Margaret Johnson

Margaret Johnson's early years were spent in Duluth, Minnesota, though there is some uncertainty about her exact birthplace. Tom Johnson recalls, Mom always said she was born in Minneapolis, not Duluth. The family moved north when she was a baby because of Grandpa's bakery job, so Duluth is where she grew up, but she'd correct anyone who said she was born there. His sister thought she might have been confusing her birthplace with where Grandma's family came from. Ellen Marsh, who lived just two doors down on Superior Street, remembered Margaret as born in Duluth and said, I don't think she ever really left it in her heart. Their neighborhood on Superior Street was marked by the smell of rye and cardamom from her father's bakery, a scent that filled the block on cold January mornings with the wind coming off Lake Superior.

Margaret met Harold at a dance at the armory in Duluth in the spring of 1959. Ellen Marsh, who was there, remembered that Harold asked Margaret to dance and she said no twice because she was there with Ellen and didn’t want to leave her standing by the punch. On the third time Harold asked, he invited them both to dance. Ellen recalled, That was Harold. She told me on the walk home that she was going to marry him, and I laughed at her.

Margaret Johnson's garden was a source of pride and quiet joy for her and those around her. Ruth Anders, who lived next door for thirty-one years, recalled that Margaret's garden was the best on the street, though Margaret herself would modestly attribute it to the good soil. Ruth remembered how each spring Margaret would hand her a paper bag of dahlia tubers over the fence with precise instructions on planting depth, only to return in the fall to gently chide her for planting them too shallow. Ruth heard Margaret talk to her flowers, noting, She'd say good morning to the dahlias before she said good morning to Harold. Even in her last summer, when she was ill, Margaret sat outside in a lawn chair directing the grandchildren like a foreman, ensuring that nothing was planted incorrectly that year.

Sarah Whitfield remembers that every Sunday the whole house smelled of cardamom bread before anyone was even awake. Margaret Johnson had a wooden spoon with a burned handle that she refused to replace. Sarah recalls one rule Margaret said out loud every single time she made the bread: never measure the cardamom. Instead, she would smell it until it was right. Sarah has tried to make the bread a hundred times but it is never right, and she thinks that the rule itself was the point.