafreeze Pacific that which became the Arctic Trawler.

Gordon: [76:40] So that comes after the crab fishing dies out is when you start that.

John: [76:44] We started it in '79 before the crabbing went totally to...but then in '80 when the boat was ready to go, course we had a bank loan and that was prime plus, and the prime went to 22 and a half, I think, at that time, so we were paying about 25 percent for a while. That damned near killed us, but then we got rid of Carter and then the interest rate went down.

[77:30] We built several crab boats, or rebuilt them. We had some military boats, the Penguin, and the Pavlof, and we got some supply boats from down the coast, the gulf coast, that we put into crabbing, and so forth.

[77:56] Sometime in the '80s we got this supply boat that we had been using for freighting. We bought the bigger one, and when that one we had sank up there we bought another one, a big supply ship that we put 20 containers on.

[78:21] That one was running back and forth for several years. The barge took over the deep sea, so we put a towing winch on and we were towing barges for Icicle Seafood for several years.

[78:43] We decided to make it into a pollock catcher boat. That was just at the start when catcher boats started to fish up there and canneries started gearing up to make surimi and so forth.

[79:01] So we put winches on that and we put a stern ramp in it and again a stanchion in the back. It was really going to be a big producer.

[79:17] On the way north, it had a collision and it sank. There we lost one guy on that one. That was the end of the pollock fishing for that one.

[79:35] Then in I think it was '85, the other boat that the government built, that was the "Seafreeze Pacific," that was bought after a couple years by Pan Alaska Seafood and they made it into a crab processing ship.

[80:03] Things were going down in the '80s so they decided to sell it. So it was down at the coal mine tied up there. I started negotiating with them to buy it. Some friends of mine over in Norway, the ship's architect, Lars Eldroy, he was Nils Fiskerstrand’s partner there. They were ship's architects. So him and the guy that owned the shipyard, started talking to him and we decided to buy the boat. Between the two of them they owned 25 percent and I had the 75 then.

[80:55] So we bought the boat and took it to Norway for refurbishing. In '86, summer of '86, it came back. Then we had new machinery in it, a new factory, and new electronics. And it's still operating. They changed the name, though. I just kept the name. Pan Alaska called it "The Royal Sea," and I kept the name because I liked that name. Now, I think it's owned by American Seafood now.

Gordon: [81:38] How big a crew was onboard? Describe that, [indecipherable 1:21:42] .

John: [81:46] I think we were up around 60. It's a big crew. I also brought a few people from Norway then to help out and to teach the people here with the nets and the factory and stuff like that. When the other trawler came, I think there were eight people that Erik brought along. Most of them are still here. I think two of them went back.

[82:29] Then when we had the Royal Sea done, there were six or seven Norwegians that came with the boat and to stay here and work. We had a heck of a time to get them in here, to get work permits. Then we got this attorney downtown here and he finally came up with a way to...I shouldn't say "sneak them through," but he got them in anyway. Now, it doesn't seem to be a problem. Now, it's open borders. Anybody can come.

[83:12] In about '87...we bought three more boats down in the Gulf, three big supply boats and took them to Norway and we rebuilt them. We were operating those when they came here. So at one time, we had six factory trawlers in operation. We had about 50 people in the office. Heck, I didn't even know half of them. I knew most of them, I guess, but those people I met, "Oh, I work here."

[84:00] Then I hired a guy. He was actually one of the owners of Sea Freeze, the cold storage down at the Duwamish, an Englishman. I talked him into coming to work for me, and he was going to run the company. Of course, he was used to this big stuff. I, with seven, eight years' education, there were a few things to be desired. Anyway, so he came to work and started working. It was not very many months afterwards he was up on the roof to do something and he fell off and got killed.

[84:54] That's when I decided I'd had it. I sell out to trawlers. It was just too many people, and too much.

[85:05] Then he got an outfit ‑‑ a New York outfit, actually, came out ‑‑ and bought it, and they retained the guy that used to work for me there to operate it.

Gordon: [85:18] What's your business's name at this point? Is that Trans Pacific?

John: [85:23] No. Trans Pacific, I think, was earlier. That was the crab, and the deep sea, and so on. It was see...was it really [Royal Seafood], I think? Then we had Marine Management. That was the management company. There have been so many names that I forget.

[85:55] We got a big building over on Eastlake that we were in, but then we sold it in '89. Then I took a couple of people with me and moved back to...I still had a building over in Fishermen's Terminal here, and I moved back there.

[86:21] We had two boats and a freighter, I think. It slowed down. It wasn't as hectic as it had been. [laughs] That went on for a while, and then I got bored.

[86:49] So I went and bought [indecipherable 1:26:51] hull and fixed that up, fished that, [laughs] and then I bought another one. Then we got into the longliners. We got two of those.

[87:13] We operated that into about 2004 or 2005, I think. That's when I decided that this is the time and started to sell it off. I sold off some here and some there.

[87:31] I think in 2006, that was when the last one went. Then I was going to retire. As I still had some buildings and stuff that [indecipherable 1:27:51] an apartment building, so I was working in those whenever it was needed.

[88:02] But there was still a couple of years to go. Then I decided I was going to build a garage. Now, I have a couple of old cars in the garage, that I'm working on, so this retirement, I don't know...My mother used to say it's such a blessing to be able to work, and that is so true. I think I got the right upbringing, where hard work was good for you, and I still think that's...

[88:42] Here, a few months ago, Ole Grosset and I, we bought some property out there. We're going to build some houses, of course, and he's going to build them. [laughs] I'm just going to watch. That's the latest project.

Gordon: [89:00] How often do you go back to Norway?

John: [89:04] My mother used to keep track to 25 and then she got off, but when I was rebuilding those boats back there, I was there 7 times in 13 months.

[89:20] I don't know why I didn't keep track, but pretty much every year. Last fall, I went back there with one of my son‑in‑laws and his son. We went up to in a mountain farm and did a little fishing and stuff.

Gordon: [89:39] You told me...Didn't you have a big family event there too? Tell us about that.

John: [89:42] Yeah. That's right. That was in 2012. I got this brilliant idea that we were going to have a reunion. So I talked to the kids and sure, they were gung‑ho right away. I started the planning. There were 27 people from the United States ‑‑ the cousins down in Oregon, and we are 15. Went back there and then about the same amount from cousins and their kids.

[90:19] My uncle, he grew up there, of course. He was about 25 or 26 when he left. They moved away from there shortly thereafter. They got too old and it was too much work.

[90:42] But in 2012, we went back there. He was about 90, I think, at that time. Several years before that, I had gotten in a helicopter and we flew up there. Of course, he couldn't walk up anymore.

[91:02] Spent a few days and so on. Then in 2012, my cousin said no, he can't do it. He's too old. He couldn't really walk much. I really should have done that, because we had several kids 19, 20 years old. Bring a wheelchair and they could haul him around. He would have really loved it. But it's too late. He died at 92, I think.

[91:39] But my aunt is still alive. She's 96 and she lives down in Coos Bay in Oregon. And I talk to her about once a week or so.

Mari‑Ann: [91:51] With all these illustrious stories about your fishing, what was going on with your beautiful dating?

John: [92:07] Jeez, I guess I should have said something about that too.

Mari‑Ann: [92:10] What you look like.

John: [92:11] Yeah. We got married in '67 and the 30th of December that same year, Tina was born. I was home for that and I was in the hospital helping the doctor, sort of. About two years later, Lisa was born and I was there for that. I think it was about three or four years later Vicki came along and I was there for that. So I was always home.

[93:02] Vicki was born in '72. About that time, that's when we started with the deep sea and I started to stay home more then. We got our own crab and started selling that. We started a pot shop. We were building crab pots. So that became quite a...

Gordon: [93:28] Why did you do that?

John: [93:31] We had a guy named Bill White and he was the only guy that was building pots there. One time I ordered pots and paid half of it, I think, with the order. Then I came to pick them up and he jacked up the price another hundred dollars because there was such a demand for them.

[93:54] I swore up and down, "I'm never going to buy another pot from him." The next time we started to build our own and then it grew. For several years, we were building 13, 14 thousand pots a year, there in the '70s. It was a big business.

[94:25] Then they wanted to go to be unionized. Union people came around. We had a lot of people there. That was all piecework. They wanted to unionize the place. I wrote the letter to all the wives and the girlfriends that I could find and told them that if that's going to happen, then we are going to close down the place, because we are not going to be union. We couldn't afford it. Then, of course, they would go on hourly and they would take a cut in their pay and stuff like that, but they didn't seem to understand that.

[95:14] Anyway, the wives put their foot down, and it was voted no. There was no union.

Mari‑Ann: [95:23] What was the name of that business?

John: [95:27] Fisherman's Metal Product, but we always called it the Pot Shop. I still have a hat today, with the Pot Shop on it, but then I got in underneath The Toy. I forgot to talk about The Toy. That's my pleasure boat. They claim it was built in 1910, so it's 105 years old, but I don't think there's anything left of it today, except maybe the Keel. That could be the original.

[96:01] That was in about '80, I think. Tina and I went back to Norway, and then I'd been looking for some, and Lars Eldon, he had found one that was fishing down in southern Norway, at the time, fishing mackerel. When we came over, then I went down there to look at it.

[96:29] The guy's name was Sjong. He was from Valderøy, which is just north of Ålesund, the place where my dad came from, but we weren't related, at least not...maybe way back.

[96:47] We agreed on the price, and as part of the price he was going to take it down to Europe. I think he took it to Rotterdam or Amsterdam, or something like that, to get it shipped on a boat to come on over here.

[97:07] This was about a 45‑foot boat, and it had an old one‑cylinder engine in it that blew smoke rings. We agreed on the price, and I paid him. He took it down, and it was shipped over to Vancouver, in Canada.

[97:33] The factory that made those engines, that's close to my hometown. In the later years, they quit building those engines, and then they started making gears for the big boats. We had several gears in the big trawlers, made by that factory.

[97:59] I went in there and talked to the old man, and told him that I bought this boat, and if they had any spare parts that I could buy. "Oh, yeah," he says. "Come in and have coffee. I'll send some guys down." I got a big wooden box full with pumps, nozzles, piston rings, and gaskets, and stuff, and that he was going to ship to Seattle.

[98:28] I was going to pay for this here, and "I've been thinking I should have a parts department over in Seattle," he says, "so, this is it!"

[98:37] [laughter]

John: [98:38] There, a couple of years ago, I overhauled the engine, and I used a lot of those parts.

Gordon: [98:45] It's the original engine overhauled.

John: [98:48] The engine was built in '56.

Gordon: [98:52] I see.

John: [98:52] It was practically new. That's one of the last ones that they built at that factory. We came over here, and went up to Vancouver to get it. I wasn't too used to...it had an air tank, to have it air start, and I couldn't get it started. It was getting late, and the boat was filthy dirty. It was Bert and I.

[99:31] We went up and got the motel, so we stayed overnight. The next morning I called up a diving outfit, and they came down with high‑pressure air and filled the tank, and so then I got it going. We took off and went to Friday Harbor. That was about a seven, eight hours run. Got in there, and we had to check in.

[100:04] That was when we entered the US, so we had to check in with the Custom. Of course, we went up town, had dinner, and got a motel there, too, because we didn't want to sleep on a boat. The next morning, we went to see the custom guy. He came down and he looked at it. What is this going to cost?

[100:29] "What is the world are you going to do with this piece of shit?"

[100:31] [laughter]

John: [100:33] It didn't look that great. I have to admit that. Anyway, $7.35 was the duty.

[100:41] [laughter]

John: [100:43] "But you have to bring it up here so I can look at it once you're done." I was telling him all the things I was going to do and laid it out. I promised that, and I did, a couple of years later.

[100:57] He came aboard, he had a couple of coffee or two, and he thought it'd turned out pretty nice. Anyway, I rebuilt it, and it's still operating.

Mari‑Ann: [101:11] Where do you keep it?

John: [101:13] Right next to Ballard Bridge. I've got a boat house. I had an old one for many years, and that saves a lot of work. Of course, a wooden boat, so, anyway, I don't know which one is worth.

[101:31] Then, some years back, I had a new one built, down in Tacoma, and I went down and towed it back up here.

Mari‑Ann: [101:38] Oh.

John: [101:39] Yeah. That took a while. [laughs]

Gordon: [101:44] So this was a pleasure boat for you.

John: [101:46] Yeah. The name is "The Toy." That started as a joke. I heard it was John's toy, and then it stuck. Then, one time, I saw this boat in Edmonds, and the name was "Cookie." Then the Toy had a little skiff, and that was called "Crumb."

[102:16] I thought, "Jeez, that's a good idea. I'll call my toy 'Let.'"

[102:20] [laughter]

John: [102:21] But they nicked it for me. Anyway, we got off talking about Berit. We had the kids, and of course we went back to Norway numerous times with the kids and stuff.

[102:44] My mother, she remarried to...I think it was an old boyfriend. She was a widow for 40 years before she got married again. They had 10, 14 years, I think, before he died. They visited us a couple of times.

[103:15] Of course, the kids, they grew up...In the early days, we had only radio communication. You had to say "over" every time you were done, and they thought this was really neat. They loved to talk to me then. [laughs]

Gordon: [103:44] Did any of them learn to speak Norwegian?

John: [103:46] They all speak Norwegian. Tina is the best one. She has the most exposure, and she goes back there too and visit my cousins quite there. They lived in London for a while, a couple of whiles, and then she flew over several times and visited, and so on.

[104:13] She speaks, I'd say, pretty good. Vicki, she gets by, and Lisa is OK. They could talk to their grandmother, and that was important. Berit’s mother, here, she spoke half and half all her life, anyway, so they were exposed to her talk.

Mari‑Ann: [104:47] Now, you have several grandchildren also.

John: [104:50] I do, and I've been there for their birth also. They all call me "Besten." That's short for "bestefar." That's what I call my grandfather. [laughs]

[105:17] Then we have two grand dogs, and now I'm negotiating with Berit that we need one. We had several, but one died, and then my son‑in‑laws, they bought one [indecipherable 1:45:34] for me at an auction.

[105:38] I took that home, and she told me in no uncertain terms, "It's either the dog or me." It took me a few days to decide.

[105:49] [laughter]

John: [105:51] So we don't have a dog, but I'm working on it.

[106:00] Then when...well, I guess we're skipping quite a bit there, but when, on Berit’s 70th birthday, and then I was planning a surprise party. All the kids were helping. They're pretty good.

[106:22] I rented the upstairs at Canlis. We got people. I don't know what. I was eight or ten from Norway that came over and stuff, you know? I don't know. I think we were about 50 or 60 or something like that.

[106:40] Anyway, she didn't know anything about it. We had it all planned out how we were going to do it, because everybody was down there. I ordered a limousine to come pick us up. That thing never came. It was getting close. It had a set time that everybody was going to be there and the we were going to walk in.

[107:11] I waited as long as I could, then, "We can't wait any longer," so I drove down, a little fast, maybe. Anyway we got there and we had it arranged with the owner. When we came in he said, "We're overbooked today, so you guys have to have your dinner upstairs today." It was just going to be the two of us.

[107:42] She got a little upset. "Oh, that's OK," I said. "It's fine." So we walked up there with him and opened up and everybody was there. That was full. That was not good.

Gordon: [107:55] You might have [indecipherable 1:47:56] some points.

John: [107:59] Yeah, I guess. [laughs] We're still living in the same house that we bought in '76.

Mari‑Ann: [108:12] And it's a lovely home.

John: [108:16] She refused to move. There's no downgrading to be talked about here, which is all right. But I feel that there's absolutely room for a dog. Lisa has a dog and Tina has a dog. They live next door, so he comes over all the time.

Gordon: [108:43] I think she'd like him once she got to know him.

John: [108:44] I know she does. She would.

Gordon: [108:52] That's great, John. Is there anything else?

[108:55] One thing you didn't mention was you love to dance but did you ever tell your mother?

John: [109:02] No, that was not something that I elaborated on. She was quite religious, you know? And then dancing was not good, yeah?

[109:11] I didn't mention that. Of course, every Saturday, we went down the Norway Center. Of course, in the early days, there was always newcomers coming in and stuff. You'd have to go down and check them out. See who it was. Yeah.

Gordon: [109:27] That's great. Yeah.

John: [109:28] Then we had this club, this Snossen club. That was started in '59. I was not in on the first year. Next couple of years, I was in the service. So I didn't get in on it before in about '62 or so.

[109:51] Anyway, that was the club. A bunch of guys got together. Old friends, you know? And cooked our own food and had a phonograph for music. And put on skits and things like that. And have some movies on the earlier days. That was a lot of fun.

[110:13] Then when the kids got old enough, they got to come. That was a big thing, you know? Now, they have more or less taken over. Out of that, oh, about 40 or 50 couples, only two divorces out of that whole group.

Gordon: [110:34] Is it all Norwegian or Norwegian background?

John: [110:37] Yeah. Some Norwegian relation or descent.

Gordon: [110:43] Got it.

John: [110:44] Yeah.

[110:48] You know, that was...we had a lot of fun there during the years. And every Christmas. We still have it. We had it here the last three or four years, I think. Now, one of my son‑in‑laws, he's cooking.

Mari‑Ann: [111:03] All Norwegian food?

John: [foreign language] or [foreign language] [111:06] or what do I call it? Yeah. A nice dance floor here. Of course, the dancing isn't as active as it was at one time, you know?

Gordon: [111:22] Is that right?

John: [111:22] No.

Mari‑Ann: [111:23] We were better and more active dancers than our children are.

John: [111:28] Didn't have anything else to do.

Mari‑Ann: [111:29] Yeah.

John: [111:31] You know? Growing up, too, you know? We had this heikarring or folk dancing and courses, so we went there to learn that when I came here. The old time dancing, that was right up my alley. So that was that great. That's if you want to pick up a nice woman, you have to be able to take her out to dance.

[112:00] [laughter]

Gordon: [112:04] I'll remember that.

John: [112:05] Yeah. [laughs] Well, I suppose there was something in between here that I have been forgetting, but you can't take everything.

Mari‑Ann: [112:18] You have lived a beautifully active and illustrious life.

John: [112:25] Jeez. Then I forgot I played soccer till I was 69.

Mari‑Ann: [112:30] OK.

John: [112:31] Yeah. Then I had to give it up. No, it's been nice.

Mari‑Ann: [112:40] It's been a good life.

John: [112:40] Yeah. Yeah.

Gordon: [112:44] Yeah, you don't regret coming.

John: [112:46] No. And you know, about two or three months after I came here, I was accepted to [indecipherable 1:52:54] Tekniske Skole. And I know I would have gone there at that time. But that didn't happen, so here I am.

Mari‑Ann: [113:10] It sounds like you got a lot better education here in these years.

John: [113:18] Yeah, but it probably would have been good to take that with also. Yeah, yeah. Book knowledge is 25 percent, and then the other one is practical knowledge, I guess. Or something. I don't know. Depends on who you talk to.

Mari‑Ann: [113:37] Yeah.

Gordon: [113:40] OK.

Mari‑Ann: [113:42] Thank you.

Gordon: [113:42] Thank you.

Mari‑Ann: [113:43] So much for sharing your life story with us. We appreciate it.

John: [113:48] Well, let's see what it looks like when it comes out. Hopefully...

Gordon: [113:53] It'll be good.

John: [113:53] It'll work out.

Mari‑Ann: [113:54] It'll be good. Thank you, John.

John: [113:56] OK.