My early years 1940 - 1966

The early years

May 1940

I was born at the time when the fear of the Germans had reached its peak in Sweden. Denmark had been invaded and it had started to become painfully clear that Sweden didn't have neither the manpower nor the material resources to stand up against Germany, should they decide to continue over the sound and make Sweden next.

All women and children were temporarily evacuated from the coastal areas. My mother, in her ninth month or pregnancy was one of the evacuees.

We went to a farm that belonged to a cousin of my father. The evacuation was eventually rescinded and we, now two, my mother and I, returned to Karlshamn, the town I came to grow up in. Perhaps not a town of any significance, perhaps not even a town full of brotherly love, but certainly a town of much innocence as I came to learn in later years, when I had gained a little more exposure to the larger world.

My first memory is of having just gotten a little sister. She slept in a bed with high sides. I was not allowed to touch the sides but it wasn't easy to stay away. I opened the side gate and had to shut it again. But, I didn't know how to tie knots, it was held shut with a piece of soft string. Eventually I just wrapped the string into a spiral, and jumped away before it could unravel again.

My father had a habit of going on long walks in town, I often went with him. He said I never stopped asking "why" about everything we saw.

My sister and I grew bolder with time. Once we crawled across the street outside our home in city hall. It was a busy street but most of the traffic, this was during the wartime, was horse-drawn. They all stopped long enough to let us crawl across unharmed. Someone finally alerted my mother to what her darlings were doing for their enjoyment and we were promptly collected. I don't recall what my punishment was but it must have been enough to prevent any recurrence. The war ended and cars started to reappear.

One of my father's friends came from Gothenburg with a large car. We drove, all seven of us the 45 minutes to our cottage. The car was parked in a stone quarry. It wouldn't start after our visit. The men decided to push the car down a small hill. Success, the engine started. Just at that moment Rutger, the son of my father's friend opened the rear door. It was swung from the back and caught on a rock by the side of the road with a crunching sound. The car stood still, locked against the rock. Much shouting occurred. I was immediately blamed for having opened the door - but I sat in the centre, I had no access to the door handle. In any case, we drove to the nearest farm and secured the door with a piece of rope for the trip home. I later learned that my father had to pay for the repair of the door and that he never again spoke to his friend. Some weekend trip.

Now we could again bring out our car, a 1937 Ford V8. It had been on blocks for many years by then, probably about six years. I had often, during my walks with my father, visited the car in its garage. A local shop owner was in charge of starting the engine occasionally, just to make sure it could still run. My father told, with some pride, that he had resisted the temptation to sell the tires during the war. Tires had good value then, when no new ones could be bought.

The first trip was back to our cottage. My father had bought the place that we had rented the previous two summers. How easy it was to travel. We just climbed into our own car, and then we arrived. 

No more bus, waiting for transfer and long walk the last few km. In the past, we had even gone by bicycle, probably quite a feat considering the distance was 45 km and that the bikes of those days neither had high pressure tires nor any gears - they were hard to pedal.

Winter closed in, the winter of 1946-47. My parents had even louder arguments in the house with many a door slammed on occasion. My father became absolutely uncontrollable with rage at times.

The first carload of bananas had arrived. I had one in a bag, to bring with me to nursing school. My parents started arguing in the stairs and it ended when my father took my lunch bag, with the new, never before tasted, banana and smashed it on the floor. The banana became mush. I could still eat it but the taste of banana was for a long time connected with the memory of how I cried when I ate the first one.

The nursery lady's name was Svea. She met in the town square every day and then walked us all, her little brood, to a street level room in an apartment complex about ten blocks away.

Every day we brought our own lunch, she had hers with a cup of coffee. She boiled her water with the aid of an immersion heater, connected to one of the light bulbs in the ceiling. One day she forgot to disconnect the heater and coiled it up under the ceiling, still plugged in. The whole contraption caught fire a few minutes later. We all had to run outside. She managed to get the attention of the crew of a garbage truck that just passed by. One man ran in, unplugged what was burning and threw the mess on the ground outside.

I never dared to look at the black spot in the ceiling where the small fire had been. Perhaps this was the beginning of my lifelong fear of anything that had to do with fire.

On our way to nursery school we had to walk holding each others' hands and also, sometimes, sing a song.

There was a tailor shop behind a large window on the second floor of a building. Sometimes we could see the tailor and we used to wave to him in the window where he was working away in the daylight.

One day I learned that there had been a fire and the tailor had suffocated in his shop. The second floor window was soot blackened on the inside the next morning. We all got a talking to about the danger of using electrical appliances in the house. We were only little children and that black window and the horror tale about the dead tailor and the forgotten iron impressed me for life.

I didn't pass by that building on my own for many, many years after that. Even later on when I had total freedom with my own bicycle I never traveled by that city block.

Miss Svea took us out into the nearby forest in the springtime and taught us to sing all the children's songs about springtime and summer then.

Every Christmas we, the children, were dressed up and sent off to the annual Children's Christmas ball at the City Hotel. It was an afternoon affair, the adults all went that same evening. Santa Claus was there and we all got a present to bring home.

One dark and rainy April day, Easter was coming up, did my father take me on an automobile trip to another friend of his, this time to a Minister's home next to a large church and a windmill in Hörby.

We arrived late at night after a long drive in the darkness. There was a large mound of snow in the yard, probably piled up during the last snowfall. We were joking about how we should put a blanket over it and keep the snow for making snowballs from during the summer.

The windmill was in full swing the next day, milling flour for the farmers in the area. The miller was an old man, lamenting on the fact that none wanted to take over the operation of his mill when he died, would I do that for him?

I was seven years old, running a windmill seemed like an exciting job for me and I said yes. I never heard from the miller again. Maybe he found someone to operate his mill. When I saw it again, 40 years later, it was converted to a restaurant fittingly called, "The windmill".

My father was unbelievably quiet on the long drive back, this time during daylight. He always used to tell stories or otherwise discuss things with me. I wasn't even allowed to try my hand at tuning the radio in the car, normally a tricky job with literally hundreds of stations crowding each other on the dial, day and night. It took a steady and careful hand to tune on just one station.

When we arrived back in our large apartment it was even larger than ever. There was an echo in the rooms that I had never heard before - and half the furniture was gone. Even the one half of the double bed in my parents' bedroom was missing.

They had separated.

My mother and sister were living in one rented room a block away. My mother had started working full time as a teacher of weaving and my sister was looked after by our great aunt.

Life changed from that point. We kept our maid for a while yet but that wasn't for long, she didn't like the new idleness of our quiet apartment. Then we had a long succession of live in maids that came and left just as soon. My father was very irritable and probably not easy to work for.

One maid had a boyfriend who would call on the telephone at any time, day or night. My father didn't like to sleep in the bedroom anymore and often bedded down on the couch in his private office. The phone ringing for the maid in the middle of the night, occasionally, was not taken lightly.

That maid stayed for a while more but the telephone was moved, to the bottom of a cupboard in the serving room next to the kitchen. The cord was extra short so one had to either crouch down or sit on the floor to carry on a conversation. I don't know if that cured the telephoning by the maid but the telephone was soon back in it's usual place, on top of the glass covered desk.

The separation must have been costly because my father sold the car that spring, no more quick and easy trips to the cottage.

My father got a 120 cc motorcycle and I rode on the back to and from the cottage that summer.

Obviously, that was not a very suitable mode of transportation for the two of us.

One weekend my father arrived in a borrowed car with two ladies. One was young and pretty, the other looked like a witch, burdened down with packages on her back and in both arms. That was the beginning of a long friendship for me. Young Sandra became my father's new fiancee, who never married him. "The witch" was her mother, Alma, a few years older than my father.

We met occasionally over the years, but they lived 600 km away,in Stockholm and we couldn't see much of each other, even at the best of times.

I learned that Alma had worked at the guardhouse at Karlshamn's hospital for many, many years. She and my father had got to know each other though his involvement with the police. They were always good friends.

Sandra had grown up as a single child and was they eye stone of her mother. For all the 60, plus, years I knew Sandra, she never in a single word hinted at who her father was. They had a small, very poorly insulated house on the outskirts of the city, a house that Alma had practically built with her own hands during the depression years, finishing around 1934.

They had moved to Stockholm ca 1939 for Sandra to finish her education. From then, onwards Alma had earned a somewhat uneven income as a movie actor stand in, or being one of many in scenes. She had been at regular at SF (Svensk Filmindstri) and played stand in for several Swedish actors, filmed from behind or in larger settings. She had had a few talking stints. She had, I learned later, a long list of movies where she had participated in minor roles, e.g. as a sales lady at the market, a bus driver collecting the fare and other single occurrences.

Sandra and my father had first met when Sandra was a teenager, studying economics at the Karlshamn Technical School, where my father was a part time teacher for many years after he had come to town in 1934. Many years later, they had recognized each other at the town square, doing Saturday food shopping.

More and more often I was allowed to stay the week at the Johnson's house, next door to our cottage, while my father went back to work in the city. When the fall came I had moved in for good and become their foster son. 

That spelled the beginning of one of the happiest times in my life.

I enrolled in grade one at the two room schoolhouse. The teachers were a husband and wife team, the school had about 25 students in all grades, in total.

On enrollment day we had to travel to the nearby village of Ryd for our obligatory medical examination. We were chest X-rayed and we all had our left hand X-rayed. It has been a question ever since, what was the purpose of so carefully locking our left arm with sandbags, putting a cold plate underneath and taking an X-ray of that part of our anatomy in addition to the so common, and often repeated, chest X-ray?

I remember walking four km to and from school most of the time but my step-parents tell me that they mostly drove me by car. Perhaps I only walked sometimes.

The road was through deep, dark forest, with only one dwelling on the way. I saw moose, grouse, deer and many other wild animals of the forest in my walks. The winter was cold and one day the milk had frozen in my bag on the way to school. The milk was all over the inside of my dark green burlap rucksack that started to leak as soon as I hung it up in school. I salvaged what I could of my food and poured out the milk and the milk ice-slush on the porch outside. There was no indoor plumbing in the school so I had no way of rinsing my bag, it smelled of sour milk for months afterwards.

One extra dark and cold winter evening I brought a friend with me home from school. We made up a story about how he was allowed to stay overnight at my place. Well, that may not have been absolutely true as the phone rang in the middle of the night, long after all had gone to bed, asking about the boy, was he with us? Yes, he was. The parents had come to the end of a long search for their son that night. Very few homes had a telephone so they had visited many places before they finally called us. The boy had to get up in the middle of the night, get dressed and rode home in a cold car, brought to life from its snowy garage outside. Needless to say, I was never allowed to bring any more house guests home again.

That Christmas was spent with Sandra and her mother at our cottage, a few hundred metres walk into the forest. You probably couldn't ask for a more perfect setting. We were deep in the forest, by candlelight and a crackling fire. It was, however cold in all other rooms but the kitchen and the living room, so cold that we all ended up sleeping there.

Santa Claus did come in person to visit but, unfortunately, he forgot his clothes by the well, where I found them the next morning. That spelled the end of my belief in Santa Claus. Too early, I think.

For my first few months in the Johnson's house we didn't have any electricity. I was too little to be allowed to handle any matches near the kerosene lamps. Every move between rooms had to be preceded with a call for light, and one of the adults would come to light and adjust the kerosene lamp for me.

For going outside at the Johnson's I was, normally, outfitted with my own battery flashlight. There, however, was much moaning and groaning about the cost of batteries for that one.

The adults used Carbide lamps. They were potentially quite dangerous but, I think, extremely inexpensive to operate. I soon learned how to empty out the canister, scrape out the remains and fill it up with fresh Carbide stones. There was a small water container on top and a valve controlling the drips of water on the Carbide. Now, if you didn't assemble the whole contraption well the fire would be everywhere, also around the edges of the carbide canister. It was a bit disturbing, especially as the adults had told about all the accidents that could happen with these lamps. I was only seven but mastered them quite well, perhaps without ever letting on that I used them on my own.

Why did I need so much light? Well, it was absolutely pitch dark outside during the long winter nights and we had no indoor plumbing, a good reason to bring plenty of light. Also, I was trusted to get eggs from the chickens as well as, sometimes, bring feed to the pigs.

After one extra heavy snowstorm I built a snow fort in the middle of the front yard, right in the path of the snow plow. They normally came up the narrow road and turned in our front yard. This time the snow plow operator turned around very carefully, backed up and turned many small turns, just to make sure that he didn't accidentally damage my artfully constructed winter fortress.

Our own roads were cleared with two horses, ours and the neighbour's. These two farmers hardly talked to each other in normal times but during the harvest and when the snow had fallen. They shared one thresher and one snow plow between the two farms. For the rest of the year they met only through their lawyers. There had been legal feuds between the two for at least some forty years. That only ended when one of the two died from old age. Stubborn Swedes, you could say.

The snow plow was a large wooden triangle with a rock on a cross member to keep the rear end down. The driver alternatively walked behind the plow or stepped up on one or the other rear corners to make the plow go right or left.

Master of the house was Johan-Gustav, an elderly gentleman then, and his wife who was called Auntie by all. I never learned her name. She died the next winter.

Johan-Gustav worked with his farmhand, Gustaf, in the forest all winter long. They got hot coffee carried out in a basket around 10.30, came in for lunch at 1 PM and worked outside until it was absolutely dark around 4 PM. Probably not many hours of work every day but more than compensated for by the endlessly long days on the fields in the summer.

Dinner was early and then the old man would read the newspaper after dinner. The news came on the radio at 7 PM The large and impressive radio set was battery operated. There, again, was the issue of batteries. Two sets were required, a number of large cylindrical low voltage batteries for the glow-wires and a smaller, high voltage battery with many connections for the cathode-operation.

The radio was put on at exactly 7 PM as we as sat quiet and listened to the news, perhaps for 15 minutes. Then followed the time signal, Johan Gustav set his watch and switched off the radio again. No entertainment from that source.

By this time the fire in the living room stove had warmed it up the living room, we could sit there and finish the after dinner coffee and perhaps add a little bit of Schnapps. The men put in snuff under their lower lips, talked a few words now and then and spit into the fire occasionally. Come 8.30 PM, it was bedtime for all.

The first person up in the morning was Aron, the young husband of their daughter Brita, my step mother. He had just started work as a line worker for the Electric Utility which was now in full swing installing power lines in the neighbourhood.

Aron had to get up at four to finish the early morning chores with our few animals and be on his motorcycle, leaving the house at five to be on his job site somewhere in the surrounding forest at six. He came home reasonably early, frozen absolutely stiff from a day in the open finished off with, sometimes, as much as an hour's ride on the motorcycle.

Brita, 28, was the young house wife in those days. She could do only what old Auntie told her. This was probably not an easy situation, but quite common on the farms around. It was quite clear that she and her husband Aron would inherit the farm one day so, "You might as well learn

how to run it now." - It's a bit ironic that they did inherit the farm but never quite ran it as a farm, the animals were soon gone and Aron continued to build power lines for a great many years to come.

All those years, working with the creosote treated wooden poles, eventually gave him, as so many other in the trade, cancer. He passed away too young at only 65.

There was much talk about electricity in those days. I may only have been seven years old but here was a hands on instruction in one branch of engineering. I learned lot and got a good start on how to be comfortable around electrical distribution systems, for life.

Some of the more traditional farmers in the area quite flatly refused to have anything to do with the newfangled electricity. They had to be convinced. We learned all about voltages, the virtues of three phase, versus single phase and where to put the substations and power lines for the most secure operation.

Our neighbour Axel at first refused to subscribe to electricity at all. That was not taken lightly in our house. A long branch line paid for by just one subscriber would be expensive. Finally Axel relented and agreed to a low voltage single phase line, suitable for a few lights only, no more.

His farm equipment could still be powered by the trusty old horse and his 1923 model stationary kerosene engine and for light, he had used kerosene lights all his days and they were still good.

The house was totally torn up when all the wires were installed. First came the "Engineer", he walked around with a bit of a black pencil, marking where all the switches and outlets should be on the walls. Then came the installers. They drilled holes everywhere and put large unsightly conduit over all the walls. After that came the painters and carpenters, putting in new wallpaper, new wall panels and finally painting everything again. Throughout all this, plenty of coffee breaks with Kaffekask to all the workers. (Coffee with a good dose of Brännvin added.) Still, no light.

The spring of 1948 arrived and the power lines were all up. The long awaited day arrived when the power would be switched on for the first time.

The lights came on - but they were dim. Ooh, how dim they were. Every time anyone switched a light on or off all the others would change brightness. Was this all we could get, was this all they would give to the hard working farmers who had paid so much to get electricity installed? No, not quite, later that night we were told of a blown high voltage fuse, it should all be fixed by the next morning.

It was, and we excelled in surrounding ourselves in light then next evening. The carbide lamps were no longer needed, we had a 1 000 Watt street light in the yard now and indoor lighting in the outdoor privy!

The carbide lamps were unceremoniously thrown out. -1 guess they carried too many memories after many years of kerosene rationing during the war years. The last time I saw a carbide lamp was in a museum.

Everything was made at the farm. We separated the cream from the milk every day. I was old enough to run the separator. You had to crank it just so fast that the bell on the centre shaft didn't sound any more. If you heard the bell, once every revolution of the crank, you were too slow. It was a long and tedious operation for a seven year old boy to complete the cream separation, until no more milk or cream came out of the spouts.

Butter making was even more laborious, the more of the butter that had congealed, the harder it became to turn the crank of the butter churn. The resultant butter was like no other butter that I have tasted ever since. It had a taste of the farm, was quite salty and spread with little droplets of water on your bread.

Cheese making was easy for a child though, it was all done on the stove and with mysterious mixtures. The various baskets dressed with cheese cloth, were kept in a special room in the cellar and turned occasionally. The results were absolutely outstanding cheeses, only different from commercially made cheese in that it was not of an absolutely even colour or consistency throughout.

The bread was dark, baked in a stone oven over the regular wooden stove. The stone oven was fired up early in the morning and the baking proper started mid morning, by the time the dough had risen to an unbelievable height in its wooden boxes, covered by a moist towel.

There was a strong smell of warm dough in the morning, gradually replaced with the smell of newly baked dark bread as the day wore on.

Last to bake, when the oven was getting cooler, were the round life vest shaped cakes, from a very special, very local recipe, probably never made again.

The dark bread couldn't be cut for several days and had to lie in storage for quite a while before it was served.

The fattened and much loved (by me) pig was slaughtered before Christmas. The butcher came on a motorcycle with a large box full of his implements. The whole crew got well reinforced on Brännvin before it all started. I was absolutely forbidden to go near. I followed the whole proceeding from the attic window, less than 8 meters from the center of activity, the butcher block.

The pig screamed when he was dragged out. Then the butcher put a black helmet over pig's head, hit down hard with a small mallet and the pig screamed even more, for a few seconds only.

The assistant very quickly slit the throat of the pig and held a bucket under to collect the blood.

Everyone had told me how terrible this should be and how no children or weak women should see a slaughter. Well, I saw it and it didn't affect me as badly as many other experiences later in life.

The successful kill was celebrated with a couple of more schnapps. The butcher soon left, he had many calls before Christmas.

On his first try to get going on this motorcycle he only made it to the first fence post, there he fell off and his box emptied out on the ground. He didn't seem hurt, the gasoline stayed in the upturned motorcycle, his tools were soon collected and he continued on a wavy trek down the hill and disappeared on the road into the black forest. I guess he made it to the next few houses as we had freshly made sausages and hams wherever we visited that Christmas season.

For Saturday dinner, after work, we were often served chicken. This chicken was old and carefully selected for her absolute inability to lay any more eggs. Early in the morning I would help to catch the right chicken and give her to Gustaf, our hired hand. He would artfully put the head down on a chopping block and - pop, the head was off. Yes, a newly beheaded chicken will run if you put her down, but she will fall right away. The legs would run by themselves and the wings could flap.

Then the chicken spent the rest of the day being cooked slowly over a low fire. It was still stringy and hard to chew at dinner time but the flavour was greatly enhanced with a rich cream sauce and boiled potatoes.

The school probably didn't have much money for extra-curricular activities. The summer started early and we had a school outing to a swimming area, complements of my father. He ordered up a large, seven seat taxicab. It probably carried about half of the children, some 15 or so and the teacher at that school when we had crammed ourselves inside. We drove to a nearby lake, parked on the road and we all climbed down to the edge of the lake. The teachers and the taxi driver were treated to coffee and kaffekask (the brännvin reinforced kind) while the children all got thoroughly chilled in the, always, cold lake water. A good time was had by all.

Never had I seen as much thunder and lightning as the summer that came. One night was worse than ever, lightning was striking all around us, but, the light didn't go away. The whole sky was lit up to the north of us. A barn had burned to the ground at one of the neighbouring farms. We went to visit the next morning and marveled over the paint-less farm tractor frame and the burned skeletons of a couple of sheep that had run the wrong way.

It was now full winter. My father came back for prolonged stays in the cottage. He had driven his motorcycle for weekend visits many times during the winter. That was quite a feat. The summer of 1948 brought milder weather and an easier drive. He bought a car, a 1934 Opel six, a car with a sheet metal body on a wooden frame.

My foster parents tried to convince my father to let me stay for one more winter. The more they tried to convince him the more he said no. Probably a wise decision, you can lose a child to the people he lives with.

I moved back to the city and started the second grade there. Our practical arrangements were probably not the very best for the next few years. My father worked on the first floor of the city hall, where we lived on the top floor. The apartment was part of the job, and he could easily slip up at any hour.

But, he wasn't much of a housekeeper, nor a cook.

My father bought monthly coupons at restaurant Reval, next door. We had our own table at 6 pm there, five nights a week. It was next to the window, overlooking the town square.

The doorman would take our coats, collect a few pennies from my father for the daily football scores. Occasionally my father would buy smuggled cigarettes as well. With a name like Reval, the capital of Latvia, it had a steady clientele of Russian and east block ships officers as customers. They were always short of funds and the waiter would take cheap smuggled cigarettes as part payment for the odd dinner.

Sometimes these visitors didn't have any money at all, but they had still enjoyed all the trimmings of Swedish food and drink. Then my father, who had studied Russian at university. (at the time of the Russian revolution when Communism seemed to offer salvation to the world) would step in, try to calm the arguments and take the name and the ships name for future reference.

He told me, that he made friends with many this way, very few of the restaurant bills were unpaid a few months later. These boats were practically running on a schedule, transporting Swedish timber to Russia, a country with the largest timber forests in the world, but not the railroad capacity to ship it west.

My father had been the Russian Vice council for many years. It was an unpaid position, only paid for for services rendered.

His most common activity was to get Russian sailors, drunken or not, released from police custody so they could sail with their ship as it would leave in a few hours. It was a serious offence for a Russian sailor to be left behind in any western country.

Our dinners followed the same routine. Our table had a whit table cloth, an ashtray and a stand with matches. I would draw pictures on the table cloth or build and construct elaborate structures with the matches, while waiting for the food. It was a three course menu. First a small schnapps for my father. Only one, never more, then an appetizer, typically a piece of herring with some white bread, then the main dish, followed by the dessert.

I, then as now, focused on the dessert and remained perpetually undernourished and thin as a reed for as long as my loving father lived.

I failed the school doctor examination once, I was far to tall for my weight. I had to give a stool sample to check for worms in my stomach, there were none.

Then, I needed vitamins and Iron. That led to a daily regimen of cod liver oil, ouch, and large, extremely hard and unchewable sugar coated iron pills. Did they contain black iron or just rust?

I still didn't gain weight. Nobody checked on how often I ate or what I ate. My father, who had lived a life of luxury, with maids and even a cook in the house for so long, until the untimely divorce, had no ideas on how to run a household.

One of the cleaning ladies working for the city would come up occasionally and give the house a once over, for the rest we were on our own. My clothes were changed now and then, mostly when I visited my mother who had a supply of clean clothes on hand.

I had a bed called a No-Sag. It was a horrible contraction, designed by a contortionist, making you sleep as if in a poorly assembled hammock. I found out, years later, that it had been a heavily advertised American made product, having had its heyday in the early 1930's.

Our apartment had an enormously large bathroom with a combined shower and tub to match. Away from the heating season we only had hot water on Fridays, the day for the weekly bath.

I had many boats, some that floated well, some that sunk well and some that floated, only to be sunk. My baths were long and the water would get cold. We were some 100 m away from the boiler so the hot water would run cold for quite a while, at first. No problem, just let the hand shower run, flushing the cool, soon to be warm again, water on the floor.

That worked well until the day when the floor drain had been closed for cleaning, and was still closed. The resulting flood, covering the kitchen and my bedroom, did damage some filing cabinets in the office below and I was strictly forbidden to, ever, run the shower again.

But, how to get hot water now?

My father often used my bathing time to practice playing the grand piano in the living room, a long, long way from the bathroom.

Somewhere in my kit was a door bell, one that steadfastly refused to do more than one “ding” at a time. But, how to get it near my father?

My father had “credit” in many stores, including the electrical supply store. Again, use the bell with a long extension cord. I went to the store, unrolled some 50 metre of very expensive three phase extension cord, added it to my father's account and – now the bell could be made to “ding” whenever my bath water was cold.

I was such an obedient child, at least when it came to not flooding any more file cabinets.

That system worked for quite a while, until the bill for the cord came in. My father got very upset, made me roll it all up again and get it replaced with something far less costly than industrial duty safety cord.

We often made long trips together. One Easter eve we took off early in the morning, destined “north”. It was a cold day, the Opel may never had much of a heater and I was soon shivering with cold. We stopped for lunch in Växjö, some forty kilometres into the trip and bought a good warm woolen blanket for me. That one stayed in my life for over 50 years, until it finally was so worn down that it went out in a move.

Now I was warm and cozy and we continued to Värnamo, not far from his birth place of Jönköping. There we stayed with some childhood friends of his, they were still running the nursing home where my grandmother had lived out her life, passing away in 1934.

The welcome was overwhelming with lots of hugging and kisses. I was received as the long lost son, even though I had never seen these people before.

In the evening a group of young singers came to the door and sang songs about ghosts and devils, all in order to drive all these beasts away.

This was a local tradition, not performed in other parts of Sweden, I learned.

Our trip back to Karlshamn started late in the afternoon. This was the time long before many roads were hardened, road numbers were not invented, and you had to navigate from place to place, reading the names at every intersection.

We were soon lost. My father got frustrated and swore into the total darkness of the rainy night, faintly lit by our headlights.

I had to step out at every intersection, shine a flashlight at the signs and my father could then read his map. Driving at night was not without its dangers. We came across a wayward cow on the road. She was of the light brown type and we could stop before hitting here.

The cow just stood there vaguely lit up by the car's headlights, idly looking at us. My father's tempers were hot, he wasn't going to act as any cow-pusher in his polished shoes and holiday suit.

He leaped out of the car, into the nearest farmhouse and raised the farmer and the wife.

They came out in their night clothes, grabbed the horns of the cow and led her off the road into the nearby farmhouse.

We arrived home rather late, or early, I should say. The next morning we both slept in.

The city of Karlshamn was full of excitement. I had my bicycle and could go wherever I wanted, whenever.

I made friend with the miller who ran the water wheel powered gristmill some distance up the river Mien. He was a kind old soul, made me share some of his milk and cookies and taught me all about how the mill functioned, from the loading of the incoming sacks to how to run the millstones safely. If they ever ran dry, they would self destruct in moments, he told.

I nearly fell into the large wooden gear mechanism over the water wheel once in my anxiety to get close.

Another favourite place, not far away was the brick factory. It was, in modern terms, totally integrated. They dug the clay in a large area nearby. When I came by, years later the whole clay pit had been filled in and turned into a hotel.

The tip-wagons were pulled by a very unique engine, I have only seen one since, in a technical museum in Germany.

It had a large, single cylinder low speed kerosene engine with a huge, open flywheel, about 1.3 m in diametre. The transmission was by a small wheel that was movable, going from no speed in the centre, to high speed when engaged near the circumference. Was it an early version of the CVT, continuously variable transmission of fame in later years?

The bricks were made by manually filling a form, then letting the sides fall away and, finally, finishing the surface off with a cutting wire, expertly handled.

The firing was in a round building with some 20 rooms around the circumference. As one room was filled, firewood was stacked around the wet bricks and the entrance door was bricked closed. The firing went around and around, taking over a week from starting the fire until the contents were cool enough to be taken out and shipped.

These were really hard working men, only later did I understand the harshness and physical exertion required of them every working day. They had taken a liking to me and I got friendly waves whenever I saw one of them, for years to come.

Other favourite bicycling destinations

School was a disaster, and continued that way for the remainder of my time in Karlshamn. I would regularly slip out after the first hour, or so, and go home to play with my toys or to read a book. The teacher, Harald Fält used to send a friend of mine, Lars-Erik Persson to fetch me. Eventually I was told to buy a new pair of shoes for my him as he must have worn out a pair just walking to my house and back so many times.

I eventually dropped out of school entirely at the tender age of 16.

Lars-Erik lived nearby with his parents in very small circumstances in a street level apartment without running water or indoor plumbing. He often came with us to the cottage.

Lars-Erik was an avid football player even at a young age, far better than I could ever dream of becoming. Once he got severely kicked in a game, fell down and couldn't get up. The ambulance had to be called to take him away. After that, he spent some time at the hospital, recovering from “internal injuries”, a severe strike to his spleen.

All of this lead to him developing full blown diabetes at the tender age of nine.

For him to come with us to the cottage, my father had to go to a special course to learn about diabetes, the signs of oncoming coma and how to counteract them. In addition, he had to learn about food restrictions and how to disinfect the skin and give insulin injections on a regular schedule.

But, Lars-Erik and I had a great time together at the cottage, so much better than when I had been with my father alone.

We built a tree fort, which unfortunately was missing a few principles of engineering and construction safety. It came tumbling down with both of us inside. Nothing bad befell us, other than a few scrapes and torn clothing. My father got very upset and had soon cut up the remainders in sizes to fit the fire place. No more tree house for us.

The sprig that I turned nine we had a large party. Dozens of my friends were invited to our apartment. We served cakes and pastries in unlimited quantities. The party was a success and all had a good time, but I was really disappointed about how much of the baked goods were left. Either my friends didn't like pastries, or my father had totally overestimated how much a bunch of nine year old's really eat. I took pity on the cakes and went to be very stuffed.

I'm not too sure that my father, almost 47 when I was born, understood too much about how children were thinking.

The summer that I was nine was approaching. My mother was going to be out of town and my father decided that I should go to summer camp, preferably on the island of Tärnö, about 1/2 hour trip into the local archipelago with the postal carrier boat, Svea.

There was one objection, though, the summer camps were strictly limited to children from less endowed homes. I could not be considered a financially deprived child and could definitely not qualify.

Well, my father found a way around that. He rented a bed for me at the nearby home of a fisherman, and I was near the camp. All I had to do was to go over there every day, participate in their activities and return to the fisherman's home at night.

Unfortunately the director of the camp didn't take too lightly to this idea and they gave me a hard time, excluding me from some activities. I did take my meals there and learned that the joys of my mother's cooking wasn't offered there.

We may joke about serving burnt porridge, but that was our breakfast, smothered in melted margarine, at the camp.

There was an incident when one of my classmates fell off a cliff and got seriously hurt. He wore a knife in a sheath on his belt. The knife got caught, pressed through the sheath and dug deep into his hip. He was very fortunate that the postal boat was just arriving at the dock, fortunately for all and probably for the survival of the boy, with a fully qualified operating room nurse on board. The boat was turned around and sped back to Karlshamn to a waiting ambulance. He lost a lot of blood but he survived to come back to school that fall.

Why a bunch of nine year olds were allowed to carry sharp knives is beyond me know, but it was just the thing then.

I didn't like the camp much, even though I was allowed to move in with the rest of the boys, now that one had gone to the hospital.

We had an old family friend who had been an employee of my father for many years. She had six children of her own, all grown up, and many grand children but still took time to come and see me on the island one sunny and warm Sunday. I convinced her of how necessary it was for me to leave this prison and go back to town on the next boat. She agreed and I walked on to the boat well hidden in the shadow of her voluminous body. The camp was located next to the dock and I couldn't afford to be seen by anyone.

I did learn, much later, of the frantic search for me at bedtime. But someone had seen me get on the boat and the worry about the lost boy, me, was soon stilled.

I didn't know if my mother was in town, but she was. I met her walking in the street as we came off the boat. She took me in and I spent the rest of the summer with her. I had gotten my first bicycle of my own that spring and the world suddenly became much larger. We used to bicycle, with my sister on my mother's luggage carrier, to nearby beaches.

There was no limit to the number of toys I had. I did have to ask and whine for a long time, but my father usually got me what I wanted.

The price possession was a complete wood working outfit complete with a workbench in my bedroom. Ironically enough I took more to working with metal and electrical items than with wood, but the bench was still a great place to work on.

The BB gun story is nothing to be proud about. Every boy had a BB gun, and I wanted one too. First my father got one from one hardware store. On loan, I found out a few days later when the owner came to the house to collect it. Apparently my father hadn't paid for that, nor many other purchases in recent months.

The next gun came from a different store and lasted longer in my possession. But, what do you shoot at? The obvious targets became rather dangerous to pursue for too long. I and my friends went out to shoot street lights. That was like hitting sitting ducks. Then we tried our luck at street names and signs. That was more challenging and also of more lasting value. The blown street lights may have been replaced the next day, but the damaged signs were nicked and dented forever. Not nice, I agree.

We didn't have any interest in shooting squirrels or birds, though I know of classmates who did. We had to curtail our street light and sign target activities when the police got on our tail. I then moved to target shooting in the largest room at home. Some shots missed by a country mile, and I still have some valuable oil paintings with pellet holes in them.

Another target was the vent ducts on the newly built Police Headquarters, finished in 1949. It was the site of the old prison across the yard from my home. The building vents were far enough away to be hard to hit if it was windy, and would give a nice "plink" sound when you hit. There, again, our activities were eventually curtailed when several policemen came outside to find out why someone had shot BB pellets through one of the roof windows over their gym, perhaps I and my friend Christer Lexe weren't as good shooters as we imagined us to be. I guess all shots didn't hit the vents as aimed for.

My father had to pay for the window replacement at the police station.

He may have had to pay for the broken window but he also had some real duties for the police. He had come on his job in 1935 as the town treasurer with double, actually triple duties; Prosecutor in the regional court well as stand in chief of police when the chief, Torsten Uller was on vacation or otherwise unavailable.

The regional prison was in the rear of city hall until 1949. It had three internal levels and a total of some 50 cells. My father's apartment on top of city hall was used by the prison manager until 1938 when it was refurbished for my parents. What was left were some very old floor lamps with cotton insulated cords which we, my sister and I were told never to touch. They leaked electricity. If you touched them with sweaty hands, they vibrated. That was, I learned much later a warning about imminent death by execution. They were retired when the city changed from a 120 V to 220 V supply system.

The prison was rebuilt in 1949 to become the new police station. Only five cells remained then.

This small city was not always nice to its young. Everyone knew everyone.

The New Years Eve 1950 was very special. A new era had dawned, an era of technology. I had started to read books in earnest. One of my first books was a Popular Mechanics special issue about the future, the years still to come in the later half of this century.

One of my father's best friends had a printer's shop and was also a book-publisher. I had absolutely free run of the book display room. The owner was a great lover of books for young people and he presented me with many memorable books, both newly published and reissued. I probably read every one at one time or another the next few years.

The librarian, Elsa Ohlin, was also a good friend of the family and I came to spend many interesting hours in the library. Perhaps I wasn't the best at returning all books on time but they all got back, eventually. She also guided me to "books of value" not all obvious reading for a growing young man.

The next spring, my father had bought a used 1948 Renault Juvaquatre. It had a better heater and even a radio, all for our comfort.

We made an early run for the cottage. On the way there we barely made it over some soft patches of the road, where the spring thaw had seriously damaged the road-bed.

The cottage, and old tenant-home had been unheated all winter. But, with the advent of high voltage electrical power came the joys of a seven kW electrical heater, sized to keep a small warehouse hot. We were soon settled in in front of an open fire, adding to the electrical heater to keep us comfortable.

Many of the cans in the cupboards had frozen and exploded, the mice had eaten into all the flour and the cereal but some cans had survived. The entire kitchen was a total mess. Perhaps something bigger than a mouse had been inside? My father suspected both the fox and the local field rabbits.

But there was enough for us. Why we went without fresh food is a mystery, but I guess someone had forgotten what winter, freezing, small animals and mice can do to stored food.

On Sunday, we decided on a slightly longer, but more travelled road home. The road gradually worsened. We passed a truck that had slid into the ditch and stood, abandoned, leaning at a precarious angle, but not blocking the road. We were beyond the point of no return and continued, foolishly enough. The mud holes became more frequent and ever deeper, we barely made it of a few and then, we were totally stuck. All four wheels were down to the hub caps and the car was resting on the bottom. The exhaust pipe was below the level of the mud and the exhaust bubbled meekly to the surface. Then the engine stopped.

We walked to the nearest farm house, perhaps a 15 min walk away. The farmer was incredulous, why would any one attempt to drive on that road, it had been closed for all traffic at least two weeks ago?

We had. Two horses were harnessed and we walked back to the car. By this time even the bumpers were in the mud. The tow-chain was hooked to the front axle, in the mud, The horses strained a little and the car was free again. The battery was dead by now and the towing had to go on for a while, until we came to a hill where the car could run free and be clutch-started again.

But, by this time evening had fallen. We were invited to join the family for Sunday dinner and to stay the night in their guest room.

The dinner may have been warm, but the guest room was freezing, not having been fired up for a while. The stove crackled all night but we woke up warm, after all.

I do remember that my father sent them a silver serving set as a thank you for warm services rendered.

We didn't venture any country drives for the next couple of weeks.

The summer of 1950 arrived. The roads were declared hard and drivable again. My father started with a long early summer trip to see some old friends in Gothenburg. They lived in a large house overlooking a valley. I fell in love with the place and the family. The wife was, relatively speaking, very young and they had two sons, only a little older than I.

They offered me to stay for the summer. The boys were away for camp so I guess I would add some life to the otherwise quiet house.

The father of the house was a newly retired librarian, a very gruff man, I can hardly remember even talking to him. The mother, on the other hand, was much younger, full of life and ideas. She made jewelery from little seashells, glued together. She had a display-case at the Gothenburg Railroad station with a few samples and her telephone number in it. That seemed to work well, because we had a continuous stream of people coming and buying one or two of the jewelery-pieces. I enjoyed myself greatly.

There was another 10 year old boy next door, we soon found each other. One activity was to build model aeroplanes and fly them. Perhaps we didn't build the nicest looking planes but we sure built many and flew them a lot. There was an air force base nearby and we got to see the latest in jet-planes, especially the brand new J 21 “Tunnan” up close as they took off and landed over our heads.

The 15 year old son of the house was a real pain for me, five years older he was truly my superior. The pain was short lived, he soon went to an island to stay at a sea cadet camp for the summer.

One sunny weekend we took the boat to go and visit him. The island dock was an abandoned and half sunk old wreck. We were strictly forbidden to walk anywhere else but on the wooden deck. I soon took to exploring both that wreck and another one nearby. The war was newly over and a lot of surplus ships had been abandoned to just rot away in those days.

The second exploratory trip didn't go so well, I fell through an open hatch. Fortunately I landed on a ledge above the water level in the dark engine room and could, eventually be hauled out by one of the naval officers at the camp. I was not welcome back on that island.

On the way back we walked through the town of Gothenburg on the way to the train station. The sky opened up and we got totally flooded, standing up to our knees in water in a doorway. We had had a good day visiting the camp, even if we all came off the train both wet and cold.

Fall came closer and it was time for me to return to school in my Karlshamn. My father came by car to pick up me and my belongings.

No dice, I wasn't going to go back to that place, I liked it here.

OK, stay, said my father. The arrangements were swift, and I was enrolled in third grade in the Lerum Public School.

That was the first time in my life that I learned about discrimination. My country bumpkin dialect which had been a constant source of kidding all summer long became a real burden. I couldn't open my mouth without being harassed. Perhaps I wasn't very quiet either and I got into my share of fights in the school yard. The headmaster tried to put me in another class but that didn't seem to help either.

Finally, a frantic call to my father; "Come get your son back."

So, I was again back in Karlshamn, a few weeks into the term. No one commented on my dialect here.

Realskolan and onwards.

1951 came. I practiced writing 1 1 1 on everything I touched or read the first day of the year.

My mother took a summer job outside Linköping, about 500 km north as a manager of a summer camp for bank employees. It was a sizable place with a staff of about 25 and up to 100 guests at one time. I and my sister were to come for the summer, too.

We left by train early one morning. True to style she wasn't ready in time and we had to call the station and ask them to hold the train while we made our way there. The taxi driver was very irritated about being forced to drive like a madman for us to get on the train.

The trip was long and involved. We had one change of trains, continued by bus and finally by motor boat. The Camp was located on a peninsula, easiest to reach by boat.

There were many children among the visitors and we started off having a royal time with swimming, excursions by motor boat in the neighbourhood and plenty of fresh air running in the forest around us.

This all came to an abrupt end. My sister, who had terrible fits of tantrum the entire summer became very difficult to be with. One afternoon she locked herself into the main floor bathroom, all the time screaming her lungs out, for no apparent reason. One of the principals of the bank finally got a ladder and climbed in through a window. My sister was perfectly fine, just sitting on the floor when he got in.

That was the beginning of the doubt about the wisdom of letting the manager, my mother, work there with two children in tow.

Next followed our disastrous fight in a rowboat with lots of screaming between my sister and I. No real action but plenty of words. My mother, who was a strong swimmer, took a dive and swam out to the two of us in the boat.

Now I had to leave.

But where should I go? The summer was young and my mother had many weeks left to work. It was agreed that I should move to a neighbouring farm, where they had a son just my age.

That was a good move. I was in an interesting place with plenty of things for a couple of boys to get into. The summer was unbelievably hot and dry that year, no rain at all for weeks on end. The ground dried up and cracked wherever the soil was exposed to the sun. The farmer and his wife spoke in somber words about what a disaster this year would be for them as far as the harvest was concerned.

That certainly didn't affect us negatively. My bike came on the train and mobility was again restored. We made long bicycle trips around the country side, outfitted with a lunch from the house.

The bike was new, I had just gotten it that spring and I didn't quite understand the inner workings of the gear mechanism. Unfortunately it got out of adjustment and got stuck in the top gear for the rest of the summer. That meant for hard pedaling and many long walks up even the least impressive hills. Ironically enough, it was a one minute affair for the bicycle shop at home to restore the gears to their full splendour.

Now, when they didn't see me very often, I was also allowed back to the summer hotel, but only for special occasions such as major trips.

One of them was a full day trip with the motor boat. It could seat about 20 passengers comfortably. The excursion took us into an old system of canals, now abandoned by commercial traffic for many years. We saw great civil works and even some forts left from some long forgotten war, hundreds of years ago.

I had gotten into a position of trust with the caretaker/ boatman and he allowed me to steer the boat whenever we were in open water.

Later that fall, I remember writing about my summer vacation -mostly about the joys of being in charge of a large passenger boat. 20 passengers, remember.

In the fall I was to start in High School. I was only 11 and put in a class of only boys.

I didn't understand anything about how first year students were introduced to the life at a high school and got into many fights. More than once did I return home from school with dirty or even torn clothing.

I had started to wear glasses for the first time. That represented the culmination of a dream, to look wise and learned. I soon found out the reality of that dream. Anyone with glasses was even more subject to ridicule than a person without. My first pair only lasted a few weeks before they got smashed by some boys during a break. Unfortunately the glass lenses survived. I didn't dare to complete the act of vandalism by breaking them myself. I brought the lenses home. That meant that my father brought them back to the opticians store to find another pair of frames that could take them. I ended up with even uglier glasses than the ones that got destroyed.

The world of literature beckoned. The school gymnastics team had their own periodical. I thought it would be just great to have my own magazine, to win fame and accolades. Besides, I also knew how to run a Gestetner duplicating machine. What better task, write a magazine and then run it on the duplicating machine.

My good friend Torsten and I talked about this, yes we would write something together. It didn't come to be. When the appointed day came to meet and start writing he was ill in bed with a cold. Well, fear not, I started writing, wrote down some ideas and showed them to my father. He got excited and thought that this could be a good vehicle to shoot a few barbs at the city administration from.

Sure enough, I wrote some, and he added enough to fill two folio pages.

Now, run the duplicating machine. I did, and ended up with a sizable stack of papers to sell the next day.

My sales were fantastic. I had sold hundreds of sheets in a couple of morning breaks and all was going well - until the headmaster showed up and collected all that I had left. He didn't pay, I noticed.

That was not quite the end of the story even if my magazine publishing career had both a quick, undistinguished and short career.

A copy of the sheet got in the hands of the local newspaper. They had a heyday the next day on page two summarizing the content and pointing out how utterly stupid the comments about the city administration were. Besides, how could a first year student say those things?

I think my father really got hurt over that article, no names were mentioned but it probably didn't take much of detective work to find out where it all originated. Perhaps he had himself to blame. He was angry and hurt at the time, and expressing that in a sheet to be sold to school children probably wasn't the right place.

My fame was made and I was established as a literary person, even if an absolute failure as such. My friend Torsten Antonsson never spoke to me again. Our friendship had come to an abrupt halt, especially so as his name, as well as mine, had been on the sheet as: "Irresponsible Publishers", probably a very true statement of the facts.

But, since his contribution actually was zero, his mother didn't like the developments at all. She made a lawyer call my father and discuss the propriety of him writing anything over her son's name. My father also lost a friend over that little publication.

The furor died down and school was going quite well for a while.

School lunch was in another building, about a ten minutes' walk away. One lunch hour I came back to school early. As I walked across the lawn I heard: "There is smoke. There is fire. The school is burning!"

Not quite all of it, but there was certainly smoke coming from the boys' restroom. I had a quick look inside and was repelled by the smoke.

I turned around and called for the grounds keeper, Holger Lätth. He came quickly and put out the flames. Someone had put a match to the hand towels. No major damage but lots of smoke.

Then came the investigation. The grounds keeper had a "good eye" on me, I had been in a major discussion with him about the general order of our bike stand. My designated stand had broken that week and my new bike had gotten a scratch, all his fault in my eyes.

Pay back time. He went to the headmaster and explained who was the culprit and the source of all the excitement. The headmaster called the police and I was hauled in as a material witness. The situation was very unpleasant. Children could be expelled from High School and returned to Public School for lesser offenses than setting your school on fire.

I knew perfectly well who the culprits were from the outset, and they were bragging about how they had put the school on fire and managed to put the blame on me. But, the fear of a real beating quieted my mouth.

In the end the investigation was closed without laying guilt, perhaps a teacher heard about the bragging of the real criminals.

But, again, I was earning fame, fame that I could well do without.

I failed that whole year miserably. I cannot even recall if I had passing marks in a single subject. The summer of 1952 was spent in and around Karlshamn. Sometime I was at the cottage with my father, at other times at home. My mother worked as a receptionist at a small hotel nearby and I saw a lot of her.

We used to go on long bicycle rides to a secluded beach only accessible from a path thorough the forest. My mother was hopeless on getting ready in the morning. When we finally were on the way the sun was usually high n the midday sky.

My mother's best friend Märta and her two daughters, Marianne and Astrid were usually there also. The idea was to find a secluded spot where the ladies could suntan naked. I don't know if they ever did, but that was certainly the goal. What was more important was to find a spot that wasn't too cold with the wind off the sea. Also, we had to be far enough away from other people that our Cocker Spaniel Lou-Lou and Märta's black poodle Sessie wouldn't become too aggravated and perhaps bite someone. They both did at one time or another, calling for lots of apologies and soul searching for the reasons.

That poor Cocker Spaniel, we didn't understand how hard it really was to run ten km next to a bicycle in the midday sun. Once she started coughing and couldn't run any more. There was a nearby well where we got some water for her to drink and poured some over her. After that we really curtailed the long runs. My mother added a front bicycle basket to carry the little Cocker Spaniel in.

That almost caused a disaster. On a fast downhill run, a few weeks later, Lou-Lou decided to jump out. Who knows why, she had spent many hours riding the basket before. The leach was short and my mother was pulled over too. There they were en a heap, with hot chocolate milk oozing from the broken thermos bottle. My mother's knee really took a beating. It swelled up and the swelling only subsided after several months. I saw her walk with a limp whenever the weather got cold for years afterwards. Why wouldn't she see a doctor?

On another occasion we almost lost our dog. She swam so far out that she almost drowned from exhaustion. My mother was a strong swimmer and, probably stupidly, insisted on swimming so far out onto the sea that we could hardly see her head before turning around and coming to shore again. Once, on her way out, the dog jumped in and started following her. None of us could swim faster than the dog, to catch up. It took a lot of shouting from us on the shore before my mother realized that she had to turn around and meet her dog. My mother was in good shape when she returned, her trip had been shorter than normal but the poor dog, we practically had to lift her out of the water.

Our Holidays were always celebrated in grand style, all of them.

My grandfather, the retired food manufacturer had lots of friends. He owned half a city block with a huge enclosed garden and several populated buildings. The largest was facing the main street. Drottinggatan, Queen Street. Is there a Queen street in every city on earth? We had one too.

The parties were in the garden and especially in a garden house in the summertime. His birthday was in July, what a great time for a party in the open. Then there was the crayfish party, second weekend in August and... The list goes on.

The whole family would get together, five children of his, me and my sister and a sprinkling of old family friends.

Invariably, there was lots of drinking, some arguments, usually good hearted and singing into the wee hours.

My sister and I, being the youngest didn't always last to the end. In the morning we may have found a family friend, or two, camped out on an air mattress in our rooms.

This lasted for as long as my grandfather was alive, until the very last year of his life. He was the magnet for all. He passed away at 87 in 1964, and there was never a party like it since.

His eldest son, Sten, was always the photographer and left thousands of happy photographs behind.

Sten was the black sheep of the family, or at least the blackest of them. Born 1905 he was in the peak of his years in my teenage years and became almost like substitute father for me, or at least an important mentor.

Sten had joined the Cavalry at a young age and soon advanced to a Lieutenant there, after much riding and military life.

The Swedish army decided to set up an air force 1926. Because of the escalating international tension during the 1930s the Air Force was reorganized and expanded from four to seven squadrons in 1932 and a serious search for pilots ensued.

Sten, being an able cavalry officer saw an opportunity to get away from tending to the horses and applied.

He received Swedish pilots license number 72 in 1932. Since all pilots had to carry a license I suppose that this number indicated how many that had received their wings before him.

Sten was always happy with the bottle and that didn't change with his flying status, for sure.

His father had a large 1927 Buick car for family car. Sten totally demolished the car when he drove it off the road and into a mountain side, when totally drunk in 1932. He did seriously injure his knee, an injury that he aggravated in an aeroplane crash in 1933. First class pilot, or not, he limped a little for the rest of his life.

As I entered the army, years later I met a few of the old officers who still remembered my uncle Sten.

I also was given a few newspaper clippings about when he got into trouble with the authorities.

All pilots were issued a service pistol, to be carried at all times when on duty. One story about his pistol occurred while they were based on the island of Gotland.

Being quite far north on the globe, summer sunrises were early. Sten always partied late and was not very enthused when awoken by the birds singing outside his open window in the morning.

He took the pistol and, unbelievable as it may sound, hit a bird in the tree.

Unfortunately, any shot that early in an otherwise quiet morning would draw the attention of the guard. After a frantic search for enemies, it was determined that Sten was the guilty shooter and had pistol with a magazine, missing a few cartridges.

He got written up and got another black mark on his record, adding to many.

Eventually, after a few far more serious misadventures, he was demoted and barred from all future flying.

WW2 had started in August 1939. Sweden was ill prepared, it had all of 170 aeroplanes and probably no greater number of qualified pilots as it stood then.

Finland was invaded by Russian troops on November 30 that same year. The Finns started an immediate mobilization and young patriotic Swedes soon joined, too.

The Swedish free brigade was assembling on the island of --- just off the coast near Helsinki. Some 8 200 Swedes volunteered to fight the Reds, fortunately only 12 of of the volunteers died in Finland. The Finns lost some 30 000 soldiers during the three month war, the Russians some 500 000. The war ended badly for both the Finns and the Russians after a peace accord the following March. Russia was deemed to have invaded illegally and were promptly kicked out of The League of Nations, the precursor to The United Nations, which was formed later, in 1946.

Sten was by this time stationed on Gotland, again, doing routine recognizance flights only.

No war there.

Early one December morning, he and another officer friend decided to join the Swedish brigade in Finland. They took off long before sunrise and found their way north to Finland, about a three hour flight for them.

They landed, taxied up to the commanding officer's office, stepped out of the aeroplanes, saluted and stated.:

“Captain Rosholm and fighter aeroplane number 56, reporting for duty.”

Not so fast, the aeroplane belonged to a neutral nation, Sweden, and was certainly not the property of any “Captain Rosholm” who was still on active Swedish duty.

A diplomatic row developed, soon calmed with the order to Sten and his officer friend, still in Finland to:

“Fly your aeroplane back to Gotland and report for duty.”

A court marshal was to follow and did. The outcome was, however, filed away. Sweden had far too few pilots to let any one go out of duty to go to jail then.

Sten continued flying recognizance flights out of Gotland. But not for very long. He soon lost his wings.

Now, the no-war was at a new routine as far Sweden and Russia were concerned. The Finnish winter war had ended.

Every sunrise, a lone Russian aeroplane would fly down the east coast of Gotland, starting at the northern tip. It had a large hole in the bottom, obviously for an aerial camera.

Sten or one of his colleagues routinely scrambled to intercept the enemy, which obediently would turn out to sea, only to return farther south, some half our later.

Some time after the beginning of this dance, Sten got a bit annoyed, let this be stopped.

He used the not so impressible capabilities of his double wing aeroplane, equipped with one single machine gun and – shot down the unarmed Russian observation plane.

Not good – the female pilot parachuted out of the burning aeroplane. She he broke her leg in a hard landing and became safely ensconced in a Swedish hospital. She some very clear ideas of who had shot her down. She gave the identification letters from the aeroplane and also described Sten's facial features clearly. He had many red dimples from a recent bout with adult onset smallpox. They flew open cockpit aeroplanes, remember, and had been very close more than one morning in the past.

She was soon returned to Russia on a Russian aeroplane, especially sent in to pick her up.

Now Sten was in serious trouble.

The ensuing court marshal brought out the records of all his misdeeds, mostly involving alcohol. The newspapers had a hey day, telling about how lil ole neutral Sweden had bravely defended itself but also gone too far.

Sten, who was a captain at the time, lost one star, became a Lieutenant again and was sent to Northern Sweden to keep guard against the Germans, who had occupied all of Norway.

Sten was a stern officer, earning the respect of his men, some of who I met in later years. The duties were probably boring beyond belief, live in tents and walk a few kilometres of scraggy mountainous terrain against invading Germans, far north of the Arctic circle and in constant daylight in summer and constant darkness in the wintertime.

Sten, being a personal acquaintance of Hermann Göring, the chief of the German air force had a good time. Görings first wife, Carin, was from Kalmar. Göring always had a soft spot for the area. Sten met him first when asked to take him on a ride in a military car. Sten was more than a closet Nazi, he was a real one. This wasn't a problem in Sweden then, it was a well known fact that a great number of the officers were Germany sympathizers.

I can well understand why Sten was placed so far out of harms way in the north. Since he spoke fluent German and soon made friends with the Germans who were equally bored on the other side of the Norwegian – Swedish border.

They took turns partying in each other's camps as the years, four in all, wore on. No bullets were ever fired and not much of military value ever happened.

Some 20 years later, in 1955, Sten had located three of his German friends from the Norwegian border, now living in East Germany.

He travelled there by tourist bus, entered East Germany by boat illegally and, again, caused a diplomatic row.

After a few days with his German friends, it was time to return to, then, West Germany. Since Sten had no documentation allowing him to visit East Germany, he certainly had no such papers for leaving.

It all came down to a “diplomatic misunderstanding” and Sten returned to Sweden some time later, not by tourist bus but by train. He hated the Communists with even greater fervour after that event, he even forced me to change out of my red swim trunks one summer day. Nothing “red” was allowed in his line of sight.

Before his return, we had read in the Swedish newspapers about this “Swede who was retained by the East Germans.” Only later did we find the name. Our very own Sten.

1953

This was the time for me to explore. I had my bike and my freedom. One place of real interest was, of course the railroad station. It was still downtown and only a few blocks away with the main line running only one block from city hall, where I lived.

There was little need for many school buses as the students living out of town could take the train almost to the front steps of the school.

A popular activity for us who lived in the city was to get on the train at the school-stop and then get off at the main station, some two km farther on.

I spent many hours idling in the locomotive stalls, making friends with the workers. They taught me about how to clean out the ash bins and also how to fire up the locomotives and get them ready for the next run.

They had two shunt engines, one a diesel driven and also a little steam engine shunt locomotive that was use to go to and from the harbour area. I often hitched a ride with either one. I got to understand what made a steam engine go and how to control the power and the brakes.

Then, one evening a large line-engine was driven in to the locomotive stall – the driver offered me to ride with him. I rode this enormously large machine as it was carefully backed in for the night.

“Can I ride with you on a real railroad run?”

“Sure, be here at 04:00 tomorrow. I am taking over the night freight train here for the the last 90 km freight run from Karlshamn to Karlskrona.”

Guess where I was at 04:00 the next morning? To heck with school for that day, I was going to drive a freight train.

I did. He taught me about throttle and piston fill advance controls, how to break the train and how to break with the engine, only. He talked about how to conserve steam and how to stay friends with your fire-man by not using too much steam, frivolously.

The track signals, that always look mysterious to a casual observer now made sense. I learned not to be scared when you drive on the right side and the track made a left turn. You couldn't see where you were going. Frightening. The fire man was supposed to look from his side then but he was often busy with the firing. Driving a 2 500 tonne train at 60 km/h may not sound so difficult, but if you cannot see? Well, the world had driven trains for 140 years by then, so these people must have known what they were doing.

The firemen introduced me to the intricacies of how to throw the coal right to keep the fire even and how to open and close the fire door at the right time. What a hard work.

The cabin was open. We rode on a night at about – 5^o C. The side windows were part open and the temperature differences were enormous in the driver's cab as you moved from behind the fire in the centre to either side.

I was on cloud nine. My legs were trembling with excitement for the next couple of hours. As we passed through the stations along the way, I had to crouch down near the coal chute so I couldn't be seen by any of the station personnel.

This is one experience that I have cherished forever. How many 14 year olds, not related to a railroad engineer, have ridden at the head of a real steam engine powered train?

On arrival in Karlskrona, I was led off the train to railroad worker's café. I had an early breakfast with the fireman. Later he led me across the tracks to get back on a regular morning passenger run, back to Karlshamn. The conductor was a friend of the engineer and let me sit undisturbed by any attempts to see my ticket.

I didn't have one.

I was again failing in school and probably had to take the same class over again.

A retired army officer run a Gymnastics camp, Hällevikslägret for about 300 children at a time,

all from Blekinge province. The camp was three weeks long.

To get there, we travelled by a chartered steam powered train. It started at the eastern end of Blekinge province and stopped at every stop on the way, it seemed, to pick up more children. On arrival we all had to line up in columns and walk the short distance to the camp with our hand luggage in our hand.

The heavy cases were all offloaded on a truck and arrived later, all mixed up.The lodgings were in military style barracks. No heat, no running water. Washing was to be done in the sea. We all had to line up early in the morning and then walk in columns to the sea for our morning toilette.

To brush your teeth in cold seawater was almost enjoyable after a while. The hard part was to wash your self with regular, very uncooperative non lathering soap, in the ice cold seawater at the wee hours of the day. No one could escape this routine, may it have been sunny, foggy or rainy. Any exclusion required a doctor's certificate.

The days were filled with activities. The camp was run military style and every move had to be as a troop. The main emphasis was on gymnastics and I must say that, after my first hesitancy, it was mostly fun. I got selected to an elite group, we learned a few extra daring tricks to show on parents day, on two consecutive Sundays.

I did fall off a rack once. I bruised a couple of ribs and even bled a little, it hurt for a while but I soon forgot about the incident. Ironically enough, the resulting scar stayed with me for many years to come.

Every state room had an adult as a live in leader. Our leader, I found out, had a liking for boys. It became a bit of a sport among us to avoid him and his groping hands. Sexual abuse was not invented yet and no one thought about reporting him to anyone. This man was an officer in the army, spending part of his summer vacation at this camp. I learned a few years later that he had been beaten to death in a port in southern Europe. He had by then left the army and joined the merchant marine. Did he touch the wrong boy?

Both of my then divorced parents came on a visit one of the Sundays. Every child probably has the impossible dream that their divorced parents will make up and be friends again. I saw them leave in a car together, but that was probably the one and only time I ever saw them together since the separation several years earlier.

Lter that fall, my father collided with a car in the first snow storm of the year on a 600 km trip to Stockholm. Not so smart to drive in snow? He continued his journey by train and returned the same way.

After the car was repaired, we both travelled together by train a couple of weeks later to pick up the newly painted little Renault and drive it home again, a full day's adventure.

On another trip to Stockholm, this time by train, he had a blood clot, ended up in a hospital and stayed away from home for several weeks. When he finally got back he had lost a lot of weight.

He didn't really exercise much parental control over me or comment about my friends. Perhaps I wasn't in the most savoury of company either. We used to go on frequent trips to private gardens, starting with stealing cherries, plums and pears and progressing to apples as the fall wore on.

Come Christmas time and the first heavy snow fall in Karlshamn, we had also become masters at making up our own home made explosives. Yes, we were taught the principles in chemistry class but I am sure the teacher didn't have the slightest thought of the possibility that anyone would go home and actually make gunpowder.

We did, my friend Christer and I charged empty rifle shells with a few grammes of gunpowder, set off by a short fuse. No questions were asked when we bought the fuse in the hardware store, or the ingredients in the drugstore. We needed an igniter, this gun powder didn't just explode if you put fire to it, it just burned in a lethargic way.

The answer was to scrape the phosphorous off the end of matches. Now we had a good working source of ignition, easy to set off with the end of a fuse.

The first explosions were staged far outside town, only to be enjoyed by the two of us. Then we had a snowfall. Snow would hide our little bombs and any length of fuse. The next move was to charge some ten or fifteen shells and fit fuses of varying lengths. The goal was to light them all, hide them in the snow and make them all explode at the same time.

We succeeded only to well. The resultant multiple explosions along about 100 m of a city street raised the interest of the police who came by in easily recognizable car, the one with the tall radio antenna towering above it. Nothing was found.

We hid away our explosives and decided on a hiatus from any more excursions of that kind. The police obviously hadn't found anything. The next day the local newspapers had a photo of neatly pierced picture window of a store. The owner held a shell in his hand. The accompanying caption said. "Passing car shot shell with unusual force to penetrate a thick glass window. Fortunately the insurance will pay for the replacement."

My mother found a left-over bottle of my explosive mixture. She didn't dare to throw it in the garbage and it stood, filled with water, for months on the counter in the kitchen. I think she, eventually brought it along on a walk and threw it into the sea. I, at least never heard anything about a terrible explosion at our city dump.

It was time for federal elections that fall. They were, as they are everywhere else in the world, preceded by many speeches, many leaflets distributed and, the town was plastered with political banners. One of the better ones read:

"Down with the taxes, vote for the communists.”

Well, a few swift strokes with a pocket knife would reduce the text to, read, still in perfect harmony,

"Down with the Communists."

Someone must have seen me and my father, certainly not a communist but definitely a politically involved person got a call.

"If we catch your boy cutting up our signs we'll give him licking he'll never forget."

My father gave me a good licking then. It was probably not a very hard one, he didn't always even catch me when he was angry. Perhaps he didn't like to hit his son? Come to think of it, he never ever hit me even once. But I didn't forget the message and didn't cut up any more advertising banners that fall.

We weren't always on the best of terms, my father and I. One dark night I decided to run away. I didn't run very far, only to the next yard where I hid in a sunken basement window area. The police station was next door. My father went there asking for help. The police probably weren't too enthused by having to go looking for a run away boy at that hour. I was soon found by one of the senior officers. He spoke very convincingly with his hands when nobody was looking, before returning me to my father. I got the idea that it wasn't a good idea to run away and be found by the police, ever again.

The next spring we made frequent trips to the summer cottage, starting before the ice had broken up in April.

There were always a lot of leaves around the house and also in the nearby forest, a mixed stand. My father decided that it was unnecessary to rake it all and then burn the leaves, we could burn them in place.

Everything was dry so that seemed as a good idea. He started walking around early in the morning with a book of matches, setting small localized fires here and there. Then he got bolder and moved closer to the forest line.

Suddenly the fire roared up and spread fast. I beat with rushes with the sweat pouring off my forehead, but the fire spread too fast. I decided we needed help, left my father and ran like I had never run before the few hundred metres through the forest to the nearest farm. I was in luck, all the men were gathered in the kitchen for breakfast. Several men ran with me back. By that time the fire was all around our cottage but fortunately no coniferous trees had caught fire yet. The men concentrated on the ground fires near the forest line. It took several hours before the danger of a general forest fire was over.

My father went to bed late that night and slept hard, he must have been totally exhausted. I woke up many times during the night, went to the window and looked outside. An old root cellar had caught fire, the flames flickered faintly all night.

The next morning we took a careful walk around the area. Our smoke smelling clothes and totally ruined shoes had served for the last time. We drove back to town late that morning.

This summer there was going to be a large fair in Karlshamn, Blekingemässan. It was to attract hundreds of thousands of visitors and be showcase for the best the region had to offer. I got a job selling chocolates.

But everything didn't work out as planned. My father died the day before the opening of the fair.

The King was to be there for the official opening. My father found out, a day before the event, that he had been excluded from the royal dinner that night.

He had been sick and off from work quite a while so someone must have thought him unimportant by now. There was a lot of politics going on in this little town. I knew perfectly well that my father had alienated many powerful political persons during his 18 years as Chief town clerk.

The morning he found out about the changed seating arrangements he started walking around to some of his friends of influence to have them interfere on his behalf. He wanted to be allowed to the dinner. His pace was high, he moved faster than I had seen him for quite a while.

Come lunchtime we were back in the kitchen setting the table. Suddenly my father gripped the top drawer hard and leaned heavily on it. I helped him to lie down on my bed. The doctor, Walter Pålsson, a life long friend of my father didn't come over in person, he sent for the ambulance right away. My father was brought to the hospital. He had probably had a stroke.

I sat with him for an hour or so, until he seemed a little better when I left.

Then I bicycled around town for the next couple of hours, inspecting the last arrangements for the opening of the fair the next day. I was ill of fear over what was happening to my father. I realized full and well that he was seriously ill and sicker than ever before.

On my return to the hospital, it was midsummer time and the sun was still high on the sky, I was stopped in the corridor by a nurse that I knew.

"Take this, you will need it."

Medication for me? I wasn't sick. It was Bromide and tasted awful. Then the doctor came out and told me;

"Your father is dead."

My mother was there as well as my father's fiancee. They did eventually become very good friends but they were hardly civil to each other then.

I saw the outline of his body against the window but I wasn't allowed in the room.

The next morning the fair opened, there was a fly-over by the air force and the cannon roared from the ships in the harbour. For me it all rolled into one farewell to my father.

I started selling chocolates the next day. The weather was unusually warm and most of my chocolate melted in the warm sun. Then I got the chocolate tray replaced with an ice cream box and sold that instead.

After a few days the weather changed. The attendance to the fair which had started out with big crowds soon shrank. The cold and rainy weather had kept too many visitors away. I heard the whole affair ended up with a large deficit.

I saw my father one more time, in the morgue. He was in the casket. His lips were slightly parted, as if he was breathing through his mouth.

The funeral was well attended with all of the town officials who had so rudely turned him away before, now in attendance. My father's life long enemy and political opponent, Nils Persson, held a long speech, appreciated by all and reprinted in total in the local newspaper the day after.

I returned to the summer camp for another three weeks of gymnastics and exercise. The weather was less cooperative and we had many rainy and cold days. That didn't stop our activities. It took a steady downpour before we couldn't do gymnastics out of doors.

Unbelievable as it was, I had never learned to swim properly and was always afraid of water. But the sea was difficult to avoid when you grew up only a few hundred metres from the shore. It took until my army days before I became a confident swimmer. Perhaps part of the reason was that I was very skinny and always got very cold in the chilly waters of the northern summer. I always associated swimming with being chilled to the bone.

My buddy Per and I convinced ourselves that we were to camp on the beach together. His mother drove us out one morning and was to come back and pick us up again late the next day.

The day was warm and we could lie around and suntan on the hot sand. Skin cancer wasn't invented yet so we really got ourselves burned to a crisp that day.

The evening led to an absolutely fantastic light summer night. We had a last exploratory walk on the beach, cooked our food over an open fire and prepared for a good night's sleep. The birds changed their songs when it got dark but kept on singing all night long. I couldn't sleep and woke up and walked outside several times during the night. Towards the morning I made a roaring fire and woke my friend up for breakfast. He was shimmering with cold and we had to go for a long run to warm up.

The sun didn't cooperate the next day and the sand stayed cold and icy to the touch. We found (borrowed) a row boat and went for a boat ride instead of sun tanning any more. There was no sun and our bodies were still burning from yesterday's sun. We caught a couple of small perch that went into the frying pan at lunchtime. We were out of butter so we fried the fish dry. Seldom has any burnt fish smelled better.

It was with some regret that we returned home, full of promises to do this again.

We remained friends for life but we never did go on any more outings together.

On a Sunday afternoon we visited the Ahlqvist's, Per's parents for afternoon coffee in the garden. While the adults were chatting away Per and I went sailing his newly finished barge. The barge was artfully made from old semi sunken wood scraps and could barely carry one person, standing still in the centre. A minor detail as how much could be carried didn't bother us. We were to put sail and go out together, the two of us.

The first little while, everything went fine. The sail caught the wind and we were moving with the front pointing up and out of the water. After a few minutes the balance changed, the nose went under and the barge continued to sail with good speed, straight towards the bottom. This represented no major disaster for Per, he was a good swimmer, but I was, as mentioned before, very uncertain in my ability to swim.

No one drowned and we returned to our respective parents, dressed in our now absolutely soaked Sunday finest. That didn't come off too well for either one of us.

But, true to the spirit of seafaring adventurers, the next Sunday we laughed over the whole affair. Now, you could say, where was the parental influence and the need for life vests? Should we wear life vests on a barge? They are unsinkable.

My own boat building career was, as with so many other careers in my life, short, swift, costly, sweet and disastrous.

Flat bottomed boats were the rage that year. They were the size of a 6 x 4 feet sheet of Masonite, nailed to two pieces of wood, the sides, and rounded up at each end. There probably wasn't a simpler design on earth. Three pieces only, of which two were identical. A well built boat would carry two.

I was to build my own. The trick with bending up the ends of the plywood was to soak them in water for a week first. I put my sheet of plywood under a few stones in the nearby river. My patience was up after two days and I reclaimed my sheet of plywood, ready for step two, nail it to the sides.

The sides were ready and I started bending the plywood. It cracked right across. What now? Never fear, I will use sheet metal for the ends. That only left one bothersome detail, how to join the thin masonite to the even thinner sheet metal? With putty! All of this looked like a real flat bottomed boy's dream boat but for one detail, it leaked so much that it would sink after a few minutes in the water.

All my brief trips were with trusty friends, good at bailing water. We sank only once at some distance from shore but then we were saved by another boat nearby.

When not in use this vessel of mine was hidden under the bushes like all the other in the area. One day mine was gone from its hiding place, never to be seen again. Rumour told me it was filled with stones and sunk by some of my "friends". We tried to find it but I had no success. An era in my life, the era as skipper on my own home built boat had ended.

Our local swimming bay had a dressing room. It was divided into two halves, divided by a single wooden wall. We took turns, being very quiet standing behind the wall and looking at the girls through a few carefully knocked out knot-holes in the wood, almost invisible between the peeling paint and the natural pattern of the wood. It did carry a certain element of danger. We may have been 12-13 year old's but some of the girls were both older, taller and stronger than we were. Some boys got caught and got a few well deserved slaps for their voyageurism.

My bathing career was short that summer. I cut my foot on a piece of glass. It bled profusely then but didn't seem very threatening at the time. I even got back into the water after having added a good size bandage from the communal first aid box.

But, the next day was bad. My foot had started swelling and I had to go to the hospital. Naturally, I had a good and visible beginning of blood poisoning, quickly followed by a very painful tetanus-shots in the stomach, antibiotic shots and;

"No more swimming until this is healed."

As usual, the weather got cold again, and the season was practically over by the time my foot was fit for swimming again.

This was the summer when the water in the bay had been closed in with tarpaulins, in an attempt to make sure the water stayed warmer, Who could tell what bacteria grew in that still water. But I for sure, must have cultivated some samples on the ball of my foot.

The end of the season came early, long before the water was too cold, with the arrival of the sea urchins. Millions of slimy sea urchins took over the coastal waters. Some would sting if they touched you but all were unpleasant to the touch. When they were gone both the air and the water was too cold for anything but to throw stones on.

The next touch of water would come in the winter. It was cold and the harbour froze. It didn't stay solidly frozen for very long, a westerly wind broke it up to large floes of ice. Then came what every person who has ever done it will dream about occasionally for the rest of his life.

Jumping between the floes of ice.

It sounds so simple, looks so simple and is really frightening. The ice is broken, each floe is hardly large enough to carry one person and some are so poor that they will break when you jump on them. Speed and judgment is of the essence, just standing still could lead straight down.

We used to try our luck at the midday break. Wet shoes or socks were totally insignificant. One day, one boy, Björn Rimér missed a jump and sank to his neck in the ice water. Fortunately we were all near the shore, and he was quickly hauled up.

There he was, dripping wet, standing on terra firma. The wind was cold and the edges of his clothing were already freezing and making little sounds when he moved. Someone remembered the newly installed hot showers in our Gym hall. We ran back to the school, made our way in to the shower area and put him under hot water to warm up again. His father, a dentist, was called to come to school with some dry clothes to collect his son.

That was the end of our jumping careers both for that year and the next. The headmaster was not about to lose any of his students to drowning in the harbour, only a stone's throw away from the school grounds.

My new bike was getting dangerous, it had gradually gotten ever weaker brakes. The gear mechanism had to be oiled occasionally, and the oil would invariably migrate to the brake pads.

The first run when leaving school was down a steep hill with a turn in the middle.

One day I didn't make it. Between the wet gravel road, the fallen leaves and my poor brakes, my downhill ride was too fast. I ran into the trees, narrowly missing some very ragged rocks. I was all banged up with torn clothes, but not really hurt. I walked all the way home, leading my bike with a severely bent front wheel.

The bike shop owner took one look at my prime possession, fixed the wheel and replaced the brakes, all the time telling me about what to never add oil to again.

My father, who had already bought me a new pair of pants to replace the ones that got torn in my little event, didn't complain about the bicycle repair bill.

That Christmas I had my first long run at a well paying job. I delivered flowers for Holm's Flower shop. The pace was high. There was always scores of prepared flower arrangements to go standing on the floor. We picked the ones that were on about the same route, put them in a wooden box on the bike and took off. It was Christmas and there was tip to be had at every door. On quiet moments we would play in the back, making wire sculptures out of the flower arrangement wires. The preparation area had very special smell of flowers, soil, paper and candles.

Old Mrs. Holm was in charge, ruling the store by an Iron hand.

We had a snow storm in just before the holidays and the streets froze to an uneven gray surface, full of menacing holes. I had a few nasty falls on the bike, but none bad enough to badly damage any of my fragile cargo.

The reward for all this was 64 kronor. I took the money and opened my first savings book. This money and some other errand-running revenue was eventually combined to buy my very first record player, one that was very modern and could play both 78,45 and 33 rpm records.

After my father's death, my mother cleaned out the large apartment. She threw away most of my father's papers and documents, leaving me with very little knowledge of who he really was. I knew his birthplace but not the name of a single relative, information that I have found difficult to replace.

I now moved permanently to my mother's small one bedroom apartment. My place was an alcove in the kitchen. It wasn't quite as lacking in privacy as one may think. There were only three of us in the apartment and each had his or her own room.

I put up a large picture of a moped over my bed. I should soon be 15 and be allowed to drive one. In the meantime I took every opportunity to drive a moped. Some of my friends either bought one of their own or borrowed one from their fathers or elder brothers or sisters.

My sister Marie-Louise was becoming even more unstable. She would pick fights over the smallest details. The fights were escalating. Marie-Louise would stop at nothing in her rage. Once she threw a heavy book at me across the living room. I ducked and one of my mother's price possessions, a crystal vase, got smashed to smithereens.

Once she locked me out on the balcony and I had to stay there until my mother came home. I didn't dare smash a window to get back inside.

She would, on occasion, get into such screaming fits that she didn't stop until her voice gave out, and she couldn't but whisper for a day afterwards.

I dreaded coming home some days, not knowing what would happen that night.

Our next door neighbour had just had a heart attack and he needed piece and quiet to be able to recover properly. I am sure that there was some not so veiled pressure put on my mother to move out of the building.

My grandparents had just finished a new apartment for themselves and my mother got offered their old one. It had a dark and gloomy yard location but with one redeeming feature, two rooms were facing the garden and the setting sun. My mother had talked longingly for a long time about how great it would be to have a garden, again. We moved late in the spring. The moving firm was called only for the heavy furniture, everything else was transported on a borrowed tricycle.

I got my own room, next to the kitchen, a large room with a grand view of the garden and a mountainside in the distance. My sister was next door but I put a double lock in that door to assure privacy.

I turned 15. The summer break came fast and it was time to fulfill a promise of mine, to work on a farm for the summer.

My father's fiancee Sandra had met a couple on a train that spring; "We always hire students as summer workers." There I was, engaged for the summer on a farm in central Sweden.

It was necessary for me to have a driver's license as I would be expected to drive a tractor a lot. In preparation I had gone to the local driver's school to pass the theoretical test as that was all that was needed to drive a tractor. One problem came up when it was time to pass the exam, though. Only children of farmers were allowed to get a tractor license. That was a bit of a disaster, was I going to work as a tractor driver without a license? I did.

I arrived at the farm in the middle of the day after a long train ride with a couple of changes of trains. The farmer seemed a nice man, skinny as a reed and driving a brand new Peugeot car, a car with hammocks for seats. It seemed like an odd arrangement. This model was built especially for cheap French farmers, no frills. - He had ordered the car straight from France.

I got a small room above the kitchen. My room was facing north and the light midsummer sky made for a bright room all night.

The family included two children, a girl my age and a boy a couple of years younger. The girl was a singing protege and destined to go far. She had already performed in church as well as on a popular children's program in radio.

The house had running water, but only in the kitchen. We had to wash up there every morning. There was a schedule on the wall, indicating how many minutes each person would have the kitchen for him or herself.

Everything was on a schedule I soon found out, including how much we had to eat. The whole family, not only the father, was skinny. They didn't get too much to eat, that was for sure. I asked why we never had eggs, a standard breakfast fare at my home.

"You got your egg today. You had a piece of cake. We only serve one egg per person per day here."

Well, the truth is they didn't serve much of anything, per person per day.

I have no idea of how much weight I lost but I grew thinner during my time there. I was so hungry at times that I would steal some of the better looking potatoes that we boiled for the pigs, add salt, and eat when no one was looking.

The work may not have been physically hard always but the hours were long. The worst was to clean out the calves stilt and the best was to harvest the hay by the lake, then we worked ourselves warm and we all went skinny-dipping, including the girls, to cool off.

The tractor was old, had to be started on gasoline and then switched to kerosene. The farmer didn't believe in spending money on much, and probably not any on spare parts. The fan belt had broken, it was repaired with a piece of wire and often broke again.

My instructions were brief;

"It has three gears and a high and low box."

- off to the field for me. I was mowing hay. Everything went fine for several hours until the radiator started boiling after the fan belt had broken. How should I stop the engine? It had a magneto ignition and there was obviously no ignition key to turn off. I tried all the switches and buttons but to no avail, the engine kept running. Gradually the flow of steam from the radiator was reducing in volume. There was no more water inside the engine. A real crisis was developing. Would I blow up the tractor?

Finally, out of desperation, I put the tractor in high gear and it came to a stop when I was riding the brakes for all I was worth. At that moment the farmer came walking towards me over the field. I almost ran away in panic. Fortunately he hadn't quite noticed my drastic maneuver. We let the engine cool down, repaired the belt with some more wire, added water from a creek nearby and started again. No more problems that day.

I did tell the farmer about my stopping technique a few weeks later, he almost hit me on the spot.

When the hay had dried for a couple of days it had to be turned. For that we had a horse and a wide rake, it looked almost like a wide pulky. There were plenty of flies, bees and other insects around among the newly cut hay and the horse became more irritated as the day wore on. I wasn't smart enough to realize how much water a horse needs to drink when he works hard in the sun and probably hadn't given him enough.

On the way home after a long day in the fields, with only a few breaks, we were finally on the road. Then, disaster struck. Something big and ugly bit the horse on the neck. I could see how the coat stiffened and we took off.

He raced down the narrow road with the far too wide rake behind. At first it was fun to finally make speed on the seat that I had been on all day. Then it dawned on me how dangerous this really was. A racing horse on a narrow road with many hills, where we could meet unseen traffic.

Fortunately I held on hard enough to the reigns to prevent us from going too far into either ditch. We didn't meet anyone and the horse gradually calmed and slowed down.

Our return to the barnyard was at a snails pace, the horse was probably totally exhausted.

The young lady of the house had many friends in the area and I sometimes had a hard time to keep my energies concentrated on the farm work.

We had endless stretches of electrified wire fence to string and repair, as well as regular fence posts to replace. That was backbreaking work!

The old bull was dangerous, he had a record for hurting people. I, stupidly, got too confident and too close at a quiet moment and I decided to reach for the ring in his nose. He saw my hand and swung his head away. There was a piece of string attached to the ring. It neatly caught in my hand and split a finger open from end to end.

Fortunately, the cut was far less serious than it first appeared. The sore bled profusely and it looked as the whole finger was mashed inside. Fortunately the cut was only just under the surface of the skin. I carry the scar yet. The doctor dressed the wound and gave me instructions not to get the hand into any dirt for a while. Not very simple instructions to obey while you were working on a farm.

The next day I was spreading fertilizer and the day after that manure. The cut finger swelled up and gave a lot of pain but seemed to heal properly after all.

Midsummer's night was celebrated with a dance for all the youth in the area. We strung lights and hooked up loudspeakers for the record player. The sound system proved almost unnecessary. The live band that showed up, unexpectedly, was very enthusiastic and played most of the night.

My host family was strictly teetotallers and did not accept any alcohol at all. That, however, couldn't be enforced for the midsummer revelers. There was plenty of drinking from flasks hidden in the bushes and the words got more heated as the night wore on. A few arguments were settled with fist-fights but I didn't witness much bloodshed. The fights were clean, one on one and without any knives.

The mistress of the house appointed me as a witness to make sure we were properly paid when we sold a calf. He was on a trailer when we drove the car to a neighbouring farm. The price was negotiated and paid in cash. When we were home again the wife, who had not been with us, put me through third degree;

"What was said, how much could you have had?"

Apparently she wasn't too convinced of the abilities of her husband to negotiate a good price.

One of the many duties of mine was to bring the cows in heat to the bull. Not a very arduous task as the bull knew very well what to do. Some of the young cows weren't so well informed, yet, and there could be quite some thrashing around then.

We had a sow which should be brought to a pig. She didn't much like the idea of getting off the ground when we wanted her to get into the tractor trailer. It took a lot of pushing and convincing before she was surely on board. The return trip was easier, then she was used to the mode of transportation.

The end of that summer job came almost too soon. I was called back to go to summer school. Sure I was hungry and tired at times, but all in all, I had a good time working at the farm.

The trip home was to take about a day with a couple of changes of trains. The train left in the morning and I would arrive home by about 8 PM.

We left early in the morning, before our regular breakfast time. The farmer brought me to the train. I had been promised a salary before I arrived, plus free room and board. On the trip to the station he told me that I had eaten so much while working for them that there was no money left to pay me any salary.

I got on the train with only a few pennies in my pocket after summer's worth of labour. It made for a hungry trip.

Perhaps I looked starved later on when I observed a young woman open her lunch-bag and bring out sandwiches. She took pity on me and gave me a piece of hard bread with some sliced cheese. That is, forever in my memory, remembered as the best sandwich I have eaten in my life. Hunger makes good spice.

I arrived home, a little weak from hunger. My mother cooked an enormous meal for us to have at that late hour.

I guess I learned something about economy and utilization of labour that summer. Make them work but don't feed them too much. I never told anyone about how I had worked for so long without a penny in compensation but I was thinking about how I should try to find out who took the job the next summer and how to warn him.

My career as a hired farmhand had run its course. I knew what occupation not to become rich in. The rest of the few summer weeks were spent in school, trying to better my grades enough to allow me to follow my class to the next higher grade. I succeeded.

1956

It was time for the midwinter break, a week in the month of February. I was invited to stay with the Johnson's, the family I had stayed with as a child.

The week started out extremely warm for that time of the year and then turned unexpectedly cold for the latter half of my stay.

One of the first nights I visited my long term playmate Sonja. She was three years older than I, had finished public school and was now helping her parents with the work on the farm. She lived in the largest room, heated with a large cast iron stove. We dined with her parents, talked about this and that and then the parents went off to bed. Sonja and I remained sitting in her bedroom, also used as the living room. The hour drew late, the lights were dimmed and the large stove really spread the heat as we could hear the cold cracking the walls.

One thing led to another and we were soon petting heavily. I knew that she was a virgin because she had told me so sometime earlier. The point of no return was soon approaching in our petting. I had her practically undressed and we were jointly exploring some intimate parts of her body. Then she started pleading with me.

"Not know, I am saving myself for my boyfriend, I am sure he wants to be the first."

Well, we were good friends and her request did make sense - but were we really to stop now?

Then she came up with a new, convincing, suggestion.

"Don't do it with me tonight, see your old friend Ingrid, she is not a virgin and she knows what to do with boys. We'll all go to the same party this weekend."

My ex classmate Ingrid's home was at a farm only about one km from where we were. Her regular place of employment was at a nursing home some 15 km away. She was to be free later that week and we agreed on the telephone that I could come and pick her up.

I borrowed a moped and drove, in near freezing temperatures to visit her. On arrival I was still a little early and decided to go to a coffee house for a cup of hot cocoa to warm up.

I carried the cup and some bread, from the counter in to the sitting area. My hands were trembling with cold and I dropped the tray on to the table. The coca spilled out over the tray, soaked the bread and totally filled my wallet. How embarrassing. The lady by the counter saw my dilemma and immediately served me a fresh tray with a clean cup. My wallet didn't fare well, though, it was totally soaked and everything in it carried a sleight chocolate tint for a long time, long after I had laid everything to dry.

We went for a walk and I got to visit the nursery and talk to some of the residents there, some which were from the area where she lived and said that they remembered me as a little boy.

Perhaps they did.

Ingrid and I were to travel back to her home that afternoon. The drive home was slower than when I had come out with open throttle. She rode her bike with one hand on my shoulder all the way. The moped worked hard, pulling two instead of one.

The party came up on Saturday night. By now the weather had totally turned. Snow had fallen and the temperature was in the -20 degrees C area. The trip to the party was by taxi. The ride home again was supposed to be in the car of one of the young men there.

It was a trip into a different culture for me. Everyone there had known each other for most of their lives, and I was included for old times sake. After all, I had taken grade one in the same classroom as most of the young people in the house.

The favourite music was "Snoddas", a singing logger who had come out of nowhere and made a spectacular singing career that winter. We danced a bit and generally had a warm feeling about everyone as we were about to leave. But, it was too cold. Neither of the two cars in the yard could be made to start.

Everyone left by foot. Ingrid and I had about four km to walk. It was an absolutely clear winter night with the stars so bright and near that you felt that you could reach up and pick them one by one. Our road took us over some fields with magic shadows from the hay that had been left to stand for the winter. The forest was absolutely dark with only the lighter snow covered road-surface to lead our way. Perhaps we weren't quite dressed for the cold and we shared the warmth as well we could on our walk. My hands were wherever they could catch warmth, somewhat helped by her willing hands.

The house was warm but quiet as we arrived in the kitchen downstairs. Her parents were sound asleep upstairs. I helped her off with the outer-clothes. We sat on the stove for a while to warm up and then we undressed even more under the supervision of a huge, but quiet dog which looked at us intently.

She had a girdle on, a girdle with what seemed like a thousand hooks. She showed me how to do the first one, then she complemented me on how quickly I learned, perhaps I did this often? -What a thought? I was afraid she would comment also on how my hands trembled from the excitement of undressing her.

I knew nothing, or at least not much, about how to make love. I had the presence to put on a rubber but then my skills of this game were exhausted. She was quite well informed and took up the guiding part.

There were no exploding stars on the sky as I entered her, now leaning back on the kitchen table. But what do I do next? Lie still and wait for the exploding stars? (I must have seen to many censored movies and read too many poorly written novels by then.) I lied still. Nothing happened. She asked me if I had fallen asleep. No, I was still there. -1 didn't know how to continue and she didn't tell me. Oh, but for a missing couple of words!

I got dressed, full of shame at my failure as a lover. Was this all I could do?

I continued the trek alone through the dark forest on the snow lightened road. My head was spinning, where had I gone wrong, what should be done differently? This was a most disappointing end to an evening which had promised so much.

I made many visits to the Johnson farm in years to come and even went to see Ingrid's parents, but I never met her again. She was either away at school or working somewhere else during my visits. Later I learned that she contracted Leukemia and passed away a few years later. I was invited to her funeral but was in another part of the country and couldn't come. My only contacts over the years have been to put a small flower on her grave whenever I came by the church where she was buried. What a way to celebrate your first night of "unabandoned loving"! We were fifteen years old then.

The springtime came early and I used to go on long bicycle rides in and around the town on my own. I visited several of the harbours in the area. Inshore vessels were coming and going with cargoes of potatoes, sugar-beets, seed and other bulk cargoes. Ironically enough, almost all of the small ports were abandoned within a few years. The less costly trucks had taken over the trade of the coastal carriers. The ships were either scuttled at sea or ended up as rotting hulks in some harbours and bays along the coast.

I was dying to go to sea and signed up as a candidate at the local seaman's house.

A small cargo vessel needed a jungman / cook. I knew absolutely nothing about seamanship, and even less about cooking.

"Don't worry, we know how to cook ", said one of the other four crewmen."

The first assignment was to take the shopping list and go to the ship chandler for supplies. I returned with several bags, to be stuffed away as best I could.

The crew's quarters was under the fore-deck. There was a distinct smell of mildew. How does one ventilate here? Simple, just open a porthole for cross-draft. Well, that was almost the beginning of a disaster as far as my comfort went. The cabin may have been vented with air in the harbour, but the poorly closed porthole leaked enough when we were in heavy sea to fill my bed with cold sea water, later.

The boat was registered for 110 tonnes, about as much as three or four large trucks would carry. On the way empty we bounced like a cork on water. I stood on watch, steering. The kitchen was small and smelly. I couldn't cook but only did the clean up and the dishes. The seasickness came on instantly. It started a few minutes after we hit the first swells when we left the harbour, a few minutes into my seafaring career. I took turns steering and leaning over the railings the next few days. Little did I know that it should be many years yet until i finally got better sea-legs and could function (?) with this dreaded illness. (I have, cumulatively, spent years at sea since then, but has my propensity for seasickness gone away? Nope.)

We arrived on the Island of Gotland where we were to take on cargo of Gypsum for a week long trip to as town on the Swedish west coast. The trip had been quite pleasant in moderate sea and under sunny skies, so far.

We arrived on a Saturday and were to be loaded on Monday. I had a couple of days to explore the neighbourhood. Not much to see or do, we were moored next to a lime quarry.

The appointed time for loading arrived. We hauled up to a position and the transporter started moving the product to fill the hold. The noise of the falling rocks ended after a few minutes. We were loaded to the deck line, with hardly any free board left, and the hold hardly even had the floor boards covered.

Off to sea, this time into rain and wind. The ship seemed to spend more time submerged than above the surface, truly frightening when considering how much empty space there was in the hold.

Sleeping between watches was next to impossible. The fore-deck of the ship regularly submerged and the porthole sprayed a squirt of water over my bed every time. Oh how I swore over my idea to ventilate the cabin. Of course, being at sea it was impossible to open the porthole to try to stuff anything around the edges. My body turned into a total state of exhaustion. The four hours on, four hours off, no sleep, no possibility to eat and keep the food was wearing me down. I was suffering, and why?

My early seafaring career was about to come to an end. After but a brief three weeks as a seaman I left in port, to take the train home. This time the pay was for real, but I got a rebate from the seafarers union, I hadn't been a member long enough to pay even one month's dues.

The rest of the summer was spent much less glamorously, as an errand boy. No more seasickness and I slept in my own dry and non-moving bed every night.

This was true for every night except one. Why not sleep in the hammock a warm summer night? Well, my definition of a warm night has changed since. Then any night above 10° C was considered warm. I prepared my sleeping bag, strung the hammock and was ready. How rudely I was awakened by the local gang of revelers who had their last drink of the night in our garden. After hours of that, the cold got to me. I declared defeat and returned to a real house again.

My sister had been on a student exchange that summer and she came back from the island of Bornholm, Denmark, with her own exchange student, Randi. She was two stay for two weeks. Marie-Louise had already been away for two weeks then.

Randi spoke Danish, I learned more Danish in those two weeks than ever before or after. We fell in love and went for long walks in town and throughout the country side. We parted way with many promises of undying love and promises that we would write to each other often and see each other soon again. I never wrote and never heard a word from or about her since. Puppy love, I guess.

That fall I finally, could buy a moped. It was a used one and wold cost 214 kronor. I had only managed to save up 204 from my errand boy job. I asked my mother for assistance but she was not in a generous mood and said no. My father's fiancee Sandra was in town. When she heard of my dilemma she opened her purse and gave me the missing ten.

I got the moped.

My mother became hugely upset over my lack of solidarity, accepting money from outside of the family. She didn't talk to Sandra for quite some time after that.

Even more freedom beckoned. The world had shrunk even more, as I explored it at 30 km/h, the absolute and totally police enforced speed limit for all mopeds.

The police would place themselves strategically along a straight stretch of road and, using a timer, clock the speed of the mopeders going by. Mine was safely underpowered and I was safe from that harassment.

I earned some money working Saturdays at Chronquist's Bakery, primarily because he had a totally beautiful daughter whom I knew from school. She wasn't very interested in the cakes of her father's making, but we would, on occasion, move off to a secluded corner of the bakery, where we would engage in mutual petting. I sometimes brought some stolen cakes home.

I was 16, it turned to winter time and things weren't going too well with school. The grades were failing and I seemed to be destined towards another year of failure, and perhaps have to pass the same grade one more time. Not a happy outlook when I already had done two classes twice.

But, you can always join the army. The youngest recruits could enroll during the year they turned 17. I sent in for the documents to volunteer to the armed forces. The examination was quickly over with and I was accepted for entry into the army that spring.

I stopped going to school. I went to the employment agent and they sent me to Reymersholms food oil factory in town.

The head office was on the third floor, no elevator, in a stately old office building in the harbour, a building that used to belong to the now defunct sugar refinery, finding new life soon as an auto parts plant.

My job was, again, to be the errand boy. There were many tasks involved.

Every morning at 9 I had to take all the orders from the office staff, hop on my bike and run to the selected bakery of the day to buy French Danishes for the morning coffee. Next, a run to the factory with the mail.

The actual producing facility was housed on the 7th floor of in a large manufacturing complex, making vegetable oils. Reymershoms ran a mayonnaise packaging operation. Scores of ladies with nimble hands would stand by machines, transferring empty aluminum tubes to a quite rapidly turning table where the tubes were automatically filled and sealed. Opposite the lady adding the tubes was another grabbing the, now filled tubes, and packaging them in boxes.

I had my very own little machine also. In spare moments I ran a can filling operation, adding 10 litres of cooking oil into metal cans. The cans were easy enough to handle when empty but sure put on weight when filled.

It was like my little dream world in this little corner of the factory. I had a window that I could open, letting in the fresh stench from the other factory to mix with the much more agreeable smell off the mayonnaise operation.

I used to make myself into a machine, concentrate on doing all the moves automatically, and allowing myself to day-dream. Perhaps you do a lot of that when you are 16 years old.

Some one hundred workers were on the floor, most of them women. They were not all of the most saviour character and there was a bit of hanky panky going on between some of the staff, behind boxes and on packaging material in quieter moments. I guess they needed something to break the routine of this mind killing tube filling operation.

The vegetable oil operation was fascinating. The smells were many and varied, from the clear flavour of slightly rotting copra to the strong aciduous vapours of the cooking process. The factory processed whale oil in the wintertime and the whole town took on a pungent almost rotten smell then. The whale oil went into making margarine, who thought of cholesterol then?

Local deliveries and the runs to the various warehouses scattered in the area was made with a three wheel electrically powered truck, little did I now then that the next time I was to see one like it was in a museum many years later. It had a very peculiar humming sound when running and did start from standstill with a cargo rattling jump. It was forever plugged in whenever parked in the factory area.

I wasn't much of a lover (!) but one of the ladies felt a need to educate me a bit. The elevators were chronically unreliable and a bit of rattling of the control buttons could make the elevator stop anywhere, even in total seclusion between floors. I was deeply shocked (but pleased?) that a lady could do such things with a young man...

Well, my time at the factory draw to an end. The dress code was rather formal and I had to wear a tie whenever visiting any of the offices. I did travel in town on my bicycle during the day and often made detours by the high school just to wave at my friends.

I got many official looking letters with various information and preparations for my soon to start military career. There was a large binder in my room where every single scrap of paper were placed - my dealings with the government.

So came the first day as a soldier. Everyone arrived on our free and official looking railroad ticket to Växjo, the Regimental city.

Boot camp may be a little less intimidating in Sweden than other countries but the idea is probably still the same, teach the soldier basic skills. The first night we had to learn how to call to attention. Never in my life had I heard that call before, but I knew exactly how it sounded. After all, I was an avid reader of comic books and the call was always written in large letters with many spaces between each letter. Call it out loudly and slowly. I drew wild boos!

We were 24 young men in one dorm room. No privacy, of course, and much discipline did we learn, both from the officers and from the other men. I made an absolute asshole out of myself within a few days. I was, after all, a high school drop out, 16 years old who had figured out the answers to all the questions of life.

The days were hard, harder and with more work than I had ever in my life experienced or even dreamt about. About the only saving was that my last few months as errant boy, bicycling a lot and running to the third floor innumerable times every day had really strengthened my legs and lungs. But for sheer strength, my 118 lbs of mostly sinews didn't do much.

The ribbing got worse over the first few days. I was so utterly exhausted that I would, many a night, fall asleep at seven, only to wake at reveille at six the next morning. That left time before lights were out at ten for much mischief. I got a small treatment one night, finding myself thoroughly covered with the contents of many tubes of toothpaste. The showers were piped with cold water only and I started that day with the coldest shower I had ever taken of my own free will.

But, I did understand that there was something to keeping quiet, talk a little less.

The friendships came easy. I was the second youngest recruit in the land that year. The youngest one had the bed over mine. He was a farmer's son and not so easily put down as I but we all learned. Soon the 24 person lodging area became a home to all of us.

We had to stay on the regimental grounds for the first two weekends and then we were free to leave for the weekend. I chose to stay for a third weekend. We were all very spiffy in our new and nicely pressed uniform.

A couple of us went for a walk in the neighbourhood of the residence. A young lady was there playing with her little baby. We struck up a conversation and soon found that she was a single mother who had just returned to town from having been at a residence in, of all places, Karlshamn.

We became good friends and I met her for afternoon walks a few times. Naturally, it was really interesting for my colleagues, who was I, accompanying the lady and her baby and who's was the baby.

Well, we got to be very busy and I lost contact with my new-found friend. Strange how a memory can stay in your mind, though.

The summer was easy as far as travelling home for the weekend. The train service was still good even though there was much talk in those days about what was to be shut down next.

In the fall I got together with a friend and we started a bus service to my home town together. It was really easy. The state railroad had buses to spare on the weekends and we chartered one going home on Saturday and returning on Sunday night. The ridership picked up as it got colder and we even made a bit of money for ourselves.

What a feeling it was to return all tired out after a weekend at home, I always had the jump seat next to the driver, overlooking the road as we drove only guided by our two headlights through the absolutely black, moonless and cloudy winter nights.

Sputnik was sent into orbit on October 4. I carefully read the newspaper about its orbit. My time to see Sputnik was on a Sunday night, October 6. I was hitchhiking to my regiment, this sighting was too important to pass away inside a bus. The trip should be about two hours if I had good luck with my drives. I raised my thumb and got a ride.

The person who drove probably thought I was mad as a hatter.

I asked to be set out on the roadside in the middle of the forest. I stood there, all alone in the quiet fall night and looked at the sky. There it came, just on time, a bright spot moving fast over the sky, perhaps the whole lighted path lasted as short as ten minutes. I had seen Sputnik. I was so close I could almost hear the radio signals as it flew over. Well, those signals had been played many times over the radio, they sounded almost musical.

About month later, I was again out looking at the sky to see Sputnik 2. Laika, the Russian space dog was was flying up there too. What did she see of us? Nothing. We knew she would die in space. How long did that take? How did she die? The Russians only told that some 55 years later, she died of overheating from the residual heat of the final rocket stage.

After my first satellite experience, after the lighted spot had disappeared below the horizon, I saw a light from far away. A car. Would he pick me up? He did and drove me almost all the way back to the Regimental front gates. He thought I was out of my ind standing by the roadside on that cold night. He probably questioned my talk and interest in Sputnik as well.

But, we both agreed that mankind had changed a little that fall.

The first year in the army was basic training. We all did t things we had no idea we could do. I learned to stay up all night, to fight tiredness, to be wet, cold and miserable and undertake missions and assignments that I had never even dreamed of in my life.

The camaraderie was great. We helped each other. The common enemy were personified in some of the officers even if most of them, in all fairness, didn't mistreat us too badly.

The excitement was high at times. We may have been preparing for war but the process was sometimes quite entertaining, in many ways.

Some highlights were the never ending night orientation sessions. You got soaked within the first half hour, there was bound to be a ditch that you couldn't see and got into. Rainy nights, of course, you were soaked through in minutes. No lights, only a very weak hand light to read the map with. I got quite good at these evening sessions. Forget about trying to go for the obvious daytime orientation points, such as buildings or hills. At night you need something continuous. Fences, ditches and roads were excellent guides, except, we weren't allowed to be near them. So, you moved a few meters away from the road or the ditch. That was hard work, especially when soaked and chilled to the bones.

I guess we would all have found our way, eventually. But we were never quite convinced that the "ugly Red" (our acronym for "the enemy") would be there waiting for us.

My body, somewhat lacking in pure muscle mass, sometimes played tricks on me when it came to handling heavy loads.

But, in one area I excelled, bicycling.

Now the load was on the wheels and all I had to do was to pedal. We had one full day when all 1 100 of us in the regiment had to bike a 120 km route with full gear. I came in number four, one away from price position. The commanding officer still gave me a special mentioning when the prices were handed out, perhaps because I had performed so poorly in some other exercises.

Needless to say, I was proud then.

After a year it was time to enroll for the professional military education. I was now a salaried state employee, destined to become an officer, or better. I was moving up my station in life. The first purchase with my new found riches was a watch, every soldier must know the exact time to attack.

The watchmaker gave me instant credit, half on delivery, the other half next month. He was paid promptly. The watch was on my arm every night and I learned to sleep, always with my left arm under the covers, so none would take my new watch away in my sleep. None did, the watch was still ticking thirty years later.

The dream to own a motorbike was old. My trusty old moped had gotten a few more illnesses and was far from reliable any more.

My first bike was an abandoned motorcycle. It was left around the residence and anyone who cared could take it for a spin. I located the owner and bought the "rights" for a pittance. Then the bike was registered and insured in my name. It was an absolute wreck but still, it was mine. A few persons still didn't see that the bike had only one owner so it still disappeared now and then, always to return, even if with a few more dents and scrapes. To start it was simple, just run fast and let go of the clutch, not exactly a very stylish way get going. There was a service shop nearby. I had a new kick start gear installed and now the bike felt really perfect. You still had to be careful at the intersections because there was only a faint braking effect on the front wheel, none at all on the rear.

One day the bike was gone, never to return. I told my friend at the service shop and he offered to get me a scooter for a good price.

The story behind that one was that Sweden had gotten scooter crazy around 1955, Husquarna had a drive train design dating back to 1929. It was matched with the sleek Italian scooter and, presto, a Swedish scooter. It was overpriced at 2 200 kronor and never sold well. I bought one that had been stored for three years for 902 kronor.

My mother did contribute with a small loan and I was on new wheels. It was a good deal but for one little detail. The tires were totally dried out and had to be replaced after my first weekend excursion. The warranty didn't include tires.

Another little issue raised its head. I wasn't old enough to drive it. I had a universal military driver's license, for just about everything on four wheels, but you had to be 18 to drive a civilian vehicle.

Never mind, I drove it for a few weeks until my 18^th, without incident.

To get home to Karlshamn, some 80 km one way, a friend and I had started our own bus-line the previous winter. We chartered a bus for the two way Saturday-Sunday trip from a SJ (Statens Järnvägar). It sounds unreal, but we made some real money on this.

But now, with my own wheels, my interest in riding the bus was zero. What a stupid thing I did then? I sold my interest in the bus operation to my colleague for a pittance. He continued to run the buses for another year and made big money, I had nothing of it any more.

The first day, perhaps even the first hour I took the Parilla for a spin downtown. I was in the store to buy a lock and had left the bike by the side of the street with a nail through the locking rings. A lady backed up her car without looking and knocked over my one hour old bike. The locking mechanism broke and the side of the bike got a scratch! Back to the store to replace the lock, I wasn't about to have this bike stolen.

The world took on a new hue. Girls would ride with me, I could go everywhere at my own leisure. What a sense of freedom.

On light summer evenings I would go on rides in Växjo, meeting and talking to people who were out working in the gardens or walking their dogs or just being around.

One night I met with a couple of girls outside their small apartment building. We used to meet for walks in the neighbourhood. My favourite was the youngest, a year or so younger than I. We had a great time together for a few days. She had to return to her home town to start school after only a couple of weeks. I never got her full name or phone number and never saw her again. I used to drive by the building sometimes, just hoping that she would be back and perhaps be walking outside, I didn't even know which of the two apartments she had visited. Silly.

This period was the one and only time in my entire life that I have driven under the influence. We had a few drinks one evening, strictly forbidden, of course, and I decided to "take a spin". The drive may not have been long but I remember noticing how the stop signs all were placed too far back, I passed them all, and how my brakes had become faulty.

The rear wheel locked up as soon as I wanted to slow down. This was of course on gravel, so I needed my best driving skills to stay on an even keel. After a few minutes it dawned on me, I am too drunk to drive. Why? I don't know, perhaps I just got scared. I returned to the residence very slowly.

The next morning I was full of remorse. You may brag and do silly things when drunk, but to die falling off a motorcycle I didn't want to happen in my future.

That scare and subsequent vow has stood me in good stead over the years.

A colleague of mine had a BSA 500, among the fastest bikes in Sweden at the time. His new girlfriend was too enthused about riding his noisy bike, it was after all British and shook and rattled very competently.

“Can we swap for a weekend?”

“Sure, no problem.”

That is when I got an early lesson of how not to drive, or at least on how fast not to drive.

Going home, I decided to give full throttle on a straight stretch of road. Anyone, even today, would be scared of going over 185 km/h on a motorcycle on a narrow road. My perception of the road was that it was getting narrower as the speed increased, until it was only a white line with a narrow strip of asphalt attached.

Did I get scared? Yes, of course I did, untrained as I was. What did I learn? That it is ridiculously simple to drive too fast, anywhere.

These were still the days before speed limits were invented and I and my classmates had already been to two funerals for friends who had died when driving stupidly, too fast.

Did I fear death? Probably not then, but some little grain of sanity told me to hold back. I can say, with some pride, that I have never, ever tested the maximum speed of any two or four wheeled vehicle since.

His girlfriend was very pleased with riding my Parilla and I didn't mind exchanging again later. I drove the BSA with great pride but realized how small you really are, in traffic on a fast bike. This little experience took care of my desire to ever own a large motorcycle.

We were now learning how to be instructors. One of our first tasks was to move in with the new recruits and be monitors in the state rooms.

I was assigned to a group of artillery-men-to-be. They were chosen for strength and stamina and were a frightening sight. They all looked like price wrestlers. Many came straight from the farm and this was their first encounter, ever, with life outside their own village.

One day, we were shown some educational films and even given discount tickets to a play in the city.

One young man came back after the play. "Oh, I am so happy to have seen this show. There are so many plays and movies now that everything must already have been made. Soon there can't be anything new to see.”

Was he the same person who brought bed bugs to our room? Who knows? We all got little bites during the nights. It got worse as the days progressed. Finally we all had to burn our bedding, bring our clothes and belongings to the gas chamber for delousing, wash the walls with lye and, after one hard day of cleaning, move back in again after a hot sauna for all of us.

Once every year we celebrated "the military day". It lasted two full days and included many exhibitions and demonstrations as well as a full parade through town. We worked long hours in the week before and entered into the Saturday with some real sleep deficiency.

The Saturday was fantastic, we had some 30 000 visitors. It was my duty to sell tickets at the entrance. We were totally overwhelmed with the throngs of people there. The ticket sales were on all day, with the heaviest load before lunch. It was a salaried job and all of us ticket sellers were to get paid at the end of the day.

There was, however, a problem with all our returns. There had been so many people and such a crush that not all visitors had completed the transaction. Simply put, we didn't have as much money as we were given tickets to sell. My discrepancy was the worst, almost as much as my anticipated pay for the day. In the end all was well, the day was declared a success and the fact that a few visitors had entered the grounds for free wasn't held against us, the ticket sellers.

The evening was crowned with fireworks and a dance with all young ladies from the surrounding countryside in attendance, it seemed.

Two of us went to our lodgings to change clothes, and perhaps catch two winks before the dance started. We slept through the whole evening.

Two of our friends met their future wives that night, they were married within two years, the two of us didn't meet any girls at all, we slept instead.

Guard duty came on a regular basis. That meant 24 hours of total engagement with the guard house as base. The commanding officer had never ending tests of how well the guards performed. We had live ammunition on duty and had been well instructed of the value of all the equipment that was kept within the regimental compound.

I escaped any major upsets on my patrols but one of the officers got shot by a guard once.

Fortunately we had all been drilled, and drilled again, on how to shoot to stop an intruder without killing him. There was a limit to our training and a young and eager officer got shot one dark rainy night when he jumped off a tree on a guard. The second guard on the patrol, nearby, shot the officer with one 9 mm bullet in the leg. The officer was away for some time and came back walking with a stick while his damaged leg was healing. We never heard of any disciplinary action after the first investigation was over.

The winter nights were awful. To stand still inside the guard shelter was forbiddingly cold and to walk, slowly, around the area was no better. Every soldier has done this, many times.

Every soldier has also developed his own means to better his lot. I found a grossly overheated entrance to a building. Once every round I would dive in for a few minutes, open my clothing and let the warmth get inside. This was of course highly illegal, a guard should be guarding all the time. If anyone had seen me I would have quickly found myself behind some vary sturdy bars for a while. But, the result of my insubordination was hardly worth the effort, the cold was even more penetrating after that visit. It seems we don't adapt to the contrast between too warm and extremely cold very well.

We learned to shoot many different kinds of weapons. I had always been a good rifle shot so there were no problems in that area.

We got to try out some of the weapons of our anticipated enemy, the Red. The idea was that we had to know how to shoot anything that could be found on the battlefield.

So, here I was shooting the large calibre and so much feared Russian AK 47, a.k.a. the Kalashnikov rifle. In case you wondered. - Yes, it is is a frighteningly effective gun, sure to kill any one who gets in the way. Also, again if you wondered, it is not very accurate over 300 m, probably because all the pieces rattle, they are loose. We did far better on the range with many other weapons, including the M1, standard issue for the Allies in WW2.

What did I learn? To never, ever in my life, ever touch any military gun. They are made to kill and so they do.

The demonstration of what happened to the dead pig made for many sick young men and horror dreams for me for years to come. Yes, the local abbatoir brought in a freshly killed pig, then we were shown what to would happened if you shot a live “person”. Some of the organs, especially the ones with lots of liquid in them exploded and spread their contents all around the neighbouring areas.

Target shooting at night was a completely new experience. What we all found really interesting were all the different weapons we had to learn. We spent innumerable hours practicing with an 80 mm recoil-less anti tank gun, both in practice sessions with rifle ammunition and in the field with live, but not explosive, full size ammunition.

The anti tank gun was a three man affair to handle for an observer, a gunner and a loader. We took turns in all positions. One live exercise has haunted me ever since and even came to change my life a little.

I instantly became partly deaf, a hearing loss that has followed me all my life.

The gunner was too quick after he had felt the charge go into the barrel on this shoulder carried weapon. He shot at the same instant the latch was closed. I was the loader and I hadn't yet gotten down in a secured position.

The full pressure wave from the tail blast hit me in my face. I became instantly deaf then and my hearing returned only gradually over the next three days. The military doctor that I saw the next morning said:

"You'll be OK in a couple of days."

Well, he may have been right in that I could hear again but my left ear kept making a whining sound forever after.

Our explosives training was equally thorough. The grand finale was a full week on a farm where we had many assignments of things to blow up. We grew bolder and bolder as time progressed and we got more confident with our ability to handle and apply the explosives. Really, the type of explosives we were handling were rather benign when in their packages, the excitement come when detonators of various kinds were added.

A couple of days were given to entering and moving around in an abandoned farm house deep in the forest, without using the doors. Do I have to tell that the house was very well vented, not counting the doors and windows, when we were through.

The grand finale was a big block that was in the way for a local farmer who had "always wanted to straighten out his access road". We were now at the last hour of the last day. Explosives, once they were taken out, could not be returned to storage. The proper procedure was to blow them up in a sandpit on the way home. We had a much better idea, straighten out the farmer's road and remove the large block.

We did! There was absolutely nothing left of the stone block, it had travelled as chards for hundreds of meters, penetrated and probably also ruined the value of hundreds of softwood trees around. But, there we made a mark, we had left a deep crater.

Obviously it wasn't the right time or place to call for professional help, such as for a bulldozer. No, we had bring out the shovels and fill in the hole before we could go home many hours later. We were rewarded for our hard work by being allowed to pile our bicycles on a tractor and ride home.

Our explosions training had ended fittingly, with a big bang. We were in practice more than ten years after WW2 had ended. The national defense warehouses were bulging with ammunition, bought for, but never used during the war that didn't involve Sweden. The ammunition was now aging and many boxes were officially too old to be used again. The net result was that we had access to practically unlimited supplies of ammunition during our live ammunition training exercises. Again the same rule, live ammunition could not be returned to the warehouse once it had been handled in the field.

To squeeze off a 36 or 50 shot magazine where a couple of shots could do was normal. We reduced many a movable cardboard target and their supports to a pile of splinters only. Naturally, we had to be careful with our equipment. One of my colleagues wanted to try how long time it took to empty a box of 2 000 count machine gun cartridges. Perhaps he didn't realize what happens to a machine gun once the barrel has become red hot, it becomes so hot that it self ignites the cartridges in the barrel.

You can never stop the firing. It shot off a bullet all by itself every few seconds, without any help on the trigger. The solution was to open the mechanism quickly and remove the ammo band. He did have a few scary moments with his self firing gun. Fortunately no officer was near enough to pick up on the reason for the uneven firing after halt was called for.

The weapons were of course dear. The thought of loosing anything that belonged to a weapon was a constant fear.

Once, a friend of mine, Bo Rosenqvist lost his bayonet. It fell out of his belt when he got dunked in deep water out of a sinking landing boat that was so badly handled that it tipped. No extenuating circumstances here, you must show the bayonet.

We all took turns searching the muddy bottom for the missing bayonet. No luck. He had to pay for the bayonet and spend one weekend in isolation. It seems as an unusually harsh penalty for perhaps having had just a loose button on a strap over your bayonet. But, as the facts were, he had lost a weapon.

Our liberal access to ammunition during training was perhaps too much for one boy. He decided to bring a few bullets home every weekend. When he had enough for a private training session at his father's farm he brought his 9 mm submachine gun home.

The next time we saw him in full person was three weeks later. The local police had recognized the sound of his salvos from the submachine gun, grossly out of place on a quiet Sunday afternoon. The arrest was immediate and the punishment was swift. Three weeks of military arrest. We could see half his face and talk to him through the bars only.

Driver's training was mandatory for all. Unfortunately not all young Swedish men had an instant aptitude for driving. Many a jerky start and close brush with trees, corners and parked cars happened. It was my turn for the initial lesson, long before my legal age to drive, my 18th birthday. After a few seconds for me behind the wheel a girl on a bicycle made a sudden turn in front of us. I immediately did, what my father had taught me - stomp on the brake and clutch at the same time. We stopped and the girl survived unscathed. Then the instructor said:

"I really should report you to the police, but the only thing I will do is to exclude you from practical driving lessons."

He figured I was too good a driver for being 17. Little did he know that I had driven my father's car on quiet roads for several years by then.

We gradually moved up to heavier vehicles. With tractors we had to learn to back up with a trailer. Boy, Some really threw a knot on themselves. I don't think all, or even half, of our group became very good at that. Again, it was a breeze for me. Things went so well that I was accepted as a volunteer driver for officers in other units when they were on evening or night field exercises. That became a small source of extra income for me.

All vehicles had tow-ropes and shovels and we were well trained on how to quickly get a stalled vehicle out of the way, or get a ditched one back on the road. But never, ever, was I driving any vehicle that had to be towed out of the mud or any other difficult spot. That emergency equipment was always returned in pristine condition after my drives.

The winter was unfortunately not very reliable that year. Our winter training was to be three weeks in the north, near the Arctic Circle.

The travelling was by train. We all knew it would be a long 18 hour trip in railroad cars with wooden benches only. We were told of how lucky we were, only last year this same transportation run had been made in box cars with wood fired tin heaters.

Some stocked up with, very much forbidden, liquor for the trip. I carefully washed out my military regulation water bottle and filled it with Aquavit. Fortunately, for me, I got quite happy very early on during the trip and gave away most of my ration before the, inevitable, inspection occurred.

The setting was spectacular, like living in a winter resort in a small town. The military winter training was there every year and the town was as made for us. We were welcomed everywhere and we quite enjoyed our time there.

We left our quarters before sunrise every morning and returned after dark. The temperatures were very modest for the three weeks we were there and we didn't suffer much from the cold that others had told us about. The skiing was good, we had our heavy army skis and worked hard with all the material we had to carry or pull along in sleds.

One morning we were all in awe. St. Elmo's fire was burning all around us. It was still not quite light and the weak flames rose from all sharp objects. You couldn't see it up close, perhaps even we had little flames over our heads, but even the tips of the skis had little lights over them. The whole experience was over in perhaps 20 minutes. We may not even have quite realized what it was until later when I went to the library and read up on this natural phenomenon. With that I earned then was an instant recognition as "the scientist", soon forgotten.

The return trip to our regimental base became an adventure in itself. We were, again, making an 18 hour run on a military transport train with much drunkenness and general unruliness. We arrived to change trains at a station about an hour away from our destination in the wee hours of the night. We off-loaded ourselves and all our gear, some 400 of us, into the sharp cold of the chilliest night of the year. The official station thermometer said - 32° C.

No train, still no train. Where was the train? The young soldiers who were so drunk and so brave in the warmth of the compartment started to look weary. The cold was creeping into all of us, the waiting room was closed and everything was dark around us.

Finally, about three hours later a couple of very cold day liners pulled up. College students were striking records in those days about how many to get into a Volkswagen. We must have struck some sort of a record with how many soldiers, complete with their gear, that you could pack into two day liners with seats for 60 in each. None of our 400 were left on the station platform. Was there a special category for us in the Guinness book of world records?

On arrival we had to march about a half hour to our lodgings. Already on turning in to our street we all in my company noticed the same shocking view. All the windows were open in our dorm rooms. We knew, there had been a mad rush to clean up at the last moment before leaving a month ago, who had forgotten to close the windows?

It may have been more than -30° C outside now. It wasn't much warmer inside. A partial blessing was that most of the steam heaters had frozen where there was copper pipe. It was bulging precariously but had not burst. No harm had befallen the heating system. We dragged our mattresses out into the corridors and stairwells to catch a few winks before the new duty day started.

The state rooms took several days to warm up again, the very walls and floors were cold right through. I slept in my great coat under two blankets. Naturally, whoever had left anything liquid in their closet found the container burst and the liquid soaked up by whatever was near.

Our closets were special. There was the only place where you could keep anything private, or almost so. Some of our colleagues got quite adept at prying open the locks of any locker. I came in one evening to find a couple of my letters read aloud to the rest of the group. I bought one of the largest and heaviest locks I could find the next day. That evening my locker was almost in pieces when a drunken soldier had attacked the lock, unbreakable, with a hatchet. Fortunately so many lockers were in bad shape that mine didn't stand out during any of the so common inspections.

Drugs were of no concern in those days but the officers were always on the hunt for liquor, often found, and stray ammunition, not so often found as it was hidden in other places in the building.

I by now drove my Parilla scooter in all weather. One Sunday night I arrived after a two hour drive through pouring rain at a temperature only just above freezing. I was so stiff from cold that I could hardly walk.

On my way up the stairs I heard an irregular "pop", "pop". The sound didn't tell me anything special but I was still puzzled as I reached for the door handle to enter our communal bedroom. As the door opened I saw the target on the inside of the door, full of holes. I instinctively turned around and ducked. The next shot missed the target, of course, the door was open now, and grazed my head. Fortunately I still had my motorcycle helmet on. It forever after had a shallow cut where the plastic bullet had bounced off.

Had I been less frozen perhaps I could have inflicted serious injury on the not so sober target shooters but I was too cold to move fast. The excitement of target shooting indoors was over for that night, anyway.

The cold drives on my scooter came to an end with a fright. One night the temperature had dropped to well below -10° C. I still figured that it was a good night to drive. Two hours later, as well dressed as I could make myself, I arrived, only to find that I could not walk. I had inflicted frost damage to both of my knees and my crotch, the first for being in the wind, the latter from sitting on a thin non insulated seat.

The pain was terrible and I saw the doctor the next morning. He offered absolutely no cure.

"Live with pain whenever it gets cold and count your blessings that no really critical parts of your body had frozen."

Oh, for the stupidity of loving to ride your own scooter in any weather.

The weekends at home were always happy times. My friends, most of them, were still in school and there were many parties.

We were strongly encouraged to wear our uniforms at all times. I usually did, especially when going to public dances. What was so special about a uniform? I never quite figured that out. Oh yes, one thing was almost too simple. You could get dragged into fights all too quickly if you were in a uniform. With time I wore it more and more seldom.

My motorcycle days had definitely ended with the cold winter days. But, how to travel back and forth now? Easy, hitch hike. Easy enough in uniform, you hardly ever had to wait very long for a pick-up.

Once, a family of four offered me a ride for part of the way. Then, suddenly, the engine just stopped. There we were, far from any building on a very seldom travelled road.

The owner tried to start the engine to no avail. He told about having had this intermittent problem for weeks. Nobody had known what to do. We all looked under the hood. Then I glimpsed a spark. The battery cable was broken. I offered to give the magic touch, pushed the cable ends together with may hands and, the car started on the first try.

Then I was a hero. We stopped for French pastries at a pastry shop and they went far out of their way to drive me to where I was going.

That may have been a time when I felt proud with strangers. On another occasion I was riding in a car with a middle aged man. We drove by a church with a very prominent lightning rod on the spire.

"They can't have much faith in that church if they install such a big lightning rod", I said.

"That is my church, I'm the minister there", said the driver.

I wished for lightning to strike me then.

That fall I had a, potentially, serious accident. We were about two dozen of us on bicycles, holding on to a rope, usually pulled by a tractor. I had experienced many falls previously but usually you could avoid personal involvement by just being very quick to let go of the tow-rope and aim for the ditch on your own, if something was developing. This was a dangerous but absolutely necessary mode of transportation, being towed by a tractor.

Today we were towed by a jeep. It was much less powerful than a tractor and the driver had to shift gears now and then to keep the speed up the hills. One shift was unusually jerky. The tow rope slackened and got below the handlebars of several bikes, mine included. When the pull returned our front wheels got lifted off the ground. What happened next takes no imagination. About ten of us took a communal tumble at, perhaps, 50 km/h, twice the speed that anyone of us would bicycle on our own. One young man had a broken arm, one was knocked unconscious with a light concussion, many others had bruises, torn clothing and mangled bicycles. I landed on my knee, it was scraped clean to the bone.

The next week was calm, no outdoors activities at all, I was confined to sick bay together with the boy who had been knocked unconscious. All of is the sick-bay soon developed the, probably bad, habit of sleeping during the day and talking during the night. I was surrounded by quite a group of philosophers. My contributions were technical. I taught about engines and had to spend a lot of time explaining how rockets really worked and what made a jet-engine drive the aeroplane. My many years of faithful reading of Popular Mechanics and other technical magazines really paid off then. I was nick named "The Professor", a name I carried with some pride.

It was during that visit that the doctor noticed that my nose was not as open as it should be, somewhat affecting my breathing.

"Well, we've got you here anyway, let's do a small operation to the inside of your nose and you will never have that problem again", said the doctor. We'll schedule you soon.

I barely made it back to my company again when it was time for fall field training. My knee was not quite functional, I was still on sick roll and could only go as an observer, a most unsatisfactory way to observe your friends in action.

They moved by bicycle, I had to follow ride with the food detail on a tractor trailer. They set up tent with a hot stove inside every night. The cooks slept near the big portable kitchen stoves, which kept some residual heat all night. There was no room for me near the stoves and I slept under a tarpaulin on a trailer. It was lumpy, cold and unbearably uncomfortable. Being alone under a wet tarpaulin while the rain was hammering on it near your nose was not a happy place to spend the night. My friends were all snuggled up in their greatcoats with a glowing hot stove burning the soles of their feet. I longed for their companionship and my turn at stoking the stove.

We were no sooner back and I had joined my troop when I was called in for my "minor operation". It was done mid week, "you'll go home on Saturday". That wasn't to be. One of my friends had developed a bad cough and started bleeding to the point where he needed a blood transfusion on Thursday, and we both ended up in the same room at the city hospital. On Friday we were both released, to go back to our regiment. He felt better and didn't stay in bed at the regiment, but went out for a night on town. I was still a bit uneasy on my feet. He came in for dinner on Saturday night and after that the two of us had a little impromptu party, with a few drinks between us before he left again.

Alcohol may thin blood, or alcohol may make you bump around if you went up. In any case, when I was alone again, I started bleeding from my nose and bled for several hours. I was probably too imbibed to notice at first. We had a cat as a mascot. He sat on the floor, drinking blood when my friend came back the next morning.

“Help. Medics.”

I do remember seeing the cat licking the blood, sometimes from my face, sometimes on the floor during the night.

I still don't know but I think I recall the sound of the ambulance sirens as we pulled in to the emergency entrance at the hospital. Now it was my time to get a blood transfusion and to lie absolutely still in bed for a few days. Nobody noticed that I may have spelled of alcohol, at least nothing was said about that.

What is really ironic is, I cannot really drink much, I am a one drink man, then as now. I must have missed the signals that fateful night when I, according to the doctor at the hospital, almost bled to death.

I had avoided death, again.

Altogether, this hadn't been the best of a fall season for me. I had fallen behind in some of the training and even lost some of my physical strength during the enforced idleness. I only weighed 52 kg (115 lbs) then.

Negative thoughts are never good. I had too much time for myself during my time off. The decision to quit was slowly maturing. Perhaps I wasn't cut out to be a career officer after all? During the last year some of us had been given high school courses in several key subjects. Perhaps I may be ready for some other type of education now. Naive thinking, I had absolutely no idea of where to go or what to do next.

Finally I spoke to my commanding officer. He called me an idiot to leave the security of the armed forces for the very uncertain future in the other wild world. Reluctantly and without enthusiasm he signed my thirty day notice form.

I was leaving, no more staying up all night, being wet, cold and miserable or sleeping in the open, I thought.

1959 GUYANA

I came home the day before Christmas 1958.1 walked down to the nearest Esso service station, applied for a job, got accepted immediately and started on Christmas Eve.

One of my first customers to drive in for gas was my, then ex-commanding officer on a visit to Karlshamn from Växjo. Deem of our mutual surprise meeting here. He congratulated me on my job and, again told me that I was stupid to have left the security of the military career in favour of the insecure private field.

I learned to pump gas, not exactly the highest of skills in this world. The gas had a very special smell that you almost got addicted to. Some would get on the clothes and you would be permeated with it.

The work was divided into several different tasks, sell gas, wash cars, sell gas on the night shift. The selling part was easy since you were constantly on the move and got to talk to all the customers.

One man came in a shiny new Volvo. I asked him why he had chosen that particular model. "Cannot a worker by a good car also?" Did he have a chip on his shoulder?

One man drove a nice new Mercedes. He had it repainted about every third month, or four times during the time I knew him. He didn't like the colour.

The car washing weeks were not so easy. The work was in a cold room where you got soaking wet rather quickly. The customers, probably with all right, demanded an absolutely perfectly cleaned car every time. I had never ending arguments with the manager about how clean the cars had to be. What was particularly infuriating was his habit of running his hand inside all the fenders, there must be not a grain of dirt there or it was, "back inside", for the car.

One farmer brought his car in every second week. It was the messiest vehicle on could ever dream of. I suspected he did transport more than people, pigs? Strangely enough, to wash that car was more of a challenge than a chore, how clean could I get it, how well could I remove all the spots from the interior? What helped was also his true smile of appreciation when he came to pick up the car late on the Saturday afternoon. He might very well have had a few schnapps as well, drunk driving was not really an issue then.

The union representative came around after I had worked there a while. “Pay up or quit.”

I officially registered as a student, no need to join then.

"But don't work too long, we are watching you."

Many a times did we get cars from the used car lot across the street to shine up before delivery. Some were real wrecks that could give nothing but grief to their new owners. There was still many pre-war models in use, they were by then over 25 years old. Some V-8 engines were sold with the valve lifters removed from one or two nonworking cylinders. Some had the brake line pinched or cut and plugged on a faulty wheel brake. Some had sawdust in the transmission to make them quiet and many had flour in the radiator so it would not leak. We were of course, if it was obvious, reminded not to make any technical comments to the new owners. This was prior to the full blown use of road salt so the cars were, surprisingly enough not rusted out.

I wanted a car as well, does not every young man want one? An auto mechanic had a 1954 model Russian made Moskvitch, a copy of the 1938 Opel Kadett. That was my first car. It was in perfect running condition but soon deteriorated. I guess the Russian automobile industry of 1954 had not gotten a too good a hand at quality control. Many components barely stayed together for very long. An auto buff of today would marvel over the primitive design. But, if it was simply made, it was simply fixed. 21 horsepower and a non synchromesh transmission made for some skilful driving. The maximum speed would not have impressed any policeman. What was frightening was the brakes. They were hard to apply. It took both feet on the pedal and a wooden box behind the driver's seat, keeping me in place to bring the car to a halt. The ventilation was natural, there were no rubber seals around the doors. The heater only heated the tip of the toes of the passenger's left foot.

My mother quite enjoyed riding with me.

One trip was memorable. We toured about 125 km south to Malmö during a long weekend in early spring. It was cold, overcast and rather gray. Our Cocker-Spaniel, Lou-Lou was in the backseat. A couple of hours into the trip the car developed a new sound, in addition to the ones that I recognized from before It was a chattering sound. It came from the rear seat. The poor dog was so cold that she lay there with chattering teeth. We moved her to the only warm spot in the car, at foot level on the passenger side. The car heater, big, impressive and noisy, great for warming one of the passengers feet at the time did now work on one whole dog, wrapped in a blanket open on the heater side.

Our highway speed was never impressive. We were passed by a car, it drove slower and I got to pass it. That was probably the first moving car I had passed in a long time. But, it was too god to be true, they had slowed down to tell me that the gas tank cap was hanging on the end of its chain. Stop and put the cap back.

The freedom of one's own car was fantastic. I bought a portable radio in the spring and made solo excursions to the coastal areas. I would drive as far off the hardened roads as I dared to without getting the car stuck and then walk to the Baltic seashore. Just being by the water, listening to the various languages on the radio was time to make dreams, dreams of going farther out in the world, perhaps? What did the buildings look like that the radio transmissions came from? Radio reception was like that all round the clock, with even more to listen to after dark. The AM band was full of all the voices of Eastern and Western Europe.

At night the dial got absolutely full as the short wave bands opened up. I would sit on quiet, almost dark summer evenings and keep a log book with a flashlight, logging where the stations originated. Not exactly a very organized DX-ing because I didn't send away for confirmation, just my own way of knowing, "I heard you".

The car also gave the freedom of seeking friends in other locales. Actually, I came to buy the car because of a girl.

I met her at a dance. "Where are you from?" "Ronneby”, some 25 km away. "Will you meet me next week?" "Sure."

That was easily said, but how should I be able to get there and home again? I couldn't pick her up on my scooter in freezing weather? That was hardly a possible option.

So, the time was right, bring out the savings book and buy that used car that I had had my eyes on for some time.

Sure, I went to pick up the girl, I brought her to the dance and brought her home again as I had promised her parents. We had a nice time and I was looking forward to making the drive to Ronneby again. That wasn't to be. She told me, by telephone, not to come back. I learned later that she wasn't allowed to associate with anyone who drove such an old car... But a common friend said that she wanted to see me...

I wonder where she is now, I never met her again.

SUMMER 1959

I registered at the seaman's exchange that sping. I was ready to go to sea. There was one requirement that may still be in effect but baffled me a little, the Wasserman test to check for syphilis was mandatory. It required a few days to be validated. Cargo ships came and left the harbour, would I ever get a call? One Saturday morning the phone rang early. I was ready to go to work. "There is a ship in harbour that needs an apprentice engine man, will you take the job?"

Did I want to? Yes, yes, yes!

That became one of the craziest mornings of my young life.

See the boss and convince him to release me on the spot, I was destined for greater horizons.

How to find a doctor's office that was open on a Saturday morning to get all the necessary health permits signed?

I ran around and got registered, I even took a quick trip to the harbour to see the ship from a distance - she looked bigger than most, encouraging.

All was done in a super rush. I managed to pack a suitcase, store away my car in a corner of the back yard and took a taxi to the boat before its departure at one o'clock.

The ship's engines started, I stood on deck, we moved away from the wharf - and I left my home town one more time, this time for the longest journey so far.

The ship, M/S Guyana registered in Sweden, was a 10 000 tonne tramp ship, carrying any and every sort of cargo to any spot in the world. It was built in Sweden just after WW2 and incorporated the latest of technology at that time.

I got a cabin to share with a young man from Finland of somewhat dubious character. I learned later on that he was quick to draw knife when drunk and angry. He didn't see much difference between my drawers and his drawers, he was as likely to put on my clothes as his own! The first trip was for a couple of days only to Stockholm.

I arrived, a sailor!

Quite by chance my mother was in town for a couple of days and she entertained me to dinner and a visit to the Opera one night, quite an introduction to "visits when in harbour" for me. I learned much later on, without mother's presence about other "visits".

It was time to load up on Swedish products, lots of paper and a few trucks for the export trade, but first a visit to a shipyard for the annual check up and bottom painting. The ship yard was near Luleå in the far north of Sweden, surrounded by the immense dark forests of the north. It was midsummer and the sun may have set but it never got dark.

I spent evenings on the hills around the dry dock, just exploring the new and unknown northern forest. The wild life was abundant. My companion, the radio, picked up new and strange stations, primarily the many unlicensed stations of which there were so many stationed in the international waters of northern Europe in those days.

This was also my first time of observing what happens when single men go out. Many girls came to visit the ship and some stayed overnight. One girl was particularly drunk but was determined to make love to the entire crew before she left again. I know for sure that she didn't succeed 100 % because I locked my cabin door that night.

By this time we were also performing much maintenance of our own. It came to my task to assist with overhauling a fire pump at the very bottom of the ship, near the propeller shaft.

It was time to try to start the little diesel engine after a couple of days of work. It didn't light up easily. Finally I decided to give the crank my very best. I took a good stand, brazed myself in a corner - and pulled on the crank with all my might. The crank let go and swung upwards in an arch, hitting me in the face just under the eye.

My glasses may have been shatterproof but they didn't stand up against that strike.

I struggled back into the engine room, hands over my face and blood running down my shirt. The first officer just about fainted on the spot.

This meant a trip to the hospital to stem the blood, to pick out scores of glass shards and to get my face sown up.

The scar is still in my face, but gravity has moved it down about 15 mm in 40 years.

I found my friends who were studying in the north, far away from their home town. I borrowed a motorcycle and went out exploring the mid summer eve scene. The whole countryside was full of music, as the Swedes celebrated the longest day of the year. I visited a dance, danced with a pretty girl and just about ended up beaten to a pulp. Wrong girl, or at least the wrong boyfriend for my safety. - Get on the motorcycle and drive on to the next place.

The drinking was unbelievable, drunken youth everywhere. I was driving a motorcycle and already had a fair idea of the dangers of drinking and balancing a motorcycle. Not a drop of alcohol passed my lips that night.

Eventually the ship laid lower in the water loaded down with thousands of tonnes of Swedish paper products. We left the sunny and light north for a final visit to Gothenburg, our final port in Sweden.

I bought a new radio - the big world needs more power to be received! This portable radio also had a built in record player, most unique for its time. We left Sweden in the middle of the night - out to the big world that is waiting. I stood on deck, mesmerized by the city lights that sailed by and grew faint as we were heading towards the sea, all the time playing a few popular tunes over and over again. Even today, when I hear those tunes I am right back on the deck, seeing the lights go by.

Summer storms may not be as bad as winter storms but I got to learn quickly what not to do on a rolling ship. Fortunately I was one of the lucky ones, many if not most are, who learned to accommodate the movements rather well. But, back to being seasick, off and on. The curse of my life?

But, now we were really moving and there was no more of the interesting and challenging maintenance work to do, all the equipment was in service. "When at sea, we clean the ship!" That is, the engine room and all areas attached get cleaned.

I was assigned with a sea water hose and a brush to clean the top of the fuel tanks and the gutters on the sides, all accessible about a metre below the engine room floor. I got thoroughly wetted with a stale mixture of oil, grease and water day after day.

"Ouch, I don't want to get down there and get dirty again." It was Saturday morning and I had already put clean clothes on for the afternoon off, soon to start.

An hour after the lunch break hours it had become obvious to the first officer that I wasn't approaching my task with much enthusiasm. A good size foot in the right place propelled me in the direction of the wettest, coldest and smelliest spot, next to a couple of dead rats.

I, the lowest of all low apprentices spoke up, and established myself as an absolutely lazy and uncooperative laggard.

I was told was I was worth, not much, and work was finished for the weekend.

I agonized about the morning's events during the rest of the day. My coworkers added vivid pictures of my future life under the first officer for the next few months. He was nearing retirement and well known for his rather intolerant way of treating his subordinates.

What was I to do? I had seen, from my army days of what can happen to obstinate young men. Come Sunday and I had had one rather restless night. Well, I couldn't quite see that I could make matters much worse. I gathered my strength, swallowed my pride and knocked on the first officer's door.

He received me coolly, listened to my apology and led me out the door. What had I done? Not only was I arrogant and lazy, now I had proven myself as a bigmouth. Fear not. I had to continue the cleaning tasks for a while yet but with some kind words of encouragement sprinkled over me.

A few days later the shifts were rearranged. I found myself assigned as a shift operator on the first officer's shift. He taught me thousands of little tricks on how to best run and maintain machinery, tricks that have stood me in good staid for many years.

Now the world was going places. We were on shift from 4-8, twice every 24 hours. Either you started when it was dark and finished when it was light or vice versa. I learned to time my trips "above" to coincide with the sunrise or the sunset - fantastic always changing experiences at sea. I learned to read the gauges, keep a log and to monitor all the machinery that was running all around me. We had two large slow speed Diesel engines and a myriad of pumps and other auxiliary engines.

The fuel was the cheapest possible and very dirty. We had to clean the fuel filters and fuel separators almost on an hourly basis. It was a struggle to keep enough clean fuel prepared in the day tanks sometimes, even the least extra time spent on maintaining a separator would allow the purified fuel level to drop precipitously near the red mark.

To bypass the filters and allow untreated fuel to the engines would have fouled the injectors hopelessly in only a few minutes. I, somehow always succeeded in staying one step ahead of empty fuel supply warning.

Some of my colleague sea men were real characters.

The cook had tasted his own food for too many years and could hardly get in and out of the kitchen, such was his bulk. But he cooked excellent food, always available, hot at mealtime and cold in the refrigerator at all hours.

The steward was in love with the cook but seemed to be thrown out more than be let into his cabin.

The master machinist was suffering from too much drink for too many years. There was no alcohol to be had at sea and any evidence of drinking on the job was severely punished as well. But, that didn't prevent him from spending all the time when we were in harbour in one long continuous drunken stupor. Unfortunately he also undertook some rather intricate injector fuel pump repairs during one of these sessions.

It didn't function very well.

We had to spend the first part of our trip under reduced power while he refurbished a second, spare, injector pump once we were under way and he had sobered up again.

My cabin companion proved himself to be quick to fight where ever we were. He was considered good company in the more seedy places. He would fight enough for all of us at times. I saw the police arrive on more than one occasion but we did exit in time, not to see any cells on the inside.

Our first long journey, without landfall, was from Sweden to Rio de Janeiro.

Rio, the object of many dreams.

It didn't prove itself like anything I could have imagined. We had the ship's radio tuned to Brazilian stations long before we arrived so our ears were well attuned to the Samba music.

The traffic was absolutely without any order. The drivers, in old, beat up and unbelievably dented cars, drove with abandon. Any flat piece of ground that could accommodate tires was driven on. If there were too many cars on one side, use the other side of the street, why let so much perfectly good pavement be underutilized?

We had our first taste of Brazilian food and met the world's most beautiful women.

We didn't tie up to a wharf in Rio, but were moored in the harbour, leaving and taking on passengers. We had 12 regulation passenger cabins, mandatory in those days. Our commute to the city was by means of a sloop. Again, local arrangements were such that our lay-over extended to days.

The view or Rio de Janeiro was breathtaking. The colours, the streams of lights from the cars by the shore and, of course, the shape of Sugar Loaf mountain and the outline of the large statue of Christ, Cocavara in the background.

Onward to Santos, Brazil which we reached after but a short 24 hour sailing later.

It was the very opposite of "Rio", just another very busy industrial city. We got ashore together and rented one of the innumerable unlicensed cabs for a sightseeing tour. The driver took great pains to show the best spots for entertainment. Some didn't quite get to those great spots, however.

We were there to offload paper and reload with grain. The grain elevators lined the harbour. -But, there didn't seem to be any way for a pedestrian to leave the area.

Fear not, all the bars, in the lower level of the warehouses, had two doors, one on the harbour side, one on the city side.

One of the bars with doors in two directions wasn't only a bar, it was a bordello as well.

You entered and was immediately received by an usher who made sure you got your first drink, on the house. Then you were encouraged to take your time and choose your favourite girl. They were famous for offering you "anything you liked",

It was hard for many to just pass through on the way to the city. The facilities were not really very posh. The ones who had chosen what girl and what activity they preferred carried on in one of many booths along the walls of the large room, booths with only a curtain for privacy. There were calls in many languages.

"How are you doing, John?"

"Not yet. - - Now, NOOOW!"

Some paid a price for these and other conjugal visits. Several of the members of the crew had to see the first deck officer later, he was in charge of the penicillin supply and authorized to administer "the seven day cure" against contracted souvenir illnesses. -Was this a time of greater innocence than now?

Our next stop was Montevideo, heralded as "the richest city in South America".

It was beautiful with many large Avenidas and stately buildings.

I tried for a long time to find a post office but ended up inside the local stock exchange. A clerk took pity on me, took my letters and offered to mail them. I learned later that he did. All Uruguayans are nice people, I think!

A memento of the WW2 was still to be seen. The remnants of the "Pocket Cruiser" Admiral Graf Spee was still to be seen. It had managed to escape from a fjord in Norway in 1939 but didn't leave safely after its internment in Montevideo, but was sunk by its own crew in the harbour on Dec. 18, 1939. The massive hull was a very prominent sight, some 20 years later. I learned that it was cut up and partially removed a few years after my visit.

Another unique sight was also "water bound". A large four engine bomber had crashed on a riverbank towards the end of the war. It was virtually inaccessible due to its precarious location on the mud bank. It looked very much out of place, suspended high above the water at times of low tide.

Safety regulations required that we had to practice our lifeboat skills ever so often. Now was a good time, while we were moored, waiting to get to our berth. It was also a good time to do some maintenance our only life boat that had an engine. I was assigned to grind and re-seat the valves, an assignment I undertook with great pleasure. Engine room personnel didn't get many chances to work in the open normally.

Then it came time to test the engine, at the same time as we were practising to lower and raise the lifeboats. It started and ran like a s charm. I was proud of my job, well completed. The motor launch took us far and we got close to the Admiral Graf Spee, just a shell then as everything of value had been long since removed.

After our trip the lifeboats, all of them, had to go back in their davits.

The hoisting apparatus was more than unsafe. We didn't have a dedicated winch but used one on main deck, far away from the davits. The operations had to be communicated via two persons to the winch-operator, who, high up on the deck couldn't see what was going on.

We got three of the life boats up safely. I was assigned to stay in the boats, gather up the oars and other loose articles and also get the slide-ropes in place. All went well with three boats and we were just finishing off the fourth one.

The "Let go" order was given before the lifeboat was secured, and it started a practically free fall down. I felt the movement starting, gave a quick thought to the idea of jumping free but instead grasped one of the life lines and ended up suspended high up in mid air. The lifeboat fell almost to the end of one rope and ended up suspended vertically, much farther down, a few meters over the water. The surface of the water was whipped to a frenzy from all that was falling in, oars, life vests, seats, emergency water containers etc.

But not I, I was hanging on for my life to the climbing rope.

Had I followed my thought of jumping free of the boat or even staying in it I may not have written this today, so many heavy items fell from high up to where I could have been! I was safely hauled in, a bit shaken but totally unharmed.

Back on deck again, things calmed down. We sent down a couple of guys in a dingy to pick up the miscellaneous floating debris. The first officer visited his cabin, came back with bottle of Cognac, gave us all a sip and said:

“Bengt, you did well and need to calm down now."

We were at sea the fateful night when Ingemar Johansson of Sweden beat Floyd Patterson to win the world heavyweight boxer trophy. It seemed like the entire crew was up, listening to the match on shortwave radio. I, never having much cared for sports, except as a participant, went to bed before Ingemar Johansson won by KO.

The next morning as I sauntered in for breakfast I casually asked: “Who won?”

Not a good question among the world's most boxing loving young men. I barely survived the verbal lashings I received. Lesson learned, stay a jour of popular events to stay in your group. A bit about herd mentality, I think.

Buenos Aires, Argentina was next.

It was now their mid winter, still above freezing but overcast and chilly. This time we really lucked out, a stevedore's strike was underway. We came to extend our stay for over one week, an unbelievably long time, even in these days before containers were common.

This was an opportunity to start some serious engine overhauling. We took apart and rebuilt one of the 12 cylinders every two days. That was very intense work, closely supervised. The intent of this operation is to make the cylinders tighter, increasing the over all efficiency and power of the propulsion engines.

Again, a few of us gathered at the end of every working day, hailed a taxi to downtown, not very far away. We explored the bars. I took a liking to Cuba Libre, rum and Coke, but only one a night. I always had a low tolerance for liquor, remember.

The girls were oh-so-pretty and they all loved us, or that is what they said. We paid for a few rounds of drinks for the girls before realizing that we may have had real drinks, the girls only got the Coka Cola with ice – at full price.

Some places were far more than bars. They were full blown bordellos, but who worried about that?

A few of my colleagues picked up a 'souvenir from their visits” and had to see the medical officer for “the seven day cure”, again, a few days after our departure. They must have enjoyed more that the drinks.

One Saturday we travelled for ours, by bus out onto the Hazienda, far west of Buenos Aires. That's where so much of the world's beef came from then. We ate Asado and had a merry time, riding the horses and trying to rope calves, rodeo style.

The next day, Sunday, we went walking around the quiet city, taking in the Avenida the 17^th of May, seeing the sites and just enjoying the first day with sunshine.

The central post office is a very imposing building along a wide street. We were on the side walk when suddenly a police car passed us and came to a sudden stop outside the main entrance.

Then, suddenly, it happened.

From across the street, some distance behind us – a machine gun started firing.

Our eyes could hardly register what happened next. - The glass of the police car shattered into a cloud of glass, the heads of the policemen disappeared.

Then it struck me, I was after all only a few month out of the infantry. The sound was all to well recognized.

This is a real machine gun shooting at by us. GET OUT.

That must be longest and fastest run of my life. We knew where we were and took off toward the harbour to the sound of approaching police sirens. We passed the guardhouse some time later, totally out of breath and soaked in our own sweat.

The next morning we bought every different newspaper we could lay hands on, La Nación being the largest. There was a picture of the naked police car, with all glass missing. The policemen had survived and the shooters, including their supposedly heavy gun, had disappeared. No further explanation was given.

The ex-dictator Juan Peron had left already 1995, four years before my visit. He had millions of supporters even during his years of exile and the Peronistas was still around creating trouble.

I guess we got to see a tiny, tiny bit of that.

The guard house was the source of another scare on the last night of our visit. We could buy limited amounts of tobacco, totally free of taxes on the ship. Since I didn't smoke, I sometimes brought American cigarettes ashore and sold them.

So, a couple of us, loaded our coats full with cigarette packages and took off,. The guard stopped us. What do you carry? Nothing.

“Stand up straight.”

One package fell on the floor. We were quickly relieved of all cigarettes, put in a back room that looked suspiciously like a cell with bars in the windows, finger printed and - shoved out the front door with many harsh words about what idiots we were. I don't know how true that was, the guards looked like they could use some free cigarettes. But, we were now registered as “felons” and on their black list.

The cigarettes were lost. The ship left the next day and I heard nothing about me being a felon on my next visit to Argentina, many years later. It was not a good idea to smuggle, I learned.

Next an onward journey through the Panama canal, that I completely missed, between working and sleeping. All I saw were the land based tug trains and the night time skyline of the country around us. What an anticlimax.

But, Japan beckoned beyond the Pacific Ocean.

We had heard so much about the bath houses in Japan that we had to try. In Kobe, a few of us got into a taxi and asked for the best bath house in town. It was family affair, a communal bath. We all got skillfully washed, with especially good attention given by the washing ladies to us, they young men (!) before we all dipped in the hot, communal tank.

We were accompanied by whole families, equally unfazed by all the nakedness around us.

It was, surprisingly enough, not very much unlike the good ole days in Sweden when my father and I went for our weekly bath house visit. I know the communal Swedish baths are long gone by now, but the ones in Japan?

For our continued trip to India, we bunkered (filled the fuel tanks) in Jakarta, Indonesia. The ship traffic was unreal, as if we were in a rush hour in a big city. We were swiftly hauled in to a narrow pier and received fuel oil through four large hoses. No time to waste here.

That nigh it was warm and muggy, but with rather high waves. Our crew quarters were in the bow. To get there you had to walk over the open deck. That was normally not very difficult since we seldom took any waves over there. Not so this night. Our safety rope, the guide rope, was up so you had it to hold on during your walk over the open deck.

I came out at 04:00, not suspecting anything special. Being a seasoned seaman I wasn't going to use the rope either, had it been there, I knew how to walk on a moving deck.

Nope, I did not. One of the tanks had been over filled and the vent had been spurting fuel oil over the deck, off and on, all night. What did I know? I was sleeping.

I took three steps outside, the ship rolled – and I was on my back, on the way to slide under the railing and into the sea.

I ended up under the railing, but with one leg on each side of a support post. In deep shock I crawled back, grabbed hold of the safety rope and got to the mid ships area, reporting to work,

I wasn't going to die that night, either.

The officer on deck went back and locked the crew's exit door. Any one who wanted to leave had to use the intercom and call the bridge first. A crewman would come down and assist with the crossing of the so well lubricated section of the deck.

We took many waves over the deck in the next 24 hours. We used fuel oil only from that tank to lower the level and the oil on deck soon washed away in the warm, tropical sea.

Bombay, India was totally overwhelming with its heat, the smells and sounds of the city. The cows, wandering everywhere, in and out of traffic. The poverty cannot be described. We, my little group of sailor friends were communally and totally in awe.

But, everything was inexpensive. How about a haircut? Sure – said and done.

I sat down on a stool in the middle of a busy pedestrian street with the barber behind me, cutting away in a very efficient manner. When he was finished, he leaned down into his box, to pick up the mirror, I thought.

No such thing.

He picked up his shaving knife, carefully opened it, waved it in front of me in a grand circle and then – put the blade to my throat and said:

“Pay now.”

I did.

None of my colleagues wanted a hair cut after that. For a moment they thought they'd have to bring my dead body back to the ship, they said. - But, think about it, in the crowd in the street, it would have taken me three steps to, forever, get out of the barber's reach. I guess he had to make sure he got paid before my departure.

Cape Town in South Africa was grand and scary. We, again had some free time to explore the area and did take the obligatory cable car ride to the top of Cable Mountain. Yes, in case you wondered, it was windy up there.

Apartheid was in full swing then and we, as nice Swedish (or at lest European since our crew was not exclusively Swedish) boys felt almost responsible for how hard the blacks had to work.

Most of the cargo was handled by hand. Some workers were not strong enough for the swinging loads and I saw at least one who we all agreed, must have broken his arm while he got caught by a swinging load in the cargo hold. He screamed in pain and went to the side. The foreman came, hollered a bit more at the man and put him on the cargo platform, still screaming. The poor man, now with blood oozing out of his arm was lifted off on shore and given a swift foot in the rear by the foreman. The last we saw of him was as he walked, alone, outside the guard gate into the street life. No compassion here.

We tried to chat up some of the black we met, but didn't get very far. They were clearly afraid of talking to us and quickly walked away.

There was a lot of drinking in Cape Town and there seemed to be quite a few ladies of the night in the harbour area. If our Swedish money had taken us far in India, it went even further here. We could go to a nice restaurant and eat well, something a lowly apprentice seaman wouldn't often have the funds for.

My around the world tour would and my seafaring life soon draw to an end, but I didn't know that yet. On the return to Europe, along the west coast of Africa, we were to make a brief stop in The Canary Islands to bunker up on more really cheap and ugly fuel.

I did clean the purifiers, remember, so I knew when the fuel was a little better. It would mean fewer disassembly operations and less ugly smelling gunk to carry up and throw overboard. No, we didn't worry about what the fish were given to eat, neither about the garbage nor about the oily mess we pumped out of the ballast tanks before taking on a full cargo.

But, I soon didn't have to work in the almost unbearably hot engine room, It was regularly over 40^o C when in the tropics, nor did I have to carry any more gunk anywhere.

I broke a bone in my foot.

Sunday – a nice quiet day in the tropics, off the west coast of Africa. Our above deck tarpaulin swimming pool had been filled with seawater from the fire pump this morning, as usual. Against all instructions, I decided to go for a swim on my own, all on the lonesome. We were strictly forbidden to use the pool alone or whenever the weather was considered to rough.

I got up on poop deck, one floor above the pool. I started on a nice run and a jump, aiming for the pool below.

There was no pool there as I started down – a really big wave had hit the ship the moment I started to run. I could feel the deck leaning more and more, but thought nothing of it as I was picking up speed.

I didn't miss the pool, but came down, sliding down the inside. My foot got caught in a fold of the tarpaulin and that was it. The pain started the moment I left the water. I straggled back to my cabin, unseen by all.

A little while later, I tried go for Sunday lunch. Not a good idea. The medical officer got hold of me, put some liniment on my foot, as it rapidly swelled up.

“No more seamanship for you.”

Next day, the foot looked better, but still felt awful. We arrived in Las Palmas, Canary Islands. I was destined for the British Seaman's Hospital. On the way, I managed to royally insult the taxi driver by telling him that his brand new Peugeot car was a very poorly designed car and should never have been put on the market. (!)

My friends threw me up the stairs of the hospital at the last moment, before the taxi driver had gotten out of the driver's seat. He was definitely aiming to give that stupid arrogant seaman, me, the proper treatment. OK, so he didn't like that I didn't like his car. Big deal?

Having set the tone of the day, it was time for an X-ray. My leg was weighted down with sand bags and put under Dr. Roentgen's machine, serial No. 3, or made at about that time. The high voltage generator started up slowly and built up to a crescendo before it went bang. Now they had an X-ray picture.

“I have been zapped! I have been sterilized! I will die young from radiation sickness!”

(I will never be able to have any children.) - Besides, there is absolutely nothing wrong with my foot.

“Take me out of here.”

The young British doctor produced a couple of old x-ray plates, obviously not from my foot, showing a clear break in a bone in a foot.

“Not mine.”

Then came the time to put on the plaster.

Young British doctor's revenge on Stupid Swedish Sailor was – a plaster immobilizing my leg from the hip, down.

By now, my friends had had a good study visit in town, and returned to pick me up, a little reinforced from the good Spanish wine. I was waiting by the front door, propped up in a wheel chair.

With the cast I far was too tall to be folded into a regular car. After some frantic running around they located a pick up truck for rent for a not so triumphal return trip to the ship, by now bunkered and ready to go. I was carried up the gang plank.

My fellow crew members looked at me in amazement – and started laughing. The medical officer got the x-ray plates to look at said: “You don't need a half body cast like that. Cut that cast down in size.”

Who is better at cutting than the ship's carpenter? He had the day off, was rustled from his bottle in the cabin and came on deck, complete with a commercial 14“ electric circular saw.

“Oh no, I will lose my leg to that drunkard. Don't you come near me now.”

Not so. This man, barely able to stand, expertly cut the plaster of Paris off, leaving me with a knee high cast instead. Not a drop of blood was drawn. Some professional carpenter skills in him, for sure.

My sailor days were over, now I became an assistant communications officer instead. Not that I minded, to learn how to use the short wave telegraph was certainly something new. I even tried, in earnest to learn some Morse code.

Our next couple of shore visits became very memorable. I had friends and friends don't leave friends behind. I was brought along to the seediest of places in Holland and Germany, seeing things and places I would never have entered, using my own two feet. Now I had no choice,

“We carry you, you come with us”.

Again we picked up “loose ladies”. On the trip from Rotterdam to Hamburg, we had no less than three non-crew ladies on board. One was serving “one and all”, the other two stayed with their “friends”, only. There was some jockeying to take food from our dining room and bring it to our “visitors”.

The officers, wisely weren't paying any visits to the crews quarters then.

Of course I had picked up a few “not so legal” things during my several months away from Sweden. That included some “pills”. We were warned about the Swedish customs' “Blue League”, they could enter a ship and practically disassemble it on arrival in Gothenburg. I saw them at work on the walls in the common dining room, but nothing was found so they soon left.

My “stuff” was in a few match boxes, under a top layer of matches. I walked off the ship with trembling knees, but nobody gave me a second look. Ironically enough, that illegal stuff I never touched, it went into the garbage, years later.

Another era of my life was over. I had learned that the life as a seaman my not have been quite what you might think. Time to move on.

How about earning a good wage at an automobile factory?

I lasted only two weeks in the Volvo factory, spot welding rear doors to the frame. After all, just making little black spots, soon to be painted over, wouldn't earn me any recognition in life. I soon learned to manipulate the spot welder to cut little half moons out of the metal. - Then, in the future, I could walk down the street, look for the little cut outs at the rear doors of the Volvo cars and know which ones I had helped making.

Not good – the paint shop didn't take a liking to my impromptu art work, costing them so much extra time to cover up.

Unemployed again.

Next job, report to the Karlshamn export harbour and the innumerable bundles of good Swedish forest products destined for export. I was to stamp the ends of the timber with the shippers identification marks. This was a total dead end job, cold and lonely to boot.

Time to do something else – get an education.

My old high school friend Göran invited me to a party at his father's place. His father, Folke Wirén was the headmaster at Blekinge Läns Folkhögskola. He told me:

“I remember you from when you used to come to visit our house in earlier years, send your School records in and I will accept you.” Said and done.

I drove my scooter to Bräkne Hoby on a cold spring day and reported for the beginning of the rest of my life. (I have had many more of those, I think)

I decided that I'd like to have a girlfriend now. Wow, what a cornucopia of smart and pretty girls there were.

In the fall I met Monica. I never looked at another girl again, until after her untimely death in cancer 43 years later.

Once, years later, after were married, on a walk in Karlshamn, Monica got excited and started to wave at a stranger across the street. He was equally excited. With him was my ex-girlfriend Ingalill, the girl I had parted with when I met Monica.

I had never known her boyfriend at the time, but there he was, married to my ex. “What did you have in common when you met?”

“We both really disliked the two of you.”

We had been friends, and reconnected on the spot, having remained friends ever since then, seeing each other's children grow up and sharing the ups and downs of life.

My schooling career did come out a little better this time. After all, I had a pretty good idea of what life as an uneducated person could be like. Now I got passing marks, or better.

Finally I also got my complete high school leaving diploma, about four years after I could have had it.

The summer of 1961 rolled in. I got a job at the SJ (Swedish State Rails) at their railroad maintenance shops in Karlshamn. It was a great place with all sorts of sophisticated railroad equipment all around me.

On the first day, the foreman asked my to fix his radio. Not exactly the perfect job for an aspiring mechanic. But, I carried it home and set to work with my soldering iron, replacing the burned out supply transformer. Oh, how many leads it had, almost too many to keep track of.

A few days later, before I had had time to try it at home, I presented the newly repaired radio. It was set up in the foreman's office and switched on.

There was a hum, then a slowly ascending shriek and then – an explosion. The internal transformer blew up in a good size cloud of smoke and flames. Not a good start for my mechanic's career.

I later learned that that very same radio was booby trapped and had been “repaired” by several new employees before me, I just managed to make the best explosion of all. No harm befell me, even if it smelled a little of old fire in the office for a few days.

One of my tasks was to do regular maintenance inspections of the day liners. They were typically chained in four or six car sets. The maintenance was done inside the shop. You had to dive into the interiors looking for the batteries, various dip sticks and more.

Of course I learned to drive them too. Push the driver's handle forward – accelerate. Pull it to the rear - brakes on. Simple.

So, one day, I brought a train out, backed it up, changed the railroad switch and drove forward to park the train next to the service building.

This is too boring, doing the same thing every day. Why not put some spice to it? Full acceleration – mmm, we are really moving now.

Full braking – What? Nothing, nothing, no breaking. The barrier at the end of the track is getting closer, now it is really close. I will hit the barrier, I will ruin a multi-million dollar train.

My life is over.

Then the emergency brake took over. We stopped less than 15 mm from the barrier. I had wetted my pants.

I only then learned that you cannot slam the breaks when you are on steel wheels on a steel rail, that would only lock the wheels. The automatic brake limiter had done its job, slowing the train gradually without locking the wheels.

Nobody had observed my maneuvre and my pants quickly dried that warm summer day. Lesson learned. Don't mess with what you don't understand.

Another job of ours was to scrap some 40 year old light weight day liners, built with plywood bodies. These had been used in the 1920's and 1930's to run in front of the express trains, stopping at all stations and then taking off again before the slower express train caught up. It all ended in 1936 when one day liner didn't get away quickly enough before the express train ran into the rear on a down slope at 110 km/h. - 34 persons died in the burning inferno that resulted.

The day liner had a enormously large 12 cylinder 15 litre gasoline engine and a transmission to suit for the absolutely fastest acceleration. It had been towed in but we started the engine and practised driving it on a little used service track. The driver sat in a formed seat, strapped with a wide belt over the hips. To operate the clutch, he had to put both feet on the pedal and push, push as hard as he could, at the same time held in place by the hip-strap. With a six speed non synchromesh transmission, calling for double shifting for each gear change, you can only imagine how strong the driver's legs would become over time, after all that hard leg-work

Now, I almost cried about what we had to do. After removing all the remaining gasoline out of the tanks (which we promptly poured into our own cars) and most of what had any value, not including the engine, we poured gas over the interior, threw in a match and stood by. The fire department were there, looking on as well. Imagine all that good equipment being destroyed. But, that is the way things are. You are no longer useful and we scrap you.

A day later, when it all had cooled down, we went at the remaining chassis with cutting torches. A truck came from the local scrap yard and picked up the steel, including the engine and transmission assembly.

I did steal some nice looking cabin lights and multilingual signs. “Nicht rauchen, Fumez pas, etc.”

BROKIND

All in all, this summer was not going well. I was in definite conflict with my mother. My summer job at the railroad shop was drawing to an end, it was only temporary.

I missed Monica and wanted to get closer to her. She was working that summer in the cafeteria on one of the passenger ships on the Stockholm to Gotland run, S/S Visby.

I didn't have any money so to make the trip by car was out of the question. I rented a small tent and arranged what I needed for a couple of weeks outing in a backpack and a knapsack. Ironically enough I borrowed a radio from a girl I secretly had admired some time ago and who probably had a good eye for me. We had never more than exchanged a few words but she entrusted her with one of her priced possessions, a small transistor radio. Then I hit the road.

I didn't get far when I met a very tired and downtrodden young German, Gunther. He was on a bicycle tour From Germany all the way to Stockholm. He had already been on the way for too long and the wind was making the progress very difficult. We spoke for a little while. I had a tent, large enough for two. A quick decision, let's continue together. He parked his bike at a nearby farmhouse and we started our hitchhiking together.

At one of our drop off points stood a car with a family in it. The hood was up and the owner tried, to no avail, to start the car. I looked and saw, based on my service station experience that the problem was that the main ignition cable had fallen off. I plugged it back in, held my hand over it and said, "try now". The engine started right away and ran smooth as silk. The owner was so grateful that he, with his wife and children drove us tens of km on our way, out of their way.

Stockholm was warm when we arrived but turned cold and wet within the first hours. Gunther and I couldn't very well set up a tent any place in the city. We didn't have the money for a youth hostel, even if we had found our way to one we were short on options. So, sleep in what seems to be the most protective doorway.

A couple of young men came by on the way to their apartment, "What are you doing here?" They were students from Egypt, in Sweden on a student exchange program. We didn't sleep that night but spent it discussing Nasser, socialism and other current subjects in a most excited fashion that only we could, driven by youthful exuberance and different cultural backgrounds. They were Muslims and we didn't drink anything stronger than a soft drink. Most of our talk was in German, the only common thread between all of us. My travelling companion was a German, remember.

We still ended the night outside in the cold. The discussion didn't go well, we disagreed on a few key points and were forcefully thrown out in the rain in the wee hours of the night. We spent the time until the first cafeteria opened walking the abandoned streets of Stockholm, cold, miserable and totally lacking sleep.

My German language skills were improving by leaps and bounds. I had no choice but to learn, and all the reluctantly gained knowledge from school was now put to its true test.

A few days later it was time for me to go to Nynäshamn to meet Monica's ship. Oh was she pretty, absolutely the prettiest girl I ever laid eyes on. She invited me to travel on a weekend trip to the island of Gotland. The ship S/S/ Visby was fantastic, a 3 000 tonne 1924 construction 900 passenger ship powered by a real reciprocating steam engine, probably the second to last in use in the world.

I got an empty first class cabin for the five hour trip and off we went. Monica was working in the cafeteria so I didn't see much of her.

But, I met the chief engineer. We talked about ships and engines. He brought my into the engine room. I spent most of the night there, climbing all around the steam engine, a real reciprocating steam engine some 35 years old. It was probably one of the last operating steam engine driven ships in the world at that time.

Nobody who has ever heard the noise of a Diesel engine close up can believe in the absolute silence of a steam engine. Sure, you heard some faint whistling from the steam in the pipes and a bit of rattle as the pistons and the linkage went back and forth. But you could talk to each other. No shouting. I felt privileged to be taught so much. I will admit that I now am a bit of pest in technical museums, I often know more about the ships steam engines than the staff.

My return trip was still filled with engine sounds, or the lack thereof, but my sleep was not so good, I ended up in Monica's empty birth as she worked the night shift.

Her old friend who didn't know that I had arrived before her soon came in with her boyfriend. I woke up too late to realize what was taking place in the birth below me. I snuck out of the cabin when they left for a late night snack. I told Monica, she was quite chocked but never told her cabin colleague and friend.

Other parts of of the return trip were not entirely uneventful, either. One of the young men on the ship didn't at all appreciate my presence in their little group. He had his eyes on Monica also.

"She is my girl, keep your hands off."

Granted, that position would be hard for me to defend, as I had to return to the hitchhiker's life.

The mother of another young man came to visit in Visby. They invited Monica for a weekend at a farm on that windblown southern part of the Island. Once there, Monica received lots of offers if she would stay and marry the young man. She explained that she coudln't stay, she was still studying. Then they sweetened the deal with a brand new Volvo car, so she could travel back to the island on holidays. The said no, again.

Monica did come back home after her summer sejour had ended.

I guess I had won out over several suitors by then?

Home again. Gunther and I said good-by to each other, promising lifelong loyalty and many trips to each others' homes again. That never came to be, we both entered school and lost contact after a couple of letters. He was, however, most upset over my lack of practicality, i.E. travelling with a large flashlight. He sent me, as a present, a small miniature light that still gives service in my house.

The "old" town of Karlshamn seemed less attractive than anytime before after my little foray out into the world, that was populated only by strangers. I finished off the last weeks of work at the railroad maintenance shop and decided to leave for unknown horizons the next day.

What did I do? I was out the evening before and bought one large suitcase, the largest that could fit into my car. I packed only and exactly as much as would fit in the suitcase, put some gas in the tank and - left home.

The date was Aug. 21, the time was 08:00 when I left. Perhaps that was my birthday, the second one. I left my ties behind me.

Where to? I didn't have the foggiest idea. I drove in a northerly direction until the fuel gauge pointed to the red area, I was in danger of running out of gas. It was still early afternoon and I had gone about 400 km to Linköping. I proceeded directly to the state travel agent, Arbetsförmedlingen, talked to them and got three referrals and advice on where the nearest youth hostel was. Strangely enough, that was the only time in my life that I ever stayed at one of those. Every young person finds that a little frightening, you are so close to strangers, sharing a room with them.

My last money were spent for breakfast so I really needed a job fast. The first interview was at a valve manufacturer, they wanted me to sit in an office next to the dark foundry, with fumes and foundry dust everywhere, recording time sheets.

That didn't sound very exciting at all. SAAB, the aeroplane factory was looking for a floor clerk, they said. I got no farther than to have a walk around the underground factory, located deep inside a mountain. There was no sun at all so I feared for my happiness there.

The second one was a job as a time keeper inside a foundry. The place was black as charcoal, noisy and with very bad air. No, please, don't make me stay here.

Not to fear, they didn't want me. Now it was getting critical. Two down, and one to go, still no job.

The last appointment was with a local job site at a road construction project. Run the office, handle the invoices and time sheets. It was located in a wing of a castle, truly a beautiful setting, surrounded by a park with deer that could sometimes be seen in the mornings. The office job was perhaps not the best for me, you had to be so damned exact all the time and always be there to answer the phone. Our field people called in from pay phones. That was a drag and I tried to introduce local radiotelephones. It was a sterling idea but the units didn't have enough range. Back to the dimes and the pay phones.

The manager was a man with great love for automobiles. In the short time I was there he ran one of the road one night, slightly drunk, but walked away in one piece. He had bought and exchanged two more cars before I left. He must have been the area car salesmen's best friend, taking delivery and almost instantly crashing it or trading it in for a competitor's model.

I got a room with a family who ran the local ambulance and taxi service. Both vehicles were probably 15 years old hand definitely seen much use before they ended up there. The drivers, father and son, were the most relaxed persons you could meet. Nothing would rattle their confidence.

The young son earned some money on the side, running a power saw, cutting firewood for the winter. He had a mobile saw powered by an old automobile engine. Any safety inspector would have had convulsions of happiness, had he seen all the unsafe equipment and practices around that saw. Luck must have been with them because they had all fingers, arms and eyes still. Catastrophe almost struck once, though.

The engine with the saw raced out of control.

The operator threw a large log in the machinery and it stopped, instantaneously. What to do now? No more cutting? Will it race again? I came to the rescue, realized that the home built governor, made from bicycle chains had a missed a few principles of engineering in its assembly and was inherently unstable. I made one adjustment with a screwdriver. Presto, the engine kept steady speed under all loads like it never had before.

Then I became a hero and got to accompany both men on their taxi-driving trips. I wisely refused to go as assistant ambulance driver, though. The traffic accidents in those days, before seat belts or speed limits were introduced, were too many and too gory to be near.

The conversion from a taxi to an ambulance was quick, they just removed the rear seats and added a gurney. No special skills were required of a country ambulance driver, just get there, pick up the unhappy injured person and deliver him or her to the nearest hospital as fast a possible. No sirens or special lights were required, just blow your horn and drive fast.

It was still summertime so there was no need to run the furnace for heat. But how could I get hot water for a bath? By firing up the furnace, of course. The controls were stuck for heat so by the time I had finished my bath the internals of the house were heated to about 30° C. The owners that came back that summer afternoon were less than amused. I could open cross draft in my room but their flowers and candles didn't take to well to the summer cooking. I wasn't so much of a hero any more.

The job took me out in the field quite a lot. I also got to arrange with the local trucking firm for extra trucks on busy and productive days. One day we got 14 brand new five tons trucks out transporting rocks and dirt. They looked large but were grossly undersized for the task. Our shovel operators put just as much on them as on the regular dump trucks, probably 10-15 tonnes. Five of the brand new trucks didn't finish the day in running order, they had broken axles or transmissions that practically exploded, throwing steel and oil in all directions. I felt sorry for the owner when he tried to get compensation for his so badly treated brand new trucks.

But, in the field you moved around a lot, not only did you handle papers. One busy day a truck driver called in sick. Could I do his job? Why not, go to the maintenance area and pick up his truck.

'The truck has new brakes, test them before you load up."

Said and done. So, you are our new truck driver today? Here is your vehicle.

"It had a busted muffler so we took off the whole exhaust system, don't drive it near any police car."

That came to be the least of my troubles. I picked up my first load, some 20 tonnes of rock and took off. At the bottom of a hill was a sharp turn. The brakes that had worked so well with the empty truck were totally ineffective with the load pushing. The sound from the engine was deafening, the truck only picked up speed, I stood with both feet on the break pedal and the curve came closer and closer. - I made it, probably on two wheels and definitely throwing quite a number of large boulders on the side of the road. I did dump what was left of the load in the assigned place. That was a fright in it self, backing up to a steep cliff where the cargo was tipped while you, again stood on the brake pedal with two feet, not to roll off...

My next stop was the maintenance shop, where I returned the keys and the truck in good order. That was the end of my truck driving career. Never again would I take over something that could kill me from any smiling mechanic.

Monica sometimes visited the site. I had made some friends among the construction workers. One man lent us his brand new Volvo car, a super vehicle of the day. It had velvet coated seats, a good radio and drove in a quiet manner hitherto inexperienced by us. We drove an hour to Linköping, visited a Viking excavation site in the middle of the city and celebrated our freedom with dinner at a then, great novelty, a steak house.

This car got accidentally dented by a truck the next week. The truck driver was very apologetic and promised to repair the car so the dent could never be seen again. We felt sorry for the Volvo owner when he got his car back. The paint job was really botched with the wavy sheet metal and the new paint in stripes and folds.

I did make several trips to see Monica again on the ship.

Sometimes she had time to leave the boat for quick trips into the city, sometimes I only saw her on the boat.

One morning I left at sunrise for the drive back to my road construction job. I would normally be alert for deer at that time but that was not the danger that morning. A duck came at me from the side. What to do? Duck for the duck if he came through the windshield and try to stay on the road? The duck broke his neck on the rear view mirror and tumbled to the road. My rear view mirror was gone. I stopped- to pick up the duck and used my pocket knife to bleed the body.

My host family and I shared a good duck dinner the next night.

The fall was coming and the road construction would come to an end. I had applied to several technical colleges earlier that year but not heard anything definite from anyone. Then one day, within the time span of a couple of hours, I was accepted at two colleges. I choose the one nearest me, farthest from home.

It was with some regret that I said good-by to my new found friends, well knowing that we would probably never meet again. And, true to form, I drove that stretch of road several times in later years but could never positively identify the section that I helped to build.

The arrival to Katrineholm was on a dark and rainy night. I flagged down a friendly taxi driver who gave me directions to my where my childhood friend, Göran Olsson lived. He met with a bottle of scotch and I celebrated my first night as a full-time engineering student by getting royally drunk - and started my first day with a royal headache. Göran passed away in cirrhosis of the liver a few years later. I guess he had too many bottles over the years.

1961 - 1963 TAXI DRIVER

I needed money, what could I do? I took a walk around town to explore the possibilities. Service stations don't keep their extra help for very long, so there must be a place for me. Sure enough, the next night I was pumping gas, just as in the old days.

But that lasted less than a week. I was warned that the owner was a bit of a strange bird. Sure enough, one night he accused me of trying to use his service station to sell my own stuff. He never told me what and I was booted out in the street without pay for the week. I thought of going to the police or to a lawyer to sue him for unlawful dismissal but thought the better of it, a student didn't have much to say and besides, there must be another part time job, somewhere. Now I understand why it was so easy to get a job with him, he often fired his employees without paying them.

Driving a taxi? Why not? I spoke to the manager at the local 13 car station. Yes, there might be part time work for me. So, I applied for and passed my professional driver's test, studied the local map and important sites in the city, sat another exam and - became a professional taxi driver.

My first assignment was on a Monday night. I sat there all night from 6 to 11 and had one ride. Not exactly an exciting introduction to the great exciting life of a part time taxi driver.

The next pass was on a Saturday. The town was full of shoppers and the market square, where our rest house was, was full of people. Olle, the regular driver took me on a couple of runs with passengers, then I was on my own.

I learned something that afternoon, help with the luggage and open the door and you will get tip. Why not, you need some exercise when you only sit and drive. I hopped in and out of that car a lot. Young, old, rich or poor, that made no difference to me. I got tip.

Many slow nights, later, did I sit and talk with the some of the taxi owners. They were telling of the good old days, the days when you cold take a break to have a drink with their customers and when a driver got tip. Imagine how cheap modern people had become, they never tipped any more. I didn't' tell them that I sometimes made as much on tip as my regular pay. They probably would not have understood.

You may never have become rich on owning a taxicab but the living was good. It was, however, shocking to realize how cheap some had become over the years. Repairs was only to be made when they absolutely could not be avoided any more.

One night I drove around with a heavy broom in the car. What was it good for? Heavy duty cleaning after cigar smoking passengers? Not at all, it was for the voltage regulator. Occasionally when the engine idled too low the generator stopped charging. Time step out and whack the voltage regulator hard to make the relay cut in again. I had to drive with constant attention to when to shift so the lights would stay on.

It could become a bit frightening for my passenger when I suddenly stopped the car, grabbed for the broom and charged at some unseen object under the hood with great banging noises.

Holiday weekends were fabulous for making money. You stayed on the road all the time, constantly taking calls on the radio. Sure, with only one channel and many eager drivers you sometimes talked in the mouth of each other. One night I was driving number seven, there was no way I could get into contact with the station, someone always cut in. Driver of car number one told me, in no uncertain words later that night to mind my place, his car had been registered longer than mine, such as 55 years. He had the priority on the radio. Imagine, nowadays taxis are dispatched by a computer, no discrimination.

This was also a time when it became a little worrisome with all the money you were carrying. After all, robberies of taxi drivers were not quite unheard of even in those days. There was no safe place at the station, such as a safe, and I certainly was not important enough to have a night deposit key at the bank. So, who looks after your money better than your wife? (!) So, we had an appointment at 02.00 when I would come up, empty my bulging pockets of "all the tip". The loose coins and bills, and have a quick tea before returning to my duties.

Any memorable passengers? Of course. One man rode often, always less than sober and always using abusive language, both to me and his friends in the car. One night I got a call, recognized the address, put the meter on "High" and arrived with a whopping amount showing on the meter. I made the moves as if I was starting the meter but only continued adding to the old balance. He had his most expensive ride ever in that little town. I just said, "pay up". He did, calling me all sorts of dirty names and giving me threats. Who would believe a drunk person's story anyway, I was known as "mister Honest" among the other drivers. That man guarded me much more closely on all future rides, and he spoke a little nicer too.

One very cold winter night I had a drive out into the country with two elderly gentlemen of Finnish origin, again far less than sober. It didn't take long before they were arguing and, one pulled a knife.

Terror struck me, a knife fight in my car.

I used the radio, in fright, and talked to the 75 year old, very experienced, dispatcher who was on duty that night. "Drive fast and give them a fright". Did I ever go for some spins on that snowy road at minus 30° C. It seemed that the ditch was less of an evil than the two arguing men and the wildly swinging knife. The abrupt movements of the car gave them something else to think about and they calmed down. Yes, one jacket was in tatters but no blood had been spilled. I bought a box of chocolates for the dispatcher who knew what to do.

Some people were reluctant to pay and tried to bargain with what was on the meter, did we really go the shortest way, did you use the right rate? That was usually no problem to take care of.

One man sat quietly in the rear seat and, when we arrived, took off like rocket. "Hey, the fare!" I called and charged after him. He turned limp as soon as I touched him and followed me back to the car where I called for the police. Two minutes later the police had arrived and, after a very brief discussion, the man was made to pay what was on the meter. "Sir, didn't you forget something", said the policeman,

"You didn't pay any tip."

I got another 15 percent. That policeman and I used to wave to each other for a long time after that.

Some addresses you knew and you had certain ideas of what to expect when you arrived. A typical call would be going to the summer dance park and drive happy lovers home.

Some other calls could be confusing by their familiarity. A medical emergency at my best friends home. What is this? Speed up. Two of my friends at the doorway, one doubled over in pain. Take off for the hospital, call ahead and open the emergency entry, this was 04.00 in the morning.

A heart attack? Poisoning? Who could tell? Drive faster.

We delivered my friend to the nurses in ER and I had to continue my work. What had happened? On Monday, no news.

On Tuesday my friend was back in school again. His girlfriend had told him that night that she was pregnant. I always thought that pregnancy was experienced by the woman, and much later. Was this a case of early feelings? (They married and had two more children in later years.)

The weather was always to contend with, the winters were snowy and slippery. One morning, in light snow with snow on the ground, I drove slowly through an intersection and, bang, the car swung around.

A married man, a car salesman driving a brand new demonstrator vehicle had woken up too late at his mistress' place and had to get home in a hurry He forgot about such technicalities as snow and stop signs.

He didn't get to see his wife early enough that morning and I ended up getting a brand new taxicab to drive a few days later.

He should have taken a cab, that would have been safer. (He lost his job over that demonstration. His wife divorced him on the grounds of infidelity, our traffic court record was used as evidence as it showed the location and time of his traffic accident.)

Was it ever warm in the summer? Probably not but I can tell of one, but only one, night when I drove with the cold air vents open all night. What a feeling that was.

One Saturday, I got a call. Would I come in on Sunday for “special duty”? Sure.

One of the taxi owners had an old friend, back in town for a day. My task was to drive him, all day, where ever he wanted to go. I was not allowed to talk, only to take directions.

The day was spent in second gear, touring the province of Östergötland, hardly ever driving faster than 30 km/h. My passenger, and elderly man, sat quietly in the rear seat. Sometimes he stepped out for short walks, occasionally he was crying as he seated himself again. Memories, I am sure, memories of a life that had been a long time ago.

Late afternoon, he paid what was on the meter, a small fortune and added 100 % tip for me. That was the quietest and best paid day in my taxi career.

The memory of the quiet man, sometimes with tears in his eyes stayed with me for a long time. What could he not have told and shared about a long life?

The taxi station doubled also as a late night service station after all other outlets were closed. That was a source of some extra revenue and really not that time consuming. One very bright summer night in the twilight of the midsummer sun, a motorcyclist arrived for gas. Our old dispatcher started filling the tank, with the motorcycle engine running. The rest of the story is a "natural". There was a big explosion and the two men ran away in a great hurry, leaving the burning motorcycle lying sideways - and the filler hose locked open and spraying 20 litres per minute of high octane gas on the ground. I came around the corner and saw it all as it happened. I made the fastest dash of my life, I left my car so fast that it continued to run in neutral, driver-less, and stopped against the curb. Dashing for what? To open the fuel pump master switch that was behind a door and could soon to be covered in flames.

Fortunately most of the burning gas floated towards the street, away from the building. The fire engine crew, that arrived within minutes made a short affair of the burning motorcycle. Thanks for a fire department that was only a block away where the dispatcher had heard and seen the original explosion. The subsequent police report turned against the poor dispatcher, he had acted in a most unsafe manner in filling up a motorcycle with the engine running.

The pump was replaced with a new, shiny one. The whole station got a new coat of paint, too.

The taxi cabs were traded rather infrequently. Surely, you can give it one more overhaul and get another year out of it? But, some had really come to the end of their useful life. Then it was usually most economical to just move the meter to the new car.

Once, the new car wasn't ready in time and I had to drive the old one, sans meter. Now, that was a new experience for the passengers, how could they tell that you would not overcharge them? Easy, I got a sheet of the price schedule taped to the dashboard and used a crayon on a note pad to record the mileage.

The cost calculation was done on a slide rule. This was long before the days of hand held calculators, remember. What a night, just about all were impressed with the "justice made". I had a good time realizing how much value I could have of my, then still in the coming, engineering education.

I ultimately got a job in Stockholm but continued to come back and work sporadically at the station. With time, it became too time consuming and I stopped. One era that was fun but not for ever had ended.

My technical education became quite interesting and I even got passing marks, or better. I had originally applied for electrical engineering but had to settle for the mechanical field, based on my practical seafaring experiences.

This didn't prevent me from really soaking up the electrical courses, which all served me well in later years.

My summer job for 1962 was to be in Karlshamn, working for the food oil processing plant where had been errand boy, a lifetime ago. I was so proud of having gotten that job and was really anxious to get started. The night before my departure from Katrineholm I heard shouts from the living room. TV news were on. They showed a live TV picture taken from an aeroplane of what looked like the entire factory, my future employer, in flames.

It wasn't all that bad. One top floor was gone and a bit more. But the factory was back in business, making food oils in a few weeks.

I went to work every day with a brand new pocket size, compact slide rule in my shirt pocket, as any real engineer would.

I was there as an assistant to the chief engineer, running around on special assignments all summer long. I even got to use some of my newly acquired knowledge on time studies, checking our the barrel filling operations. I would occasionally drive by and record what the men were doing just then, a statistical study. They seemed to be working 100 percent of the time, no break, no interruptions. I tried sneaking up on them, to no avail, they were always working.

Not possible, I was sure. Then, by just standing there, the phone rang twice. Nobody picked up. Why? I could see that the call came from the guard house at the bottom of the hill. So I went back and asked, “why the two rings?” - Because we thought you were on your way. Oops. Secret solved. No more 100 percent efficiency at work there.

The Karlshamns Oljefabrik had some very tall silos, probably over 100 m tall. The elevator was old an poorly maintained. Once on the way down, it let go. We were three in the car. The elevator dropped some distance and stopped suddenly against the acceleration limiters.

One man had wooden clogs on, and his feet half way out. He hit the shoes so hard, he practically broke his foot in half and had to call in sick for the rest of the day. I was scared out of my wits, but learned, again, that safety back up systems can work. Thank you.

Ever since, I have been very leery of construction elevators or old elevators, are they safe?

Now I was rich. Not only had I saved from my taxi driving, but also set money aside from my summer job. How about a car?

Sure, the least expensive one was an orphan, the manufacturer, Borgward, was no longer in business. I bought a German made orphan, a Goliath for a song.

Sure, it was a real pain to keep it going as there were very few spare parts to be found, anywhere. This car was built for speed, for the German autobahns. A little 40 hp engine was enough to propel you over 150 km/h if you dared to go that fast. The gearing was such that the fourth gear could only be used when cruising at over 100 km/h.

In consideration of the anticipated speeds, the designers had left a significant detail out, the heating fan. Conversely, driving in the city, following traffic , wintertime, you would nearly freeze to death for lack of heat.

I went to a scrap yard, found a suitable fan, installed it and – the heating system became the best of all. I had some fun with that the next winter, in my drives to and from Stockholm.

The next summer was different, now I got a job in the SKF steel foundry in Katrineholm. I was hired as a mechanic, time to perform.

The foreman was a brute without much appreciation for the tenderness of aspiring Engineers. If it was dirty, noisy or looked a bit scary, that's where I was sent.

The summertime was a bit of a break for the foundry, time for upkeep and to look after the stuff that you couldn't normally access. Do I have to mention that a foundry is black and black on black. No other hue or colour survives there.

We saw many specialist service men come and go. My language skills served me well, I was sometimes assigned to work with German and French engineers.

The French service engineer, in town for several weeks was young and quite starry eyed with the Swedish women. We made friends and he would, occasionally have dinner with Monica and I.

Once, around midsummer he asked if he could borrow my car to take a girl out for for the weekend. We weren't going anywhere, so why not, here are the keys.

He took off with a happy grin, probably full of imaginations of what he could do with his new found Swedish girlfriend and a car.

He returned on Sunday night, with a little less of a smile. What happened, did you get sick? Did the car break down? Did you run out of gas?

Nooo, nothing of that: “It never got dark.”

I guess young French lovers cannot do it in the light of the midsummer night?

This was the summer when our old friends from the arts college in Bräken-Hoby got married. Loffe and Anita were students, just like us, and, if anything had even less money.

They had a civic marriage at city hall, in front of the major. The honey moon were to be tenting by the coast, some one hour drive away. We all drove in my car, full to the rafters with two tents, and more for the two couples.

Camp was set with much merriment and then it was bedtime. We woke up after midnight to the sound of a real good size fight in the tent next to ours. The newlyweds were fighting. Loffe got thrown out of the marriage tent, came knocking on ours and asked if he could sleep with us.

“Sure, welcome in.”

They had a happy marriage for many years to come. It unfortunately ended in a car accident outside Karlshamn in 1969, in a 100 km/h head on collision when they were hit by a car with four totally drunk young men. Five people died then, including Anita who was the driver. There was a suitcase on the passenger seat. Loffe told us that he was sitting in the rear seat with his dog in his lap. He claims that he was saved by their dog, crushed to death, but which had became his buffer in the crash.

Loffe had 11 breaks in his bones, including a fractured hip, and spent the next nine months between the hospital and rehabilitation.

He passed away in a heart attack a few years later, still a young man. We, their friends, agreed that he had died of a broken heart, having lost his young wife so tragically.

The summer ended all too soon and it was back to the books, again.

On a clear winter day, one of my friends asked me if I would drive us to the nearby field to go flying with him. He was accumulating hours for his commercial license, still far in the future. He was, after all, still and engineering student.

“Of course, I'd love to go with you.”

Off we went. He had a cheque book from his uncle's bank, strictly for flying lessons. A lucky guy, I guess, he had a relative who would pay for his flying hours.

We rented a little three seater Cessna. He decided to raise the rpm a notch for extra speed and power and we took off and kept on flying with the engine revolutions near the red-line.

He knew a girl at a boarding school nearby. After a few turns over familiar territory, we took a turn to the boarding school.

We flew low, loudly so, very low, made sharp turns around the tree tops. Eventually a lot of students and teachers came outside to watch our aerial show.

The school was near a lake. All the boats were on land and there was this totally white expanse of frozen lake for us to fly over. The pilot decided that this was the place for a really low pass with our land plane, no skis.

We came one way, rather high, made a 180 degree turn and flew back, only metres above the white snow covered lake ice.

Then the pilot pulled the nose straight up, up, up, until we started losing speed and leveled out.

“Shit, we flew under the power line.”

He reduced the propeller rpm to a normal level and we returned to the air field in a very calm manner. He recorded the flying time, far over elapsed watch-time due to the increased engine speed, paid the bill and I drove us home, very quietly.

We could have died, right then and there. People who fly into high voltage power lines usually don't live to tell the story.

I never flew with him again.

Some time later he showed me a copy of the letter that the principal at the boarding school had written to the flying club, based on the registration letters on the aeroplane. My friend was forbidden to fly again for one full year. I don't know what his girlfriend said.

The winter was, as always cold and snowy in that part of Sweden, some distance away from the warming Baltic sea. Monica and I had, for years, gone walking during the first real snow fall. It was always with a great deal of mystery in the air.

All traffic was stopped, all was quiet, only a faint hiss from the falling snow, or so you thought. Even the sounds of the trains at the railroad station we muffled and could hardly be heard. We would walk for hours, kicking the loose snow, throwing snowballs, if it was warm enough to make them, before returning to our cozy little apartment.

It had one room that served as living room and bedroom, one large kitchen, large enough to accommodate visitors on air mattresses on the floor. There was also an ultra modern bathroom. We lived well.

The rent included metered heat. Every radiator had a little elongated device, vaguely reminding you of a thermometer. The internal tube was replaced once a year, and the next year's rent was set, based on how much heat you had used.

To use the electric dryer in the basement could be quite costly and we decided, the second year we were there to only wash there and to save some money by drying all out laundry on the radiators in the apartment. This acted like putting insulation on the radiators, making them nice and hot to dry our clothes and – totally messed up the heat meters.

These little devices eventually made us lose our apartment. We had to move out and live at a hotel.

Being a very smart and well travelled man, I had the answers to most of the world's problems. I followed my hero, President Kennedy closely. More than once I was of the full opinion that I should have been hired as his assistant, perhaps as the Vice President. That didn't happen, though and I had to sit on the sidelines, watching the Bay of Pig misadventure of 1961 and other stupid American attempts at dominating the world. The Cuban missile crisis shook us badly.

We all know where we were when we learned of President Kennedy's untimely death.

I was in front of a committee, answering for why I was worthy of graduating, as the liar and a cheat I was. My landlord of two years had decided that Monica and I had taken in roomers, were running a boarding house and a lunch kitchen, did all our friends' laundry, never closed the balcony door, day or night and had used far too much hot water and heat in our apartment. He had gone to the College, claiming that I owed him a bucket full of money.

All of this was, of course an abject lie, just to claim some more money from a soon-to-be ex-tenant. Since I knew and had been forewarned that he had done exactly the same with the people we took over the apartment from, we had a good defense, the truth. The whole thing petered out to nothing, but we did have to spend our last study days in a hotel that fall, with all our belongings in boxes. Not exactly a place to celebrate the graduation.

I was on cloud nine as I received my diploma, all ready for my new job, starting in January.

Stockholm

The ultimate job was awaiting in the new year. I thought computers were mystical and certainly represented the wave of the future. (They may not have been all that mystical.)

There was an ad in the paper early that fall that just caught my attention. "Wanted: "Computer service engineers", surrounded by a very futuristic wave symbol. Perhaps it was the picture that caught my attention. Isn't it interesting how little things, seemingly unimportant, can change your life.

I sent in all the necessary papers long before I had graduated, and waited. A call came, "Come to Stockholm for an interview and - a test." What a firm, they not only interview, they even even test their future employees. This is really "high tech" at its best.

About 50 young men were there for the day. We were quickly processed and exposed to different questions and tests. The ultimate was when we were placed in front of a very complicated mechanical calculator, the size of a typewriter, full of interacting wheels and hundreds of springs. I later learned that it was out of a 1920's book keeping machine. I had a good time and disassembled and assembled this monster in good time. But, not everyone had spent their days playing with mechanical things like I. One young man next to me managed to get a hundred springs and parts flying over the room. Once they had stopped bouncing, he grabbed for his coat and left.

I was one of four out of fifty hired for the five open positions. Only four for five? Why? "We only found you four to be "good enough". (One of the four quit on the third day.) Hired for what? A six months computer service course.

Real computers? No, thirty year old very large and complicated mechanical accounting and billing machines. The course got to be boring at times, there was really no need to hire graduate engineers for this job.

The floor above the school was occupied by an electronics firm supplying, among other things, instruments to the Swedish armed forces. The building had a most elaborate burglar alarm system, unseen anywhere else in those days. I took to studying the system, just a mental exercise, to see how it could be defeated. There didn't seem to be any obvious ways so, why not bugger it up a bit. I did, rearranged a couple of lose wires and dropped a screw, "accidentally", in the "wrong" place.

What a reaction. The next morning we were all searched by the police on the way in to our premises. Then followed a series of interviews with everyone there. I volunteered no information on why the system had been so cleverly sabotaged. The police was not even sure it was not really an accident, even the crossed wires were just crossed by bringing a couple of loose ends together.

To this day I don't know what the secrecy was all about, only that it involved an American firm that even in those days was a prominent supplier to the US defense.

Time to enter the field and service some real life equipment. The job was really rather simple, but very exacting. You could spend hours adjusting a machine only to realize, on start up, that something deep inside was grossly out of adjustment. Start again.

We were in a large room, as in a factory, with tens of machines running. The noisiest were the printed card readers. The tasks came in ebbs and floods. Sometimes you had time on your hands. Not exactly your perfect start in the life of the working man.

Living was not always good. I arrived in the depth of the winter, at the beginning of the new year. I went to the state apartment referral service. If we had had three children we would have been in turn for our first apartment in a far away suburb in six years. It was glaringly obvious that that represented the beginning and end of the legal market.

My next forays were into the various aspects of the black market.

Interesting, to say the least.

You could get anything in the way of apartments if you had enough money. Now it got to be critical, I had spent several days in a fruitless series of visits to offices and agents and the cost of the hotel room was hurting my budget. One scam was going well then. "We will register you in a private list for a fee, come tell us what you want and pay the fee", a steep fee. I was growing desperate, went to register, got a nice treatment in a super plush office, paid my fee and - was back in the street again. Only a vague promise, "We will call you when your perfect choice comes up". I soon got a call, from the lady who just had taken my money. "No, I don't have any apartment but I have a room to rent in my own apartment."

Her apartment was far out in Solna, a suburb, on the bottom floor of a tall apartment building. But, a place of my own, finally. - Not quite, I had to share the room with another, also married, young engineer. A bed of my own, at last. The hotel bills had been draining me of all my resources.

Every city dweller has a love/hate relationship with his car. I developed one quickly. It was needed to get around between the various job sites but a true pain to park. Every night I had to get out, regardless of the temperature, attempt to start, sometimes it would not start, and drive or push the car across the street to avoid a whopping large parking ticket which also was recorded against you drivers license.

Big city driving was, however, easy to take. The oldest car gets the right of way. Most people, in those days, really cherished their new and shining cars, they would always yield if there was a chance of sheet metal touching. I drove like a maniac, sure in the conviction that as long as the other driver saw me, he would yield. It worked very well, I only got hit by a bus (!), a truck from out of town (!) and a German tourist (!) who obviously thought that his new and shiny Mercedes should have the road before my old, slightly dented by the truck and the bus, little German made car. He was the only one I could argue with, both of the other drivers were larger than I.

The German tourist got some quick education in traffic manners, in my best German, of a most irate "local", me. There must be, somewhere in Germany, a person who always drives defensively when he visits Sweden now.

I had much worse luck with another German, also in a Mercedes. In Germany they announce their intention to pass by blinking their headlights. I waved my hand in acknowledgment and moved to the side to let them pass. But, I may not have moved over fast enough, and, even worse, I had waved my hand. That, in those days, made every true blue-blooded German see red and be ready to commit murder. It has since been outlawed in Germany to ever take a hand off the wheel when driving. I only remembered about the "crazy German" a few seconds later. Too late, I was being forced off the road by the passing Mercedes. I narrowly escaped tipping over and saw their car speed up and disappear. No, I don't think he was related to the person I had taught traffic manners to a few months earlier.

Monica was in Katrineholm, 2.5 hours away. I became a master at driving the curvy road at maximum safe speed, this was before the days of speed limits. It was really an experience to get up at 04:00 to drive to Stockholm on the coldest days. I arrived with the 07:00 rush hour traffic, my car well heated, driving in my shirtsleeves or, sometimes to really confuse my fellow rush hour drivers, without any shirt on at all. Block heaters were not invented and garages were very hard to come by so most people just dressed well and froze on their way to work. The capacity of car heaters have certainly improved since then and I don't recall being cold in a car for very long now.

The living conditions, sharing a room, did have its advantages also, how could I be late for work when my room mate had to get up early? Every week, when paying my rent, I was invited to have one sandwich and one glass of milk in the kitchen. I fixed the landlord's very old and most unreliable TV sets many times and got plenty of appreciation for that. It was usually just a matter of going to the store and buy one or two new tubes, depending on how the latest fault manifested itself. On the down side was that there was only one bathroom and it took some intricate scheduling for us four to share equally.

One night I had my weekly, all that was allowed, bath. A visitor was in the house and wanted to make a visit. I did get out fast but not without a few angry words being said through the closed door. To add insult to injury, I had not cleaned the ring off the tub, who had the time with them banging on the door? Their guest had had to wait and also had to see the messy tub. -1 was asked to leave, then and now. I hid in the room and left the next morning.

My first call on the "For rent" ads brought a strange response, "Yes we have an apartment in the middle of Stockholm, near the Royal Castle, we only want a modest rent and you can move in now..." Sweet words, what is the catch?

"You have to live with our 19 year old son, clean the apartment and cook his food."

Mattias was a nice quiet young man when we met him. Monica was ready to come to join me in Stockholm during the summer school break and we were both "weighed" as to our ability to act as substitute parents, not much older than him ourselves.

Mattias lived his own life, and pretty well looked after himself. Monica had some good sessions with him about hiding dirty clothes and not cleaning his room but we got along very well. It was soon, however, glaringly obvious that he was not studying but rather earning some money in not so clear manners. He was working as a stevedore, and brought home "left over" samples of the goods he handled. He was an avid gambler and had really mastered some of the games of chance at Gröna Lund summer park. He shared his winnings generously with us.

The location was just as you would imagine in a spy-thriller. The building was first listed in 1762 in the Stockholm tax rolls. A narrow winding street with tall dark apartment buildings on both sides. You entered the stairway with a key and climbed some old stone stairs three floors up to the old, always in darkness, apartment door. We were supplied DC power and city gas, both not exactly very user friendly. I blew a fuse once, the cabinet door flew open and the exploding fuse sprayed molten metal and burned tiny holes all over my clothes. The gas was to be paid for by tokens. The punishment for forgetting to buy tokens was – a cold dinner.

Across the street lived an old Russian couple. They had mounted a narrow shelf by one window and fed the birds there. That the birds were mostly pigeons and seagulls didn't seem to bother the couple. I could hardly imagine any birds that less needed feeding than those, they were a pest in the city. It made for some interesting moments when the very large seagulls maneuvered between the buildings. We even had one crash into our window once. We had a windy night until the glass was replaced. Our landlord paid for the repair.

The street life was highly varying. The night silence was often penetrated by the calls and arguments of the drunks leaving the local restaurants. There was a street vendor keeping his carriage with flowers in the basement. Next door was a small fruit store. They all loved Monica. She was the prettiest and nicest in the neighbourhood. She often received flowers or fruit as a present on her way in or out.

We didn't know much about our neighbours, who does in a big city, but knew that one apartment housed a "massage institute". They did make a roving business with clients coming day and night, especially in the evenings. What was strange with them was as most people you met would not comment on the weather or otherwise acknowledge you, these "clients" all walked by with their heads turned away. Strange coincidence that they all called on the same apartment.

This all became clear one afternoon. The police started their raid on the wrong floor, the third instead of the second. There certainly was no bordello in our apartment but it took a few moments of confusion before that was established... Monica may have looked as a prostitute when she opened the door and was immediately arrested, no questions asked. I came around the corner as she was being led to the paddy wagon, not in a very quiet manner. I managed to quickly convince the arresting officer about Monica's provenance.

The raid then quickly moved to the correct floor, the one directly below our apartment. We recognized several of the "masseuses" as they were placed in the paddy wagon and taken away. Strange, they had never talked to us either.

It was true that we did live close to the Royal Castle. The King and the Queen were known for going on their evening walks in the neighbourhood. It was always "exciting" to meet them and we met them several times. I always bowed and Monica curtesied a little. The King, who always wore a hat, lifted his hat for us. Was there no security then? After all the Swedish prime minister Olof Palme was shot to death in the same streets only several block away a few years later. No, the only security was one plain clothes policeman who usually walked on the other side of the street. He was the one with the shiniest shoes of all the people there.

The Queen died later that year and we never met the King on any more walks. Perhaps his lost his appetite for walks when he had to go out alone.

Stockholm in the summer, then as now, was fantastic. There was music in all the parks. The summer productions were in full swing. The city changed its behaviour to receive the tourists.

The bright summer nights are something that you never take for granted, but appreciate anew every summer. It was the time for long walks on quiet streets when all the buildings took on a shadowy outline against the "almost light" night sky.

We had very little money and learned to do a lot of things that were for free. The museums were, to walk was, the old town with its narrow winding streets was only a few steps away from our front step.

The summer was sunny and we took to suntanning like never before. The ill effects of too much ultraviolet light were not invented yet. It became almost a routine on sunny days off; Get up early, pack a basket lunch, drive the then so lightly travelled streets to the area of Drottningsholm Castle. Sometimes we parked in the visitors parking lot, sometimes a little closer to the water.

Unbelievable, but there was privacy close to the city. We spent lazy days on the beach, well guarded by some cows in a field nearby. The gate was open one day and we got cows sharing our little stretch of rocky beach. Unfortunately, cows leave smelly souvenirs, and we had to move a short distance.

Again, there was much trouble with keeping the car, it had to be forever jockeyed around the neighbourhood. Driving home from work one day I had to make a sudden stop for a man with a wheelbarrow. What he was doing in the middle of a busy thoroughfare escapes me. I almost stopped with a terrible feeling, the brake pedal was sinking to the floor and the car didn't slow down any more. I took a wild turn, made a few people jump aside to the tune of my horn and rolled to a stop on the sidewalk. Now what? A car without brakes in rush hour and absolutely no money for towing or repair. I walked home and came back later and drove it very slowly to a secluded parking spot. The diagnosis was soon made. A few pennies worth of copper pipe and some brake fluid and I was on wheels again.

The fall arrived with darkness. Monica was back in Katrineholm and again took up the biweekly 2.5 hour driving routine, each way.

Mattias' parents returned to Stockholm for the winter. I took a small room in a private room near my work. The fall was full of sounds, smells and colours. One unseasonally warm night I went for a long walk, thought a lot and decided to give up the not so futuristic computer business and the poor housing.

I only had to go to one interview, in one place, and got the job as a Design Engineer at the Stal-Laval Turbine factory in Finspong.

Goodbye, Stockholm, your housing situation was not good, and you were not the place to be if all we could do, until we had three children in six years, was to live in rented rooms.

Finspong.

It took another year for Monica to graduate from college.

I was now a design engineer, a bit green but still deemed knowledgeable enough to take on my own project.

My pride was great, until the gravity of the job had sunk in. The centre of the turbine was suppied by no less than 12 high pressure, thick, high alloy steam pipes. That assembly was designed by making drawing projections, over and over again until there were no more interferences, no pipes going through each other.

This was almost impossible. My predecessor had used six months of never ending drawing work for his assembly. I was slowly dying in my shoes.

Then an inspirational moment, as I was idly playing with some pipe cleaners. I could make the whole assembly in a few minutes, just bending and trying out the fuzzy wires.

Make a model. Said and done, I soon had showed my idea to the management, and promised a far shorter time to completion than six months of never ending drawing work.

They assigned me an empty room, soon filled with 20 mm electrical conduits, cut and bent to suit the assigned space. Two weeks later I even made the installation drawings using a light projection through the model and over the individual pipes.

Whew, that was a relief. Not only was the job done in a very short time, it was 100 % correct. It later became the quickest plant assembly in years, all the pipes fit on first try.

Now, I was a bit of a hero and appreciated by the bosses.

The pay was meager, only about half of what I had earned in Stockholm, but the costs of living were far less. I lived in a shared bachelor apartment, populated by single men during the working week, with the addition of many nice young ladies during the weekends, Monica being one of them.

The winter in Finspong, some distance from the sea was, as usual, bitterly cold, with the odd – 30^o C morning temperature. Finspong was new territory for us and we travelled widely, again without spending much money beyond the cost of gas.

This was the time when the taxation people caught up with me, big time.

My mother had received a small pension in my name after my father had passed away when I was 14 years old, the first payments some 10 years ago.

After I had filed my first tax return, I got a nasty letter, “You owe taxes for 5 years of pension payments.”

My mother had opened the letter and handed it over on Christmas day.

“Now that you earn a lot of money, you can take care of this.”

No, I couldn't, there was no way that I could pay that much on short notice. I travelled to Norrköping to meet the tax assessor. He was totally cold.

“You got the money, you have to pay your taxes.”

The next I know, 60 % of may wages were garnished. The spring of 1965 became an internal battle. How little can I spend? How little can I eat?

The lunch room offered one good meal every day, but only five days a week. I, once, put a few potatoes in my pocket, for dinner at home, later. No luck, I was stopped at the door and had to give up my potatoes, and was banned from the dining room for the rest of the week.

Again, it was tea and dry bread with cheese, that seemed to fill best and allow me to sleep. I was down to 125 lbs when springtime came.

What about Monica, still in Katrineholm? I was responsible for both of us. She didn't complain, but I notice that she lost a lot of weight. Her refrigerator was often empty when I visited, she used to go to the grocery store and buy outdated items, not always good, but still nourishing. She was again back around 95 lbs, so skinny you feared for her health.

This went on for about five months. I never told my mother, she was after all the cause for all our troubles I never told her about the disservice she had done us. Never, ever. She went to her grave without knowing.

But, in all fairness, this event did change my attitude towards my mother, forever. She had a good salary, but never, with a penny aided me or Monica.

My younger sister was then, as always loosing items and moving here and there, usually at my mother's expense.

My feelings towards the Swedish “welfare society” took a real beating. Was there no human feelings at all. Couldn't that tax assessor have given me one year, instead of five months to pay? I tried to apply for a respite, to no avail, my paycheques were still greatly reduced.

The thought of leaving Sweden started to raise its head at this time.

An incident happened that I am still a bit ashamed of. Will time forgive?

After an unusally heavy snow fall, the cross country skiing was perfect. I tried, in vain to rent skis for us. No luck, all ski rental packages were priced far beyond our budget.

In anger, we went out to the beginning of a much travelled ski trail and – walked in the trail. We must have destroyed the joy of skiing for many that day. At the time, I was cursing everyone and the world for not allowing me to earn enough money for a proper meal, or skis.

There were thousands of photo negatives in my albums, but very few copies had ever been made, they cost money I didn't have. The films I could buy cheaply in bulk. The developing cost but a few pennies in my own developing can. That one was broken when I found it in a street side garbage bag. Add a bit of elastic and glue and presto, my own developer. It stayed with me for over 40 years, only discarded years after I took my last B/W pictures.

Time to make prints, my evenings were so hungry, I couldn't sit still. The local photo club was dormant but a few die hard members had kept the lab in good order. It seemed that the almost overbearing smell of photo chemicals dampened my hunger a bit.

Wow, what an opportunity for the cold and dark winter evenings, make pictures. I was soon making my own prints and some huge enlargements. My colleagues added paid jobs and I was making a little cash again. Eventually I made wall size enlargements. They were difficult to set up and could call for hours of exposure time. I'd set up just after work and come back to shut off the enlarger before bedtime. The developing was carried out in an old abandoned bathtub in the basement.

Most of my own large pictures, unfortunately had to be abandoned in subsequent moves but I still have the negatives, just in case.

The photo club may have been dormant, but I was electrified. I joined and elected president, soon enough. We went from 10 to over 100 members in a few months. I guess the single channel state TV programs must have been more than boring for so many to take a night for the club out now and then.

It was fun. We made excursions for special shoots, one was to photograph the forest in fog. Another one was night time pictures after a day of freezing rain. I even won a couple of country wide photo competitions at the time. One for a trilogy study of “Old woman with tired hands.”

The wonderful state TV was still only transmitting six days a week, leaving Wednesdays open, since by this time, the Swedish population had fallen into two groups, one much larger than the other, TV-lovers and TV omnivores, gratefully watching everything, as time allowed. The other group, distinctly smaller was where I belonged, critical and annoyed by the slowness of the media, dribbling information at the pace of the creators, leaving no control for the watchers. The ultimate TV feed back device was not invented and never came, the off button on my set that would echo in the transmitting studio. Bad joke, it was first told at the beginning of radio in the 1920's.

How about some really good movies on Wednesday nights? Said and done, We were three who formed a “film studio”, rented a vacant movie house, arranged for films from a distributor and got started.

First, some really catchy signs. One young engineer was a budding artist, and made several large signs. They were hung in strategic places, we only had a few, so they had to be effective.

The heavy 35 mm films arrived in large packages, were duly transferred to the movie house, inspected by the projectionist and we were ready. The 400 seat had 200 filled the first night, to see “Potemkin” from 1924. The next movie night, showing “Anna Karenina” we had every single seat filled and people lined up on the sides as well.

There is a photograph in my files, showing the three founders, sitting around a table with stacks of bills all around us, so successful was the second night. We made so much money that we could pay for professional signs, making sure the movie house was filled to capacity on all but the sunniest of evenings. The whole operation was very legally registered as a non profit club, so we could lower the ticket prices as more people came.

Low and behold, on idly checking out the projection room one night, I found several cans of film in a locker. It was a corporate propaganda film that was made in the 1930's. We invited a few old heads to see it. They recognized scores of the people in the move, even though it was over 20 years old at the time.

For the showing of this 20 min film, after a regular feature, we had invited a number of the people filmed, they stayed for a question and answer session afterwards. That night, to which I had invited the local newspaper hacks was written up as a great success.

I still have a copy of recording of my voice from the radio as I was interviewed by Svensk Radio TV for a news report.

The film studio stayed in action, showing films of world wide recognition, for years to come, finally dying out when TV went to a seven day schedule and started showing late night movies, long after I had left.

1966

TO CANADA

What an adventure this set out to be. I cannot really say how it all started. We had always thought and talked about seeing more of the world and perhaps work abroad. My little tax collector adventure still burned inside. I started buying foreign newspapers and answering ads in them. The next step was to contact a few consulates and find out what it took to move to their respective countries.

What an adventure that was. We made a few trips to Stockholm and talked to lots of "officials" The worst one for lying was the immigrations officer from Australia. There was no end to the great opportunities that were awaiting us there. "And, by the way, we will pay for your fare as well."

What an offer? On further examination there was a catch.

"You will have to take one of three jobs that we offer you, anywhere."

Anywhere? Where then?

"If we find you a job on a sheep farm, that's what you have to take for the contracted two years."

“How about the two of us?”

"You go where we tell you, we cannot guarantee that you end up in the same place."

The whole thing about Australian immigration sounded as if it was a bad joke. It wasn't. Some returning Swedes were interviewed on TV that moth. They had gone and experienced all of the above.

So, to further check I wrote to my uncle, living in Australia since many years. His reply was swift.

"Don't come here, it's tough and you will never make much money."

Discouraging findings. Scratch Australia for "confirmed uncertainty".

New Zealand was almost the same, except with the promises of high taxes in addition, they were, after all, running the most socialized country on earth then.

South Africa.

"Please come, what do you want to do?"

Well, some checking with friends who had already been and come back revealed that everything was not well in that country even then. People had to live in fear of the black and take many precautions before going out at night as well as locking up everything. It didn't sound too exciting, or perhaps it did.

Then there was Liberia, a Swedish mining company ran a large operation there.

"Please, come join us."

But, it's contract work for a limited time, and then you leave. Very little chance for the wife to do meaningful work. And, all sorts of horror stories came from the people there about how unsafe you were outside of the Swedish workers' compound. Again, perhaps a bit too much excitement.

The list goes on. Nothing seemed to be just like the interviewers said.

The U.S.A. was another potential target. They loved papers even in those days. It was a long drawn out process to qualify but once it was done you were guaranteed a visa in very short order. The Swedish quota of immigrants was never filled in those days. We did it all, went to the doctor, got a police certificate to confirm our lack of criminal activities and the time came for the personal interview.

The interviewer was very enthusiastic. Everything in USA was dressed in roses, everything was perfect and we would become millionaires in no time. Not in those exact words but the interviewer really loved his home country.

We had returned for the final interview which was going really well until the officer started in on his pre-set questionnaire. Some time in, he leaned to look at Monica and asked:

"Have you ever lived as a prostitute."

Not a good question,especially since they already had a police report to the negative. Her face looked strained and in a few seconds, she stood up, grabbed me by the shoulder and said,

"We leave now."

and we did. The interview was wrapped up in the next few minutes and we did exited. The immigration interviewers last words were:

“We hope to see you again, soon.”

Some luck for that... - But we did actually receive a complete set of immigration papers to USA, addressed to us in Montréal about a year later, without any further action on our part. Strangely turns the wheels of immigration departments.

End of any prospects of us going to USA.

Now it started to get interesting. So far everyone hadn't told us much in the way of truths at all - everything was too good, it seemed.

Perhaps we, young and newly graduated professionals with a good command of the English language were as near to "price meat" as these immigration officers would come. We certainly would go to work from the first day and probably never draw on their social support services.

Finally came Canada's call to an interview. They were slow to send all the papers. The interviewer met us in a large office at the top of a Hötorget a skyscraper, overlooking downtown Stockholm and a good part of the archipelago. We were all prepared to listen to more lies and half truths about how good another country was, this time Canada.

Not at all. He was talking very loudly on the phone when we stepped in to his office. Suddenly, he threw the phone back on the cradle and started in on a long tirade about the utter stupidity of the Swedish bureaucrats and how inflexible and impossible they were to deal with. They were just as bad as their counterparts in Canada.

Wow! Had we met a real person, one who knew the truth?

Then came the interview. Canada, it's as good as any other country and with just as bad bureaucracy as Sweden.

Well, at least someone who didn't try to rope us in. We started to feel better, perhaps Canada would have something for us, after all.

I returned to my job and we started thinking more and more about what to do in Canada. I knew that I would find a job quite easily, but where?

There was a small contingent of British people working at Stal-Laval in Finspong. They all seemed to migrate away from there as time went by.

One got a job at General Electric in Toronto,

"Drop a good word about me."

He did, and I got an application form in the mail. Before long I was hired, sight unseen as a design Engineer II and promised free passage to Canada.

In the meantime Monica got pregnant so her desire to look for a job was greatly diminished. Considering that she was still early in her pregnancy, we decided to continue the moving process. The arrangements seemed to fall in place.

Now it was time to leave notice to quit in Finspong. A three months notice was the legislated minimum. I did and we started to prepare to leave.

Everything had to go. We were to travel by boat and were allowed a total four boxes pieces of luggage, in total. Still much better than to fly, then your entire new life would have had to be started from one 20 kg suitcase, each.

We had sales continually, people were coming at all hours. Finally we had hardly anything left, living with a kitchen table and a bed only.

Some stupid mistakes I made. One of them was to let my carefully selected books be sold. Only afterwards did I realize how difficult it is to find a book "that you had but want to look at again".

The car was a British Austin. I had bought it that spring when the old one totally fell apart and wasn't safe to drive any more. I got the Austin really cheap because it "steamed" and didn't run well. I observed it on a drive by and came to the not so difficult analysis, the head gasket was leaking. After a very small investment in a new head gasket and a couple of hours work outside, in a cold rain, that car was almost perfect again. And, oh fore the nice leather smell inside.

It was bought by a neighbour. As it happened, everything in the apartment was second hand when we bought it and fetched very little. The car, by some absolute stroke of luck, was bought by a lady who "fell in love with the smell of leather" and didn't question my first asking price. I didn't have the heart to tell hear that it consumed gasoline and engine oil in almost equal proportions.

So, when we left Sweden, most of the money we had realized from all of our possessions came from a car that I had bought almost for scrap value. Luck, I guess because on arrival in Toronto I had $ 130, exactly what I needed for the first month's rent and a shopping basket of food before my fist pay cheque arrived.

The day of departure approached in early June. My colleagues did, as was customary when someone were to leave, find my departure worthy of arranging a party. This time at a cottage just outside of Finspong. Everyone was there, good food was served and the music played. We ate, sang and had a good time until the new day definitely had started.

Time for me to drive back to my home. Sweden had just started to tighten up on the drunk driving laws. The legal limit was still high but now it was being enforced. So, what happens to me on the way home?

A red light, a red waving spade and, a nice little discussion with a couple of officers of the blue.

They asked me to sit in the back seat or their patrol car while they checked my papers. Never have I breathed in, only for as long as then... I was in luck, there was no suggestion that I should blow into the little balloon that lay next to me in the seat all the time, in a most frightening manner for someone who probably had celebrated my soon to come departure from Sweden with one too many.

The farewells in our home areas were in many respects strange. We went to several good bye and good luck parties. Only our mothers cried a little. We weren't going away forever but we knew it would be a while until we came home again.

I spent an early morning walking around Karlshamn and took photographs of everything that I would like to remember or that I thought would be interesting to look at again. The pictures were quite good. Unfortunately they all got lost in a flood a few years later.

Finally, time to leave for the boat. My mother was too busy preparing for a vacation trip. She came only as far as to the ferry site in Malmö. She stood as a lone figure on the end of the pier as the Copenhagen ferry pulled out.

Monica's entire family came along on the ferry and to the ship in Copenhagen.

The first view of the Ocean liner, M/S Kungsholm, long since sold to the cruise trade and now scrapped, was impressive. Perhaps we all knew that the days of the ocean crossings by ship were now on the very last legs. The aeroplanes had taken over and only die-hard ship lovers traveled by boat. Since we had both spent considerable time working on ships, we weren't going to pass up on this trip.

The seven members of my Monica's family all came aboard, went for a sightseeing tour of the ship and then it was time for a farewell. In the final moments we all sat in a bar on the ship, overlooking the harbor of Copenhagen raising a last glass for a while.

The boat's whistle blew a second time and all had to leave.

We were on our own. Canada next. - Or was is New York city first?

We took part in many activities and "danced all the way". The crossing took nine days, a little slower than most trips that originate in the U.K... I gained four lbs in nine days.

Monica's stomach were showing the definite signs of the growing baby, now in its fifth month.

One evening we went to see a film in the auditorium. The ship moved in the sea and I got a queasy feeling. - Funny with seasickness, why do some come away so lightly. My lifelong curse, again?

When we approached the North American coast I unpacked a radio and hung it against the porthole. The first voices to reach us were in a commercial for a car dealer in Halifax!

We were starting a new life. Cut away reminders of the old. Well, much wasn't cut, but just left. One remnant was still with me, the 15 year old briefcase that had served me well throughout my entire schooling career. It had been a sled in the winter, rain-hood at times, shopping basket when needed and hugely abused over the years. Now it was just a beige limp old leather briefcase.

Dear fish of the North Atlantic, I hope you had a good meal on my briefcase after I threw it out of the porthole.

New York City; We arrived late at night and cast anchor just off the city for a few hours. We stood for a long while on deck looking at the skyline and observing the automobile traffic on the coastal road. What awaited us beyond that shore line? Probably exactly the same questions that all the millions of immigrants to North America had all thought before us.

We lifted anchor and sailed in early in the morning. We stood on the lookout and peeked through the early morning fog as the Statue of Liberty revealed its full length on the left and on the right we finally made out the details of Manhattan.

The shock of arrival was absolute. We were thrown from the air conditioned, controlled and calm environment on the ship directly into the full speed of a humid, overheated 35^o C day in New York City.

All our luggage had to be opened and inspected before we could proceed. We didn't have much so that procedure was soon dispensed with. The freight forwarder took it all for shipping to Toronto.

Time to get to the hotel. Who, knows, perhaps New York cabbies won't go the shortest way or, perhaps, overcharge you when you are new in town? I put on my best lying tone and talked about my previous visits (!) to New York. Perhaps that helped, perhaps the cabby was honest. The trip to the hotel took a few minutes only and he certainly didn't overcharge us.

Time to explore the great city by foot. We visited the major sights in a few hours. We had made a friend on the boat, a schoolteacher by the name of Ray, returning from a summer in Denmark. He guided us around his home town. We ended up having Corned beef hash in the theatre district on the wee hours.

Surprises everywhere. One was a little hard to take and all my fault. Living in Sweden we knew all about energy conservation. "Don't leave the light on when you leave the room", was a common phrase. Well, surely I wasn't going to leave an air conditioner running in the hotel room when we weren't in there to enjoy it... So, I switched it off when we left to enjoy walking in the 96 F hot city.

The uncooled hotel room, closed and on the sunny side, was probably at 110 F when we returned. Needless to say, we didn't enjoy that night's sleep.

Next day, take the bus to go and see "the Johnson's", family friends in New Jersey.

We bought a soft drink at the West Side bus terminal before we left. We were served by a young man behind the counter. He was so immensely fat that he sat on two chairs, he could only reach as far as to the drink dispenser on one side and the cash drawer on the other. I often wondered what could have made him so fat and what sort of a life he could have lived - we certainly see more than a drink dispenser everyday at work but that was his life, tied to stay on the top of two chairs.

A strange thing happened during the bus trip. As we drove through a city in New Jersey the bus stopped before several police cars, fire engines and an ambulance. On a ledge, high up on a tall building stood a person that, apparently, was threatening to jump. The people in the street was calling to him with bull horns. We eventually got rerouted around the place on side street and to this day I don't know what happened.

Did he jump? Did he step back in through the window. I don't even know, for sure, what city we were in. Perhaps the whole thing was a dream?

Betty and Roy met us at the bus station. Roy drove his 1957 Chevy, already then recognized as a rather special car. He offered me to drive on the way home but told me to be careful, he didn't have any automobile insurance. That was my first surprise about how people lived in U.S.A. -This was certainly not a socialized country of Europe!

Roy had built his own home with his own hands many years ago. It was on the edge of a farm, under some very tall trees, now totally devoid of any foliage.

There had been an invasion of "beetles" and they had eaten all the leaves. Strange to see defoliated trees in the summertime.

Lee, my good old friend, took us out to show a bit of his world.

We had to go to this very favourite Bowling alley, try some bowling and have "the best Hamburger in America". Not from any McDonald's, though, they were still only opening their first restaurants in the west in those days, remember.

It was a tough evening, riding in a car with open windows, seeing so may new people.

Lee's sister Beverly lived with her husband and newborn daughter in a little house in a valley. They had powerful lights all around and a shotgun near at hand inside the front door. I asked about that; "People can come", they said.

It was warm and humid and one of their horses had a nasty cut on his leg. The sore was infected and full of little worms. I did a little job as assistant veterinarian that evening. Not nice, but the end result was good. I learned that the cut healed completely so we must have done the right in the way of a cleaning and disinfecting job.

Roy took us to see his boat.

"Boat?"

It was more of "a large engine in a hull". It was a cabin cruiser outfitted with a large V-8 automobile engine, perfect for getting to the fishing areas quickly and home again at the end of the day. I was secretly questioning how much pounding the thin plywood hull could stand under the forces of that hugely overpowered engine plant. It worked fine. We went some distance, fished for a bit and came home safely.

That gasoline powered boat caught fire a few weeks later, and Roy and his wife were saved from the worst of the fire ball by jumping in the water. The were picked up by some other fishermen, nearby. Roy had no insurance, so the boat was gone, never to be replaced.

We dined at a Howard Johnson on the way home. Our first experience of thirty six varieties of ice-cream and eating a meal at a counter.

This was an exotic lifestyle.

We returned to New York City by an early morning bus. Then came the interesting part - getting to Toronto.

We had been told that it was "so simple" to take the train.

The ticket agent almost laughed at us when he heard what we wanted,

"A sleeping compartment to Toronto".

They were sold out six months ago. How about a recliner?

"What? - I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll sell you two tickets, even though the train is oversold, and you figure out a way to get on."

Well, that was certainly encouraging words.

It will forever remain one of the low points in our lives, thinking back to the night we spent on the train. All the stories, books read or movies seen, had totally mislead us on what to expect.

These were the days when the railroad companies were still trying, hard, to get out of the passenger business. We know now why they succeeded so well.

The train had fewer cars than listed. This lead to total overcrowding and a complete disregard for the seat reservation system, ever so incomplete and inaccurate as that may have started out to be.

We expected a "normal" train ride and had not had any dinner. We were "of course" to enjoy a leisurely dinner on the train, as the only way to go on any trip over a couple of hours. - There was no restaurant car, no food service at all on the train! Well, we had a least managed to find two seats in an air conditioned car, surely we can live on candy and water overnight. Neither was to happen.

Our car was one of very few where the air-conditioning actually worked. It was one of the warmest weeks of the year, remember. The trainman who came thorough occasionally muttered something like, "you must be freezing to death in here," and switched off the cooling. I paid attention to where the switch was and got the air conditioning started again each time. This went on for about half the night, then the trainman smartened up and added a large padlock to the switch after he, again, had cut off the cooling. We started to become really sick of this adventure.

As for our candy and water? The candy melted soon enough and we didn't find any water anywhere on the train. It had left New York on a fourteen hour run to Toronto with empty dispensers and empty tanks. The stench in the toilets was unbearable.

The customs stop at the Canadian border was permeated by angry discussions between some passengers and the Canadian customs and immigration officers. Many were immigrants from Italy, even fresher off the boat than we were, and not all with much mastery of the English language.

The train arrived in Toronto several hours late the next morning. Monica, very pregnant, was not in the best of shape. We both needed food, a shower and a "real bed".

General Electric had sent a personnel officer to meet at the train. He was in a bad mood, having been forced to wait around for the late train which had no specific arrival time announced.

He took one look at my beard and wondered how long that would stay on. I missed the irony of the question, I did learn later on that a beard and sandals was not the proper dress for an aspiring young Engineer in neither U.S.A. nor Canada.

But the car ride from the station? We got on the highway, driving up the most beautiful forested valley, the Don Valley Parkway. We were totally impressed with how good Toronto looked.

That impression was soon to be adjusted.

The Hotel was called Knob Hill, "Scarborough's best motel", long since gone to hotel heaven in a heap of dirt somewhere. Another rude introduction to North America. A Hotel ! Where were the amenities?

We did at least get checked in and found an almost naked dining room. It did have tables and chairs, though.

The new place of employment, General Electric was awaiting. We had arrived on a Friday and I was signed up as employee and got my Company ID before long, that day.

The first night we were invited to dinner by one of my ex colleagues from Finspong. He was well settled in and had a nice house in a suburb. They took us to buy some light clothing and then home for dinner. - Except, his wife didn't feel like cooking that night.

Monica and I had probably lost a pound each since leaving New Your City. No dinner now? Ouch!

Much, much later that evening, still without any food in our stomachs we ended up walking near the hotel and bought us some Hamburgers at "Red Barn". Their greatest claim to fame was,

"Hamburgers, still 15 cents."

They were still 15 cents, not much money but not much hamburger either. We went to bed a little less hungry but quite confused after the last couple of days.

Perhaps we should have stayed on the boat.

Hey, we had arrived!

The shocks were piling on.

We had prepared ourselves for our Canada move by studying and reading just about everything we could find about Canada.

I had spent hours reading the Statistics Canada annual issue for 1965 and was quite up on various statistics by the time we arrived.

That and talking to friends and colleagues who had either worked in or visited Canada hadn't prepared us well either.

Our language skills were passable, but Monica's were not as well practiced as mine. I still started on my first working day with a Swedish – English dictionary. Fortunately I could put that away quite soon.

We were quite surprised by many things. The cost of food was one. We almost felt that we had to talk quietly to each other about how cheap the food was. We feared that the store owner would hear and raise the prices, perhaps closer to Swedish levels.

The sizes of the packages in the stores were quite surprising. To by anything that big was not practical where we came from.

The bread counters smelled of freshly baked bread. How could they? We were used to the heavy Swedish bread, delivered from far away. Here, the bread was baked right in front of our eyes. What a service. - But in all fairness, the breads were fresher but not as tasty.

I must admit, I took an instant disliking to the many huge cars we saw. We had left little regulated Sweden where all cars had to be inspected annually. Her, enormously large, very rusty cars with a misfiring engine seemed to be the rule. I couldn't believe my eyes, seeing the odd car with the doors held closed with a rope, or my friend's car that had a large baking sheet where the floor would be in front of the driver's position. It was all rusted out.

People, in general seemed to be nice and helpful, none of the hesitance about talking to a stranger that could make Sweden so cold, at times.

The TV! Wow, such TV programs, so many and so varied. We had left with only two channels, and one of them was only on for a few hours every night.

Here, our rabbit ears pulled in some five stations, and even some with cartoons. Cartoons were considered “low brow” and to dumb down the people people in Sweden. The Flintstones was about the only one there, ever. Here, I celebrated the cartoons by spending one complete Saturday, sitting in front of the set, eating snacks the whole day. - It did give me a headache and a bit of a tummy-ache but it was all worth it. – Cartoons all day. Imagine!

We couldn't believe our eyes on the first day of school in early September. It was still a nice and warm day, of course. The children were walking down the street, bundled up with scarves and all, as if it was mid winter. How would they be dressed when it got really cold. We found out later, they were dressed the same way but now the parents drove them to school.

Children were still walking to and from school and seen around the various shopping areas then. It was a never ending surprise over the years to see how afraid parents became of letting their children out of the house.

In preparation for our move, we had gone to some spring sales in Sweden and bought us some nice, modern clothes. That may have saved some money, clothes seemed to be more costly in Canada then, but put us totally out of style, or at least out of style with most people.

Monica's dresses were way too short, and my clothing was cut too slim in comparison to what most people wore. My light summer coat became almost useless. We had no cool summer days and the few we had in the fall didn't allow me to wear it much. That coat went to recycling bin, almost unused, years later.

I decided to get myself a suit. I didn't like the offerings in the stores. This was the tame when men wore shite socks and wore too short pants that ended some 3 cm above the shoe, showing off the white socks. It was totally offensive and ugly in my eyes.

Off to a “ Swedish Tailor”. He was a real tailor but had one problem, he combined his sewing with drinking, we found out. My jacket was perfect and the length of my pants too. But – he must have slipped with his measuring tape as he made the pants to fit a waist about four inches smaller than mine. It all got corrected but I never again bought a tailor made suit.

Shoes were different. European shoes, then as now, were made with a slim sole and rather low uppers. Mine were perfect. It took a long time for me, and many comments from my colleagues before I acquired a pair of brogues, resembling working booths in my eyes.

Oh for the restaurants in Toronto. To go in Sweden was always an event, here people seemed to eat out all the time.

I had my first pizza on Yonge Street. As he was spinning mine in the air, I reminded the chef to “make it good, it is the first one in my life”. He looked a bit puzzled but came to our table and asked how we liked his “best pizza”. Another pleasant surprise. In Sweden a waiter would be stiff, take your order and never be seen again, we always thought. Here, a waiter was talkative, human and cared about the food we got and how we liked it.

I guess, working for tip is a good motivator. Wait-staff in Sweden were, then as now, paid by salary only.

Driving was a surprise. Swedes drove like Germans, by the rules. Nobody was shy to raise a finger or otherwise direct errant drivers. Sure, that did create a bit of irritation. All were best and showed it.

Drivers in Toronto went hither and dither. Lane markings were advisory and not hard barriers not to be crossed. Nobody seemed to care much about the other person, just trying to stay clear was enough. Speed limits were loosely attended to, a few km/h over the limit seemed to go unpunished. In Sweden you could lose your drivers license, driving 55 in a 50 km/h zone. Oh how much simpler driving was in Canada.

Monica found cooking to be quite difficult. To encounter recipes in degrees F was a real obstacle in itself. How to measure in cups and spoons were baffling. How big is a cup? This seemed very loosey-goosey. Was everything done on the fly?

The oven in the stove did, then as now create its own problem. The principles are different. European stoves heat all round, Canadian ovens only from the bottom. We enjoyed our share of half baked breads until Monica learned to master the difference.

In those days, you still had to figure out your relationship before you could address any one in Sweden.

“Du” (confusingly enough you in English) was strictly for family. Also, after permission had been given, formally, you could never address any non-family as “du”.

“Ni” (again you in English) was official. You addressed older people, officials, waiters and all people you were not related to, or had been given permission to address as “du” with “ni”. I haven't even described when to use the “ hon”, “han”, “henne” or “honom.

Are you confused yet?

We were. The five different ways of addressing people socially in Swedish were totally eradicated in English. All were spoken to as “you”.

Are we all bests friends, brothers or sisters? It took me months to become comfortable dealing with bosses and strangers, all addressed as my immediate family. This, of course applies to any one coming from any non-English language. We were not unique.

The drug stores were nothing less than amazing in our eyes. Was everything legal? No, of course not. But, a drug store in Sweden was a place where you entered, took a number, stood back and waited forever. Where do we do that here? Nowhere. A drug store sold everything we saw, even sandwiches and food over a counter. This we took an instant liking to. No line ups, no surly clerks here.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Back to our arrival days.

My friend with the lazy wife had done a good job of introducing me at the plant. A far too god job, as I was to learn soon enough. They had had some tricky engineering problems and I was introduced as the new guru capable of the most intricate calculations and evaluations.

Not so. I may have had a good basic engineering education, but I was no scientist. The first weeks were very humbling.

The very fourth day on the job I was trundled into a chartered aeroplane and flown to “the centre of the world” as far a General Electric went, Schenectady, NY. Monica was left all alone in an apartment with a mattress on the floor, a box for kitchen table and two aluminum chairs. It was a scary moment for us. But, I had to go. Business first.

In those days, the Schenectady works had 27,000 GE employees in about 65 buildings. The entrance road intersection had 22 traffic lights, as I counted one day. It is all gone now. There may be 800 left and the huge intersection looks barren with about four traffic lights remaining

There I met with some really sharp business types, all ready to interview me and tap into my great, previously promised wealth of knowledge. Was this a case of mistaken identity, was I thought of being someone else?

Not at all. The first night we went to a very plush club, on the water for dinner. The subject was going to be – how is our Canadian operation going, where are they failing? - I had been in the Toronto office three days!

Nevertheless, I did, with the aid of my never to be used again, English – Swedish dictionary survive quite well, they gave me credit for not knowing all the technical words. I never did convey any insight in the overall operations of their Canadian subsidiary.

I did find out that these “guys” were quite nice people and we did have some useful exchanges. I came back to Canada, rather better prepared for what needed to be done.

I can never say that I enjoyed my time at General Electric. The atmosphere in the offices were charged, with many nationalities and different forces at work. The turbines under production were slavishly copied from old US designs and didn't call for much technical input.

There was murmurings a bout a union being formed, which of course would, and did, lead to a strike. 

Fortunately I got a call from my ex employer in Sweden and left General Electric in Scarborough before the strike call. 

My career continued in Montréal, Quebec. 

More of that to follow...