Papa, my Norwegian grandfather, built a house when they emigrated to Raymond, Alberta, Canada. In it were furnishings purchased from catalogs or made by the same hands that built the house. From my aunts’ descriptions it was a two-storied beauty and its curving stairway and hand-finished furniture were impressive. They described the headboards of the beds, where Papa had lovingly carved garlands of roses. The catalog items—especially the variously colored lamps—dazzled the many guests who often came to stay for three or four days from around the surrounding countryside.
Nonie, my grandmother, often had young women—usually from Iceland—to help with the young family. Their long journeys by sea produced unwelcome guests in the form of lice nestled in their hair. The aunties were usually included in the lice cleansings and remembered them as painfully unpleasant and thorough.
When Nonie was expecting her fifth child, Papa and his brother, Uncle Dan, made a trip all the way to Salt Lake for an April general conference. They fell in love with Salt Lake City in the springtime and returned to Canada intent on moving south in time for the expected child to be born in the heart of Zion.
Try to imagine the turmoil of a family of six (the wife nearly seven months pregnant) and a family of two (Uncle Dan’s) trying to move their households in two months—by train. Papa came up with a novel solution: leave the house and most of its furnishings behind. To show he was being responsible he asked his bishop to try to sell anything he could and send him the money he collected.
The sad end of that tale is that the overworked bishop wasn’t able to sell anything. Furnishings mysteriously disappeared and the place disintegrated into a gambling hall on the edge of town. By the time two of my aunts and an uncle were able to make a trip up there “to see the old place” it had burned to the ground. No one has been able to decide whether it was the town fathers, embarrassed by this disreputable blot on the landscape, or careless gamblers who were responsible for its demise.
Papa, always looking to the future, found land in the hills southeast of Ensign Peak. No one called it “Capitol Hill,” because the capitol building had not yet been built. But Papa was a man with a mission and was soon building another two-story house. This was always referred to as “the old house” by his children and was something of a mystery to his grandchildren. Evidently, it was built only to house the family until Papa could at last build the house of his dreams for his little Olga. The old house was gone by the time we grandchildren came along. We grew up with a castle!
This needs some explaining. Originally, castles were built as fortifications to keep people out. Papa and Nonie had no intention of using their house for that purpose. Anyone and everyone was invited IN. Papa’s romantic nature, however, seemed to compel him to avoid the ordinary at all costs. So his creative wonder contained a squared tower attached on an angle to the front entryway, with a curving wall at the side of entry steps, which took the place of a drawbridge. Atop the tower were four smaller turrets with bits of colored glass embedded in them, which stuck out on angles and shone like jewels when struck by the setting sun. The roof of the house was flat and all around it the parapets rose to a height of about 2 1/2 feet. Since Papa didn’t have the materials used to build the castles of Europe, he made his own mix of concrete, which he intended to last through the Millennium. That material was also a guarantee the house would never burn down. To emphasize this, on rare winter days a small fire was built in the middle of the large living room.
My mother, Helga, (who was the baby who caused the hasty departure from Canada) told me a grade school friend once asked her where she lived. When she tried to tell her, she was interrupted with an “Oh, you do not live there! That’s a castle and nobody lives there!” How wrong that little child was. Anyone who entered was quickly made aware of all the living that went on in that home.
During the day, Nonie often held court entertaining friends. People loved her enough to climb up that high hill for visits. Neighbors were also frequent visitors. Her closest was her Danish sister-in-law who’d married Papa’s brother, Uncle Dan and lived next door. She was called “Aunt Valborg” by her nieces when she gave them blunt advice they didn’t want to hear. When her lecturing was tolerable and quoted she was “Auntie.”
Evening meals were generously shared with anyone who was in the house when Papa arrived home from work. First, they’d witness Papa’s loving greeting and kiss after a teasing, “Where’s my darling little Olga?” Then they might have to wait until Papa shared some surprise—like an armful of shoes of various sizes. He’d toss them out on the floor, inviting his children to “Come try dem on! I bought plenty sizes!” Then, after the meal, the guests were often served up a dessert of culture: the king and queen of the castle would entertain everyone with a dramatized story or a few arias from operas they’d memorized. Sometimes Papa played his violin.
Our mothers were the ones who told us stories of their growing-up years in the castle. They amused themselves with simple pleasures. In winter there was sledding, as well as two sports new on the hill: snow skating and skiing. Papa made the snow skates and my mother took orders for them at LaFayette grade school. They were similar to an ice skate without the boot, but the blade was about 1/2 inch wide. The skiing was very low-tech, the equipment consisting of a couple of barrel staves or narrow, flat planks of wood, with a slice of rubber nailed across to hold the “ski” on the foot.
In summer the children roamed the hills and hiked in the canyon, sometimes with Nonie and a picnic basket coming along. The girls and their mother had an uncanny sense of when certain wild flowers would be in bloom and spoke of leaving the evening dishes to go looking for sego lilies or mysterious and elusive moon lilies.
I was only three when Nonie left for heaven so I missed knowing her here. But her loving daughters often brought her back for visits by telling stories to her grandchildren. After her death, Aunt Grace moved into the castle with her family to help Papa and look after her younger single siblings. Later, when Aunt Grace and Uncle Walter found their own house, Aunt Harriet and Uncle Ern moved in. It was during these years that I was allowed to stay overnight with cousins and discover the castle’s merits for myself.
So let’s return there for a brief tour of its interior. On the ground level were the usual rooms: kitchen to the east, dining room and living room along the north side. There was a sewing room, intended for Olga and her daughters, but which was used as a bedroom most of the time because Papa couldn’t keep up with his growing family. I think it was still functioning as such when I was growing up. I remember some of the last of the Christmas Eve parties held in the castle, with a tree hauled out to the center of the living room so we could hold hands and dance around it, singing our own rendition of Norwegian Christmas songs.
Now here’s a question: Have you ever heard of a castle without a dungeon? I recognized it the first time I was asked to go there. It was where my aunties stored their grocery staples and household supplies. Concrete stairs led all the way down but the goods we were sent to get were housed on open shelves at the right side of the stairs. The trick was to reach the items requested with short arms and little hands without falling down those stairs. They were scary, so let’s get out of there and continue our tour.
When ascending to the second story it is necessary to mention the stairs leading to it. There were the “backstairs” which Aunt Grace dismissed as “rickety and terrifying” and there were the front stairs, which curved graciously upward about four or five steps and ended at a wall. My aunt once told her mother she should lock herself in her bedroom and tell Papa she wasn’t coming down until he finished the front stairs. “Don’t be silly, Grace,” was the reply she got from Nonie. But my aunt ended by telling us, “When Mama died they had to carry her down those rickety stairs…Papa never found time to finish them while she was alive.” So what kept Papa so busy? Well, supporting his family and looking for work to do so. Sometimes the work was out of town and he had to be away for weeks at a time. He also served for 25 or more years as a local missionary. And let’s not forget the snow skates—or anything else he could make and sell.
So however we ascend to the second story—by the rickety stairs or the finally-finished front ones—we will find it contained bedrooms and baths. The master bedroom had a Romeo-Juliet balcony from which its occupants could survey the entire city. To the east of the bedroom the master bath housed a matching bathtub and basin, both made out of dyed green concrete and chips of white marble which glittered when buffed and polished. The tub itself was the largest and coldest we ever bathed in.
I can’t remember how the flat roof with its parapets was reached but it was easy even for a child. It made an excellent place to hide and watch the action below. It was also fine for looking at the stars and falling asleep with cousins.
Now, a last word of caution: If you come to Capitol Hill looking for a castle you won’t find one.
Our family lost its beloved castle during the closing years of the Depression when Papa couldn’t afford to pay its back taxes. By then Aunt Harriet and Uncle Ern had a new house next door. The castle stood there as a backdrop as we watched a series of owners remodel, redo, renovate, and reject anything that vaguely resembled a castle. Its last owner, the most sensitive and in tune with the spirit of the house, lived in it seven years with his patient, helpful wife, trying to bring back some of its former glory. Finally, they had to admit defeat. Papa’s “forever” concrete mix was slowly but surely disintegrating. There seemed to be no better answer than to tear it down and start all over again.
The owner shared this as he showed a few of the third and fourth generation around his new home. We told him Papa would have appreciated the expansive view through the length of the ground floor and Nonie would have enjoyed the size of the kitchen. There were interesting staircases and surprise little nooks to delight the imagination throughout. On the second floor, instead of the Romeo and Juliet balcony there was a tiled sauna. At the far western end of the second floor was a little door leading to a balcony built exclusively for two to enjoy the spectacular Salt Lake Valley sunsets. The entire place spoke of another clever and imaginative builder who had built a dream house for his sweetheart. As we finished our tour we told him we felt sure Papa, being the forward-looking man he was, would approve of this new creation. He seemed very pleased to hear it.
Let’s end this on a philosophical note. Houses and even castles are only tiny kingdoms of this world. Perhaps memories really are more important than the physical evidence of someone’s labors.
Jackie Moulton is 92 and has enjoyed putting words together most of her life. She likes poetry and prose and often writes to find out what’s been going on upstairs.
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