A Toronto day in the cold of winter

The night was coming to an end.

I felt, more than saw, the beginning of the dawn as the light from outside become just a little more noticeable.

I resisted the urge to get up, rather staying in bed, half asleep, watching the emerging day arrive.

The sky was dark, but the ground was white with the snow from the last days of cold weather with occasional snow falls.

I looked out over the lake. It was frozen. Again, as every winter, it was criss-crossed by an ice breaker making paths for the ferries. Only two of the three were running now.

You have all heard of the man who took one million photographs of Mount Fuji, over a lifetime.

I, occasionally, take pictures of Lake Ontario from my perch high up in the high-rise apartment building. You can hardly believe how many faces of a lake and the surrounding areas you can get over a few years. They are all digital and hidden away, well categorized, in my computer. That is backed up four different ways and in different places. No electrical storm will be allowed to erase any of my, so far, 140,000 photographs.

The world is all too full of people who, somehow, lost their hard-drive and all the information on them. Is that a curse of modern life?

Most of my pictures have been taken on celluloid. They will stay good for viewing for at least 100 years. I still have some of the first photos my father took, dated 1912. They are just as good today as when they were first taken - but the people are all dead. Nobody knows them any more.

Today was a good day for weather. I took three photographs. One, using a long lens, was to pick out the details of how a lone, forgotten, sailboat had frozen into the ice. I looked at the picture, with snow on the deck, and had a quick memory flash on being on a sailboat, like that one, leisurely sailing on the lake below my window.

The most recent photographs were quickly transferred to the great big storage in the cloud. The electronic one, never seen, never quite understood, for future processing.

The day had begun.

My days were many by now. I could feel a certain resistance in my legs when walking far. The friends are many. Life in the city brings new connections, new acquaintances and, occasionally, new friends who enter your inner circle. Their lives, somehow, become part of yours.

Our children are long gone and don’t much care for the opinions of us, the oldies, any more. But, hand over heart, I wasn’t very diligent at listening to my parents either. We still party with our children and greatly enjoy their company, but the most common company is more of our age. We have many, in many walks of life.

The sun rose and broke through the clouds. Another cold and sunny winter day in Canada. Just what some, but not all, like.

The lonely widow, too rich and too intimidated was out shopping again. What could she need? After 15 years, surely there was time for you to open your heart again. “No, he may take my money.” What good is your money? You live alone in a house large enough for two families and drive one of the most expensive cars in the land?

Why?

Oh, what a terror to “have money”. Shared pleasure is double pleasure. You share, you gain. She goes
on the most fantastic first-class trips, mostly alone, to far-away places.

“How was the trip?”

“It was good.”

“Did you take any photographs?”

“Who for? My children take their own trips and don’t care for my pictures.”

At this early hour, my camera was lying with the uncovered lens looking at me from across the room. Was I born with a camera? Probably, there are many pictures of my friends that I remember taking as a little boy. I got the proverbial box-camera at age 9. It served me well. My father had had one of the early models, little newer than the 1888 version. It had a 100 exposure roll. My box camera only took eight pictures on a roll.

Every picture had to be carefully deliberated then. Was it a good moment, object, place, time and would the exposure be correct? All these calculations had to be made before you touched the release button. Pictures cost money. Then, when a little older, I learned to develop my own film.

I had a Russian made copy of a Leica camera with a terrible cassette mechanism, calling for some very careful loading, in total darkness. But, the the lens was superb and the camera took good pictures. It also travelled well.

You can only take a picture if you bring a camera. Yes, I know, everyone carries a better-than-ever camera in their mobile now. It is wonderful to see what is posted on social media today. All the drama, all the excitement, all instantly replayed on media screens everywhere.

Our friends were awake. Some had gone to work. Other, pensioners as we, were enjoying the day to the fullest.

All the things we only do when we feel like doing them. Driving in the city is one “joy” that I don’t regret giving up. My car gets dusty in the garage. I don’t have to show it off. Nobody cares about my material possessions.

We all have some.

What is far more important is to know where we are. What are our interests? What do we enjoy doing alone, or with others? Sure, I read the newspaper with great interest every day. What an old-fashioned way to get news, some say. But, you see the name of the author. That, with time, allows you to see the slant of the view or even to judge how accurate the article itself is.

As a boy I had to get up early, before 04:00, to start my newspaper deliveries in my Swedish home town.

A bonus, much appreciated, was the extra copy that invariably ended up on my mother's breakfast table. It was cold in the winter, to walk the streets long before sunrise.

I have never met my “newspaper boy” here, high up in the Toronto condo. I know it’s a person, but that’s all. Perhaps he/she is also cold in the winter and brings a free copy of The Star or Globe and Mail home to his/her family to read over breakfast.

The retired history professor has been writing into the wee hours. He’s still asleep and won’t stir much before noon. But, his writing is good and he still publishes a new book almost every year. Of course, you don’t have to hunt for a publisher much these days. Amazon will publish anything and print on demand. All that matters is that you are known and well liked. He is.

I am not well known outside my smaller circle. I did publish my memoirs recently, all of 108,000 words within almost 400 pages. The feeling is great, especially since the odd person sends me little comments on my stories now and then.

The day is maturing.

The streetcars appear a little more seldom and are not jam-packed any more.

We decide on a walk. We dress well. No umbrella needed today. It is a seldom used implement in Toronto. It rains so much less often here, compared to other world-class cities.

We live in a world-class city? Yes, life is here is comfortable and predictable. Services run well and people are, in general, easy to get along with.

We chose to retire here, a few years ago, when newly married. Life had been hard on us both for a while. We both been previously married for many years. Both of our late spouses had cancer and ultimately passed away, all too young.

My wife tells that she had met a hundred “frogs” but not “kissed any” on the way. I, being a retired project manager, was far more organized in my approach. I met 17 ladies for coffee, didn’t kiss any, and soon decided that my search was over. I had given up. There was no woman in my future. I’d remain a “grumpy old man” for the rest of my life.

My soon-to-be wife was coffee date number 18. Our searches had ended. I proposed a couple of years
after we met. We had walked up the Eiffel Tower. The wind blew hard and ther rain wetted us.

Did she have strong enough legs?

She did and she said “yes”.

The apartment in the sky was ready for our wedding a few weeks later. Life started anew. The honeymoon trip took us north of the Arctic Circle in Norway.

We hiked on the permafrost and ran a half marathon under the midnight sun.

Another trip brought us to the driest place on earth, the Atacama desert in Chile. It was - 10 C at sunrise and 46 C mid-day.

We have been aging a bit over the years. A major back operation put my wife down for a year, then a
heart attack for me.

Life goes on. We still travel, but don’t plan to climb mountains or hike any permafrost now. So far, we have been married for 11 years and visited 22 countries together. The photographs, the stories…

Don’t fear, Canada is still the greatest. Portaging with a far too heavy canoe in Algonquin park or

sleeping outside in freezing weather in Yukon territory may be behind us, but, why not plan for another trip?

The camera will come along. It can lead you into trouble. On my first, ever, trip to Turkey, I decided to take some pictures of the locals and the city around me.

When in a different place, dress as a local. Clothing is always less costly than at home. I am always painfully aware of how much I stand out as a Westerner. I often start out on my first day, buying a new shirt, pants and shoes.

My camera? It looked too expensive and too intrusive. I did dabble with a Minox camera, years ago. Sure, it was super small. It fit in the palm of the hand but used a very small film format, too small for usable enlargements.

Why a Minox? They were the “camera par choice” of the spies. They would sneak into the locked office, use a copied key to open a desk, bring out secret files and photograph them, page by page.

I never got any copied keys and never got to photograph any letters that would change the path of humanity.

This time, my camera was in a plastic bag, one with a prominent logo from a local store in Istanbul, once called Constantinople and full of spies with Minox cameras. They all lit up Gitanes cigarettes in their days, the favourite smoke of all French spies.

I had no Minox and had never smoked Gitanes. The Minox was not good enough now and the Gitanes were gone. I had tried, but I never learned to smoke.

Oh, did I ever try. My mother found a crushed cigarette in my pocket. Her punishment, now long forgiven, made me lose all interest in tobacco.

I’m a lot older now, a world traveler, as I have always been from the day I put a map of my home province on the wall, adding pins as our school outings took me around. I traveled enough as a young man to wrap a string around the globe before my 20th birthday.

Toronto beckons. Walking out we are, again, pleasantly surprised at how most, but not all, drivers give right-of-way to pedestrians. There aren’t many cities where that is done.

Our most recent trip was to Saigon, Vietnam. The only way to cross the street, with or against the traffic light, is to be part of a hundred-person group charging into the traffic. It doesn’t stop the drivers but the flow divides so pedestrians can get across.

A quiet day calls for low level experiences. The Toronto underground path with its, forever undecipherable, maps and warren of weather-controlled walkways will, with a bit of luck, lead to the Eaton Centre.

Pensioners don’t spend big but the joys of window shopping never go away.

The buzz at the Apple store never seizes to amaze. What brings all the people in? Do they buy all these expensive gadgets there? Yes, they do.

The food court is, as always, impressive with the numerous “regional” offerings. The variety is far less than meets the eye. It is really just a few large food corporations who sell factory made fast food. We stick to coffee.

We take a quick look at Dundas Square. The walls around are lit up and playing their advertising messages incessantly. The square is quiet. The man calling out “Jesus” is still on the corner, though. Doesn’t he get cold or tired, ever? I take a carefully framed and focused picture of him from behind some people.

Nathan Phillips Square is full of skaters. I take another few pictures, trying to position the skaters perfectly in front of the Toronto-letters.

We had done our 10,000 steps for the day. My wife’s back-doctor and my heart-doctor would both be pleased over how well we had followed their instructions on how to get strong again.

It doesn’t matter how well you dress, parts of you are always cold when you come home. It is a wonderful feeling, it tells you that you are alive.

On our walk home, we looked in at a couple of restaurants and checked out their menus. We are always looking for the next nice place to dine with our friends. These restaurants are more and more difficult to find. Most new restaurants have no sound attenuation and the noise level will kill all attempts at any meaningful discussion. But, hope springs eternal, there must be some, somewhere in this large city.

I dutifully took my pictures to the computer, edited a few, and filed them in their correct category. Perhaps, one day, I will publish a photobook of “Toronto” scenes. It will also contain many photos of the oodles of not so bad graffiti that we are blessed with.

For dinner, we dove into the freezer. We buy in bulk at Costco, prepare and freeze a lot of meals.

We had a stuffed pork chop, cooked sous vide, with a glass of boxed red wine.

Another pleasant winter day in Toronto had drawn to an end.

__________________

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


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21 - At the railroad shop

The summer of 1961 rolled in. I got a job at the SJ (Swedish State Railroad) railroad maintenance shop in Karlshamn. It was a great place with all sorts of sophisticated railroad equipment all around me.

I was exposed to a prank, by the foreman, on my first day.

“Can you fix my radio?”

“I’ll try.”

I carried it home and set to work with my soldering iron. He wanted it back the next morning. I presented the newly repaired radio, not yet tested. It was set up in the foreman's office and switched on.

There was a hum, then a slowly ascending shriek and then – an explosion. The internal transformer blew up in a good size cloud of sparks and smoke. Not a good start for my mechanic's career.

I later learned that that very same radio was booby trapped and had been “repaired” by several new employees before me. I just managed to make the best explosion of all. No harm befell me, even if it smelled a little of old fire-smoke in the office for a few days.

One of my tasks was to do regular maintenance inspections of the day liners. They were typically coupled-up in three or four car sets. The maintenance was done inside the shop. You had to dive into the interiors looking for the batteries, various dip sticks and more.

Of course, I learned to drive them too. Push the driver's handle forward – accelerate. Pull it to the rear - brakes on. Simple.

Day-liner trainset

Eventually I became trusted to drive the train in-and-out for service, I’d drive it in, then back it out after the service, change the rail-switch and drive forward to park the train next to the service building.

This is too boring, doing the same thing every day. Why not put some spice to it? Full acceleration – mmm, we are really moving now. What you don’t know you often learn the hard way. You cannot slam the brakes on a train. Then the wheels lock. I didn’t know that yet. I was going at a good clip and applied, what I thought, full braking.

What? Nothing, nothing, no breaking. The barrier at the end of the track is getting closer, now it is really close. I will hit the barrier, I will ruin a multi-million-dollar train. I will die in the crumpled driver’s cabin.

My life is over.

Then the emergency brake took over. We stopped less than 15 mm from the barrier. I had wetted my pants.

I only then learned that you cannot slam the brakes, that would only lock the wheels. The automatic brake limiter had done its job, slowing the train gradually without locking the wheels. Nobody had observed my maneuvre and my pants quickly dried that warm summer day. Lesson learned.

Don't mess with what you don't understand.

Another job of ours was to scrap some 40-year old lightweight day liners, designed for speed. These had been used in the 1920's and 1930's to run in front of the express trains, stopping at all stations and then taking off again before the slower express train caught up.

Karlsson-car, model 1933.

This one had been towed in but we started the engine and practised driving it on a little used service track. The driver sat in a bucket seat, strapped in with a wide belt over the hips to be able operate the clutch with both feet.

Now, I almost cried about what we had to do. After removing all the remaining gasoline in the tanks (which we promptly poured into our own cars) and most of what had any value, we poured gas over the interior, threw in a match and stood by. The fire department was there, looking on as well.

A day later, when it all had cooled down, we approached the remaining chassis with cutting torches. A truck came from the local scrap yard and picked up the steel, including the engine and transmission assembly.

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

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At summer camp - sexual abuse, or not?

I had just turned 13.

As springtime continued I spent more and more time away from the city, at my father’s cottage.

There was a girl, Sonja, a couple of years older than I. She was not the brightest light, academically speaking, but we had known each other since I was about the age of four.

She lived, as an only child, at her parents’ farm only a few hundred metres away, through the forest, from my father’s cottage. We spent a lot of time together. 

This summer we would play, as always.

We did games, played cards, built little forts, made a fire and roasted early apples, swam in the lake and rowed the row-boat to the blueberry patch across the lake.

We were always very comfortable with each other. This year I got a new problem. It became painfully clear to me that looking at her would make my penis grow. I tried to stand facing her so my sideways profile wouldn’t give me away.

One hot day, we decided to play Indians. Sonja put on a short cape, covering her to above her knees, and I put on a loin cloth.

I didn’t notice at first, but my very definitely erect penis was sticking out on the side of the loincloth for quite a while.

She looked at me, very intensely, and I eventually followed her yes to my erect penis.

What was I doing?

I tried to hide away. She just stood there, in full amazement.

Then, as she moved quickly, her cape flew open. There we were, she showing her bare breasts and underpants and I with an erect penis, facing each other.

We gathered up our clothing and continued that day as if nothing had happened.

The next day was again nice and warm. We continued our game of Indians. She let her cape hang so it barely covered her breasts, which were easy to see from the side. I noticed that she wore no panties this day.

I made my loincloth a bit narrower, showing myself quite easily.

No, we didn’t touch each other all that summer. We met many times, even went berry picking practically naked. It became a bit of a game who show each other what we had. We were too young and probably too innocent to even think of intercourse. That didn’t happen between us until a couple of years later.

I wonder what her parents would have said. They seemed quite prude to me.

My father didn’t mind. I already knew that he was a naturalist. I had seen photographs of my parents, naked together when I and my sister were little. This was before their untimely divorce when I was seven.

So here we were, my father in shorts, his 13-year old son and the neighbour’s daughter as near-naked as one can imagine. I guess we all learned something that summer.

Nakedness is not necessarily lewd in closed company.

Sonja told me, eons later, that my father liked to pat her on her naked buns, occasionally. He never touched her in any other manner.

The summer was, as I mentioned, warm and sunny.

In late July I went to the three-week-long gymnastics camp, by the coast of the sea, for the first time.

We were in army barracks, not too well aired out since their usage last year. The boys were in theirs and the girls in other barracks. Each room, with 24 boys or girls had a leader, most commonly an army NCO for the boys or an army nurse for the girls.

The camp administrator was a good friend of my mother. Both my sister and I felt welcomed.

The gymnastics program started on day one.

At first, I was out of shape but soon it dawned on me, I am quite agile.

As the weeks progressed I became more and more at ease with the routines. I was selected for the elite team and we did so much more. Sure, I did fall occasionally. Once I tripped off a high beam, about two metres from the ground. I grabbed hold of the pole and slid all the way down.

The skin on my chest took quite a scrape. I bled a bit and the local nurse was called in to patch me up.

To my embarrassment or pride, I performed with a white bandage around my chest on the last, final show-the-parents day.

Being in thy gym team was great. Half or the participants were girls. I quite enjoyed looking at them in their practice. Now that I knew how to look, thanks to my friend Sonja, I was probably quite a voyageur.

This summer I had added a pair of very tight swim-trunks to wear under my gym shorts so I wouldn't be showing any immoral parts on the field.

Boy, did it hurt at times? My rising penis was squeezed up and held tightly against my stomach.

Girls had entered my line of vision and they were very important. I had had ever touched a girl or even knew much about what and who they were.

That fall I joined a mixed class. The girls were mysterious and challenging. There was one, half a head taller than most of the boys in the class. She had very noticeable breasts. Obviously, every boy secretly desired to touch them.

I was the lucky one. I had free movie tickets, thanks to my father’s position as a local tax collector. The boy with the movie tickets wins.

We would go to the movies together. In the dark, we would hold hands and I could let my hand slide up and cup her breasts under the clothes. I could feel downwards under her beltline and even touch the front of her tummy, all the way down to where I could feel the budding pubic hair of hers.

On our way home, especially in the dark and cold winter days of the north, we could stop in a dark place and kiss, lightly.

My father’s apartment was perfect for parties. It was the only one in the building, with a separate street entrance to the two flights of stairs. The offices were all closed and the building was usually empty by 19 every night.

My friends could visit, unseen, at any hour after that.

My father? He worked long hours in various committées and often wouldn’t come home until after midnight, expecting me to be solidly asleep.

I usually was, but I had left all the lights on. Being alone was always scary.

As for parties, we had ample notice of which evenings I could hold them. My friend Christer had a cousin with many friends, and we also invited the boys and girls from our class.

With time we developed a little clique of about 10 friends, five boys and five girls who would meet at my place for fun. We started off with board-games, continued with card-games. As the fall continued, we became more and more comfortable with each other.

The lights would be dimmed and there would be some light petting here and there.

Then a new game: “Change partners”.

The rules were simple. The boys would each seat themselves in a soft chair or couch. We covered the windows with leftover black-out sheets from WW 2, still standing in the front door closet.

The lights were turned off to leave us in absolute darkness.

Then we began.

The boys sat down and a girl found each of them and seated herself nearby. Very near, I may add.

The boys’ wandering hands had free play. Some girls were shyer than others, we were all 13, remember.

“My partner is good but Johnny’s is better.”

The girl in Johnny’s lap would leave and find her way to your place when “my” girl moved to Johnny.

The trick is getting the right girl, the one with the biggest boobs, or the wettest scrotum, or the one who knew how to tug at your penis best, was to remember who exchanged partners with whom. 

I never asked any girl how she liked the game, but they were back the next week, and the next, again.

Now, you can say, was this a “proper” game for a bunch of 13-year olds? Who can tell? We all enjoyed it and no harm was done. At least, no virginity was lost in that game. On the good side, I think we all learned a little more about the anatomy of the opposite sex, even if it was pitch dark and you couldn’t see a thing.

As the winter eased up, the sun returned with more daylight and longer evenings, we moved on. Our game was deemed impossible if it wasn’t held in total darkness. I guess we were too innocent and a little shy to see each other’s faces as we touchy-feeled each other.

My favourite, the girls with the biggest breasts was, of course, my movie-companion Anna. We saw each other in school every day.

My life changed abruptly the day my father suddenly passed away in a stroke, a few days after my 14^th birthday.

I was back at summer gymnastics. This was summer No. 2 for me. I had greatly enjoyed my first summer and even advanced to the elite gymnastics group, performing for the parents on Sundays.

The camp looked the same, but we had some new leaders.

My lodging had a new supervisor, one I hadn’t met before. He liked us, the boys, more than the one last year, and spent a lot of time with us in the lodging.

Sometimes he would sit with a boy, reading a newspaper. I noticed that some of the boys moved away as he came close but thought nothing of it.

He talked to me about how lonesome I must have felt, now that my father was gone and he hoped that he could be like a father figure for me at camp.

Then, one evening, he came and sat close to me, with the proverbial newspaper in his hands.

I noticed how his free hand moved and started to fondle my testicles. I moved away.

The next night, he was back again. This time, covered by the newspaper, he fondled me more deliberately. I didn’t suffer and didn’t much object. After all, my testicles had been fondled by girls the preceding winter and I had learned to like the feeling. It even gave me an erect penis, as little as it may have been. More hands? No real problem.

I became much more apprehensive when he, being a lot heavier than little skinny me, the gymnast, lifted me enough to reach my anus. There he put his finger inside. To have something in your anus was not an altogether unique experience. In those days the only way to take the temperature was to use a rectal thermometer, and they were made thick and solid so they wouldn't break in use.

I didn’t react at first and he did the same thing the next night and the next, ultimately jerking on my penis at the same time.

This was all done on the quiet, usually when we were alone. I noticed that his hand smelled of vaseline soap. 

That must have been the lubricant.

One day he invited me to sit on his lap. My anus was a bit softened up from repeated visits by his finger the days before and I could feel how the tip of his hard dick would seek its way in. We were still covered by the newspaper so none of the few boys in the cabin would notice.

I could feel how his dick throbbed as he ejaculated inside me I had to visit the toilet afterward to dispose of the "white stuff".

I didn't find the experience unpleasant and liked the attention that I got from this leader during day time. He liked to have me sit on his penis again, ever so lightly, and we did that when few were around so nobody would know.

A couple of evenings later he tried to enter too deep and that hurt me.

I instantly stood up and walked out.

From that day we never exchanged a single word between us. I focused on girl watching and totally forgot what had happened, these events were of absolutely no significance in my life.

Imagine now? That would not have gone unpunished.

He had a few other favourite boys but they, as well as I, soon turned away completely. This officer-on-vacation may have been a boy abuser. I read in the local paper that he was murdered in a bar in Spain a couple of years later. Perhaps he had touched the wrong boy there?

I already knew at the beginning of the summer that I had failed too many classes to continue. My father got upset, but he soon passed away and could do no more. That fall I had to do the same class over again. I lost contact with my girlfriend and a few others that I had been with the year before.

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


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13 years old - My first girlfriend

Me, the teenager.

I turned 13. I am just another teenager. Then life dished out some real changes for me.

• I witnessed my father die in front of my eyes when 14
• Sailed the Baltic Sea on cod trawlers the summer I was 14
• Worked on a farm the summer of my 15^th, never got paid a penny because I had eaten too much and not worked hard enough
• Sailed on a coastal steamer the summer I was 16
• Dropped out of High school and joined the army before I turned 17
• Left the army when 18 and ...
• Went to sea again and sailed around the world just before I was out of my teenage years.

But, was the definition of teenager even invented then? I don't think so. It was an invention by marketers when they found out that there was a lot of young people with money to spend.

On my three speed Crescent bike. My mother took the picture.

I wasn't in that spending group, ever, only in the age group by this time.

I was a kid in High School who had just noticed girls. They were noisy, hard to talk to and had some sort of a mystical pull to them.

At the school dances I danced with girls, awkwardly, while watching older students dance cheek to cheek. That activity was frowned on by our, ever present, teachers acting as chaperons. They would even step out on the dance floor and break up any couple that looked too excited.

The cheek-to-cheek activities could continue outside but not for me – yet – I was too innocent. Invariably school dances took place on dark and rainy nights. That didn't deter the enthusiasts, they just moved a little farther away, out of the rain, and took shelter in the darkness under a passageway between the new and the old buildings. The new dated from 1936, the old from 1912.

The covered area is under the passageway, on the right. 

I already had a girlfriend when 13. We would go to the movies together and hold hands in the theatre. If it was dark and gloomy and we could feel that nobody was watching us, we would even hold hands walking to and from the movie house.

My father, the city treasurer, was also the pleasure tax inspector for the area. Not only did he, occasionally, seldom or never (?), inspect the tills of theatre groups, touring circuses and magicians or even the people who held ”interesting talks with sciopticon pictures” about their last visit to Timbuktu. But – the most glorious bonus of this job, he had two free tickets to every single pleasurable (?) event in the area – I had access two free movie tickets. My father had obligingly signed a whole booklet with requisitions that I had hid away, to be used when it suited me.

My girlfriend and I were in the same class. She was the most gorgeous of all human creatures to look at and her dress, oh that was something to behold. Her favourite was a pair of jeans, most likely two sizes too small with a thin cotton sweater, similarly sized.

All the boys drooled over her, but I was the one who got the price. I was the only one with free access to movie tickets. Naturally, the boy with the most assets wins the girl.

No, that may not have been the only reason, we honestly liked each other.

................

That summer I went to a gymnastics camp. It was run by an offshoot of the Swedish army and staffed, mostly, with military personnel on vacation.

Children, some 100 or so, 12 – 14 years old were picked up from the whole of Blekinge province. We arrived by a chartered steam powered train. The trip was super exciting. It was the first train trip on their own for many. I stood on the platform at the front end of a car just behind the locomotive and, of course, arrived well blackened by the soot from the engine.

In front of one of our dorms. (My photograph)

We lived in a multitude of dorms, under the auspices of one of the vacationing NCOs or officers. The girl's dorms were run by army nurses. We were all strictly controlled.

The food was really good and enjoyed by most.

Of course we did have to prove that our nails were clean, on occasion, before dinner. We all had brought our own dishes. After every meal we stood in line for the few cold water taps to rinse our plates, cups and utensils. Was that hygienic? Who knows, but I never heard of any ill effects.

The washrooms were most rudimentary and in the open. They would have been superb by mid 19^th century standards and smelled the part. Fortunately, they were located in the forest, some distance from the common areas.

The morning toilet was mandatory. My mother had been pre-warned and I possessed real salt-water soap, i.e. Soap that would melt in seawater.

After reveille we were allowed a few minutes for washroom service, then lined up in our swimsuits and wrapped in dry towels for the 500 metre walk to the sea-shore. There we had to get into the water far enough for it to cover our knee-caps. Now, brush our teeth and rinse. Then show that we washed not only our face but our necks as well, all supervised from the shore.

Was it cold? Imagine walking outside in your swimsuit on a 12 deg C foggy morning and then getting into 14 deg C seawater. It was supposed to harden us. Some mornings were wonderful, though, with sunshine and really warm water, perhaps 16 deg C. I always read the big thermometer on our way down.

I felt properly hardened every day.

This was a three week long gymnastics camp. I may never have been much of a gymnast in school, but this summer I surprised myself. I was good, became better, and was even chosen to perform with the elite group at our weekend meet-your-parents days.

The gymnastics were great both to perform and watch. True to form, I would go out of my way to watch the girls practice.

I did fall off a gym-bar once. It was high and I grabbed the support pole. It was rough and scraped the skin on my chest as I slid down. The nurse washed off the dirt and put a plaster on to arrest the blood oozing out. It did leave a lasting mark, I still have some scratch marks on my chest.

Sexual abuse hadn't been invented yet.

Our dorm, with about 25 boys, had a supervisor who liked us all and encouraged us to sleep naked. That was a bit cold and few obliged. He would like to sit on his bed and invite me, and a few others, to sit next to him. He would then read a newspaper and show articles for our approval, at the same time fondling our private parts.

I noticed that he had his zipper open and that his member would grow, substantially, covered by the newspaper and only visible to the boy next to him.

We, the favoured kids, learned fast never to sit ”there” and read the newspaper with that man. Strange how busy we were, doing other things when he was near.

A little side story; I learned, years later, that he had been murdered in a bar in Spain. Perhaps he fondled the wrong boy in the wrong company.

One of my dorm mates had a father who was a pilot in the Swedish air force. He came visiting his son in a sailboat. The father promised to do a fly-over in a Saab Tunnan J29 the next day at a certain time.

All of us from that dormitory lined up outside at the appointed hour and – true to the promise – a single Saab Tunnan jet plane swooshed down over our camp, really low.

The noise brought all outside. Then the airplane came back, almost touching the treetops as it flew by. We were really impressed. Imagine, having a father who not only had his own sailboat but also flew a real jet plane.

June 30 was to be a very special day, there would be a total solar eclipse, mid day. The preparations include lectures on the solar system, the moon, and, not to be forgotten, lots of information on how to protect our eyes. We were lucky, no clouds. The whole camp stood in the open, amazed, with our black, sooted, glasses during the entire 2 minute and 22 second darkness. We also confirmed that the birds fell quiet as the sunlight dwindled.

....................

I came back to town, invigorated by my newly found gymnastics skills. I signed up for a gymnastics program that fall and enjoyed greatly.

Then I noticed something. There was a ballet class in a nearby gym. Most of the participants were girls with only a few boys. I switched to ballet, primarily because that's where the girls were. My career was cut short by my father's death. I still developed a life long love for ballet and the accompanying music.

..........................

School was always an afterthought and I never tried very hard. I still had extremely high marks in Biology, Chemistry and Physics. I really found those subjects interesting but utterly failedin other subjects.

My best friend then was Christer who has long since passed away as I write this. He may not have been the most savoury character. We found many ways to get in trouble together.

There was an election that fall. I went around town and mutilated an election banner: ”Down with taxes, the Communists”.

If you used your pen knife and cut out ”the taxes” the sign clearly read: ”Down with the Communists.”

That was not a good move. Someone saw me and went to my father. He, even though he was no admirer of the Communists in town, told me to cease and desist.

I did.

The communists got only 4 % of the votes that fall. I felt very proud. After all, a lot of people must have followed my political advice.

................

Christer's mother was a member of the Bethel free church. He and I were offered 2 kronor for each Sunday mass visitor we could bring in. I had many friends. One krona for you and one for me if you go.

I got a few reward kronors that fall until I got too greedy and asked the same person to come back once too often. Well, it was good as long as it lasted.

Christer's older brother, Tore, acquired a small 120 cc motorcycle. It lacked many finer details, such as brakes. I am still 13, but talked him into let me try it.

I did and ended up in a wood pile. Nobody noticed if there were any new dents or scratches on the motorcycle, but I got some. That called for another run to the hospital to stitch up my bleeding elbow. I was more careful about verifying vehicle brakes after that event.

.....................

My parents had been divorced for about seven years by now. I lived with my father in a huge apartment on the top floor of city hall. The largest room was ten metres long, with chandeliers in the ceiling.

Wedding photo.

One, or both of them, have erased all photos of them together. All I have is their wedding picture from 1935 that I found as bookmark in a long forgotten book. The two boys are my mother's brothers.

My father was active in the local politics, often worked late and would come home long after I was in bed. I was alone a lot.

I hated the dark. In truth, I was afraid of being alone in the dark. When on my own, I would search the apartment for ”one more light” that I could switch on. I even left the refrigerator door ajar so the light could shine over the floor in the kitchen. Needless to say, that was not appreciated.

Being home alone also meant that we could have parties, not chaperoned by any adult.
.

My girlfriend and I danced, of course.

.................

I had long driven my father's Renault Juvaquatre 1948 model car. At first by holding the steering wheel, sitting by my father's side. This year, still 13, I learned to drive from the driver's seat to and from our cottage, 35 km away. I would sit on one pillow, with another pillow behind me, and have a hat on my head so I looked older.

I was no master at shifting gears but did learn the rudiments of taking the foot off the accelerator when you clutched. The final part of the road was very narrow and you had to pull over to the side and stop when meeting a car or a horse drawn wagon. I never stalled the engine when starting up again, I think.

This was probably not entirely without legal risks for my father, he was occasionally the acting chief of police.

Father's fiancee, Sandra, lived in Stockholm, some 600 km to the north. Normally he would take the train but one time he decided to bring some furniture and drive, even though we were in the month of November. But, the weather was still nice so why not?

That didn't go so well. Half way there, the snow started to fall. Who knows, nor does it matter, but he collided with a car driven by a dentist from Stockholm. The cars were dented and taken to a nearby body shop. My father arrived to Stockholm by train with the furniture in the luggage compartment.

Then, once in Stockholm, he got a very painful blood clot in his leg. He ended up in the hospital for a few days before returning home, also by train.

Later, just before Christmas, we both traveled, in first class on the train, to Norrköping to pick up the newly painted car to drive it home again.

I thought our dinner in the restaurant car was just the grandest of all.

This time the weather was nice, cold an crisp, and we drove home through a bright snowy landscape. This French car may not have had a heater designed for the temperature of the far north. We both had blankets around us.

The next time we were in Stockholm we visited the dentist and his family. They served a candle lit dinner in their grand apartment, overlooking the city hall, and all had a good time.

To collide with someone is not my preferred way to meet new friends but, but why not?

......................

This winter had its pleasures, I have never understood people who complain about winter. Dress for it and "get out there".

The skating rink was close. I got a pair of brand new white (!) figure skating skates. Why white? that was the only pair in my size in the store, so my father bought them. Was white for girls? I didn't know, but many of my friends did.

Sure I had my tumbles, but got better with time. Then, one of my classmates came from behind and hit me. I landed hard and broke my right wrist. I continued skating for a few minutes but something must have been wrong, The pain in my arm got steadily worse.

My father walked me down to the hospital and I left, a few hours later, with a plaster on my right, the writing arm.

Karlshamn Lasarett.

The white skates?

I traded them with a girl classmate who had gotten black skates from her father, the fisherman. That was a trade that stood me in good stead the next summer. I went fishing with his trawler on the sea.

What to do about school? Learn to write with your left. I did and I can still write passably with  my left hand.

..................

Spring again. Our cottage beckoned my father. We would arrive while there were still remnants of snow in the shady spots and thick pipe-ice on the lake. That melting ice had more of the consistency of slush than ice. It would freeze hard over night but was extremely dangerous to walk on.

The cottage was, of course, ice cold inside. It had a 380 V power supply that fed a 7 kW open coil industrial heater, sufficient to dry out and overheat the inside in less than one hour. The heater had come out of a building demolition, stolen by me, and dragged on my bicycle to my father. He saw the need and, to the cottage it went. The installation was far less than to the electrical code. My father admitted that he hadn't worked with wires since he was 20 years old in 1913.

Summer arrived and now we could enjoy the growth everywhere.

Father decided it was too hard work to rake the dead leaves and dried straw from last fall. Why not just burn it?

That thought may have been the beginning of the end of his life, the moment that left me fatherless and changed my life forever.

He put a match to some grass in an open area. It was dry and the fire spread. It was moving into the forest undergrowth in minutes. 

He was slashing at the fire with branches, probably to little avail.

I ran, the fastest two km run of my life, to the next farm.

It took seconds to convince all available hands what was about to happen. The smoke was already visible over the treetops. Several men and women ran with me back.

The undergrowth fire was finally put down by sunset, many hours later.

There was still one fire left, though. The ground cellar was built with very solid beams. They burned all night. I was out with my father, carrying buckets of water from the lake to pour on that.

After a nearly sleepless night, the next morning was calm again and we returned to the city.

King Gustav VI was on his Eriksgata, visiting all of Sweden. He would pass through next week and stop over for a dinner with all the ”important” locals. My father was assigned a seat close to the king.

Now, back in town, my father who had been on sick-leave on and off the last few months, learned that he would not sit at the King's table the next week. He was relegated to a seat far back in the dining hall.

This was a crisis. What can be done to reverse this?

He and I went for a crazy four hour walk through town, talking to most all in authority, to no avail.

That may just have been too much for him.

We returned to the apartment where Sandra, his fiancee, had prepared lunch. He was to set the table, leaned over the cutlery drawer – grabbed it hard and stood there, as if in panic.

We lead him into my bed. Sandra called my father's best friend, Dr. Walter Paulsson. His office was just across the street. He was with us within minutes.

Dr. Paulson practically screamed when he saw my father: ”Harald, I told you to take your blood tests”, turned around and called for the ambulance.

My father was dead three hours later – from an internal bleeding inside his brain. The Post Mortem confirmed that he had far too much Warfarin, a blood thinner – also used as rat poison – in his system. He had failed to check his blood values or adjust his prescription after the blood clot the previous November.

I spent the afternoon in a state of chock, circling the hospital on my bicycle between visits to my father's room.

On my last return I was met by a nurse. She held a small gray envelope in one hand and a glass of water in the other.

”Take this.” It was salt of Bromide, a mild sedative.

He was dead. I looked at him, so quiet and seemingly small in the bed, and left.

The King arrived one week later and was greeted by the major of Karlshamn. My father was not at the dinner...

My life had changed forever.

The next year I was 14, you can read that story here:

http://ayoungboysjourney.blogspot.ca/2017/04/growing-up-14-years-old.html

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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