Turk Carlson. 1990.

Turk Carlson

I lived on 15 Mile Road in Kent City. I have lived here twice. I came for the first time in 1983. And left in 1986. I came back around 1990 and I stayed in Sparta the rest of the time.

I was born in Baumbach, north of Stockholm, Sweden and we came to this country when I was two years old. We lived one year in Chicago and then we came to Sparta.

My parents went to Snow Church but back in those days it was called the Mission. They had Swedish services. Those old Swedes, they could not speak English. We had no regular preachers. We had what they call ‘circuit riders. One was from Muskegon. His name was Anderson. One came down from Cheboygan and he toured around the Swedish communities. His name was Leeman or Lyman or something like that. Some of the families that attended were the Selines, Andersons, Johnsons, Petersons, and we were the Carlson’s. None of them are around anymore. I guess they are all gone now.

My dad’s name was David and my mother’s name was Anna. We have no relatives that live in this area. I have a cousin in Grand Rapids that is the only relative I’ve got.

When I was a kid, we went to Norton School. Then, I went to Sparta High School. I graduated from the eighth grade at the Norton School. My teachers were Ruth Johnson, Dora Miller, Ruth Roth, Lena Darby, Meryl Hodgens, Irene Hout and one lady came in and taught for a little while. Her name was Haybarger.

We used to prank the teachers also. One time we were playing baseball and I got hit in the nose. My nose is still crooked today. We used to play after school hours. I remember one game we played Kent City. We always got beat. Oh boy! We got beat.

The Christmas play was a big deal. We always started out singing Silent Night. Then we followed that with a play. Santa Claus always came, and they’d pass out presents.

I remember the Box Socials. Irene Hout had a box social one time and raised enough money to hire a truck from Sparta and took us all over to the beach at Lake Michigan for our school picnic. Irene married a guy by the name of Woodward. They lived on the old homestead south and west of Fisk Knob. They had a beautiful home there. If she’s still alive today, she’d be nearly ninety years old. She had a sister who was a teacher also. Her name was Maureen and she married Reichelt.

I had five brothers and four sisters. There are three of us left. My only brother is in Meadow Lark in Sparta. He had a stroke. He is paralyzed on one side. My younger sister lives in Grand Rapids. We are the only ones that’s left. We grew up around the Sparta and Kent City area.

We used to walk to Kent City every Saturday night for the band concert. They had a wonderful band in Kent City. They had a band stand also.

We had one black family in Kent City. He was a Mason. His name was Billy Cook. They lived over east of Kent City. Very nice family.

Every time we got a nickel we would walk to Sparta and get an ice cream cone. They had a hotel in Sparta and that is where we’d get them. We would take a short cut across the field to get there.

I will be 82 in September. I was born in 1908. I can’t remember the 1915 tornado, but I heard a lot about it and I was only 7 years old. I remember the stories. There were two little girls that got killed. One of them was picked up and it carried her ½ mile. I remember the winter of 1936. I remember south of our place there was a deep hill and that it snowed over completely level. There was about ten feet of snow in there. It was a long time before that thawed out. They always kept 15 Mile Road open. In some places, there was only a one-way road through, but we were always able to get to town. Now, the people north of us had to take a bobsled and a horse and haul their milk up to the corner for the milkman. The Kent County Road Commission did the best they could to keep the roads open. They did not have the equipment back then that they do now.

When I was growing up, we had some pretty good neighbors. Right across the road there was an old gentleman from Canada by the name of Wesley Day. South of us there were two Phelps families and to the east of us was the Bradfords. You probably heard of them. They lived in that big brick house.

Our old family house was burned, and they built a beautiful home on that place. It was on the southeast corner of 15 Mile Road and Phelps. My folks lived there then I had the place. It wasn’t worth fixing by the time they got it so they burned it and rebuilt it.

I remember a black family that lived on Peach Ridge south of 15 Mile Road. Their name was Vond. Billy and John Vond. Those kids went to Kent City. The one daughter went to Kent City. She went to a little country school south of there through the eighth grade. Then she went to Kent City High School. Oh, they were a fine family. I remember them well.

For entertainment, we would go to Kent City to see the band play. Every Sunday afternoon we would go out to Camp Lake to see the baseball game. We would ride our bicycles over there and then we would go fishing down in Ball Creek pretty near every day. Kent City had a wonderful ball team. It was a semi-professional ball team. They were not school kids. They were all older men. They would play on the south side of the lake. They used to have a ball field right out there. It is all built up now.

One of the guys on the team was a barber from Kent City. His name was Harley Rice. He had two sons. There was Dwayne and Dwight Rice. There was Clifford Garner. He was the pitcher. There was Harry Kelley. He played in the outfield. I remember the Rice family. I remember Lana Rice. She was still here when I left. She was gone when I came back.

I remember the businesses in Kent City. Saur’s had the department store. Montgomery had the meat market and that was where the laundry mat is now. Larry Saur had the Chevy agency. Harry Saur had a hardware store.

We grew string beans, peas, sweet corn and lima beans and took them to the Canning Factory in town. I remember when they got really busy and needed help they would blow the whistle at the factory and people would show up to work. They had so many blasts for men and so many blasts for women.

There was a boarding house across from the factory and a lot of the workers also stayed up town at the hotel. The Canning Factory owned the boarding house and hired people to run it. I remember the Superintendent of the Canning Factory. His name was Louie Poczik. He was Superintendent for years.

I remember the stagecoach line that used to run through Kent City. The fellow that had a hardware store in Sparta by the name of Howard Finkler lived in Lisbon on the stagecoach line. When he was a kid, one of them stagecoaches was stored in his barn. His barn burned down. That was the end of that one.

I farmed until my folks died. Then I went to work down in Sparta at Extensole Corporation. I was there for eleven years. Then I retired. I have never been married and never had kids.

I remember when they put M-37 through the old Ball Creek Avenue. That was around 1922. They came as far north as Bradford’s old brick house. From there they wanted to go across the field (where it goes now) and the farmers got all up in arms. They got together and took them to court. The road got held up for a year until they settled it.

I remember the TS&M Railroad. It crossed through the north outskirts of Sparta. You can still see the grade there where it went. You know there’s a lunchroom on Sparta Avenue on the north end of town. The train crossed just north of there going east and west.

I remember the Swedish Mission (Snow Church) had a picnic every year. Once it was at Camp Lake, once at Long Lake and once in that little maple grove on Tyrone just before 17 Mile Road on the east side. They used to go to one another’s homes and have a service now and then.

I don’t remember hearing about them moving bodies to Chubbuck Cemetery from the old hotel land on the corner of 17 Mile Road and Main Street. But I do remember a cemetery being on the south west corner of Main Street in Sparta across from the bank. They moved their bodies over to Greenwood Cemetery. They built a big department store there to begin with. That burned down. I do not know what is there now.

Growing up, my homestead was three miles from Sparta and three miles from Kent City. Most of the time we went to Sparta.

We had an old apple orchard on our farm, but we didn’t raise them commercially. It was just for our own use.

The people that previously owned our house were named Taylor. But it stood vacant for quite a few years before we got it. That house was about 125 years old at the time they burned it up.

When I was young, I remember farmers spraying their trees with a barrel pump and I had to pump the handle and my dad would spray the trees.

When we had to go to the doctor we would go to Sparta or Kent City. In Kent City, there was a Doctor Shorts and in Sparta, Doctor Bollander. Doctor Short's office was right across the street from Longcore’s Barber Shop.

We got electric in 1930 on the farm where I lived. But I remember going to Sparta in a horse and buggy in 1914 and they had lights there. I do not know when electricity came to Sparta. It must have been quite early. I remember when we first got it at home. It was quite a novelty. We were tickled to get it. I remember our first radio. One tube and headphones. You’d be surprised. We could pick up Pittsburgh. Omaha, Nebraska came in clear. Chicago. It worked off a six-volt dry cell.

It must have been about 1921 or 1922 when we got our first telephone. My oldest sister, when she started teaching at school she put the telephone in. She taught in the country schools. The first school was Noble School. Then she taught at Myers School east of Sparta. Then she taught at a school way down on Leonard Street way out in the country. That was the last school she taught at.

Now, Noble, he was a veterinarian. They named the school after him. They built the school on his property. I think he was still alive when I was a kid, but I didn’t know him.

I remember a Civil War veteran by the name of George Norton. He lived on Phelps. I was never in the service.

There was a gravel pit just south of us about a mile and there was one just north of Bradfords. It’s all built up with houses now.

There was a temporary sawmill that sawed lumber when they were building their houses around there. That is the only one that I know of that was really close. There was a sawmill on Fruit Ridge north of Nyblad’s storage. A fellow by the name of Holmgren ran it. He had a sawmill there. I never saw it, but I was told about it. It was operated with a steam engine.

We found a lot of Indian artifacts on our farm. We found a lot of arrowheads. You would usually find them in the field right after a rain. If you had a field all dragged up and you get a rain, then they would show up. My brother found two hatchets. They were about that long (holding his hands up to show about eight inches), about that wide (showing about four inches) and pointed.

We had a neighbor that used to put up ice and every time we wanted ice cream we’d go down and get a block of ice. His name was John Carlson but he was no relation. I heard they had a big icehouse on Half Moon Lake right there by the railroad track. They’d load up ice there and take it into Grand Rapids.

The interview ended here.