Being poor in Sweden

After several years of studies, I finally graduated with my degree. 

I started my first professional job as a first-year engineer. 

Then I filed my first full year income tax return. It felt so good. Finally, I was earning a real wage from one and only one employer. 

Not so fast. Unbeknownst to me, the income tax department had renewed an outstanding, now over six years old, tax debt. I had received a small pension from my father after his untimely death ten years earlier. I never even knew of this pension. It had been paid out for five years, in my name, to my mother at her address. 

At Christmas break 1964 we arrived at my mother’s home for a joyful holiday with my family, we hoped. 

Among the Christmas presents for me, under the tree, was a pair of good quality winter shoes, much needed as I had suffered much cold from my old, leaky and totally worn out shoes that fall.

My wife had worked extra hours, in addition to being a full time student, and saved up money for those shoes.

I happily put them on and paraded them around the Christmas tree in front of the family.

My mother quietly left the room and came back with a few papers in her hand.

“If you have enough money to buy those expensive shoes, certainly you have the money to pay for this.”

It was the accumulated tax bill for the five years of my pension she received after my father’s death plus another six years of tax penalties, all on one statement. I had no idea of the existence of either the pension or the unpaid taxes.

It was a huge amount for us, far more than my wife’s and my combined monthly income.

My mother gave this to me at the same time as the rest of the family were opening their presents.

I swallowed hard but kept my calm for the duration of the Christmas holidays.

On return to work in the new year, I received a reminder from the taxation department (Skatteverket), this time addressed to my home. My mother had “corrected” the address.

I travelled to see the tax collector about an hour away, entered the office and started to explain my situation. I just didn’t have any savings to pay that enormous bill.

“Don’t you know that your taxes always have to be paid first?”

I literally went down on my knees praying for some sort of relief. He repeated the same sentence one more time.

My next few months' paychecks had 2/3 taken off, leaving me with what I needed to pay for the rent and nothing for any other expenses at all.

No money for food?

My wife was still living 100 km away at the university residence and we only met on weekends. My car for the weekly trip was truly held together with baling wire and Scotch tape.

I cannot really tell how she survived. There was literally no food in the refrigerator when I came, but she had access to subsidized lunches at her university. Those were not substantial, and only enough to carry you until dinner time.

I tried to limit my eating to the very minimum. It became a personal challenge to see how little I could eat before bedtime, and still be able to sleep all night.

I found that hard bread and cheese with tea grounded me best. I bought day old bread at the bakery and the cheapest cheese I could find in the cheese shop. Sometimes the owner added a free end piece, the last left-over from a cheese wheel.

We had a lunch room at work and I had coupons for that. The supervisor was a very strict lady. You were forbidden to ask for more than what was ladled out on your plate while you were in the line.

You picked your own boiled potato, though. I sometimes put an extra in the pocket of my jacket. That didn’t last long. The supervisor caught me and made me throw my potato in the garbage.

I was sooo hungry that evening.

This went on for several months. We both lost weight and I really worried about my wife’s health. She was down to 44 kg (97 lbs), a weight she had been at when I first met her as a teenager several years earlier.

My mother?

I never, even with one word, indicated to her how much pain she had caused, not once, for as long as she lived.

But – in truth, that changed my relationship and my respect for my mother, forever.

She often came to visit, but I couldn’t really forget the long forgotten (?) tax bill.

At her funeral about 35 years later I visited her, alone, in the funeral home where she laid in an open casket.

Only then did I tell her how much she had hurt me and my wife in our early years.

My mother didn’t answer.

------------------------------------
If you want to read my memors, "The seasons of Man", buy the book here:

https://www.amazon.ca/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=bengt+lindvall+the+seasons+of+a+man

A Polio victim's story

By Sharon Weber  (Nee Robbins)

I grew up on Jasper Avenue in the former Mount Dennis area of Toronto. Those were the days when everyone walked to school. After dinner, when dishes were washed and put away the neighbourhood children would go out to play. The parents would sit on the front porch and relax before their children had to be bathed and put to bed.

I got polio in one of the last big epidemics of 1949, at 18 months of age. That certainly changed the future life for both me and my family.

I was sent to Thistletown hospital where I stayed for a year and a half and only left when I was three years old.

While there, they strapped us to our beds most of the time. Mom said that I was a little "firecracker" during my stay. After all the kids were strapped in for the night to their beds, I would get my hands underneath and untie myself, then climb out of my crib and get into one of the boy's cribs. When the nurses came in the next morning, they would see my empty crib and wonder where I was!

I used wooden crutches and had a leg brace

up to the top of my left leg.

The neighbourhood kids really made my day when I asked if I could join their daily game of jump rope made from many elastic bands. They very kindly turned the 'rope' a lot slower so that I could jump with my crutches.

My parents must be commended for allowing me to be as normal as possible.  They bought me roller skates (The older kind that could be adjusted to the size of your shoe) I had two different size feet then, and still do, due to the Polio so I adjusted the skates to fit. I would also move the bolts on my crutches to make them 2" longer to make up for the height of the wheels.

I would happily skate up and down the streets near my home using my crutches as ski poles. Boy did I ever wear down the tips of the crutches as I took the corners as fast as I could.

A most embarrassing moment was when I fell while roller skating. A few of the parents that were sitting on the front porch came rushing down to help the little crippled child. They sympathized and said: "You poor child, are you hurt?" Their gushing sympathy made me cry. Then they thought for sure that I must be hurt. My parents had to assure them that I was more embarrassed than hurt and if I was ever really hurt, then I would call out to them. After that I could fall and get up on my own.

I was a happy child and as I look back and see that I was quite spoiled.  Not only by my parents or brother Ross or sister Elaine. I was also spoiled by many service groups like the Kiwanis, Lions and the Rotary club.

From grade one to grade eight I attended Sunnyview Crippled children's School on Blythwood Avenue in central Toronto. Back then we were all bused to this school instead or going to our neighbourhood school. It had advantages of being all on one floor and having physiotherapy and a heated pool for swimming lessons and hydro therapy. However, it had the drawback of not knowing the kids in your neighbourhood as well as we were picked up early and dropped off late by the bus.

The service clubs took us on trips to the circus, ice Capades, the zoo, etc. One organization even rented an airplane and flew us around the city of Toronto. 

Another time, they rented a pool in a hotel and stocked it with fish. We each got a fishing rod. We rolled our wheelchairs to the edge or sat in chairs at the edge of the pool. We could catch one fish each. We weren't allowed to keep the fish, but we were given the fishing rods.

I remember special people like Mr. Murray Brown from Christie's Cookies who picked me up every Wednesday night in his personal car and took me to the Beverly Street School pool. We even learned to do water ballet in that pool. He would then bring me back home.

We always had dogs who loved us unconditionally.  I would take my dog for walks alongside my crutches. I even used to take my little toy fox terrier for a walk while I was on the roller skates.  Boy, that must have been a sight. No wonder the neighbours had to hold their breaths while seeing this.

  

I felt really blessed during my younger years and often felt sorry for my brother and sister who had to stay at home while I went to all these exciting places and did so many things that my family couldn't afford.

I remember exciting times at the CNE where one year I met Annie Oakley and had my picture taken with her. My mother would talk her way backstage somehow and they allowed me to have my picture taken with Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. I even got my picture taken in "Nelly Belle", the jeep that Pat Brady drove.

Another time I presented flowers to Queen Elizabeth when she was touring Toronto.

My childhood went from one special event to another. Of course, I had my share of operations. I felt like I was the guinea pig at sick Kids Hospital. They were always poking and prodding and suggesting some newfangled operation to improve my life. It seemed like they waited for Easter, Summer or Christmas vacations to book me for a new operation. The final one was when I was 14 years old and I was the first child to have my leg "stretched". 1 1/2 inches. It still didn’t grow with me and is too short today.

I didn't like it when it happened but now instead of wearing shoes with large soles I could buy shoes off the rack. They had to be of two sizes and I threw the odd ones away.

The recovery from that operation took two months and I only had anesthetics when they put the machine into my left leg and when they took it out the end. I didn’t get any painkillers because they said I would be an addict by the time it was finished. 

My worst memory from that time was when an intern came and accidentally turned the screw the wrong way. I could feel my leg retracting and I screamed

"Make him stop! He's turning it the wrong way! Tell him to look at the gauge! Look at the gauge!"

The nurse shoved me back on the bed and said:

“Shut up, Sharon, he knows what he's doing"

I insisted he check the gauge and when my panic finally got through to him, he checked it and mumbled a "Sorry". He then stretched it back to the original length and did more than double what he was supposed to do on top of that! The doctor in charge, Dr. Bedard, gave me an apology and gave me the next day off from the stretching regimen.

There used to be a nurse on the 6th floor named "Jenny". She swore like a trooper and ruled the floor with an iron fist.

When we first met her, most kids hated her because she made us eat what was on our plates, (even liver!) We did outsmart her though. There were always six beds to a room and the ones that could get out of bed would take the "disgusting" food from the others that couldn't get out of bed and flush it or hide it in the garbage pails. After going there several times a year, I realized she only wanted what was best for us, I would even go up to the 6th floor to see her while on follow-up visits to the clinic downstairs.

Clinics... well that was another story.  After every operation, we had to prance in front of a group of doctors and interns in our white underpants and undershirts. It was soooo embarrassing!  The main doctor would discuss what had been done and what it was they expected to happen. I would be prodded and poked and then sent home until they decided what operation to try out on my next vacation.  I hated physiotherapy as it always felt worse afterwards than when I started.

Despite the many operations I endured I had a multitude of happy memories to dispel them.  My poor mother used to do 100 exercises on my "polio" leg every morning and evening. I can remember drawing on one end of the dining room table with a "bobby" pin while she was distracted by moving my leg back and forth.

My Dad was good to me. One summer I had a cast from my toes to my waist and had to spend my time in a push-wheelchair. My Dad made a special board to attach to the front of the wheelchair and big enough to fit a dollhouse. Someone would put me on the front porch and I would play for hours. I would make up stories about my miniature dolls and move my doll furniture around.

All in all, I had a great childhood with lots of fresh air and grand adventures on my roller skates. Once, I even tried skating with ice skates on the pond at the end of Jasper Avenue. I had to admit defeat because my crutches kept slipping on the ice.

I remember Sunday school classes at church and church picnics with good memories. I would try to kick my shoe while balancing on crutches.  I never won but I liked to try everything. Thanks to the volunteers of Toronto's many service organizations I had a happy childhood that was full of wonder. Each day was a new adventure.  You are wonderful people and I know there is a special place in Heaven for people like you.

On my 18^th birthday.

After a grand total of 11 operations and years in hospitals I grew up. I still have had to use crutches all my life.

By now I am an elderly grandmother of three sons and three grandchildren.

I usually get around with an electric scooter.

Bridge over River Kwai builder tells his story

I found some crumpled photocopies with this typewritten story in an old file cabinet that was to be discarded.

There is no (Google) evidence that these pages have been published, but I would be surprised if they had not. Unfortunately I have not been able to find any person that is associated with Mr. Sayers today. Here is the story. If you know more about the origins, please let me know.

YES, THAT BRIDGE IS STILL THERE

Memories on re-visiting the War's most dreaded feat of railroad engineering built not with machinery but with bodies.

As recalled in 1976

By

C. TRANS SAYERS

 
I was a Lieutenant in the Royal Netherlands Army - Field Artillery -that is in the Army Reserve in April 1939 when I was sent out by a Dutch export house to the then Netherlands East Indies. On arriving there I was transferred to the Army Reserve of the Royal Netherlands Indies Army automatically when the war started in September 1939. All officers in the Army Reserve were called up in the East Indies for special training. This special training lasted for one month after which we went back to our jobs.  It was repeated every two months.

On May 10th, 1940 the Germans invaded amongst others, the Netherlands. We were then called up again and were told that as officers we were not allowed to leave the Netherlands East Indies although we wanted to go to Britain.

The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour and the war in the Pacific started. After the fall of Singapore in February 1942 it was obvious that the Netherlands Hast Indies would be lost.  By that time there were very few of our own or American planes left in the air. We were being bombed regularly by Japanese planes who also came over with their Zero fighters.

After the Battle in the Java Sea where practically the whole Allied Pacific fleet was sunk it was suddenly strangely quijt. The Japanese landed in the East Indies with the result that the Netherlands forces surrendered on March 9th while our unit on an island off the Naval Base of Surabaya surrendered on March lith. We were then shipped to Surabaya and interned in a larpc camp where we stayed until August or September 1942 and were then taken by train to Batavia where we stayed another month in another camp. The treatment by the Japanese was brutal.

In October 1942 my group was shipped in the holds of small Japanese freighters to Singapore to the Changi Barracks. Together with other officers and men 1 was sent to the Australian Imperial Forces part of these barracks. There was a whole Australian Division taken prisoner in that area.

After several months there in appalling conditions, such as shortage of food and medicine especially, we were sent in metal boxcars to Thailand. There were so many men per boxcar that it was impossible for anybody to sit down or to lie down. This trip lasted for 4 nights and 5 days until we reached Ban Pong, in Thailand. Some of our people had already got malaria and dysentery and you can well imagine what the conditions in these overheated boxcars were.

From Ban Pong in Thailand we were sent by open trucks up North into the jungle.  This trip took two days. At night we just slept in the open air. When we arrived in this camp which was only half finished, more huts had to be built of bamboo, more latrines dug etc. We were then split up into parties and we walked under Japanese guard for three days up a kind of elephant path. The railway at that time had barely been started and all that was being done was various camps were built along the track. When we finally reached our destination quite a few in this party of about 400 who were all Dutch, were sick with dysentery and malaria. We then started, all the 50,000 POW's, Dutch, British, Australian and Americans along the line to Burma to work on the 'Railway of Death'.

We started from the Siamese side (later called Thailand) and others who had been snipped also from Singapore and from Sumatra started on the Burmese side working towards each other. In about September or October 1943 the whole dreadful railway was finished. It was all done by manual labour. At that time we had some elephants but there were no such things as drills to bore holes in the rock for blasting or bulldozers or tractors. The railway was built right across the jungle through rocks and mud at the cost of some 16,000 prisoners of war. A lot more died after the war of the after effects.

Later on during the period when we were driven by the Japanese like slaves and coolies, they brought in so-called 'Free Asians' - these consisted of Tamils, Indians, Javanese, Chinese, Malayans etc. These people were also put to work on the railway and died like rats. The Japanese gave us little or no medicine and hardly any food although plenty was available in Thailand.

The most vivid memories of that period was the cholera epidemic when people died like flics; the dysentery and malaria, the horrible tropical ulcers of which so many of our friends died, lack of food and vitamins with the result that quite a few were practically blind because of the deterioration of the eye nerves and the enormous courage of quite a few who were desperately sick but still wanted to live and did. Above all, one remembers the cruelty and stupidity and red tape of the Japanese. The Koreans were not regarded as human beings by the Japanese and they in turn took it out on us.  Other vivid memories are the millions of maggots in the latrines, the black mud in the jungle during the rainy season and the dripping trees; The early morning parades when the Japanese rounded up everybody who could barely walk, or not walk at all, who pushed and beaten had to be working on the railway.

The most heavenly sound was when later on the Allies got the superiority in the air and we heard planes coming over in the middle of the night. They were Flying Fortresses going over to bomb targets in Singapore or in the neighbourhood of Bangkok. It was something unbelievable when you are in the middle of the jungle in conditions we were in, to hear these planes coming over. Later in the night you could hear them returning. The thing that kept most of us alive was that we were convinced that eventually we would win.

In 1944 on December 7th, I was taken back down the railway during the day to Tamarkan after first, I believe, passing through Chungkai. However, what stands out in my memory was that it was December 7th, the date marking Pearl Harbour Day. We had already seen planes coming over, all allied planes, and when you are being transported on a railway during the day it gives you an uneasy feeling in wartime. We were with a mixed group of about four or five hundred British and Dutch POW's.

During our trip we had to stop in the middle of the jungle for the locomotive to take on water. While we were standing there we heard planes coming. Suddenly we saw a huge Flying Fortress about two or three thousand feet up. We waved at it. The guards had already disappeared right into the jungle. Some others who had come down from Burma and had already experienced the bombing by allied planes had also disappeared into the jungle. Two more planes followed and went on their way down the railway line. Suddenly I heard them turning in the distance and they came back. While everybody rushed out of the boxcars into the jungle,they dropped several sticks of bombs.  One of them fell right across the right hand side of the track. This killed 52 POW's. From then on these planes went up and down the train using 20mm machine guns and bombs. I was lucky that I jumped out of the other side of the train where no bombs fell at that time. When it got dark we collected the wounded who practically all died because we had absolutely nothing with us to hclp them. The next morning we buried the dead in some shallow graves and continued on our way down the track. The railway was actually finished and used by the Japanese as their main supply line for Burma. Altogether it must have cost at least 100,000 lives including POW's and all the so called 'Free Asians'.

Practically all POW's were, as of 1944, assembled in large camps more in the neighbourhood of about 100 kilometers North of Bangkok. From time to time parties of 150 more were sent up the line to maintain it.  From 1944 onwards we were visited by allied bombers quite regularly and altogether we must have lost at least 300 or more people because of allied bombings.  They knew where we were but we were always close to the railway line and I am quite sure that they could not avoid hitting us.  In those days we never saw a Japanese plane.

Then fortunately for us, the Americans dropped their atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  This saved our lives because if I am not mistaken, the allied landing in Malaya would have taken place not before the 19th of September 1945.  The Japanese surrendered on August 17, 1945.

It was very strange in our camp because the Japanese commander sent for the Commandant of our group, which in this case was a British Officer and told him that the Japanese had surrendered on the orders of the emperor.  You have to bear in mind that there were no allied troops anywhere nearby. The Japanese surrendered to us, gave us their rifles and ammunition and we took over. It was another month before the first allied troops, Pathans under British officers, arrived from Burma. In the meantime some paratroopers had also arrived and helped us.  From then on some of us were put back into the Army, as I was, or flown back to the homeland.

The famous Bridge On The River Kwai which is now being visited every week by tourists is actually a metal bridge.  It was bombed several times during the war which we could watch whenever the bombers came over. It was hit and part of it was knocked out. It was interesting to watch the bombing from close by.  In the beginning, the planes that came over were all Flying Fortresses of the American Air Force and they always took the same bomb run: they circled and then came in from the original direction.  There were two Japanese anti-aircraft batteries near the bridge; they were also hit. When the Royal Air Force came in they had different bomb runs; they would attack the bridge from several sides. By mistake they also dropped one stick of bombs, that was at night, right across one of the camps at Nonpladuk.  We lost 100 men that time.  When the bridge had been put out of action the Japanese built - or rather, we built, a wooden bridge alonside it.  This was in use until the end of the war. After the war the metal bridge was repaired again by the Thais. When the Japanese surrendered in August 1945, I was put back into the Netherlands army, being fit enough to serve. At that time we had our problems in the Netherlands East Indies and the Netherlands needed a lot of troops. After having been trained by a British Major I was sent to Malaya - to Kuala Lumpur, where we had the Netherlands Forces headquarters. At that time we had about 22,000 troops who came from the Netherlands and about 5,000 marines who had been trained in California. I was then sent to Port Dickson, also in Malaya, to join the staff of one of the Brigades.  In April 1946 I returned to the Netherlands on the "New Amsterdam", then still a troop ship carrying 5,000 men; also a number oi'  women and children returning to the Netherlands.

As President of the Canadian Importers Association Incorporated I was invited by the Federal Government in Ottawa to join the Ministerial Trade Development Mission to Southeast Asia in February and March 1976. It was apart from the business side of the mission and quite a moving experience to go to the places where I had been before, just prior and during the war.  When it became known to the Minister, the Honourable Donald Jamieson and the other Govern-ment Officials who accompanied him, especially Lindsay MacNeil the Director of the Pacific area, they very kindly arranged with the Canadian Embassy in Bangkok that my programme would be such that I would be able to visit the Bridge On The River Kwai.

Because we were tired and because probably I had discussed this experience with several other people of the Mission, the night of March 9th was quite a strange experience.  Before I went to sleep and even in my dreams, 1 re-lived the whole dreadful experience again. I even imagined 1 heard the voices of old friends. It sounds silly but it actually happened.

The trip to the Bridge On The River Kwai from Bangkok is 134 kilo-meters by road.  In this case I travelled under slightly different conditions; I had an air-conditioned car at my disposal with a driver and a guide and one of the members of our mission who is also a free-lance phofreelance photographer joined me for this trip - J. E. Herrmann of Oilweek in Calgary.  We left at 6 in the morning and arrived at the site of the bridge in Tamarkan at 8 o'clock in the morning.

Everything of course has changed. The bridge is still there but now as a tourist attraction.  The wooden bridge which ran alongside it is gone. There is a small open-sided bamboo restaurant serving beer or soft drinks and food.  We took quite a few pictures and then left to go to the cemetery in Kanchanaburi.  The cemetery is extremely well kept by the Allied War Graves Commission.  There is a Dutch, Australian and British section.  In this cemetery 8,000 people arc buried.  There are two other cemeteries in Thailand and one in Burma.  Of the actual campsite - at that place, nothing remains.  I could find no trace of it. I then tried to find where our Boon Pong was.  He was the Thai who lived in Kanchanaburi and who had a small shop there and risked his life many times during the period that prisoners of war were there, to smuggle in money and medicine. He also gave us the latest news which he had heard over the radio.  Whatever was smuggled in was paid for by many people with cheques, all of which he accepted and which were all honoured after the war - when he was given the British King's Medal for courage, He does not live in Kanchanaburi now nor has he his little shop. He now lives in Bangkok, a rich old man. I tried to reach him but he had left. It was disappointing not being able to give, him a 'thank you'.

As far as Boon Pong is concerned, there is a very interesting story; Just after the war in Siam (or Thailand as it is called now) there were a lot of Thais running around with knives, sub-machine guns, revolvers, pistols etc. In our region there were quite a few guerilla fighters who had been fighting the Japanese all the time. For some reason or another also Boon Pong's life was being threatened by some Thais.  As I at that time was attached to the liason Military Police, we had to protect him. Therefore at night, a friend and I would sit, each on one side of Boon Pong who was still in his store. You have to visualize that these stores in the Far East and Southeast Asia are open at the front.  The store was well lit but outside it was pitch dark. We would sit there with our 45 Colts and our sub-machine guns quite close to him, hoping and trusting that nobody would try to shoot from the dark at us.  However, one day, when I was sitting on the verandah of the Officer's Mess, across from his store, a few shots rang out.  We rushed out of the Mess with our 45 Colts but the man who had fired the shots had disappeared around the corner. Boon Pong had been shot and had two bullets in his body. We rushed him to our small Hospital which was still in the same camp and I am glad to say that he fully recovered.

There is also a Japanese Memorial not far from the cemetery. Apparently once a year various Ambassadors and so on, go to the Allied Memorial to pay their respects, while the Japanese go to the Japanese Memorial, but this is never done at the same time.

If you ask me after 31 years, in 1976, what I think of that period - it was a horrible experience. The Japanese were very cruel, although not scientifically cruel like the Germans, and also very stupid. It is simply unbelievable that if they needed this railway line so badly, they didn't feed all their prisoners of war and coolies properly. 

There was absolutely no problem in Thailand to feed people because they had more than enough rice, even in those days; fruit, fish, etc. - everything we needed. They gave us nothing and let us starve and die. My feelings was that we should have hanged quite a lot more than we did. However, it was a marvelous feeling when the war was over and you could say to yourself "I have made it".
My wife (1 did not meet her till after the war) who with her family was in another camp, suffered as only the Japanese can make one suffer but - and this is a frequent comment of Canadians we meet -we do not now express bitterness against the Japanese. To perpetuate bitterness only serves to perpetuate one's sufferings so - except when specially reminded by such a re-visit I have just described, it is best to turn over that page and close the book.

*************

 

The Globe and Mail, Toronto, SATURDAY APRIL 17, 2010

IN LOVING MEMORY

Frans (Charles Francois) Sayers

April 19, 1916 - April 9, 2010

WW11 Veteran

It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Frans Sayers, in his 94th year. He was the devoted and loving husband of Lydie for 63 years and the loving father of Frans (Debra) and Renee (Johan Petersen). Opa of Celia (Eric Coulombe), Delphine (Junior Boutin), Nikko, Serena, Kirsten, and Christian as well as the proud great- grandfather of Taylor, Tyson, Reese, Maya and Kees. He leaves behind a legacy of great memories and accomplishments. His remarkable community spirit will be greatly missed by many here in Canada and abroad where he travelled and worked. A family service was held. If desired, donations may be made on his behalf to the Royal Canadian Military Institute Heritage Trust Fund, 426 University Avenue, Toronto M5G 1S9. 

FOX news can do wonders to uninformed minds.

Not a communist in sight, or?

I have often wondered about people who voted for and believe in Donald Trump. What twisted logic can make them support a person with so few, or no, redeeming character traits?

I got my chance, talking at some length with a retired American surgeon and his wife from major city in a Southern state.

On the subject of Canada:

"You are leaches of the earth and sucking the life out of the American worker. Your 270 % import duty on American milk (!) is just a blatant example of how you mistreat your trading partner – and get away with it."

(That duty is a penalty on a quota representing 0.0002 % (2/10,000) of all Canadian import from USA and has never been imposed.)

"Your health care systems sucks and Canadians lead a life of pain and misery, dying while you wait for your poorly rationed health care to be available to you."

(Canadians live four years longer than the average American.)

"Canadian doctors are “probably” the ones that failed to qualify to work in USA and had to settle for being employees of the state in a second class country." 

Said by a surgeon from USA.

Needless to say, he was a great fan of Fox news.

After a few more failed attempts to connect on a more factual level, I innocently asked.

“You just told me that Donald Trump has proudly said that he has almost eradicated Obama care, making forty million Americans uninsured.”

"They all get excellent health care, all they have to do is to walk in to the nearest ER and they will be looked after."

"What kind of care?"

"They get what services they need to leave the hospital and will be charged accordingly."

"But what if they cannot pay?"

They will be charged anyway. But the hospital may have to write off the fees as uncollectable.

"You were a surgeon in a hospital, how many operations did you make that you were not paid for?" 

"About 20 % of my patients couldn't pay. I sent the bill and after a certain time had gone by, forwarded my claim to a collection agency. Sometimes I got paid a little but often nothing at all. That’s life."

"Did you perform different operations when you knew that the patient couldn’t pay?"

"Not really, but I may have cut back on some of the long term possible cures. I knew that they couldn’t get them, anyway. My objective was always to do enough so that the patient, hopefully, could leave the hospital soon.

Some of the uninsured are losers and slackers. They are unwilling or unable to find work with an employer that would pay health insurance fees to support themselves and their families.

Millions are illegal immigrants and they deserve nothing from the US government. They will soon all be deported. Trump is doing a good job of arresting them and sending them out of the country. Then they will no longer be a problem to our health care system.

We also have the same problem with all the criminals, all the drug dealers and other persons that live off crime. They don’t deserve anything at all and may soon die on their own."

I stopped taking notes at this point.

His wife turned to me and asked: “Which church do you go to?”

Church?

She proceeded to tell me that only good people were in church. The kind of people who look after their fellow man and live a righteous life.

My next question, posed to both of them: 

“So you think that is a good Christian way to let so many people go without access to health care insurance?"

I drew a blank on that one.

The two of them immediately changed the subject and were more interested in Canadian socialism, which in their minds was exactly the same as total communism, where our government “spends other people’s money until it runs out”.

How poor Canadians are hounded by the government who controls so much of our lives and makes Canadians pay what must be the highest taxes in the world.

The discussion soon ended when I told a few financial facts and when I explained them, correctly, that Canadians pay far less in taxes than Americans do. 

We get many public services that we appreciate, add in the value of free-to the-user health care and Canadians are paying among the lowest taxes in the OECD.

They had never heard of OECD.

I didn’t sleep well last night, having met two representatives of true Trump supporters, totally convinced that FOX network is the only news station that tells the truth. All other news sources carry fake news. 

They both agreed that Donald Trump is the best president that the USA has ever had. He will make the land prosperous like never before.

"Look at how well he negotiates our trade around the globe."

and...

... "Just wait until Trump has put that soon-to-be Nuclear-armed Iran in its proper place..."

These persons were very well off, well educated and with bright minds.

Oh – what propaganda can do.

Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda, Nazi Germany,  would have felt proud to hear the effects of one-sided propaganda today.

They loved America, the best country of all...

... "especially if compared to Canada that is run by such an incompetent and lying Prime Minister as Trudeau." (sic).

I felt sick…

---------------
If you want to read my memoirs, "The seasons of Man", buy the book here:


https://www.amazon.ca/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=bengt+lindvall+the+seasons+of+a+man

Me and the newspapers

Thinking, reading and aging.

I was 9 when I realized that I was a “me”.

I could make things better or worse around me, almost at will.

I always read the cartoons in the newspapers. We had five daily papers delivered to my father’s apartment.

At age nine, I looked at the headlines and turned the pages to follow up on particularly interesting stories.

The Swedish airforce seemed to always have three accidents in close order, then nothing for a long while.

One day I saw an accident, or at least the aftermath of one, before the story was in the newspaper. A twin-engine airplane had crashed in the water just outside the harbour. It was fished up and brought in to quay within a few of hours. 

This picture that I saw for the first time

one year AFTER I had written this story. Was my memory good?

The pilots had jumped and both stood by the quay-side, wrapped in dirty blankets over their still-wet uniforms. The blankets probably came from the fishing boat that had picked them up as they landed in the water, 

They stood there, looking at the sad, soaking wet, remains of their airplane, suspended off the rear crane of a service boat. One half wing and one of the engines were missing and almost all the windows were broken.

(This was written from my memory. I have since learned that both pilots had perished. The wet-looking persons were most likely the rescue workers that had just hauled up the airplane. - but you have to excuse me - I wrote from a 70-year old memory-recollection.)

This was the moment when I realized the clear and undisputable connection between the real world and what was written in the newspapers.

The next morning I was up early, grabbed Karlshamns Allehanda from the front door and sat down with my father at the breakfast table. I could fill in the newspaper story with details, and also explain what all the items were in the accompanying photographs.

I knew the photographer. The paper was produced, typeset and printed in the same city block as we lived. We would sometimes wake up at around 2 am when the presses started rumbling, producing that day’s batch of about 6,000 papers, almost one for every household in town.

That day, I went into the offices and sought out the photographer. Did he have any more pictures, how could he get them into the paper?

He was a kind man and showed me the magic of his Linhof press camera – the one with a moveable lens mount – and also introduced me to the photo scanning machine, the one that makes all the dots that are printed as a picture. (It took me another 20 years until I got my own Linhof camera)

Linhof press camera, ca 1947 - it looked the same forever.

As we stood there, the telephoto machine started up and a picture of our king appeared right in front of my eyes. Telephoto machines may have been around since the 1920’s but to see one in action in 1950 was still seeing a wonder.

This spurred me to explore the world of newspaper news ever more.

The year 1950 had entered with much fireworks. This was he half way mark of the centennial. All wars had ended (?) and a limitless future lied ahead.

I drew pictures of space rockets, with special sleeping arrangements for taking off and in weightlessness in space.

Cars had no fins yet, but new speed records were broken that year, prompting me to design my own cars, some missing a few elements of inherent stability, but why not?

Our library was in the same block and the librarian a good friend of my father. She would bring out today’s paper, show me an interesting article and give me an easy-to read book to read on the subject. 

I got hooked on actually reading newspapers on my own in December 1951.

Captain Carlsen stayed on his sinking ship, The Flying Enterpise, in the English Channel until it sank. He became a world hero, followed for the 17 days it took his freighter to finally go to the bottom.

Picture from Wikipedia.

Another 51 years came to pass before the mystery of “why” was solved. The freighter had a substantial amount of the nuclear isotope zirconium in the cargo. That was part of nuclear rector operations in those day. Any salvage company that had put a line to the ship, if it was unmanned, would have owned the ship and its cargo.

My teenage years were as tumultuous for me as for all other.

I focused on my life from day to day. Time flew by.

Every day started with a good perusal of the newspaper. I though Aga Khan was the greatest man, being so rich and getting a new wife, again and again.

Haile Selassie was making mayhem in Ethiopia. I wanted to go and see for myself. – Not yet, you are too young.

The dictator Peron was ousted from Argentina. I did did go there a few years later and see the city of Buenos Aires. It was scary, we were shot at by a machine gun, operated by some Peronistas.

I may not have had much money, but I sure did practice and try out many things.

Everything was a new adventure now.

Some adventures were better than other. Four of us climbed the narrow service ladder to the top of a newly built 40 metres tall radio tower. You entered the top platform via a trap-door. Going up was a child’s play but not so climbing down. One in our gang, not me, froze on the top platform. Nothing could budge him. (He is a retired dentist now. There were probably no great heights to climb in that profession.)

The fire department came and one agile fireman climbed up and got the boy down.

The next day the local newspaper looked different, we were photographed on page one. “Dramatic rescue…”

Not good.

Over the next few years, I developed a different relationship with our local paper, it was far too intrusive for my liking.

I started and failed in the publishing business. I had published a “school paper” on my own. It was too radical. The principal confiscated all my printed papers and I was severely spoken to. I had had bad advisors on what to say. Use better news sources in the future.

The next day I was on page two, in a photograph with my name. My father and a few others were furious at me for my self made "fame".

A small fire at my Highschool wasn’t all good for me either. There was a towel fire in one of the boy’s restrooms. I saw it and called the caretaker in to put it out. I was not the guilty firebug but ended up named as suspected pyromaniac on page two just the same.

I learned to drive a Caterpillar on the construction site for our new railroad station.

Me on the Caterpillar tractor.

One day the regular driver was drunk and managed to sink the tractor in the semi-frozen mud. I was just a passenger but was identified, standing on the sunken tractor as "an adventurous city boy" by name. That newspaper photo gained me some fame among my friends

Would TV dethrone the written world for me?

Not so.

The announcement came; We would, finally, get a strong TV signal in my home town. I borrowed a TV set and jury rigged a good size antenna.

The TV set from 1959

Then – the moment of truth.

My mother, sister and I sat down to watch TV at home for the first time, ever.

I lasted 15 minutes. This is too slow. Give me a newspaper so I can choose my own news and how deeply I want to learn about them.

I have never learned to watch TV and especially not TV news. They are too slow and superficial.

All thoughts in those growing up years were very "now"-oriented.

A few years later, as a married man, I became a father of a bouncing baby girl.

Then life really changed. There was this tremendous responsibility for my family on my shoulders.

No more “now” but rather, “what now?”

I worked hard and diligently for years and years to support my family.

The newspapers were always with me. The world events sometimes scared, entertained or moved me.

But – what can a lowly individual do? I may have wanted to become a special assistant to President Kennedy during the Cuban crisis in 1951, but he never called me for advice.

Keep working, stay away from people with too outrageous ideas and try to stay sane.

With time, world or local events came to touch me in a far too personal way.

Every downturn in the economy of USA led to one in Canada, six months later, and people would get laid off. All too often I was one of them, too.

The separatist issue in Quebec was a huge negative factor in the lives of many. I had no particular ties either way, had a job and couldn’t be anything more than an observer. Taking any political stance would, surely, have rendered me jobless soon.

Réne Levesque - leader of Parti Quebecois in 1978

The 1980 referendum, staged By Réne Levesque, had a terrible effect on the economy of Quebec. Hundreds and hundreds of companies moved out, leaving far too many unemployed behind. At one time the official unemployment rate was over 13 %, a hitherto totally unheard number for anywhere in Canada, not seen since the 1930’s.

In my opinion, to read the newspapers became an agony. There were these never-ending news stories about how we had a large provincial party, Party Quebecois, and their federal ilks, Bloc Quebecois, that only had one goal in mind, to destroy Canada as we knew it.

Finally, many years later I broke. I couldn’t take the incessant talk about separation in Quebec or the forecasted and the real economic decline any more.

I took a job in Ontario and sold my house in Montreal.

It was eerie to open the newspaper the first few mornings we were in Ontario. Nothing on the first page about separation, perhaps a small article on page 6 only.

What a relief.

Now I was getting a little more mature and my outlook on life took a different turn. The children were long gone and quite on their way building their own lives.

We talked about where to, perhaps, retire in the next few years.

A condo downtown Montreal had always been a dream of ours. But, that was hardly a realistic thought, now that we had sold our Quebec home at a huge loss and moved to Ontario. (Thank you, Premier Jaques Pariseau, for destroying the Quebec housing market in preparation for yet another referendum in 1994.)

Monica had always had a soft spot for her home town, Karlskrona, in Sweden. We checked out the housing situation during one of our Swedish vacation trips and found it quite good. We could get a nice apartment, overlooking the Baltic sea, for a reasonable cost.

Then – we ran into the Swedish bureaucracy. It didn’t take many days to confirm that we were ill prepared for what would be coming at us from there. To get an unlimited driver’s licence again would take three years. Since we hadn’t paid taxes in many years and had no credits to apply, the first year’s taxation would be double of the next. We put our Sweden retirement thoughts back on the shelf.

I went through a number of job changes in the 90’s and found life as an employee ever more insecure.

Now I was no longer learning about the future, reading any science fiction stories or taking much interest in politics.

A state of survival had arrived. Every day had to be focused on “what next”?

Eventually after some four years of worsening illness, Monica’s cancer killed her.

We held a funeral with only the family present. After a few days all had returned to their own lives in different countries and there I was, all alone.

I had no ties to anything in the world. No job, it had disappeared in a bankruptcy a few weeks earlier. 

The house was large and empty and far too full of memories from earlier days.

I made a clear and concientious decision to live as a “grumpy old man” from that day on.

The newspaper took on a new meaning. I read about the world, its twists and turns with different eyes.

Where would I fit in? I was not ready to retire and took a few short time assignments that in effect gave money but led nowhere.

Me and Norwegian Princess in Ushuaia,

Argentina, the world's southernmost city.

One assignment was to be a dance partner on a cruise ship for one full month. That helped clear my head. I came back with a new goal in life. I realized that I truly like women, their company and their way of being. I should have known as I had been a happily married man for 41 years already.

My new goal: To meet someone to share my life with.

That well designed and executed project was soon accomplished. I wasted no time on random leads or meetings. A few months later I had a new girlfriend, a lady who became my wife some three years later.

We decided to “do it now”, go for what is on the bucket list.

Now, some 15 years and 22 countries-visited later we are both glad we did.

We danced as two of 20,000 dancers one night

at the Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Newspapers?

Oh, they are still there and still devoured for quite a while every morning.

Being pensioners with a “limited” ~20 year life span ahead there are some subjects that I just don’t have to give much thought to. any more.

It shocks me to jump over the latest medical break-throughs or the latest wild public transit scheme, so long in coming that I may celebrate my hundredth birthday on the day of inauguration.

The financial pages are interesting, but worth about as much as the weather forecast – ever changing from day to day.

Our bodies don’t have the right proportions any more, it seems as if so many parts, bits and pieces have moved downwards over the years. Sure, it is nice to be nicely dressed, but so many of the in-fashions don’t “work” any more.

We make sure to spend as much time as is practical with “the young”, may they be 20 or 60 years young. It is dangerous to let your brain fossilize.

We count our blessings for having had (see how much I talk in past terms now) the wherewithal to take an apartment smack in the middle of Toronto.

An apartment high up with a view, has no lawn, no gutters to clean, no snow to shovel and not even a hose to wash the car with.

Instead we live quietly with all that the city has to offer within a short walk from home. It is such a joy to take the streetcar, the subway or the bus. No traffic to contend with and, best of all, no need to find a place to park the car.

Next?

---------------
If you want to read my memors, "The seasons of Man", buy the book here:


https://www.amazon.ca/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=bengt+lindvall+the+seasons+of+a+man