Dancing has played a large role in Martha Johnson’s life, but she is not averse to relaxing every now and then.

The Providence Journal / Steve Szydlowski

SOUTH KINGSTOWN — When she was growing up in Sweden, Martha Persson Johnson of South Kingstown didn’t like it when the boys told her she couldn’t play their games.

“I was so mad, I rode my horse right in the middle of their soccer field,” she recalled of one day in particular.

The offended boys retaliated by taking aim with their soccer ball at her horse, and the frightened animal took off toward a brook.

In telling this story from so long ago, she says modestly, “I’ve forgotten many, many things.”

She actually has forgotten very little, considering that she has lived more than 36,000 days, on two continents, and was telling the story in great detail.

“I had no control over the horse,” she said of that moment of being atop a frenzied animal heading for water.

“The next thing I knew, I was on the ground, the horse was licking my face.”

She laughs at this highlight, which occurred around 1918, and looked a little shy about the girl who so long ago challenged those boys. But they would grow up to be her good friends, she said.

There are more stories, ones she has been telling throughout her lifetime, like “the one when you were showing off for the boys and climbed the tree,” her daughter, Carol Stuart of Narragansett, says.

She not only climbed it, she climbed past the boys until she came to a branch that couldn’t hold her, and she fell into a river.

“I was all soaking wet,” she said, but she knew that her mother expected her home at a certain time for supper. And she didn’t want to go home wet and having to explain what happened.

So she dried her clothes — by putting them on some nearby cows where their body heat could take care of the dampness. But what she didn’t count on was that she would arrive home smelling of the barnyard.

When her mother questioned where she had been, “I started to cry,” she said.

Her mother cleaned her up, and Martha was allowed then to eat with the family, digesting also a little advice about the consequences of showing off.

It must have been a lesson she took seriously, because as she approaches the accolades that come along with turning 100, she shies away, saying she doesn’t want to appear to be bragging.

“It’s not bragging, mom,” says her daughter. “You need to be proud. You look so beautiful.”

But Martha Johnson has to be encouraged to talk about how she would swim at Narragansett Beach up until two years ago, how she still owns a car and drives it, was a champion at fishing, including ice fishing, and traveled by herself to this country at age 19 to study to be a nurse. Her aunt in Providence sent her passage to come to America and learn.

But that generous aunt died two weeks after Martha arrived, and the young girl was forced to work off her passage by caring for her cousins for two years. After that, she became a nanny for a family on Providence’s East Side. She was able to not only send money home to her family, but also return to Sweden to care for her mother when she was ill.

It was at a Providence dance that she the man who would become her husband, Gosta “Gus” Johnson.

What did she like about him?

“Everything,” she answers. They were married for 50 years, and had two children, daughter Carol and a son, Kenneth Johnson, of Richmond. Two grandchildren came into their lives before Gus died in 1989.

Martha Johnson stands tall, with a full head of white hair that occasionally has to be thinned even though on Sept. 7 she will officially be a century old. She has outlived four of her siblings. Her baby sister Astrid died at a young age, but there were still Folke, Elsa, Arthur, Helge and another Astrid. Helge and Astrid still live in Sweden.

On her 95th birthday Johnson traveled to Sweden for a celebration held at her old schoolhouse. The firstborn child of the late Martin and Hilma Persson, Martha H. Persson Johnson still cooks, cleans her apartment, drives to Galilee occasionally to watch the ferry come and go, plays cards, bingo, and has painted several of the oils which line her living room walls.

“Dancing has always been a big part of her life,” said her daughter, though that has become limited, apart from a little two-step with her great granddaughter Jessica.

Johnson isn’t sure what has kept her going so long, but her daughter thinks she knows.

“She loves life. She works at it. She eats well, she walks. She has a spirit.”

Martha wants her to stop with the accolades, but Carol tells her again.

“It’s not bragging.”

“Enough,” says her mother, as she prepares to show some family photographs hanging in her room.

“Just slide and hop,” Martha says, telling of her own personal solution for getting up from a chair.

She does just that, with grace, and a smile.

afleming@projo.com