14 years old - Father died.

I was fourteen.

My father had passed away and my life changed forever early that summer.

The Blekinge Fair, Blekingeutställningen, was to open a few days after my fathers funeral. It was to be a grand industrial and cultural fair with tens of thousands of visitors expected. The preparations had gone on for years.

Blekingeuställningen 1954

It seemed as if every kid in town were engaged, somehow. My first job was to sell chocolate from a basket strung around my neck.

The summer days were hot, my chocolate got soft and some even melted. I traded the chocolate for Ice cream. The box was heavy but I sold a lot. The weather changed and that summer went down in the annals as one of the rainiest in memory. The attendance at the fair dwindled under the cold, gray and wet skies.

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At the appointed day, I returned to the same gymnastics camp as last summer. I had some fabulous three weeks. Sure, it rained a lot and I don't think I was ever warm. There were no means of heating in the dorms. You often performed gymnasts dressed in woolen sweaters. The vagaries of Swedish summer weather at play.

Part of the performance field near the dormitories. (My photograph)

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What about the fishing harbour? That seems like an interesting place. I often talked to the fishermen.

Fishing trawlers in Karlshamn

One trawler was owned by the father of a classmate of mine, the girl that I had been, occasionally, skating with that winter.

“Would you like to go fishing with us, Bengt?”

“Yes.”

“OK, be here at 04:00 with warm clothes and rubber boots.”

Wow, I am going out on the sea in a real ship, a 15 metre trawler. It had a crew of four, I was number five.

Me with herring in abundance. (Photograph from my camera)

We were out for two days, trawling for herring. The silvery “gold” was loaded on ice, below deck.

The rolling of the boat soon made its effects known. With a round bottom, it would move from dipping one railing in the water to the other in seconds. That is just the way trawlers are built to maximize the in-hold cargo space.

The food was prepared on a single burner in the front cabin. It smelled great, except I was in no condition to enjoy it. I was seasick, an affliction that has stayed with me for life even as I traveled around the world in a much larger ship, later.

Seasickness creates no after-effect, so you feel great again within minutes once the movement abates a little.

Back in port I was rewarded for my efforts, not with money, but with “off-fish”. That is any fish other than the intended herring. Unfortunately, at least then, it was illegal to sell any other fish that you were licensed to catch. That was seen as unfair competition to the fish dealers.

I came home to my mother, loaded down with many delicacies of the sea. Eel, cod, plaice, one lobster and many other strange-looking seafood but no herring, that was all sold at the wharf. My mother went across the street and convinced the butcher shop to let her put some in their freezer.

After that, I was paid in money too, in addition to lots of free fish for my mother.

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By the end of the summer, I had moved to the home of my mother and sister They lived in a one-bedroom apartment, nice and sunny but too small for the three of us.

Gone were the days when I'd had my own bedroom, a large room for my model railroad and free access to a few other rooms. All of my toys, tools and other paraphernalia were put in an unheated attic where they disappeared, little by little, or deteriorated from the humidity in the winter.

I resided in the kitchen. I had a box with my belongings under the bed and a few books in the living room, where my mother slept.

My mother had a lot of free time and we enjoyed every warm day to the fullest

Summer, ready to go to the beach.

The freedom of the town was absolute. My bicycle was a treasured friend, taking me anywhere.

The Mieån river powered a flower mill. It was pure magic to observe the drive shaft power divided to many lesser shaft by means of gears made from wood.

I spent many hours there but was eventually thrown out, never allowed to return. I had moved too close and almost fallen into the drive mechanism. The miller grabbed me and threw me out, hard. He probably wasn't prepared to answer for a 14 year old boy that was chewed to mincemeat by his mill.

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Another favorite place, even more exciting, was the railroad station. Steam trains and so much more.

Steam powered shunt engine.

I talked myself on to the little steam driven shunt engine. With time I learned to operate the controls, running back and forth on the yard

It was cold in the winter and cargo cars would freeze into the snow and ice and needed extra efforts to release.One day nothing could be moved, the train of couldn't be moved at all because the car brakes were set. I walked the train and opened the air tanks the little engine could get them moving again.

I took a liking railroading.

Locomotive stalls

It got better. The large line engines were parked in a locomotive stall. It takes a lot more than just putting fire in the fire box to make a steam engine go. They require many hours of service and upkeep.

I met one of the engineers and said; “I would really like to drive on of these on the track.”

“I'll take you on my morning run to Karlskrona, it's a three hour ride. Be here at 04:00 tomorrow morning.”

I was there, unbeknownst to my mother or high school administration, of course.

It became a trip to remember for life.

Light freight train in 1954

I learned to verify the brakes, start the train, blow the horn when the signals said so and – how to set the cylinder fill adjustments for maximum efficiency. A steam engine needs far more than a throttle to work.

This was local freight train. It stopped at several stations for local goods to be exchanged. I was only allowed to jump off when nobody was looking, and had to go round the train and get on from the side facing away from the station.We arrived in Karlskrona around sunrise. The engineer and the fireman brought me to the railroad cafeteria where I, full of pride, had a full breakfast, complements of SJ (Swedish State Railroads).

How to get back to Karlshamn? Not a problem, it was all pre-arranged. A conductor walked me to the morning train, going west. No ticket needed. This was a passenger train running in daylight, I was not allowed to be seen in the driver's cab and relegated to the third class wagon.

I bragged of my newly learned skills to a bus driver, on his way to pick up a bus in Karlshamn. He sounded almost envious, he never knew it would be so much fun to drive a train, he had always thought that it was “hot, cold and windy”.

To drive a train was certainly all of hot, cold and windy at one time.

I even worked at the maintenance shop at that station one full summer, many years later. The steam engines were gone. All power was by Diesel engines then, far less exciting.

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With my new found interest in moving equipment I spied an interesting contraption, the train transporting clay at the local brick factory.

This engine was of a most unique design. I have only seen something like it at a technical museum in Germany since.

Again, I befriended the workers and – of course – got to ride the engine.

It was a single cylinder, slow speed, kerosene fueled engine with a huge flywheel, running at constant speed from morning to evening. It was built in in 1938 and two years older than I. The power takeoff was by means of a small wheel moved in our out on the flywheel from the centre, an early version of our modern constantly variable transmissions, a.k.a. CVT.

The brick production was in full swing.

The bricks were formed by hand in little boxes. The top was cut off straight with a wire. The soft bricks were put into the oven.

The burning oven was round, with about 12 – 15 sectors. They were fired in sequential order with peat moss and wood. After the heating cycle was finished, the oven was bricked in and left to cool down for a few days. Then the cycle started again.

The next time I passed by that brick factory, some 35 years later, it was gone and replaced by a hotel.

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I may not have been the most diligent student but anything mechanical or chemical was interesting.

Sure, we learned how to make gun powder, didn't all high school students?

It burns in the open, as demonstrated in our chemical lab, but explodes if you enclose it. That was not demonstrated, only taught in theory. We decided to make our own.

Said and done. There was no problem with the ingredients, between matchboxes (!), the drugstore and the hardware store. The latter supplied many, many metres of black, slow burning, fuse.

For a container, we chose 6.5 mm gun cartridges. They were available in infinite numbers at the shooting range.

Our home made explosive mini-bombs went off with a resounding bang. But, why only one and one? Can we make a fusillade? We made about 20 bombs. Then we walked the main street and placed 10 of each on both sides of the street. 

Once the little bombs were set, we walked down the street lightening them one by one, starting with the longest fuse.

They went off at a rate to make a machine gunner proud. Someone called the police. We waited to see them arrive and look up and down the street in consternation. Nothing to see there.

This was on Saturday night, next Monday morning there was an article in the local paper. “A strange projectile had shot through a large picture window, an empty cartridge, probably shot up by a passing car.”

My mother, who had a fairly good understanding of mine and Christer's destructive talents instantly demanded, and confiscated, our remaining gunpowder supply.

I told her how dangerous it could be if she threw it out, she could blow up our entire building if it went into the garbage. She filled our gunpowder bottle with water. It stood on the kitchen counter all winter. I secretly suspect that she brought it on our first swimming excursion the next summer and disposed of it in the sea.

This was the end of our chemically destructive era.

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I joined the shooting club at a young age, starting with the shorter carbines of navy class. The youngest boys shot only pellets, you moved up to real bullets at age 14. By that time I became a really good shot, I even got a medal for those skills in the army, years later.

But the excitement, only shooting at a paper target at up to 300 metres, had its limitations.

I owned a Daisy air gun, far more accessible and easily transported than the army issue weapon which was always so carefully kept under lock and key.

One fall evening we brought it out and set out to shoot at street lights. We only choose those that were in a remote locations, not watched by any pedestrians. It was a very satisfying experience; Every hit was acknowledge by a “pop” and darkness.

We may only have been out that one night. The local paper, again, reported of the huge expense the city had absorb to replace shot out lights – and that the police now had their eyes out for any suspicious persons.

My Daisy gun never left home again.

But, in practice at home at least one of my father's valuable paintings took an injury, two shots went through. It was behind the target.

After that the gun disappeared, never to be seen again.

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My life had changed drastically after my father passed away, I had to repeat one class and I lost contact with my girlfriend. We didn't meet again until 62 years later, thanks to Facebook.

On the good side, I made a lot of friends in my new class too.

A life lesson, good friends are important even when bad things happen in your life.

Most of the photographs here are taken by me, but there are some stock images from the Internet.

The next year when I was fifteen was quite exciting too. Click here:

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