Gustaf Lind and Laura Caffey

00:03 My name is Laura Kathy. I'm 61 years old and today is March 4th 2017 in Mobile, Alabama, and I'm here with my dad to record on storycorps.

00:18 I'm good friend.

00:25 Age is 87 years old.

00:29 Today's date is March 4th, 2017, and we located in Mobile Alabama at the present time.

00:38 Hand

00:40 A relationship is my daughter.

00:44 It's going to last a bunch of questions. Should I guess?

00:48 I will get started the daddy. I know that our family was from Sweden that your dad came over on a boat from Sweden when he was young and a lot of the Swedish immigrants actually settled in the midwest, but not your family. So tell us about that.

01:15 Grandpa Lin Augusta friend

01:19 He would have Captain and US Norwegian Navy.

01:24 Norway decided to have a civil war

01:28 Between the country and they divided the country from Norway to Sweden. So I have Levis Norway now and I have a sweet but he was one of these captains that did not want to fight against his own people.

01:43 So he

01:45 Decided to leave Norway.

01:48 Pursue other lamp to live in being a captain of a sailing vessel. He ended up in Mobile Alabama on a for master mark.

02:01 There a four-masted bark bark

02:11 Premier Home

02:14 He got out and look for some Lana found some in Saraland, Alabama and there he decided to build a house on some land ahead boss.

02:27 Which is on Norton Avenue and

02:32 He was

02:35 Working there and got the house bill what have you but he was still selling so it took him a few years from 1884 to 1901 before he can move his family over here. So he moved his family over here in 1901.

02:56 And my dad was nothing but a baby.

03:00 And

03:03 It was seven of them that come.

03:07 And they said one cereal and we brought a fellow named proof them with him.

03:15 And that was his first mate on the ship or something. They were they were friends anyway.

03:24 He all he was at Sea later on.

03:31 They had a discussion between him too and I move my grandmother and Mister Bruce them and they got married and moved next door divorce town.

03:43 So even this early is the 19 hundreds there was divorce happening.

03:52 The 1930

03:55 I was born to Gladys Glenn and

04:01 Gustav Lynn singer

04:07 How old is living in place where they didn't have it by white family living out there?

04:13 And the white families were the swans the Evans.

04:22 The Smiths

04:25 Adobe's

04:28 Enough

04:32 Of course, my grandmother was living there too. And she moved across the road to the roof to my house and move in over there after they got remarried.

04:49 I guess from metal Roman Atwood about the basic how they got here.

04:56 Hello, my mother was born in Mississippi and her grandmother.

05:02 My grandmother was a Cherokee Indian.

05:10 Her dad was a German from Germany had it migrated over here and they working.

05:20 Tangerine and orange tree

05:24 At that time as they were farming they were the farmers and they did.

05:33 But we had a cold spell to come through at one time and wiped all the orange Citrus crops out.

05:41 So then I had to look for other work today.

05:45 My grandfather he ended up working for Alabama product at a carpenter.

05:52 And of course, my dad was still on the ship he was date on that. He would have picked out more and on one.

06:00 I have a 24 years old is Daddy carrying back to see with him as a cabin more. So he he spent the rest of his life as a Merchant Marine to catch up or she had to quit.

06:17 During the war you got it.

06:21 The

06:24 German Saw Three Ships out from under him and one of them was about 40 miles south of Mobile Bay.

06:34 So was that World War 1 or World War II?

06:44 Hello.

06:45 Anyhow what, we growing up our look at 4, so I can remember that was about 7 white families living in Saraland.

06:57 There was a swan.

07:00 Head over there later.

07:05 But you had some real close friends in the African-American Community depression what you all went through?

07:20 Which started with Hoover in 1930?

07:23 And ended up with Roosevelt on 33 and he stayed there till 4 to 6, I think.

07:32 Hunan

07:34 That's one of my bro. We got living this Airline we didn't help.

07:40 I didn't know we didn't have no money. Only way we got by was with a Farmland. We had a 20-acre garden and they had about enough seed and fertilizer and then he had two blocks to

08:00 Do the work on a garden?

08:07 Are we will ever family had a share so they were sharecroppers who was sharecroppers and if you had nine families in you, I mean nine members in the Affairs got nice if you had to get back to so that was a fair way to do it.

08:26 Blue baby Adams was one of them.

08:30 Blacks it was over already.

08:34 Rest of the people that work in the farm and you saw that they got the food that they need it and all that stuff.

08:42 How do you ended up raising me just about it?

08:47 You taught me how to fish and hunt?

08:50 How to

08:52 Do the things that most people don't do?

08:55 He also

08:58 Took care of me when I was young.

09:01 And what are you got to pay your old auto care of him? He was a great man.

09:17 Lots of things but like I say we started out very poor and we survived the depression.

09:27 And Roosevelt, and things didn't get better until World War II and World War. I started picking up but meantime hollingworth and Whitney.

09:41 Amscot wish become Scott Paper Company

09:45 What format 1934 antlers back in operation in 1938 International started in 1930 and went on until?

10:03 Route 36 and started I wonder if those two meals started up they were paper mills in this area like you're my mood.

10:14 Holland weather wouldn't made unbreaks paper

10:18 Shell container stuff that for the war effort. They had all kinds of papers. They made a made a few.

10:28 Vapors airport used to put stationary and IBM cards and all that type of work email about right after they were they had a big finishing room there where they finish the paper.

10:45 It was a good place to work and I'll work out for 40 years. I know you ended up with a job there as a maintenance electrician when I was hired in a lab technician.

11:01 No one that day is going to need electrician in it and a couple of years, but they didn't you didn't buy but one man for one job.

11:11 How was all in working with you?

11:13 What are they did business?

11:16 So whenever at job come over and then I was transferred from the lab to the liquid form.

11:23 Where I have to go to start off with and reason I got there was because

11:30 During the time.

11:33 I was in service.

11:36 I worked in radar.

11:39 Who's established units? How long are you so cool, son West Coast set them up and got them function them on, or what was going on or near Pacific. They had some of it was outdated and had to be upgraded hell is that the Korean war was during the Korean War remember from 1950 to 1953. I was just charged and then had to 70 years in the reserve.

12:16 After that, I was discharged from a reserved two year before War started and

12:28 Vietnam veteran all

12:35 How happened miss that by 2 years by that time already had a story have a family a Laura and I got married and single, Massachusetts.

12:47 She was 19 years old when I was 22.

12:52 That's all we got retired from service.

12:56 We move back to Saraland and that was a foreign country for her being from Boston, Massachusetts. And Alabama was quite a challenge.

13:12 Call we lived in the woods and there was nobody living around us.

13:18 I had told her she had to use Outhouse and she didn't believe it.

13:23 Hydro or she had told border from a creek and get a bath and a great cuz you didn't believe that either but it all comes too fast.

13:31 Help me after we was there for a while to start rebuilding the house.

13:37 In 1955. I started building a house to live in and we still live in the house today.

13:45 Play Shaw Brickhouse McClintock on from Fairhope, Alabama.

13:52 Had a Brickyard over there. I think I still have it. I'm not positive and you built your whole house yourself. Didn't you give me suggestions on how to do things sometimes blue baby Adams. I'll come down and let you know how he needed to do something.

14:16 Set a nickname blue baby or that his name whatever but he was so blue.

14:28 Hey was one of the finest people I've ever known.

14:36 Although I want to just backtrack just a minute daddy. Cuz I know that when you were little things weren't always good at home and you off and went you would Escape some of

14:48 He would Escape by going down the river and and living with a family for a couple of hours a week or so, and I can tell us a little bit more about that experience. How old were you when that would happen in Georgia where all the quiet John?

15:06 My dad was okay to come in and when you go for the boat in long as he wouldn't didn't get into drinking he was good, but once he got started drinking he went well.

15:19 And everything went wild with it everything went upside. I hate use it.

15:33 And I still got scars from it.

15:37 But that's neither here or there but that was part of the thing. But when I started I left my girl back in double ender and we went down to creep. See you lived on by you Sarah. That was your home or where you

16:00 Shut down Emerson kitchen rapper and fisherman somebody he was sharp in the wood. He was a woman.

16:12 How I knew he had a wife.

16:15 Rear with him and he has three daughters are real and that he's raising.

16:23 And then I Won song Finally.

16:26 Which is my age now, he's not bad at all. But even my

16:31 Hell no.

16:33 However time something would happen. I just leave and go to a stay with them.

16:40 Until everything finally get cleared over a week or two or more and I might come back on.

16:49 I feel sorry for

16:52 The girls going to beat them just like he beat up.

16:58 And they all ended up with different problem from it over there by Sue.

17:08 And yet so you felt bad at times when you had to leave your your younger sisters and brothers. Say it to save yourself. Yeah, that's behind a you've made a good life for yourself since then. I didn't have any education.

17:31 Young I was tongue-tied.

17:37 We had accident the house and had to get a surgeon out their doctor North from Prichard to come out there to take care someone up some of us and after that was over with he want to know what was wrong with my reason I couldn't talk.

17:58 And

18:00 My mother told him he was born that way.

18:03 So he looked in my mouth and he said will it takes a simple thing to take care of it?

18:10 So he operated on my mouth that the same day out there in the woods and then I started to learn how to talk. I never did learn to spell yet. I was still trying but I still hadn't learned, but I had a good lie.

18:33 I got the first time I ever left Sarah.

18:38 He put me on Friday and we want to Montgomery got inducted and then I want to Fort Jackson South of South Carolina, and it's been 12 weeks there and then they move me to Rosanna and ass wants which was okay with me and eight weeks of training and then want to Fort Bliss, Texas.

19:09 And did some desert raining out there in New Mexico and Austin, Texas different and then we'll ship to Massachusetts.

19:18 For the radar unit deal how I got into.

19:24 And until that time, I never knew that everything existed outside of Saraland and

19:34 How is a to Port my life but?

19:38 I knew about I knew it like the back of my hand. I've had to go down and several times and get people out of it over the years but

19:51 So it was the service daddy that really opened up your life in a lot of ways because she saw a different parts of the world that you hadn't seen before.

20:04 I think that was the best thing that ever happened to young man.

20:09 What that service time in the service?

20:13 They told me a lot they told me there was other things in this world besides working at a service station cuz I started working at a service station when I was 8 years old Ralph and Ralph are moved to Saraland 1938 and he cared to mail you had a little service station had them. Set up in the air and you care in the mail to 8 Mile and what a view.

20:45 Hello.

20:47 He decided he needed a job. So he come out and brought me up at 7 station to work and I'll work through there till 1945 or 46. I got on a boat with no man. I want her.

21:02 South America on a banana boat

21:07 And that was experience of my life. I don't think I've heard this story.

21:16 A wiper on that boat and it was a wooden hull boat. The name of its is a quick way and it was 360 ft long steel bulkheads and whenever

21:34 We got into Trinidad that we went to the Amazon pickup.

21:41 Banana, is there then we went to Trinidad to full of life or low. What was that? We had a hurricane comment about to see 3536 what I wash in that boat from one end to the other and it was twisting them napping and I said if we ever get out of this alive that I would get off at for when we get New Orleans and when I got to New Orleans, I got off at boat.

22:15 Little man say don't I didn't think nothing about it, but I did.

22:20 It was scary for me to the mansion.

22:30 It was on the boat wasn't he was chief engineer on a boat $4 just to help her the deckhand. I had a bigger engine or two of them. I probably won't the cylinders were three and a half foot across them and they called him open Play cylinders. So every time at

22:58 Brooklyn come down. You gotta grab a squab all that piston all the way around at one stroke, and it was slow training. So if you had enough time to go through all 8 cylinders that you had to take care of only six hours at a time.

23:31 It was

23:33 Work work experience. I want to jump back to the to the

23:42 Job working at Valero gas station for a minute because I know it one time his fears had you running moonshine. You didn't even know it.

23:54 He would have I had an old truck I bought from when I was 16 years old.

24:00 And I want to

24:05 Bruxie over there in bulk sugar

24:10 I carried it up to one of his friends place a business in Turnersville.

24:17 Life isn't that barn and then had to go back and get a truckload of rain, and I also carry it up there.

24:26 Saraland was known for its bootleg that was probably 25 pills and Sarah Lynn that I knew about and reform.

24:39 I could call her name since most of them, but I don't know if that would be a proper thing to do or not. So I'll just get the names of them.

24:51 But it was

24:53 Acquire growing up process

24:56 We also add cereal and want to end up again. It wasn't nothing but night clubs from mobile. There was a bridge that wouldn't have Bridge across chickasabogue Creek.

25:10 They had a ferry across show to start off with in 1930 that started building on a two-lane road through the school.

25:20 Before and you want by train know if he can go up there and then you got on a framework to mobile driving a car across a creek cuz you had to get a ride from logs and all that stuff to get to the creek and too many people go with that way.

25:42 But they finally fell from bridge across and filter Gravel Road started in 1932, which I was young and I didn't know when they got to start over. That's what I was told. They finally got it locked up in 19 whenever the war started 1941 they come in blocked off at Highway. Well, that's cuz I were using the shipyard in Chickasaw and right or up and feel that in.

26:16 The shipyard in Chickasaw was boat building for World War were they?

26:27 And it shipped that I had never tortoise Shipyard down whenever Second World War.

26:38 I know they were turned out or ship a week down there.

26:44 Corvette

26:47 Most Alabama dry docks here was working.

26:51 Had it.

26:53 And that's another thing too. I got it worked at Alabama product for a year. Not quite a year cuz outside Machinist.

27:04 Helper

27:06 And that meant that you had to go down into shelf like all the insulation off of it so they can get to the boers and condensers and all that stuff that they were working on.

27:18 That didn't go too good with me because they let you work for three days and they lay off for a week and then call you back when they had another job, So you need more regular work or not working.

27:38 Pierce's grocery store

27:41 How are we going to make this as much money there? I went closer to home and old man wasn't he was on the ship so he I was safe while he was gone.

27:56 I don't know. It was a good life. I want to skip forward just a little bit Danny if you will. I want to you been married if you talked about me and Mama and getting married and you have to have been married 64 years now. So I wanted to ask what kind of advice you might give to young people getting married these days about how to stay married for 64 years if not too hard.

28:24 The first race you got to love one another and a second place. You got to remember that. There's two sides to every story.

28:36 Her side your side and then you find the middle ground to settle it all by and that works pretty well for me. It would probably everybody else have a Talk Amongst yourselves to find that out.

28:53 But nowadays the only thing I do is it I don't like it and I'll get up and then something I'll go my way. I'll just get a divorce.

29:02 And I can embarrass you didn't think about no divorce. No till death do us part.

29:12 That's why I won't mind to go.

29:16 After we started building a house in 55, it wasn't long that you come along.

29:24 And then from that point on every two years we had another baby coming on.

29:32 It took a while ago started but won't got it started it kept coming and then you ended up with me and my three sisters and my brother.

29:44 I wish I don't know. I have a dog.

29:49 And now you have

29:52 Grandchildren

29:57 Three granddaughters

30:00 The younger Sur 13 years old, I think.

30:05 The oldest 44 he'll be in June.

30:15 Hungry, we had him at the house for your regular and I enjoy what I do. He's a big boy now. He's a grown man.

30:31 He likes to hunt he likes to fish.

30:34 He's a captain on a tugboat. But all the rest of them is doing good things, too.

30:45 Also got him a job working.

30:50 He has a man going with him and other two brothers.

30:55 And they are good.

31:00 I appreciate them.

31:03 They were day. I just don't get to see him as much as I would like to write.

31:08 Hernan

31:10 Vicis kid

31:13 The other than Google One, Mississippi

31:18 I hate studying to be a PA.

31:21 Greer's just started at Auburn

31:28 Mary Catherine, I don't know what she's going to do is your baby has her baby granddaughter.

31:38 I got them granddaughter and now I've got to

31:45 Go look drawers. That was married and family John choker.

31:53 Isaac Susanna his wife Savannah and then Meg cousins.

32:01 I want to I know we don't have a lot of time left, but I want to just do one thing that I wanted to talk about one last kind of thing is always when we were growing up going mullet fishing.

32:14 Was such a great fun thing for our family and you would take us out.

32:19 The set the net but you have one favorite story that you like to tell about taking three New York young ladies mullet fishing one day and I love for you to tell that story before we end where is down at fishing and Ron my nephew come from Boston and he brought these three young ladies with a New York City and my understanding was that we all Shackled when they got here because they were coming for three days and they brought three suitcases that they had to pay over baggage fees for at the airport. So they didn't really know much about what it was like in lower, Alabama.

33:19 So we did.

33:23 We went out and set the net hard few mullet here. And then we moved on up and we had some crab traps in the rules clue as I pulled in that school the boat and the grass is that close to park and up single full of mullet.

33:41 Has going at a motor story jumping one of them jumped up and hit when he's young lady is right in her bathing suit what down and our bar. He jumped up this message goes off.

34:03 I just live right on that and I think we're coming out of that business is probably scared. Everybody is the funniest thing I've ever seen.

34:25 So we're still laugh about that every once in a while and you are always been an out big Outdoorsman just order to as we're headed. Tell me one of those.

34:39 One of your favorite sort of experiences you've had in the outdoors. We're what forward was whenever y'all was little and I've never been anywhere until I got nervous. We decided to start traveling across the United States.

34:56 We had went to the Grand Am.

35:01 And well, we went to California and then we'll come back and went into four corners and saw the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas and places that we hadn't seen what

35:16 Petrified Forest from so it put to the Grand Canyon was outstanding parkour drove a hundred it 104u00b0 when we left we drove 164 miles and at night the temperature turn down to 16 degrees and we all like to froze remember that night. We were fine and everything we had in that truck tow it warm up with it was a cold night. That was a most beautiful sight we ever seen we were sold a deer up there. We saw the canyon and thank a couple of us walk down there to the game.

35:59 Aurora NY, right. Did you think I remember walking down into we did it with Jenny, but then he'll help us up. But we had we have seen for the 48 states in the United States by the time I got to a point I couldn't travel no more night. So I've enjoyed every one of them and one of your trips was a six-week trip to Alaska.

36:43 And is one of the best trips I ever had one of them retired. I was 67 and Kimber 68 years old and I'll only a few years ago now.

37:09 I'm still kicking around a little bit.

37:13 Anything else you need a real? I think we're about to the end of our time. Is there any one last thing and you might want to say

37:23 I had a great life.

37:26 How Bantu

37:28 I have a dozen or more presidents of the United States. Yeah, I lived in a time when

37:37 I got to see some of the most remarkable things to happen to the United States the Wright brothers build their first aircraft and Pruitt.

37:48 Electricity was invented and started going out.

37:54 Then they come up and feel closed role-playing about that a square that you can look into and it was a television they call it.

38:05 They're still popular.

38:08 There's all kinds of things that happened in my lifetime that will never happen and nobody else's.

38:15 Where you at? Some of the greatest inventions come on the internet.

38:24 Computer systems you name it? It's out there and all of it was done in my lifetime and not somebody else's and those people will never get to know what really took place. We went through a War and World War II and survived it and at the end of World War I got her powers from being drafted into the service.

38:53 But they had end of the war 1945 so they didn't need anybody else that he cut me off on me up, but I talked off the next go-round.

39:08 This American Life

39:11 Didn't have anything start out with don't have too much now, but I got plenty to eat.

39:18 Had enough to it. I got a beautiful family and I've enjoyed every bit of it in my lifetime.

39:26 How about 14 Grand young and three granddaughters and my three daughters? It's come in through marriage.

39:37 So we have a good solid family going now, and I hope it stays that way.

39:44 Yeah, me too Dad.

39:47 Anybody else? Thanks for sharing.