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The Duchesses of Bohemia
Before Clara Olson died, she lived. Gloriously. The firecracker of the Chippewa Valley, the footrace champ of Barstow Street. At 14 she stopped racing long enough to find her best friend, Emma Hannsen, a transplant from the east. By 1908, all the trees worth chopping had been chopped, but nobody had said a word to Mr. Hannsen, who arrived in the valley to find his family’s future lay fallow. Emma, who knew little of lumber, escaped her family’s troubles through Clara. And Clara, who had unnamed troubles herself, did the same. Throughout that summer, the girls imagined themselves as other people—older, stronger, duchesses in a faraway land. Clara dreamed of a place she’d seen on a map called Bohemia, and one June afternoon, while she and Emma sat alongside one another in a grove of immature trees, she told her of this place. We shall be the Duchesses of Bomemia! she cried. The following fall, upon being stricken by a bout of pneumonia, Clara called Emma to her bedside to bequeath all of Bohemia to her friend. There are many trees there, she whispered, and you and your family will be happy. Clara’s last breath came at 2:14 a.m. the following morning. Present were her father, her mother, and the only surviving Duchess of Bohemia. Words by BJ Hollars. Audio narration by Jane Jeffries. Audio recording by Scott Morfitt. |