HELEN OKERSTROM HENDERSON 

My Dad was from Sweden. He landed first in New Britain, Connecticut, because he had sisters there. He came at the age of nineteen and he went on to Colorado Springs. He moved from Colorado Springs to Bisbee in 1898-1899, I think. 

My mother was from Finland. I don't remember the year my mother came. (My mother and her sister) went Colorado Springs because friends from Finland got them jobs there working in the laundry. My Dad came to Bisbee and then he sent for her. They were married in the Presbyterian Church in 1900. 

I was born in 1905 (in Bisbee). The house burned after the fire in 1908. All my mother saved was the two children and a washboard. It happened at night so we were all in our nightclothes. They lost everything they had. So they had to start from scratch. That's when they decided to build a rooming house.

My mother did all the washing and ironing for all of those beds. That was the time when not only did you rub your clothes on the washboard, you boiled them in a boiler and then rinsed them in two waters and then a bluing water. She did all of the washing and ironing for that, for all those beds. We did not have running water. Most of the men chewed tobacco at that time. We would have spittoons. I remember one of my jobs was to clean out the spittoons. I hated that! 

We had a lot of Serbian and Italian neighbors and a few Swedish people lived on OK Street. Everybody was friendly. All the youngsters would gather and we used to play games outside on the street.... We would play kick the can, take ten steps and settle. We would play from when we got home from school until it got dark, about 7 o'clock, and then we would go home. 

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