Woody Andersson

Victor

All four of my grandparents were immigrants from Sweden.  They had a strong Scandinavian sing-song accent, but they all swiftly became fluent in English.  Grandfather Victor Anderson (my father's father) was a rather gruff, but generous man with a good sense of humor, who would visit from his home in Joliet, Illinois several times a year.  At one point, he had owned a grocery store and my Dad Carl delivered groceries from a pickup truck for him.  Business was not always profitable (fallout from the Depression?) and later on, he sold the store and became a butcher.  A letter sent to him from Sweden in 1949 addressed him by his formal title of "Charkuterihandlanden (Butcher Shop Proprietor) Herr Viktor Andersson".

 As a community leader, he was a member of both the Elks and the Masons, I believe. Whenever he drove up from Joliet to visit us in Chicago, he would often provide a large ham or a generous pot roast for Mom to bake. After our big meal, he liked to go to the local ice cream store for dessert.  Back then in the 1950's, refrigerators had very small freezer sections, so no matter how many people were expected for dinner, a pint of ice cream was considered enough. The wrapper would be removed and the brick would be sliced into equal-width rectangles, one per person.

 He would usually give each of us kids first a dime, later a whole quarter during each visit, which made him a very popular visitor! He was deceptively smart, a fact that I discovered when I challenged him to a game of chess at an early age (I quickly lost!).  He bought a new Studebaker in the early 1950's which we kids called the forward-backward car due to its similar tapered shape in both the front and rear.

Grandpa lived upstairs with Uncle Charlie in a 2-story house on Dover Street in Joliet. Regrettably, I never heard either one of them speak a word of Swedish. My Aunt Gen and Uncle Stan lived on the ground floor. One feature of that house that fascinated me was a cistern in the basement.  When the rain flowed down from the gutters into the downspout, a special valve could direct it into the large (perhaps 10 by 10 by 8 feet) holding tank.  I have no idea how they drew water out of the cistern, but it was full every time I checked it out.

Grandmother Jenny Anderson  (my father's mother) was a kindly, but frail old lady, who always wore a very formal dress with some sort of a doily-like embroidery on the top. I was a young boy when she died of cancer.  In fact, one of the few memories I have of her was that she had some sort of electrical device meant to arrest or cure her cancer, but apparently, it was in vain. She was a good-hearted person, and was the only adult that I can recall, who actually asked me for a preference of a birthday present. When I immediately thought of a bicycle, she politely turned it down as too expensive. My second choice was for a wind-up mechanical toy piano that featured little characters from the L'il Abner cartoon comic strip that would bounce up and down, and play the piano or some other instrument.  At the time. I enjoyed that toy immensely, and inevitably, it soon broke down and several pieces fell off.  Mother saved it for many years, but it finally disappeared. If I had been prescient enough to hang onto it, that toy is now considered to be a highly prized collector's item on EBay.

Don Johnson

Victor Anderson was a Swedish immigrant who came to America in the late 1800’s.

Victor has a fairly tall man. He always wore suspenders. I believe it was fairly common attire in those days. I recall that Victor was a kind and thoughtful man who loved his children and grandchildren.

Victor spent almost all of his adult life in Joliet, Illinois. Not much is known about his education and where he attended school.

Victor entered the grocery business in his early adulthood with at least one 
or maybe two of his brothers. I believe they were Uncle Andy and Uncle Pete. Years later, after the grocery store was sold, Victor went to work at Shiners meat market in downtown Joliet. He became one of the best meat cutters at the market.  After he retired from the market, the owner would call Victor back to work on a part time basis at least in part due to the fact he was so talented and efficient.

Victor sometimes made Swedish potato sausage in the basement of his home on Dover. I was told his sausage was one of the best.

 Victor and Charlie (an older brother) both lived upstairs on Dover Street in Joliet from the early 1900’s (?) to early1950’s.  Gen, Stan, Tom and Don lived downstairs. In June of 1953, the Johnson’s moved to the west side of Joliet with Victor. In early October of that year, Victor became ill and passed away. He died of a coronary occlusion

Victor loved to play cards with his brothers and others. He particularly liked Peonicle and I remember him playing for hours on end.

Victor also loved to travel. In 1923 or 1924 Victor, Jenny, Carl and Gen embarked on a cross-country trip in their Model T Ford. The car had no windows so it must have been very interesting when it rained. They traveled all the way to California and back.