{"id":1969,"date":"2021-09-08T10:54:15","date_gmt":"2021-09-08T15:54:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/?p=1969"},"modified":"2021-09-08T10:54:15","modified_gmt":"2021-09-08T15:54:15","slug":"its-a-swede","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/?p=1969","title":{"rendered":"It’s a Swede*"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>When I was a teenager, before I could drive, I ran errands on Saturdays for a shut-in just a few houses up the street from us.\u00a0 Swede Chamberlain [his first name was Lester; Swede was a nickname] was a tall, large, elderly man.\u00a0 His house must have been one of the best-looking houses in Vail at one time, maybe 100 years ago.\u00a0 It was located on a corner lot; it had a nice porch, and large maple trees accented the perimeter, giving him a lot of shade in the summer.<\/p>\n

Swede sold greeting cards out of his house.\u00a0 The only entrance he had available was the large step up into the kitchen.\u00a0 \u201cCome on in,\u201d he would yell to visitors\/customers after knocking.\u00a0 He would be sitting in his rocking chair in the room next to the kitchen, which may have been a dining room at one point, smoking his pipe.\u00a0 He wore the same sweater every time I saw him.\u00a0 The converted dining room had three walls of greeting cards in wooden display boxes lined up according to birthday, anniversary, sympathy, etc.\u00a0 He sat in his chair looking out a window that overlooked the intersection where the Nelsons drove through without looking for kids sledding<\/a>. He also had a very good view of the entire southeastern part of Vail, including our house.<\/p>\n

Prince Albert pipe tobacco stinks.\u00a0 But Swede lit his pipe and didn\u2019t care if you liked it or not.\u00a0 It may not have been a very good business decision, but then, I think the Ryan family was his only customer.\u00a0 Mom would say, \u201csomeone go up to Swede\u2019s and get a card for me.\u201d\u00a0 That person was me.\u00a0 Perhaps Kathleen did a time or two.\u00a0 We were the only ones who knew Swede on a first-name basis.<\/p>\n

I inherited the job of getting groceries for Swede from my sister, Kathleen.\u00a0 It would have been Carol\u2019s turn, but Swede freaked her out.\u00a0 The grocery list always had a quart of milk, a loaf of bread, a tin of Prince Albert pipe tobacco, and a package of either Juicy Fruit or Double Mint gum.\u00a0 Occasionally, he would include a box of stick matches. \u00a0\u00a0I can\u2019t remember other items he may have purchased outside of some lunch meat or similar protein but being a kid with a huge appetite and an over-functioning metabolism, I often wondered how he survived.\u00a0 As I mentioned, he was a large man.\u00a0 He was over six feet tall and must have weighed close to 250 pounds.\u00a0 When he did walk, I could see that his legs were probably swollen to more than twice the usual size.<\/p>\n

Kathleen and I always had to go to Eddie\u2019s E & J Market and give the list to Eddie.\u00a0 He would compile the merchandise and take the ten-dollar bill, hand us the change and off we would go.\u00a0 Upon bringing the groceries into Swede\u2019s house, he would pay us thirty-five cents and a package of gum \u2013 the one in the bag of groceries.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure it was more than the price of one of the cards he sold.\u00a0 And actually, he had some very good cards.\u00a0 I\u2019m guessing they cost a dime or quarter during that era.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know much about Swede.\u00a0 I have no idea if he ever had a real job, a wife, a family, or a business.\u00a0 Once a month, an ambulatory limousine would come from Sioux City with a person or two already in the car and pick up Swede to take him to Iowa City.\u00a0 Swede was enrolled in the State Papers Program<\/a> at the University of Iowa.\u00a0 The program was a service provided by the U of I in which indigent persons across Iowa were admitted for a day to receive compassionate care and diagnoses for ailments not addressed by small town doctors, or unrealistic for certain people to pay. \u00a0The program offered patients for med students training to become doctors. \u00a0The limo would drop Swede off at the sidewalk of the intersection late in the day after it picked him up.\u00a0 I watched him walk up the steep sidewalk with his cane several times.\u00a0 It was painful to watch.<\/p>\n

I remember the Legislature preparing for debate on the matter of the State Papers Program.\u00a0 Although it wasn\u2019t terminated through the Iowa legislative process, it was discontinued, eventually.<\/p>\n

Swede died in 1988 at the age of 90 and is buried at the Vail Cemetery.\u00a0 His house was razed, and the new owner built a fallout shelter in its place.\u00a0 That\u2019s another story for another time.<\/p>\n

*\u00a0 “It’s a Hallmark”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was a teenager, before I could drive, I ran errands on Saturdays for a shut-in just a few houses up the street from us.\u00a0 Swede Chamberlain [his first name was Lester; Swede was a nickname] was a tall, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[889,885,888,887,886,884,836],"class_list":["post-1969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-double-mint","tag-e-j-market","tag-juicy-fruit","tag-prince-albert-pipe-tobacco","tag-state-papers-program","tag-swede-chamberlain","tag-vail-community-swimming-pool-assn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1969"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1970,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1969\/revisions\/1970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}