Bold Spirit - Linda Hunt [59]
Headlines in the Brooklyn Standard Union showed that citizens here faced the same threat that Helga did—losing their home to foreclosure. Even when the amount of taxes owed was small, she saw that the government and banks acted with impunity toward delinquent taxpayers. A front-page article on January 14 told of 101 parcels of lands and homes being auctioned off in six wards because the owners could not pay their 1894 taxes. Citizens owing the city $164 on a property valued at $5000 lost it all to someone bidding $3200. A lot valued at $300 was sold off for $250 although the woman owed only $14.58. City claims of delinquency as low as $12 were enough to justify the sales.5 Learning of these heartless stories while living in limbo in New York, Helga knew that the next letter from Ole could announce that their foreclosure date was imminent. Helga and Clara earned their own living during the winter and spring of 1897. But no matter how hard they worked, they were unable to earn enough money to return. They felt trapped by economics, thousands of miles away from their family.
Back on the farm in Mica Creek, Ole faced a far greater heartbreak than the threat of losing their land.6 In early April, their fifteen-year-old daughter, Bertha, came down with a sore throat. This news made parents nervous, especially after the epidemic of diphtheria in Spokane the summer before. Most victims lived in Spokane where Bertha had worked for a few months as a domestic to help earn money for the family.7 The previous fall, their eldest son, seventeen-year-old Olaf, contracted diphtheria when he worked in Spokane. He spent time in a sanatorium outside the city to heal, and like many older children and adults, he recovered. Then he returned to their Mica Creek home.8
At moments like this, Ole wanted Helga home more than ever. The worrisome seven months had now stretched into a year. Helga’s letters gave no indication of when she could afford two train tickets. Nor did he have any extra funds to send them. He barely earned enough for basic expenses to feed and clothe a growing family of seven children. Even now, he needed help from the older children who worked in the city of Spokane. When he rode the horse into Rockford or saw his neighbors, they no longer asked much about Helga because it was such an embarrassment. He had no answers to explain her Pollyanna belief in a mysterious, but obviously unworthy, sponsor. If the sponsor refused to give her the $10,000, would not a decent human being at least loan her the money to come back home to her family? Earning her way across America had proved that she could work. If she did not have the expenses of rent and food in New York, she would be able to pay back a loan.
Ole knew the fear Helga harbored for diphtheria after the scare in Minnesota where they saw so many children die. After the Minnesota County Health Department held meetings and sent pamphlets home on how to best keep the contagion from spreading in a family, parents usually decided on a plan of action. If a child came down with diphtheria, the mother generally would be the nurse caretaker, which meant a father’s task involved taking care of the other children in an outbuilding, keeping them warm and fed. This way the primary caretaker would not inadvertently pass the disease to the other children.
When the doctor confirmed Bertha’s diphtheria diagnosis, Ole ordered the other children to stay in an outside shed. “We were so cold,” recalled Ida.9 He and their oldest son, Olaf, tried to take care of Bertha and the other children as best they could. Each day Bertha grew worse and as her throat was swelling, she lay prostrate on her bed, hardly responding to her father’s frantic attempts to get her to eat or drink something. He sat by her bedside late into the night. Ole likely remembered another time while Helga was away from home. Ida insisted on planning a party for her sister Bertha’s tenth birthday, so he rode