Dear Source:
Thank you for the lovely article on Mr. Otto Tranberg. The description of life in "West End" many years ago brought me back to listening to my father, Axel Frederiksen, describe his boyhood there at the same time. He spoke of riding bareback imitating the amazing feats of the characters in the western novels he read as a child. He spoke of having all of his auntie's property at Estate Lower Love as his personal playground. He spoke of lifting 100 pound sacks of grain or other commodities off the boats in the harbor and carrying them to his father's grocery store for sale and working in his parent's grocery store.
He loved to tell the story of his family of six children getting into squabbles at their home by themselves and calling their parents at their grocery store to sort it all out. As he described it, there were so few phones that one only had to get the operator on the line and say "Myrtle give me the shop" and she would know who was calling what shop and what those Frederiksen kids were up to that their Pa would have to settle for them.
My mother was from Christiansted and always teased my dad about Frederiksted and the area beyond it as "back behind the face of God". For my dad, during his childhood, this was the best of places and the best of times.
Julie Frederiksen
Boylston, Massachusetts
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