A boy grew up to look after himself.
Never, not for all the tea
in China.
I said these words on my 20th birthday
as an answer to the question:
”How does it feel not to be a teenager anymore.”
Life had finally gotten some semblance of stability
at this point. I was on my way to college, and I had a girlfriend.
First a little background.
My first memories are good. All was bliss at first.
I lived with my parents and my younger sister in a large, airy apartment. We had our own room, and all meals were
served on the dining room table by a maid, summoned from the kitchen by a
button on the end of a long cord. My father drove us in a large car that had a
radio.
Something changed early 1947, the year I was to
turn seven. My parents had started to argue and screamed at each other a lot.
At easter 1947, my father took me on a several days long trip to visit one of his own childhood
friends a few hours automobile ride away.
He was very quiet during the drives, both ways.
As we came home and entered our grand apartment
something was amiss.
Half of all the furniture had disappeared. Even one
half of the matrimonial bed in their bedroom was gone.
My parents had separated.
I only learned why over 25 years later, after my
mother had remarried. Her new husband told me. They had made love in that
marital bed in 1947, and my father had walked in on them during the act.
After the separation, my mother and sister lived in
a rented room across the street. A few months later they moved to a one-bedroom
apartment in a brand new building a few blocks away.
I continued to live with my father in the now sparsely furnished large apartment.
He tried to run the house for the two of us. He had
never cooked in his life, never shopped, and certainly never turned a finger to
do laundry or clean house.
Even I, at seven, noticed the dirt in the corners,
how my sheets turned brown where I slept and how I often wore smelly clothing,
picked out from the dirty laundry basket.
My father always wore a white shirt to work. As the
supply of washed and ironed shirts grew low, he would purchase a new shirt from
the men’s store across the street, sometimes weekly.
He attempted to get our maid to come back, but she
refused. He tried, over and over to find another maid to run the house. They
all ended up fighting with him and were soon gone.
The
summer of 1947 we were spending more
and more time at my father’s cottage, Torpet, some 35 km inland.
Due to the separation and all the costs associated,
our wonderful, large, and comfortable Ford V8 car from 1937 was soon sold and
we had to travel first by bus and then bicycle the last few kilometres. He was
54 and in good condition then.
Our cottage was located by a lake, near two farms
in the village of Kämpamåla.
One farm was run by the Johnson family. There were
no children in this multi-generation house. The youngest was Brita, the
farmer’s wife.
They seemed to like me a lot, and I felt very
welcome there.
The next farm, the Gustavsson’s, had a daughter
only a little older than I. Her name was Sonja. We had been friends since
previous summers.
I stayed with the Johnsons during the weekdays all
that summer. My father came for the weekends and for his summer vacation, which
we spent at his cottage, Torpet.
I had a great summer, partook in all the farm
activities, rode the hay wagon, got bitten by many ants and stung by many bees.
Fortunately, I’m not allergic to any of that.
Brita Johnson, the young wife, only 27 at the time,
took me in as a son. I felt loved and protected.
As the fall approached, and grade one in school loomed on the horizon, I put my foot down.
“No, I am not going back to the city. I will stay
here.”
Who can tell what prompted the decision.
“Bengt stays.”
Was it my words, or that my father realized that he
couldn’t handle a seven-year-old grade one student in the city that prompted
the decision?
I stayed.
Now, what do all “old people” tell about how they
went to a village school in the country.
The same story.
This is true, or at least it was in my mind.
“The 4 km to school that Sonja and I walked was uphill,
against the wind and the rain, in a half metre deep snow both ways, every day.”
In truth, Brita told me many years later that she
drove us and picked us up most of the time except when the weather was
unusually nice. If she had driven us to school in the morning, she’d call the
school to tell us to walk home on our own.
The many birds and animals of the forest were very
close as we, two kids, walked silently on a narrow road.
We saw the mating dance of birds, the odd moose,
many deer, and lots and lots of lesser animals. Sonja, a couple of years older
than I, knew most of them and could give me running commentary.
The road paralleled a creek for some distance. We
could, with luck, pick a few crayfish to bring home in our bags. They were
hard-shelled in the fall but had soft shells and were hard to catch in the
springtime.
Oh, for the joy of getting your own private serving
of three crayfish with dinner.
The winter became hard for my father, all of 35 km
away. The ice and snow made it difficult to visit, especially since he no
longer had his car.
The Christmas 1947
was celebrated at the cottage, Torpet. My father had a new girlfriend by then.
She and her mother were with us.
The sun had set by 4 pm in those dark winter days.
The forest was dark, and it was hard to find your way, even with the white snow
on the ground. We had no electricity, and the heat was by wood-fired stoves.
For any outdoor venture after dark, including visiting the outdoor toilet, you
needed a flashlight.
“Don’t shine it too much. Batteries are expensive.”
I thought I knew the way to the outhouse and
switched off the light once. I took a good tumble into the bushes. I used the
light both to, from, and inside the outhouse after that.
No complaints.
I also learned that Santa Claus was not for real. I
found all his clothes near the well on Christmas day. Was it you, dad?
Yes.
Life was good.
In
springtime, my father acquired a
lightweight, foul-smelling motorcycle to use for his weekly visits.
He would arrive chilled to the bone. Then we set
the fire to warm up Torpet. By bedtime, it was so overheated that we had to
open both entrance doors for a few moments of cross-draft to cool it down for
sleeping.
By morning it was ice cold again. I would stay
under the covers until father had got a good size fire going.
I stayed at the Johnsons all summer of 1948. I was
8 then.
We now had electricity everywhere, installed during
the spring of 1948.
This summer, like the one before, was mostly warm
and sunny, not always to be taken for granted in Sweden. The thunderstorms were
fearful but never lasted for long.
One night, lightning struck our ca 30 m long radio
antenna, strung up from the gable of the house to a tree. We had a huge 1930s
tube radio. We sat in the living room when the radio practically exploded in
front of our eyes. The front flew out and the loudspeaker magnet tumbled to the
floor. The fire didn’t catch so we only had to contend with the smell of
burning insulation.
My father bought a much smaller and far less
powerful replacement radio the next weekend.
When fall came and it was time for grade two, this time
in Karlshamn. I again said,
“I’m not coming, I’m staying here.”
That didn’t happen. Father prevailed and brought me
to the city. I duly moved into my old room in my father’s grand apartment on
the top floor of the City hall.
By this time, the lady who had been in charge of
the city hall housekeeping services for some 40 years had stepped in. Our
apartment was cleaned, occasionally, and all bed linen and other clothing,
including my father’s white shirts were done with the wash for city hall. He
had to pay, I know.
She had six sons, all much older than me, of
course, and she took good care of the practical arrangements. We, she and I,
stayed friends for as long as she lived, well into her mid-90s.
My grade two and grade three teacher, Maria
Andreasson, was a kind-hearted soul, and I attended her classes obediently for
the next two years.
Our home life was good, I did whatever I did, but
schoolwork was not on my agenda. Father never noticed.
I would visit my mother and sister in their
apartment regularly. My mother always changed my clothes to different ones,
newly washed and ironed.
If I stayed overnight, she’d make sure to serve
hearty meals for us, some could be pork chops with the fat attached, and
whipping cream with the dessert, or some other guaranteed calorie-rich food.
“You are so skinny, Bengt, eat more.”
I was, in truth, both skinny and hungry. The
mandatory school lunches may have been good, but I was a light eater.
During weekdays, for years, my father would take me
to Restaurant Reval for dinner where he had his regular table. It was only a
100 metre walk across the town square.
Again, it was a slow process to eat at a
restaurant. My father had his friends at different tables to talk to. But I had
none. I was bored to tears by the time dinner was over, and I never did eat
much.
Now, visiting with my mother and sister was not
without drama. My sister’s mental illness was probably well manifested already
at age seven, when I was nine.
She’d scream at me and mother, throw things, and
make life quite difficult. Alternatively, there could be full days of
normality. I never knew what to expect.
It wasn’t my problem, anyway. Father was always
nice to me. He may have pretended to be angry and even to chase me. He never
caught me and never, ever, in his entire life laid a hand on me. Neither did my
mother, for that matter.
He was all bark and no bite, and we both knew that.
In the summer of 1949, I was sent to summer camp on
an island. The lady who cooked had very few skills, and making porridge was not
one of them. Several mornings in a row, they served burnt porridge with milk
that tasted sour for breakfast. Enough of this. I escaped after a few days
following Maria Persson, the old cleaning lady, onto the ferry back to
Karlshamn. Once there I spent the rest of the summer with my mother and sister.
She worked full-time at one of the local hotels, but we still had plenty of
time together. We went to the beach, and swam, a lot.
It was a good summer for me, and I didn’t worry one
iota about my parents who would never talk to each other. (They communicated by
letter only, as I learned decades later.)
Grade three, my second school year in Karlshamn was
good, I liked school and made many friends.
The summer of 1950 became all
different.
My mother worked full-time, and my father had to
tend to a legal case out of town.
I could not stay with my mother, and, for sure not
be with my father. He made some arrangements. We travelled for a long time in
his ratty old car to Gothenburg, to see his good friend from university, Mr.
Plantin, and his much younger wife.
They had only one son, a fifteen-year-old boy away
at a navy camp on an island for most of the summer.
I got the guest room as mine. On our visits to see
the son, at a camp far out in the archipelago of Gothenburg the two of us
established a mutual, very solid, and almost instant report.
“I hate you and the ground you walk on.”
We learned to avoid each other. Mrs. Plantin seemed
to be so concerned about my well-being that she never commented.
I ended up staying the summer and even started
grade four in Lerum, just outside Göteborg.
But did Bengt like to go to school in Lerum?
Nope, I didn’t. I found to my horror that I was the
object of much bullying. Many would mimic my Blekinge dialect, probably quite
broad then. I was too thin-skinned for this.
I had a few fights. The headmaster put me in a
different class, but I continued losing fights that I often started myself.
After a few weeks it was all over. The headmaster
called my father to discuss what other options there may be for my schooling.
My father returned, about mid-September, in a foul
mood. He and Mrs. Plantin spoke to each other, in a different room, in very
loud voices.
I was made to pack, and we left soon after
lunchtime that day. We made slow progress. It soon started to rain and got
pitch dark after sunset. There were no road numbers in those days. You
navigated by going from community to community, hopefully in the right
direction. It took about many hours and we arrived back in Karlshamn in the wee
hours. Now, that same trip would be a four-hour ride on an expressway.
The next day my father walked me the few city
blocks to our communal public school. It was in a stately old building. I was
duly enrolled to start in grade four the next day.
My new teacher was Harald Fält, a real
disciplinarian of the old school.
I only stayed in his class for one year, grade 4,
and he was probably happy to push me on to High School the next year.
By this time, I had more fun at home, playing with
my innumerable toys, my model airplanes, my growing railroad, and reading
books.
We had breakfast, usually something very good and
sturdy. Oatmeal was my favorite, but cereal with milk was good too.
Father listened to the radio, and when the morning
news ended at 08:15, it was time to send me out the kitchen entrance, the one
used for deliveries, for my short walk to school. This entrance was a narrow
stairway with an empty alcove at street level.
On days when I didn’t want
to go to school, I sat in the alcove
at street level, quietly, until the city hall clock struck half-hour. By then
my father had left for work and I could return to the apartment.
I was old enough to realize what I missed, had I
lived in a normal family. My friends all had a mother who cooked. I would be
welcomed with milk and cookies, or whatever when I visited.
None of that at my house. My father was barely to
be seen. He either worked with his papers in his home office or played the
piano. He had always been an accomplished pianist, was a member of the local
music group, and practiced for the next performance, almost incessantly, it
seemed.
I started running around more and more with my
“outdoors friends”. These were boys with probably somewhat similar home
surroundings, it was more fun for us to be out in the streets than at home.
This may have been the beginning of my rebellious
streak, “if forbidden, do it.”
I skipped classes too.
Harald Fält was no dummy and soon realized my lazy
streak. He, twice, took time out from teaching at the 10-o’clock break, run to
our apartment, find me, and escort me back.
He hit me.
Soon he sent my best friend, Lars-Eric, to fetch me
if I didn’t show up.
On arrival, Harald Fält took me into the corridor
and pinched my arm until it bled. I hid my tears when returning to the
classroom.
I’ve had enough trying to be a truant, better to go
to school.
I did. But I never did any homework. Father didn’t
check and I was probably smart enough to wing it at exam time to pass.
We had a weekly exercise in the Swedish language
class, to write an essay. It took about two hours. Harald Fält would sit at his
desk, scribbling on papers.
I wrote freely, probably too freely at times. Some were
rejected in a most embarrassing way.
The teacher read it aloud to the class, me
head-down in shame. When finished, he would make some comments about the
treatment of the subject, and then ceremoniously tear my essay up into a
thousand pieces.
He’d hold them all up high over the wastebasket and
let them flutter down, some pieces landing on the floor.
“This is your trash, Bengt, pick it up and put it
in the wastebasket.”
I did.
He’d sometimes give me a separate slip with my mark
on it, “Excellent – but not appropriate.”
I remember a few of my rejected essays still.
One was about “A mother’s place in the home”. – I
was angry at my mother that week and probably wrote something nasty about
“absentee mothers”.
Another one was entitled, “Man’s best friend”.
That is about dogs, of course. That week, I and
Lars-Erik had been chased by a big, nasty dog which, fortunately, was far
poorer than we were at climbing trees. We ended up in the tree “forever” until
the very angry owner of the very angry dog (!) came to fetch his angry (Did I
just say that?) dog with some very well-chosen words about what awaited us if
he ever saw us again.
We stayed away from his dog, forever.
Being who I was, this essay, one of the angriest I
ever wrote, was read with great intonation to the class, but not torn to shreds
in front of us.
I got the customary slip, “Excellent – but not
appropriate.”
The next week our gym teacher announced.
“I’ve heard that Bengt and Lars-Erik are good at
climbing. Now climb the rope and touch the ceiling”.
I was 10 and weighed 36 kg. This was the first time
I ever made it to the ceiling on the rope. I was shaking with fear. If I lost
my grip at that height, I might have killed myself.
Both Lars-Erik and I came down safely, but I burned
the inside of my one hand badly on the rope. My hand was bleeding, and needed
to see the school nurse. She asked how I hurt myself but I didn’t tell.
I knew where the demand to climb came from. I
trembled in fear. Who else has read my story? My father learned about this
storied story later. It had been circulated to the entire teaching staff.
I had to recite the highlights to him. He muttered
something like, “good going”, but I am not sure.
No, I never tried to set this school on fire.
Not until next year, when in my first year of High
School. (It wasn’t me; I promise.)
Life turned harder, almost by the day.
I missed my mother, or I thought I missed her. What
did I know?
Father did his very best. We went on trips
together, just he and I.
The ratty old pre-war Opel was upgraded to a used
sleek little French car. It started, most of the time, and never blew any steam
out of the radiator when going up long hills.
I learned to wash it, and how to apply lubricant
where needed. He left me alone, once, and I put oil on everything shiny, all
the rubber components, including the door and window seals. Father became
furious and soon taught me how to remove oil from rubber with kerosene. That
was hard work. I never oiled any rubber again.
He loved movies and brought me to see many that little
boys should not see, good material for horrible little-boy-dreams.
He bought me just about any toy that I whined for.
Some of these had never been paid for, as my mother learned after my father’s
sudden death a few years later.
I got into shooting with pellet guns. I practiced
in our living room and put a few pellets through some of my father’s cherished
oil paintings. Not good, to say the least.
One night, I and my new friend Christer, of
somewhat dubious character, and I went out each with one of my guns, shooting
out streetlights.
My father, in charge of city finances, saw the work
order charges for replacing many, many streetlights on one particular day. He
commented to me about the fact that there must be a sharpshooter on the loose.
That made this into an adventure. We set out one
rainy night with the goal of shooting out many
streetlights on one particularly dark road
through the park.
A dog walker saw us after we had shot out a few,
but we saw him too and ran into the woods. It was wet among the trees, and we
were soon soaked through.
As we stood there, the police came. Two policemen
got out of their car and shone into the forest with huge car-powered lights. We
lay down, very still on the wet moss. It was cold, very cold.
They didn’t see us, but this was too close for
comfort. No more streetlight shootouts for us.
I came home, soaking wet and shaking with cold. My
father drew a warm bath and gave me hot chocolate milk.
“You fell off the bike into the ditch? Really?”
Did he know?
I was an angry young man. One night I decided to
run away from my father.
I ran into our local yard and hid in a lightwell on
the back of the police house.
I had always thought that the police were nice,
they had always been when I met them.
My father called the police for help finding me.
One of the senior members caught a glance of me hiding in a cellar entrance,
hauled me up, and slapped me with full force. He led me home to my father. I
had many bruises on my upper arms the next day. The gym teacher saw them and
started querying me about who had beat me.
I, again, brought out the story of what a lousy
bicyclist I was and how badly I had tumbled into the ditch the day before.
I never ran away again, and I also lost all my
faith in how nice the policemen were.
The summer I was 11, my mother had a job as the supervisor of a bank-owned vacation home
in central Sweden, about a seven-hour rail ride north from Karlshamn.
My sister and I would both come for the summer, as
we were told.
All went well for a few days, until my sister, who
couldn’t quite swim well yet, and I had a fight in a small boat in view of all
the guests.
My mother dove in, fully dressed, swam to our
rowboat and separated the two of us, her fighting children.
There was a meeting of the directors. My mother and
8-year-old sister were allowed to say, but I had to go. I got a ban from ever
showing my face at the vacation home again.
I spent the rest of the summer on a farm, sharing a
room with the farmer’s ten-year-old son.
I had a great summer and gained a lot of weight and
muscle.
All was good.
My mother applied to be rehired for the same job
the next year. She wasn’t hired. Wonder why?
My high school years were difficult. I started
picking fights already in the first year, failed my grades, and had to do that
year over.
About setting the
school on fire. It wasn’t me. I came
by as a boy that I knew ran out of the boys’ bathroom, smoke billowing out the
door.
I took a look inside. The fire was in a few towels
that hung on the tiled wall. They fell down and were soon smoulding on the
floor.
The caretaker, Holger Lätth, came running in and
caught me the firebug, red-handed.
Next stop was the headmaster’s office.
I pleaded my innocence but never told of who the
arsonist really was. It was Olof Dike. A couple of my classmates came, talked
to the secretary, and were let in as my defense witnesses.
Not good enough. I was, but without a name,
featured on the first page of Karlshamns Allehanda, the local newspaper the
next day.
“First grade high school student sets fire to the
school.”
I carried that stigma, or was it honour, for some
months to come.
High School introduced me to another group of boys
to fight with. I got quite beaten up a few times, lost my glasses twice, and
came home with torn clothes more than once.
Once, staying with my mother that day, I came home
from school with blood on my stomach, running down a leg. I had picked a fight
on the way out for the day. My opponent’s fist had hit at the level of my belt
buckle. It had turned over and cut a long gash in the skin, through the shirt.
Mother just about flipped when she saw me walking
home, hand over my shirt and blood between my fingers and running down one leg.
After some quick damage assessment, my mother
marched me to the school nurse, she had an evening office one day a week. The
sore, no longer bleeding, was patched and the nurse promised to write a report
about the other boy.
He and I were called to the principal’s office.
There were many witnesses to the fact that I had started the fight. My cut was
superficial in spite of the bleeding. Nothing came out of the whole event.
I never challenged that boy again, though, he had a
mean fist.
My mother was horrified, but she had no say in the
matter of who I chose to lose fights against.
I don’t think that father ever understood what went
on. He had a full professional life of his own to live.
The next summer, I had just turned 12, my father
had his girlfriend in town and was probably relieved that I spent it with my
mother and sister.
We had a, mostly, enjoyable time with plenty of
outdoor activities. My mother, a born athlete, would carry my sister on the
back seat of her bicycle and I’d propel myself on my bike for outings in the
area.
She was working long hours at the hotel, and we
often had dinner with our grandparents or with my mother’s best friend, another
divorced schoolteacher. She had two daughters, our age.
I had my bicycle and would, gradually expand my
circles of interest. There were few manufacturing or service facilities that I
had not walked into, and often been escorted out of, that summer.
Things didn’t go so easily that fall.
I hated school
and all it stood for.
The next summer, I was 13, and I went to a
gymnastics camp. I excelled and even performed a single for the assembled
parents on Parents’ Day.
One girl, Anne, and I got to like each other. We
were on friendly terms in school and would invite her to the movies with free
tickets from my father’s pad. We used to sit in the rear of the movie house and
involve in some innocent petting.
Many of the boys were envious of me. “The one with
the movie tickets win.”
This was the age when hormones got racing. Entire
lecture hours could be spent looking at one girl, how she moved, and dreaming
of who knows what.
School was not important. Many teachers scolded me
and tried to do what they could for me to better my grades, but to little
success. I was put in a remedial class. No luck.
But I excelled in biology, chemistry and physics.
They had different teachers, but I loved the subjects. I went to the library to
get books on biology, with special emphasis on insects. I only collected live
specimens and let them out again for my own enjoyment.
That did not earn me many friends. Some wouldn’t go
near me for months, “he has insects”
The largest insect in our area was Ekoxen, a ca 12
cm long bug, with impressive-looking claws. It looks like a land version of a
small lobster.
They were strictly protected. I would catch one,
keep it for a few hours, scare some people and then carefully return it to the
bush where it came from. None ever came to harm in my care. Our biology teacher
was horrified, learning about this in class, and gave us an extra in-depth
lesson on protected species.
The chemistry teacher was less than enthused about
my abilities in the lab and kept a close watch.
But the local chemist’s shop had it all, Bunsen
burners, charcoal, sulphur and … That’s the stuff you make gun powder from,
isn’t it?
Yes, it was. We made many explosions. None that
took any fingers off, but that was mostly thanks to luck.
As school progressed, I got A’s or near A’s in
these subjects as I failed all others. My father may have seen my school marks,
but what could he do?
He paid dearly to send me to take evening classes
from my regular teachers. Nothing stuck. I saw no value in learning, except for
the things that I cared for, given5 my narrow horizon of the small city of
Karlshamn.
This was the year when 50 cc mopeds became legalized
I Sweden. Everyone wanted one, but you had to be 15 to drive it legally. We
were only 13.
Christer had a neighbour who was a little
different. I never figured out if he was a pedophile or plainly gay.
This man had a moped and a large fenced-in garden,
perfect for a local race of motocross with a moped.
I’d accompany Christer to this man’s house.
Christer would ask to use the moped and get a flat “no”. He took it
anyway. The owner was hollering but,
strangely enough, never really attempted to stop us.
I, again focused on extracurricular activities. The
shooting club, using 6.5 mm army Mausers was great. I won many prizes at 200 or
300 metres. I was a good shot.
The boy scouts were terrific. All our activities,
weather permitting, were outdoors. We camped, hiked, lived off the land, or
from the fish in the sea, and enjoyed boy activities. I was soon made group
leader, in charge of seven boys. I enjoyed my newfound authority and worked
hard to make proper decisions.
I always wanted to show my boy scout shirt, the one
with the insignia and my marks on it. That was not so easy as the weather got
colder. Then I got a larger size, and wore it on top of a thick sweater, like a
uniform jacket.
As soon as I turned 14, I joined the
military auxiliary, another group with
much excitement for boys.
The winter before I turned 14 may not have been
academically rewarding, but I learned a lot about life and thought that life,
in general, was pretty good.
I saw quite a bit of my mother and sister but
always left as soon as she started to act up. I know that my mother had to pay
to have the kitchen door frame rebuilt, my sister had finally slammed it so
hard that it fell out of the frame.
She was gaining muscle.
Then, my father died, practically in my arms, a few days after my 14th birthday.
He collapsed when setting the lunch table. His
fiancée, they were engaged now, and I guided him to my bed.
The ambulance came.
Father lived for a few more hours until he passed
away from a massive stroke at 6 pm that day.
That ended all that I knew of a normal life, even
if it had not been all that normal in the view of many.
My sister, not quite as overcome as I was, greeted
me later that evening, as I came home from having left my father dead in the
hospital bed, with some words, truly expressing her feelings that I often heard
in years to come.
“Suckling pig”.
I was an intruder, taking mother’s attention away,
and intruding on her space.
My mother’s one-bedroom apartment may have been
good for me to visit and stay the odd night in, but for living there full time,
no, not at all.
Almost all that I knew as mine disappeared in the
next few weeks, as the grand apartment was emptied by city decree.
My mother struggled, but my belongings, the pellet
guns, my huge model railroad, all my collected books, my woodworking table and
all the tools, expensive German model toys, extra clothing, almost all that I
counted as mine, was hastily thrown in cardboard boxes and sent to an unheated,
humid in the winter, attic. Most had self destructed after the first winter
there.
I returned to the same four weeks long gymnastics
camp as the previous year. Now I was 14 and this was summer No. 2 for me. I had
greatly enjoyed my first summer when I had advanced to the elite gymnastics
group, performing for the parents on Sundays.
Back with my mother, I now lived in the kitchen
alcove in a portable bed. It had a slot where the hinge was. That’s the only
private place I had to put anything of mine in. I kept my magazines and a few
other belongings in that fold.
My sole visible addition to my area was a large
advertisement for a Monark moped, taped to the wall.
School was, as usual, of little interest to me. I
was again, for a second time, held back one year.
My girlfriend Anne, now one class above me moved
on, of course, and soon had another boyfriend.
I gradually lost contact with my, not all savoury,
friends of the last year. This may, in retrospect, have been good for my future
life.
The school year went by in a blur of arguments, punishments, and discussions about how poor a student I was and my
feeling of hating it all.
The new life with my mother meant that I stayed out
of the house as much as practical. I immersed myself in all the extra
activities. There was always something going on, so I was often away on
weekends.
The Boy scouts had outings, the paramilitary group
had overnight exercises when we lived in tents and played soldiers.
My classmate Tore went to see his parents some 15
km out of town. I often accompanied him as we went by bus. His family welcomed
me, and we had good times on their little farm, facing the Baltic Sea.
The story of how we met is worth telling. I was
bullied, for real, in the lineup for the School lunch one day. Tore saw this
from a distance, quickly moved close, and gave the bully a good going over. I
reclaimed my place in the line. Tore had his lunch at my table and a lifelong
friendship was established right then and there. We were 12 then.
He, with time, became like a second son in my
mother’s life.
It was clear, beyond doubt that to have my sister
and me in this little apartment was not very practical.
My mother gave up this modern, bright, and sunny
apartment for a larger one, facing a courtyard. It was horribly drafty and very
cold in the winter.
The building was first shown on a city map in 1772
and was leaning badly, this way and that way.
There were bats and squirrels in the attic. My
uncle, my mother’s brother visited us one particularly noisy evening. The
ceiling was alive, it seemed.
“That is Miss. Burman’s ghost walking around”, he
said. “She was murdered in this apartment 200 years ago.”
True or not, the Miss Burman story stuck, and my
sister would spend many a windy night, or nights when the squirrels walked
about, huddled in a chair in my room.
Old buildings have character, with or without a
resident ghost.
The sun could never shine there but we had more
space, one room for each of us.
I soon set up my newly acquired laboratory set in
my room, complete with a Bunsen burner and a propane tank to feed it. I did
some experiments with anaerobic combustion, created some unexpected smoke, and
my mother’s antennae went up.
More gunpowder? The last batch, from the old
apartment, she had carefully, without shaking it (!), carried down to the
harbour and thrown into the Baltic Sea.
Unfortunately, one of my mother’s colleagues from
school saw my burner set up.
He started talking about the danger of having
propane inside your dwelling, and this went out.
I had to stick to electrical experiments after
that. We only had six Amp fuse in our distribution box and they didn’t stand up
for much. Fortunately, my mother bought fuses by the dozen in boxes.
I had a flashlight so I could find my way to the
fuse box even when it was pitch dark. I was an expert at changing fuses
quickly.
Why so many fuses?
We often had to rely on electric heaters. Any extra
load would blow the fuse. My electrical contraptions would sometimes short
circuit, or I plugged in too many tools, soldering iron, tin-smelter, etc.
Hot water was only provided on Fridays, and it was
not always hot. We were on the same hot water circuit as our neighbour, also
tenants of my grandfather. They had an old contract, predating the hot water
heating when all had fireplaces and didn’t pay for the heat.
We suffered.
Eventually, my mother gave up on adding electric
heat, the bills were horrendous, and we got a kerosene heater in the central
room, the kitchen. I made sure that the windows were not fully closed for
safety. The kerosene fumes never killed any of us, but the smell permeated
everything. Even the food in the refrigerator tasted kerosene in the coldest
months.
Even worse was the lack of hot water. The landlord
may have been my mother’s father, but hot water was again, due to the
neighbour’s old contract, only to be supplied on Fridays.
Our bathroom was very poorly ventilated and after
the first bath, all the residual smells of the almost 200-year-old building
were reawakened. It was stifling, but at least we all had one hot bath a week.
On the good side was the access to my grandparents.
I always felt welcome.
I also got to do many chores. Cutting the grass in
the large garden with a push mower. (!) I convinced a classmate whose father
had a hardware store to sell us a used motor-driven one for a pittance. That
one worked well for a couple of summers until I, stupidly, run it over a large
stone. That bent the motor shaft. No more motor-driven lawn mowing that summer.
I took it apart the following winter, found a
scrapped mower behind a service shop, bought it for one krona, and fitted a
straight engine shaft again. I felt so proud when it started.
Having an enclosed garden was wonderful. No spying
eyes could see us.
The summer house, used only for parties served many
well.
I brought a few willing girls there on nice summer
nights for extra-curricular activities, too.
My uncle, in his fifties then told about how he
used to ‘entertain” girls there in the 1920s. No difference between
generations, we agreed.
My grandfather had been in the militia during WWI.
He still had one full box with several thousands of 6.5 mm army ammunition in
the attic.
I had found it and used a few hundred for practice
shooting at the shooting range. They cost 1 krona each there and I had my own
free supply. This ammunition was in surprisingly good condition, even though
the manufacturing date was 1915, 40 years ago.
A few of the brass casings would crack but hardly
any would misfire.
I was in the militia and had my own army rifle at
home, only 15 years old.
At new year’s eve, guess what I used in lieu of
expensive fireworks? Right, some of the blank shells, the ones with a wooden
plug for bullets. My friend Tore and I took turns shooting the rifle into the
air
After about 50 shots or so, the wooden barrel
started to smoke and it was time to stop. We put the gun away under some debris
in the warehouse and proceeded to exit into the street to partake in the rest
of the celebrations.
Deem of our surprise. There stood a police car
outside our entrance. Two officers were asking the passers-by:
“Someone has been shooting a rifle here, do you
know where?”
We didn’t, we said. (!), or did we?
Again, a bit too close for comfort. I never shot
that gun outside the shooting range again. It was a military-issue gun and
certainly not intended for new year’s celebrations. Had I been found with the
fully assembled gun the repercussions would have been terrible. It could only
be transported when taken apart in three pieces. Nobody was allowed to carry
any ammunition at all, ever.
I turned 16 in the springtime 1956. School was
terrible and I had almost failed again.
The fall of 1956, when I was 16 didn’t unfold all that well. I was again falling behind in my school
performance.
My uncle Sten, the ex-WW2 fighter pilot,
‘suggested’ (?) that I should volunteer for the army and learn to be a man. Or
did he insist with some undeniable force? I did submit my papers to the right
authority and was called for the interview in late fall.
“What is your objective with volunteering for the
armed forces?”
“To become a jet fighter pilot.”
That dream ended a few minutes later after the
doctor had put a colour wheel in front of me. I am partially colour blind.
“It’s the infantry for you, young man.”
I quit school entirely soon after the new year of
1957 had begun. To gain physical strength, I took a job as an errand boy for a
local edible oil factory. I bicycled a lot with a heavy three-wheel cargo bike
until I showed up for my first day at the regiment in April.
My legs were stronger when I reported for my army
service in April of 1957. I was still 16 years old.
I took an early train and
proudly showed off my military issue ticket. The conductor looked at it and
said,
“You are too young for all
of that – go back home to mother.”
I may have been too young,
but not the youngest. The youngest recruit, Rune Johansson, had the cot above
mine. He was one day younger.
As new recruits,
representing the king and the country, we weren't trusted to leave the lodgings
for the first four weeks. The indoctrination was incessant. One important
activity for all infantry soldiers was to take cover on the ground. I tried to
argue with the officer:
“But it's wet.”
“Get down.”
“Now I am wet.”
“Yes, and so you will be
for the rest of the day.” - I was wet and cold.
“How many do not have a
High school graduation diploma? Hands up.”
All of us who held up our
hands, me included, were in the stupid group. We had to take two mandatory
evenings of classes every week. If that wasn't enough we also had one weekly
military evening exercise, usually after dark.
My body protested and I was
totally exhausted at first. I slept all I could when not on duty. I even
learned to have lunch and then sleep 15 minutes before the afternoon
lineup. My slightly underweight and not very well-trained body really took
a beating. I was clearly the weakest in the group. That didn't exclude me from
anything, except from carrying the assembled machine gun in the field.
Even though we were
infantry, foot soldiers, we were expected how to drive many military vehicles,
up to a five-tonne truck. This was the summer when I got my driver's license,
at age 17, far too young by Swedish law.
We started out with one
instructor and four pupils in a large passenger car. I happened to be the first
driver. 100 metres from the front entrance a young lady on a bicycle crossed
the road right in front of us.
I immediately stomped down
the clutch and the brake, something no untrained driver would do. The lady gave
me a casual look and continued as if nothing had happened. Then I put the
gear shifter back in first gear to continue.
“Stop. You already know how
to drive, no more training for you.”
My father's driver training
when I was 13 had paid off. The instructor threatened to report me to the
police, and I got no more driving instructions.
Ironically enough, the very official
and real driver's license I received, covering both trucks, cars and
motorcycles said, with very small letters on the bottom;
“Only for military vehicles.”
I didn't always follow that rule. I
was stopped in a routine control once, It was dark and the policeman, reading
my license with a flashlight, said nothing and returned it to me.
Now I knew, my not-yet-valid license
was legal in the dark.
The Swedish army had some 100,000
recruits at any one time, our field exercises were grand with huge troop
movements closely scheduled and organized. We, the soldiers didn't know or
understand much, our job was to follow orders.
- To travel all night on the flatbed
of a truck, stop and set camp in the rain.
- To bring out our fording boats and
cross a minor river. It seemed that at least one of us would fall in the water
and have to be hauled out, totally soaked.
- To stand guard, to stand guard a
little more and then stand guard again...
- To march through the dark forest, soaking
wet in the rain.
- To be on patrol at night, forbidden
to be near a road or a fence, when the only sure path was to follow a creek.
The best way not to lose the creek was to walk in it.
Sometimes our wonderful 20-person
tents with a good size stove didn't make it. At those times we had to sleep on
branches, wrapped up in our greatcoats. A soldier's best friend is not always
his weapon, for us, it was the greatcoat and the green raincoat.
Did I say that it rained and we were
all wet and cold?
I may have had a somewhat skinny
body, but there was nothing wrong with my lungs. There was really only one
activity, other than target shooting, where I excelled. - Riding a bicycle. You
carry yourself and the appointed amount of gear and - off you go.
You still had a lot of gear but the
speed was yours to set. Of course, the winner was always a true athlete. But -
eight or ten hours on a bike sorted out many. I was never fast but I just kept
going. Once I was No. three of 1,000 cyclists on a day-long ride.
That was probably the proudest moment
in my short military career. I can still bicycle quite far.
The bicycle may have become the
beginning to the end of my military service.
A very efficient way to move troops
fast and without tiring them out is to tow them. 20 soldiers, or so, each held
on to a rope, normally towed by a tractor at about 30 km/h. With a bit of
practice, you learned to hang on uphill and brake downhill, never letting the
tow rope go slack.
We came over a hilltop and the Jeep
that towed us speeded up downhill. The tow rope slacked momentarily. Once the Jeep
was going uphill again the tow rope snapped up, lifting several bikes off the
ground.
The resulting pile-up included at
least two totally destroyed bicycles, two men had broken arms, several others
had been severely scratched and were bleeding.
I dug myself out from under the heap
and - couldn't walk. My knee had been scraped naked, clear to the bone. I still
carry the scar.
This was a terrible time. I may not
have been the most enthusiastic solder of all, but I still liked to be part of
the troop.
Now I was a nobody, unable to keep
up. I was on crutches and had to sleep with the kitchen crew.
I applied for an honourable
discharge. It was granted.
I turned 19. My army days were over.
I no more had to be wet, cold and miserable, stay up all night or sleep in the
open.
What next? I had registered at the
Karlshamn's seaman's exchange in Sweden in the spring of 1959 and I was ready
for a bigger world, to go to sea. And, sure enough, I never had to sleep in the
open on a job again.
Cargo ships entered and left the
harbour every day. Would I ever get a call? Then, one Saturday morning the
phone rang early. "There is a ship in harbour that needs an apprentice
engine man. Will you take the job?"
Did I want to? Yes, yes, yes!
The ship, M/S Guyana, built 1948 and
registered in Sweden, was a 10 000 tonne dry cargo ship with a crew of 42,
usually running only on the Europe - South America trade. But that was not to
be for my time on it. More to come.
The ship's engines started. We moved
away from the wharf - and I left my hometown one more time, this time for the
longest journey so far, not returning for a full year.
A few days later, while taking on
cargo in port, I was assigned to assist with overhauling a diesel engine
powered fire pump at the very bottom of the ship, near the rear end of the
propeller shaft.
After a couple of days of my work, it
was time to test the engine. It didn't light up easily. Finally, I decided to
give it my very best. I took a good stand, brazed myself in a corner - and
pulled on the crank with all my might. The engine started and released the
crank. It swung upwards in an arch, hitting me in the face just below my left
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.
“I'm OK, nothing wrong with me, let
me just wash my face.” I said, probably in shock, as I realized that I could
still see.
Well, the glass may not have been
clean and the next morning the left side of my face had swollen precipitously,
and I was bleeding again. This meant a trip to the hospital to stem the blood,
pick out scores of glass shards and get my cut cleaned with Iodine and sown up.
Oh, that hurt.
The scar is still in my face, but
gravity has moved it down about 15 millimetres in 55 years.
Once loaded with
Swedish product we sailed south, across the Atlantic Ocean, across the Equator
and towards Brazil. Just before arriving we got a radio message. Our ship had
been chartered to sail around the globe and to return to Sweden in one year.
Those who didn’t want to go on, got a
free trip back to Sweden. If you stayed, the bonus was the value of the trip to
Sweden that you didn’t take. I stayed and got the bonus.
It was a fantastic year, we visited seven
countries before setting foot in Gothenburg again, just before my 20th
birthday, 11 months and 26 days after we left.
My teenage years were over.
My seafaring days were over for this
time. I had also confirmed that I was the stupidest and least informed person
on the globe. I had seen and experienced so much, but I DIDN’T KNOW OR
UNDERSTAND ANYTHING.
I went back home to mother with
lots of mechanical and other life experiences under my belt. I didn't stay long
there, I soon left for a university education and a mechanical Engineer's
degree!
Since then, I have circumnavigated
the globe a few times, learned to master four languages, and worked for longer
or shorter periods in 28 countries. Perhaps I got a bug for learning and
experiencing ...
