Things I Think I Remember, I think: Part Three, Summer 1971 through Summer 1975: High school and beyond!
This is Part Three of my “Things I think I remember…” series, where again I’m trying to make sense of all those little memory snippets and fragments that pop up between my ears from time to time. This is pretty much my high school years and my stint in the Swedish Army; from the summer of 1971 when I started tenth grade, through summer of 1975 when I got out of the army. As I did for Part Two, I’ve also borrowed freely from some of my other posts, such as “My love of music and drums…” and “Working for a living…”, so don’t be surprised if you might have read the stuff already. But, this being MY blog, I reserve the right to repeat myself! Also, for historical references and context, I’ve borrowed liberally from Google and Wikipedia, so be aware!
Three big things happened during this time; in the summer of
1972 my friends and I went traveling in southern Europe for a month. Also, in 1973 I started working at Farsta
Hospital, which gave me a whole host of great memories, and in the late summer
of 1974 my friends and I again went out and traveled in Europe on the Eurorail
pass.
As I was putting my memories in “order”, I realized that
much of what I remembered was closely tied to the music I was listening to on
the radio and my stereo system and the movies I watched. So, you will see a lot of references to music
and film, since much of these inputs are intertwined in my memory bank (such as
it is…).
I pondered how to fit all this in chronologically, but since
my birthday is in August, I’ve decided to make it kinda like from August
through August(ish), which fits nicely with the school-years. A lot of times, I do remember things, but
more in a sense of the school-year, rather than the calendar year, but much of
it is still approximate. Nevertheless, a
couple of years ago, I got all my old report cards from my dad, which he had
saved for some reason. At first, I
didn’t know what to do with them, but when I started this little blog series, I
realized that the report cards could serve as a road map to my school years,
and each little segment is closed out with a report card. So, take your grain of salt, and let’s go on
a trip down memory lane, into the swinging 60s!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Summer 1971 through Spring 1972
Funny enough, I don’t remember much of what I did in the
summer of 1971, even though I turned sixteen in August of that year. I probably spent a lot of time at the
Eriksdalsbadet open-air swimming pool complex, hanging out with my friends, but
nothing special comes to mind.
Nevertheless, in the fall of 1971, I started high school, or
“Gymasiet” as it is called in Sweden.
Lennart had decided to go to a trade school to become a house painter,
Chino had left school all together to pursue a career in music, and since
Thomas was a year older, he was already in high school. So, I went to Gubbangen’s Gymasium, which had
been built between 1954 and 1957. Just
like when I went from sixth grade to seventh grade, I was now the new kid,
again thrown in with teenagers that were two to three years older than me. By golly, some of the students had cars, and
were driving to school, something that was totally foreign to me. Fortunately, Gubbangens Gymnasium was just a
15-minute brisk walk from our apartment, so getting there was no big deal. Some of the students that lived in Farsta
proper took the subway, but that would have been silly for me, since I was just
one stop away at Hokarangen.
 |
|
Gubbangens Gymnasium overview. |
 |
|
Gubbangens Gymnasium main building. |
 |
|
Gubbangshallen, where we had physical education, which
was built between 1958 and 1959. Unfortunately, now it looks a bit shabby, but when I went there it was nice and shiny. |
Even though Lennart and Chino had elected to skip high school, we were still close friends, and we would hang out a lot. In the fall of 1971(ish) Chino and his brother Maffi started an original band called “Syndikatet”, and they played in and around Stockholm. Lennart and I were recruited as roadies; we were dressed in matching pink full overalls, hauling around three full stacks of Marshalls and the PA speakers. We would ride in the back of the van, and we were coooool, because “we are with the band!” Around this time I had my ABBA moment; Lennart and I were with the Syndikatet boys at a car dealership in Stockholm looking for a tour bus, and Bjorn Ulvaeus showed up in a rusty old VW bug with some blond girl in tow. We knew who Bjorn Ulvaeus was, since he had played with the Hootenanny Singers and he had also been a substitute teacher at my school, but we didn’t know who the blond was (the blond was Agnetha Feltskog, who became a member of ABBA. In 1974 ABBA won the European Eurovision song contest with Waterloo, and the rest is history…).
I think tenth grade passed pretty uneventfully for me, but I know I really got into music, and I would listen to records on my stereo system constantly. Here is a little list of albums I bought at this time:
Shaft, Isaac Hayes, released July 1971
Who’s Next, released in August 1971
Santana III, released in September 1971
Performance: Rocking
the Filmore by Humble Pie, released in November 1971
Led Zeppelin Four, released November 1971
Paul Simon's first solo album, released in January 1972
Slade Alive, released in March 1972
Smokin’ by Humble Pie, released in March 1972
Roadwork, Edgar Winter and the White Trash Band, released March 1972
We also saw all the hit movies from that time:
The Frensch Connection, released in October, 1971
Diamonds are Forever, released in December, 1971
Dirty Harry, released in December 1971
A Clockwork Orange, released in January of 1972
Cabaret, released in February of 1972
The Godfather, released in March, 1972
 |
|
My Report Card from tenth grade, spring 1972. My grades were not great by any measure;
mostly Cs, a D in Frensch and a D in mathematics, but at least it seems like
my grades had been pretty consistent.
|
Summer 1972 through Spring 1973
In the summer of 1972, Lennart, Thomas, Thomas’ girlfriend,
her friend and myself set out on the Eurorail, which was a 30-day railway pass
that would let you travel by railway all through Europe, for a cost of 350
Swedish Krona (about $74 at the time), planning to backpack the whole
time. We were crazy young; Thomas was
just 18, Lennart had just turned 17, and I was about to turn 17 myself, and the
girls were about the same age. We had
planned to stay out the full 30 days, so off we went! We set out from Stockholm Central Station,
and we took the overnight train to Paris, which was about a 24-hour trip. We were in the convertible sleeping cars,
where each compartment had regular seats for six people during the day, but in
the evening one converted the bench seats into six bunks, three on either side
of the compartment. We got in to Gare du
Nord train station in Paris about noon the next day, and at the station, this
was the first time I was confronted with the infamous “Frensch Toilet”, a squat
toilet, a type of toilet where the user squats over a hole in the floor rather
than sitting on a bowl. One is supposed
to squat over the hole, while holding on to two handles, one for the right hand
and one for the left. Fortunately, I
only had to go pee; I held number two until we got to our little pension budget
lodging in Paris, which had a shared bathroom between the rooms, but at least
the bathroom had a regular toilet.
 |
|
French squat toilet, like the one I used at Gare du
Nord in Paris in the summer of 1972. Number one only,
fortunately I didn’t have to go number two…
|
 |
|
The Eiffel Tower, Paris, France. |
We spend some time traveling down the Spanish Costa Del Sol,
which hugs the beautiful Mediterranean sea.
We would stay for a couple of days in various little beach towns and
hang out on the beaches. We also met a
bunch of Americans traveling around; it was kinda easy to spot the American
girls, since their derrieres tended to be a bit wider than that of the European
girls, but to each their own! In one
little town, we found a little bar where we would usually eat and drink, and
the British bar keep would play two records constantly; Every Picture Tells a
Story by Rod Stewart and Tapestry by Carole King. To this day, those two albums are part of my
favorite records of all time. Also, at
the beach there was an impromptu bar, where the barman played American Pie by
Don McClean constantly, so that’s another song that I won’t forget! We also took a ferry (maybe from Barcelona)
over to Ibiza, and stayed a couple of days.
Ibiza was nice, and in 1972 it wasn’t the giant party town that it has
now become; instead it was pretty sleepy.
The beaches around the city were mostly stones and pebbles, so in order
to get to a beach, you had to take a little party boat. However, it was worth it; I had never seen
water so clear!
 |
|
Ibiza city, or as it is known in Catalan, Vila
d’Eivissa. |
After we got back from Ibiza, we got this crazy idea that we wanted to travel down to Morocco (or, what was Spanish Morocco at the time), to be able to claim that we had actually set foot in Africa. We traveled down the Costa Del Sol, all the way down to Algeciras, on the southern tip of Spain proper. From Algeciras, we took a ferry over to Ceuta, which was the main city in Spanish Morocco. On the ferry ride, we could see the Rock of Gibraltar, and we were followed by dolphins.
 |
|
Ceuta, in North Africa. |
We got to Ceuta in the late afternoon, and we just started walking down some street, when an older woman yelled out to us from her fifth-story apartment window “Turista? Turista?”. We nodded yes, and she waved us up to her apartment, and showed us to a bedroom with one queen-size bed were we slept. If memory serves me, Lennart and Thomas shared the bed, and I slept on the floor, but it was totally OK! We were in Africa for crying out loud! The next morning we got up, and paid our hostess by opening our wallets, and she took whatever money she thought was appropriate (probably a couple of bucks). So, we looked at each other, and realized that our African adventure wasn’t that adventurous, so we took the ferry back to Algeciras, and started our trek back to Sweden. Somewhere along the way, we had run out of money, and we had to wait at some Spanish town for my parents to wire down some Krona, so that we wouldn’t starve on the way back. I remember going to the bank to get the money, and the young female teller said in English “it is a thousand!” Bless my parents; they had wired down 1,000 Swedish Krona (about $212, given the exchange rate at the time). So, we were set, and, if you count the time it took via ferry from Ceuta, our trek from North Africa back to Stockholm took six days, and we just slept on the trains, or wherever we could lay our heads (and no showers, yuk!). I remember coming home in a stupor; I took a shower and slept for fourteen hours straight! What a great adventure!
We probably came home sometime late July, early August, and
we were pretty beat. My grandmother Lily
was on her way to visit my uncle Janne in Alaska, and she asked me if I wanted
to come with her, but for some mysterious reason I said no. In retrospect that was crazy, to give up an
opportunity to go to Alaska, but I was young and crazy. However, I did accompany her down to
Copenhagen, where she had a layover before heading over to Alaska. This was the first time I had ever flown in
an airplane, so it was pretty exciting.
I stayed overnight in Copenhagen, then took the flight back to Stockholm
the next day.
In the fall of 1972 I started eleventh grade, and I don’t
remember anything special, other than going to classes, and hanging out with my
friends on the weekends at clubs and discos, wearing our platform shoes and
boots. Still listening to music such as Talking Book by Steve Wonder, released in October 1972; They Only Come Out at Night by the Edgar Winter Group, released in November, 1972 and Houses of the Holy by Led Zeppelin, which was released in March 1973. We still went to the movies, and we saw the
hits:
Deliverance, released in July 1972
Last Tango in Paris, released in October 1972
The Poseidon Adventure, released in December 1972
Live and Let Die, released in January 1973
Paper Moon, released in May 1973
Also in the spring of 1973, on two separate occasions, I saw
The Who and Led Zeppelin in Stockholm.
The two-and-a-half hour Led Zeppelin concert was absolutely amazing,
more like a religious experience than a show, and I remember walking out after the
show in a trance-like state (also, my ears were probably ringing, which I’m
sure contributed to the trance).
 |
|
Eleventh Grade Class Photo, probably taken in the spring of 1973. I'm middle row, third from the left. I don't remember everybody's name, but here are a few: Sten, Claes, Jan-Erik, Gunnar, Lars, Kjell, Gunvor, Alexsandra, Georg, Sevek, Fredrik, Thomas, Kerstin, Monika, Berit, Janne, Peter, Leif, Per-Erik, Johan, Steven, Lars and Kim. The old guy toward the bottom right hand side was Sven Rudewald, who was our class captain and also our math teacher. Poor soul trying to teach me math... |
 |
|
My Report Card from Eleventh Grade. My grades still suffered, and in math I had
slid into the abyss of an F, from which I never recovered (I think I had
already got lost in eight grade math, and if you are lost in eight grade, you
will probably never recover). I don’t
know what I was doing, but I certainly wasn’t studying! |
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Summer 1973 through Spring 1974
In June of 1973, I got a job as an orderly at Farsta Sjukhus
(Hospital), working first as a summer fill-in orderly, and then on the weekends
during my last year of high school.
Farsta Hospital was opened in 1967, only to be torn down sometime
between 1987-1989, to make room for apartment buildings. The hospital was mainly geared toward
long-term care and rehabilitation, so I don’t think they had any emergency
rooms. My friend Thomas had worked
there, and he suggested I apply, and lo and behold, I got the job! I was 17, and as impressionable as you can be
when you are a teenager. The hospital
was located a 15-20 minute walk from our apartment, so it was very convenient. I worked on ward number three, and we had
some 50-60 patients, most of them elderly.
Many of them had suffered strokes, and the halls were filled with
wheelchairs, which could be operated by one hand, since strokes often affect
one side of the body. I had been warned
about smell hallucinations (also known as phantosmia or olfactory hallucinations),
wherein our brain tricks you in to smells that are not actually present, and
for the first few weeks of working at the hospital, everything had that typical
hospital smell; a combination of urine, feces and disinfectants, but after a
while the hallucinations went away. The
weekend shifts were interesting, 7AM to 5PM on Saturday, then a split shift on
Sunday, 7AM to noon, then 4PM to 9PM.
This was perfect if you had been to the clubs and discos on Saturday
night, since you could go home on Sunday and take a long nap! Also, since most of the orderlies were young
women, this was a pretty great place to be if you were a young guy!
Most of the work consisted of changing the bed linen, changing the
bed-ridden patient’s hospital clothes, and giving them sponge baths. We also fed the patients that couldn’t feed
themselves and occasionally even administer nutrients via feeding tubes,
changing out urinary tract catheter bags, and turning the bed-ridden patients
over every four hours to combat the bed sores.
Bed sores are nasty; once they had developed, they were almost
impossible to heal. Being at an age when
everything leaves an impression, I have a bunch of very vivid memories from my
time at the hospital:
I saw my first dead person, a man in his 60s that had passed
away that afternoon; I couldn’t help myself, and I snuck into the room where he
laid. When I touched him, I was
astonished that he was still warm (rigor mortis does not set in
immediately).
One of my buddies took to me to the hospital morgue, and it
was just like the movies; dead bodies laying under white sheets, with name tags
attached to their toes.
Every ward had a little kitchen, with a coffee percolator
that was operated 24/7. One evening I
must have had seven or eight cups of coffee; that was the first time that I had
experienced a coffee rush, complete with a racing heart!
One of our patients was demented (back then, we didn’t know
about Alzheimer’s disease), an older woman probably in her late 70s. Most of the time she was completely
disoriented, not knowing who she was or where she were, and pretty much
bedridden. I had worked with this
patient for several months, not seeing any improvement in her condition;
however, one day when I entered the room where she was staying, another older
woman was at her bedside. visiting. My
patient, who had been unintelligible for the for the last few months turned
against me, looked me straight in the eye and with a clear voice said, “this is
my sister”. The woman visiting confirmed
that she was indeed my patient’s sister, so even though my patient was normally
in a vegetative state, she still had some long-term memories, one of which had
been triggered by her sister’s visit. I
was astonished!
Since most of the patients were elderly and bed-ridden, the
hospital protocol at the time consisted of giving the patients laxatives twice
a week, in order to ensure that their digestive systems did not stop
working. The laxatives were usually
given on Sunday night and Wednesday night, which made for some heavy cleaning
on Mondays and Thursdays, sometimes changing the bed linen several times during
the day. Ergo, the smell
hallucinations!
The summer of 1973 was unusually warm, and since the
hospital was not air-conditioned, several of our patients suffered from heat
stroke. One of our patients was a
100-year old man, who, due to the heat, was pretty much comatose for three
days, not eating or drinking. We thought
for sure that heat would kill him, but on the fourth day when I came into the
room, he was sitting up in his bed, looking around as if he was looking for his
breakfast. It was astonishing, and
showed all of us the resilience of life!
On our ward no. 3, there was also a young male patient, who
was paralyzed on the right side, and he also had some neurological
problems. When I first saw him at the hospital, I was completely
astonished; I remembered this guy from my fifth-grade class, so we were the
same age! We had gone to school for a year together, and if I remember
correctly, he was a bit of a class clown. The story (never checked by me,
mind you) went that at 16, he had gone off on his 125cc motor bike with his girlfriend
on the back. Since he only had one helmet, he had let his girlfriend use
the helmet, and they went riding. Well, he lost control, and crashed the
motorbike into a stone fence, and hit his bare head on the stone (his
girlfriend was supposedly OK). Ergo, his paralysis and neurological
problems; due to his head injury, he was essentially back to being 4-5 years
old, and he behaved as such. Super sad; some years later I saw him in his
wheelchair briefly in central Stockholm. He had supposedly been
discharged from the hospital, and he was hanging out with some questionable
dudes, but again this was a very brief encounter.
One morning when we made our usual rounds, one of our male
patients was sitting up his bed, holding a Foley urinary catheter in his hand,
with the balloon still inflated (mind you. an inflated Foley catheter balloon
is about the size of a walnut). He had somehow managed to pull out the
catheter out of his bladder, and through the urethra, which must have been very
painful. As someone who has had the "pleasure" of using a Foley
catheter (you can check out my blog posts about my prostate, if you are interested),
just the thought of pulling that thing out makes me cringe, but I guess
anything is possible!
In the summer of 1973 I turned 18, which was a prerequisite
for working the night shift at the hospital. I liked working the night shift;
it was usually pretty light, and I spent a fair amount of racing around on the
three-wheeled scooter to pass the time, doing some routine checks on the
patients.
The fall of 1973, last year of high school, and the world
was my oyster! Chino, who had left
school in 1971, had started working part-time at The Amplifier Doctor, a little
music store run by Thomas Danko, where I met my friend Bjorn Skorge. Bjorn was also part-time, and he was a member
of Synd ock Skam, my first band. Synd
ock Skam was based in Vendelso, a suburb some 30 miles from Stockholm,
consisting of Bjorn on bass, Janne Andersson on lead guitar, and Janne’s
brother Sten Andersson on rhythm guitar.
For some reason, they needed a drummer, and we started practicing in
earnest in around late 1973, early 1974, with me playing my old Premier, which
I recovered in a sort of red velvet covering.
We practiced at Vendelsomalms school, in a sort of void basement, with a
sand floor and no heating, and a rickety wooden staircase. Somebody (maybe Bjorn, Janne and Sten) had
built a stage, so at least we were off the sand floor! I think we used to practice on Sundays, and I
remember taking the bus, rather than driving my car.
After I got my driver’s license in August 1973 and buying my
first car (a black 1962 VW bug) I do remember driving to the hospital for my
shifts, listening to my home-made cassette tapes, mostly Led Zeppelin; life was
good, I had wheels and I was making money!
 |
|
1962 Volkswagen Bettle, complete with an air-cooled
engine which put out a whopping 34 horsepower! The heater never worked; your left foot was
roasting, while the rest of you was freezing.
Same with the defroster; all you could see was a little circular
window to the left of the windshield.
I even remember scraping the windshield on the inside to get the frost
off! |
Also, due to the oil crisis in Sweden in 1973-1974, for a
short while the Swedish government introduced gasoline rationing, and if you
had a car, you were issued a rationing card, pretty much like the food
rationing cards from WWII.
 |
|
Swedish gasoline rationing card from 1973-1974. You were limited to 10 liters (2.64
gallons) of gasoline per fill-up, and I think you only got one fill-up per
week. |
During this time of gas crisis, Chino, ever the adventurer, had traded in his gas-sipping Alfa Romeo 1600 for a gas-guzzling 1969 Cadillac Coupe DeVille (I kid you not, this is the honest to God’s truth), and the dealership had practically given him the old Caddy. I don’t know what compelled Chino to buy the Caddy, but it was COOL and ostentatious, no doubt about it! And during a time when folks had given up driving their cars and turned to mopeds, driving around in a gigantic Caddy meant that you were a somebody (maybe a crazy somebody)!
 |
|
1969 Cadillac Coupe DeVille, just like Chino’s
car. Impractical during normal times,
but during the gas crisis, the car was downright insane, but my word was it
COOL! |
The 69 Caddy had a 472 cubic inch engine (7.7 liter) V-8 engine, which of course sucked gas like there was no tomorrow. At least on one occasion, we pooled together our gasoline rationing cards to fill up the Caddy, so that we could go cruising in downtown Stockholm. Once, we piled in eight of us kids in the car; four in the backseat, and four up front in the bench seat, and there was probably room for few more kids! Chino’s dad Franco called the car “two rooms and a kitchen” due to its size, but, since Franco loved cars as much as the rest of us, he probably secretly loved the Caddy… I don’t think that Chino kept the car for very long, and if I remember correctly, he traded the Caddy in for another Alfa Romeo, a model 2000 this time.
As far as my old VW Bug went, in the spring of 1974, driving
home from a weekend at my friend’s family summer house, my old VW Bug gave up
its ghost going up a long hill in third gear.
Black smoke was coming from the VW’s heating vent, and I probably blew
the engine. Since I was going in the
military service anyway in the fall of 1974, I sold the old Bug back to the
used car dealership where I had gotten it just a few months before, and I’m
sure I just got a pittance for it! Later
that summer, I also sold my Premier drum kit, for the same reason.
But all in all, the fall of 1973 and spring of 1974 were
great! On some club that we frequented, I saw a couple doing the Bump dance for the first time, and Who's That Lady by the Isley Brothers (released in the summer of 1973) became my favorite disco song. During the April Easter break
1974, Chino, his singing partner (whose name escapes me) and I went down to
Majorca, Spain for a week. Chino and his
partner had gotten a gig at a hotel on the island as a two-piece, with Chino
providing the acoustic guitar accompaniment.
I tagged along, probably as a bell boy, but we had a great time. Unfortunately, here is where I developed my
aversion for black olives; one night we ended up at some bar, drinking Sangria
and eating a bunch of black olives. Back
at the hotel, I got violently ill and threw up all the olives, along with a fair
amount of Sangria. Since that fateful
night, I can’t eat black olives, and I for sure stay away from Sangria!
Also, sometime in the spring of 1974, I got slapped in the
face by a girl. Now, you may think that
such an event would be unpleasant (which of course it was to some extent); however,
it turned out to be a true win-win situation.
My buddies and I were at some restaurant-club in Stockholm, having a good
time. At another table sat a group of
girls, probably five of them. All of a
sudden, one of them got up, walked over to me, and slapped me hard across my
face. Well, the girl who slapped me was
good friends with my on-again, off-again girlfriend, and the slapper though
that I had treated my sometime girlfriend badly, and she wanted to display her
displeasure with my bad behavior. So,
where is the win-win? As soon as I got
slapped, my buddies were both astonished and impressed that I could have such
an influence on the opposite sex, and they asked me something like “what was
that all about?”. I answered something
like “well, you know women…”, and my manly stock went way up. Also, the slapper’s friends had all been watching
this unfold, and as she walked back to her table, all her friends were like “you
go girl!”, and, in the eyes of her friends, she was the heroine in this little
drama. This was just like a scene out of
Legally Blonde, where the nerd gets slapped, only to have his manliness elevated. Now, I’m not in any way advocating that a
person should behave badly to get slapped, nor am I suggesting that you should
slap somebody, but if you gonna do it, for maximum impact, do it in public (Will
Smith, anybody?).
So in early June of 1974, I graduated from high school, unfortunately
with lousy grades, all of my own doing.
Rather than studying, I was working at the hospital, probably to make
money to make my car payment and some pocket change for fun. I was also playing with our band Synd ock Skam,
mostly practicing. I stayed at the
hospital through July of 1974, after having worked some 1,100 hours in little
over 12 months (crazy, when did I sleep?).
But since I never studied anyway, it probably wouldn’t have made a
difference… Consequently, I barely
graduated, getting an F in math…
Fortunately, I later redeemed myself academically, but that’s for
another blog post!
Some of my favorite albums were released around this time:
Innervisions, by Steve Wonder, released August 1973
Selling England by the Pound by Genesis, released October 1973
Quadrophenia by The Who, released October 1973
Full Sail by Loggins and Messina, released October 1973
Rock and Roll Animal, by Lou Reed, released February 1974
What Were Once Vices are now Habits by The Doobie Brothers, released in February 1974
Again, we continued to go to the movies to see all the
latest hits:
American Graffiti, released in August 1973
Serpico, released in December of 1973
The Exorcist, released in December 1973
Magnum Force, released December 1973
Papillon, released in December 1973
The Sting, released in December 1973
Blazing Saddles, released in February 1974
Sweet Movie, released in June 1974
 |
|
Spring 1974 Class Photo; I'm middle row, second from the left. Again, I don't remember everybody, but here are some names: Janne, Per-Erik, Johan, Sven-Erik, Sten, Lasse, Kjell, Fredrick, Claes, Steven, Lars, Thomas, Sevek, Gunnar, Gunvor, Georg, Kerstin, Jan-Erik, Kim, Leif, Peter, Alexsandra, Berit, Monika and Ulf. |
 |
|
Spring 1974 Twelfth Grade Final Report Card. Pretty much all Cs and Ds, and the miserable F in math. Fortunately, by the fall of 1996 I had redeemed myself by earning a Batchelor's Degree in Chemical Engineering from California State University, Long Beach. Now that degree required some gnarly math! |
 |
|
My performance review from Farsta Hospital, dated July
31, 1974. Apparently my behavior had
been very good, and my performance had been most satisfactory! |
Summer 1974 through Summer 1975
In August 1974, after I quit working at the hospital,
Lennart, Thomas and I went out on the Eurorail railway pass, determined to see
more of Europe. For some reason, we
wanted to travel through Great Britain, and we traveled all the way from
Stockholm up to Kirkwall, on the Orkney Islands. On the way up through Scotland via Edinburgh
and Glasgow (I think), we happened upon Kyle of Lochalsh, a quaint little
village. The train station was also the
post office, a bar and a little hotel, so we decided to stay the night. For some reason, the water coming out of the
tap was a tea-colored brown, and when we inquired in the bar, they informed us
that it was the usual mineral rich water, and they were all drinking it! Now, when I look at pictures of Kyle of Lochalsh,
I don’t remember that it sat right on the water, so maybe this is one of those
fuzzy memories, I make no guarantees!
 |
|
Kyle of Lochalsh in the north of Scotland. |
From Kyle of Lochalsh we made our way up to Inverness, to catch the ferry to Kirkwall (apparently, today there is no ferry from Inverness to Kirkwall, so it is possible that we had to travel from Inverness to some other port, but my memory is a bit cloudy). However, we made it to Kirkwall, we did make it, and we stayed at a private bed and breakfast, just a room in a modest house. I remember walking toward our lodging, and people had goats in their front yards, very quaint. After we settled in to our lodgings, we went to a local bar for some refreshments, and it was right out of a western movie; when we walked in to the bar, the four or so locals stopped what they were doing, and turned around to sum us up. We were just some long-haired tourists, and after the initial assessment, the locals went back to their drinking. We stayed the night in Kirkwall, and in the morning our hostess presented us with an enormous breakfast; eggs, sausages, bread and meats, and whatever else the folks on the Orkney’s eat, much different from the usual Swedish breakfast which usually consists of toast and butter.
 |
|
Kirkwall, Orkney Islands. |
However, for all its charm, Kirkwall was COLD, being almost as far north as Stockholm, and also being right out in the north Atlantic. So, the three of us made a decision right then and there that we must see the SUN! Long story short, we decided to travel all the way down from Kirkwall in the Orkneys down to Corsica (or Corse), in the Mediterranean. It took us three days to travel; first ferry from Kirkwall to the Scottish mainland; then train from Scotland down to London; then train from London to Dover; then ferry across the English Channel to Calais in France; from Calais train to Paris; from Paris train to Nice; then ferry from Nice to Corsica, and we never stopped to sleep, just napped on the trains. A couple of memories from that trip stand out in my minds eye:
The ferry across the English Channel was crazy; all of a
sudden we were caught in a storm, and it seemed like the ferry was being tossed
around like a little toy boat. We had originally
settled in to the busy dining area of the ferry to have a little lunch, but
after the boat started rocking like crazy, we were pretty much the only ones
left. The furniture should have been an
indication; the chairs were tethered to the floor via steel cables, and the tables
had a raised rim around them, about an inch tall, supposedly to prevent plates
and glasses from slipping off the tables.
I also seem to remember a waiter sliding across the floor holding up a
tray because the ferry was rocking so violently, but this may be one of those
fabricated and / or exaggerated memories, I make no guarantees (after all, some
50 years have passed since then)! (At
some point I need to check with Lennart and Thomas…)
The ferry from Nice to Corsica was a night ferry, and we all slept in our sleeping bags on the aft deck of the boat, with the exhaust from the diesel engines being belched right across where we were sleeping. When we woke up the next morning, we were all sticky and oily, but what the heck, we were in Corsica, and the sun was shining!
 |
|
The island of Corsica.
|
I don’t remember where we stayed; according to Google, the ferry from Nice stops at places like Ajaccio, Bastia, L’Ile Rousse and Porto-Vecchio, so it could have been any of these places. The only thing that mattered was the sun and the beach, and I do remember that we stayed in a little Frensch pension, in a sleepy little town. We had a great time, and we were finally able to thaw out from our trip to Scotland and the Orkneys. My memories of Corsica are all wonderful, and they will remain so.
Sadly, here is a little side note about Corsica; when we were
there in the late summer of 1974, there was no evidence of what later became known
as the Corsican conflict. At the core of
the conflict is a historical and ongoing nationalist movement seeking greater
autonomy from France, fueled by cultural and economic grievances. The conflict started in the spring of 1976,
between the French government and various Corsican nationalist militant groups. It is almost unfathomable that such a quaint
and wonderful island could be wracked by such violence, which apparently peaked
in the 1980s before the Corsican nationalist groups and the French government
reached a truce. However, the conflict has
continued well into the 21 century, with the latest violence flaring up in 2022. Bombings, shootings, murders and street violence
seems to be the rule, rather than the exception. Sad indeed…
I think we stayed in
Corsica for some four to five days, before heading back to Nice in France
proper. For some reason, the three of us
had some little squabble or disagreement, probably over what to do and where to
go next. So, for some silly reason, the
three of us split up, and I went to Venice (and slept on the sidewalk with a group
of Americans), then to Milan, and from Milan to Vienna, Austria. Nothing memorable; I was pretty disappointed with
Vienna, and after everything was said and done, I think I only stayed out on
this trip some three weeks, as opposed to the planned 30 days.
The fall of 1974 was not a great time; I remember feeling
low and defeated, not much to look forward to, I just wanted to get my
compulsory military service over with, which started in October of that year. My car had blown up, Synd ock Skam was taking
a break, I had sold my drums, and I found myself not being a kid, but not
really being an adult either. However, in the meantime, by the early fall
of 1974 I was working at Pressbyron, which was (and still is) a chain of small
convenience stores, mostly located adjacent to the subway stations in
Stockholm’s vast subway system. I
remember working at a store in Tallkrogen, which was about a 20 minute walk
from our apartment, a not very fascinating or rewarding job, but I did make
some money! Back then we did not have
cash registers at the stores; instead we just made change in a change drawer,
and then did a reconciliation at the end of the day. One of the benefits of working in a
convenience store without a cash register was that one got pretty good at
adding and subtracting, since most purchases were small; a pack of cigarettes,
a newspaper and a candy bar. I remember one time being so quick at adding
numbers in my head that the numbers just appeared in front of my eyes, almost
like a chemical reaction rather than an actual calculation!
 |
|
A stock picture of a typical Pressbyron kiosk. Even though this picture was probably taken
sometime in the 1950s / 1960s, by the time I started working at Pressbyron in
1974 not much had changed; the customer would walk up to the window and make
a purchase, pay and the merchandise would be handed over. The kiosk would be stocked with candy,
cigarettes, newspapers, magazines and books. |
 |
|
A typical Pressbyron kiosk. |
 |
|
Our platoon marching toward the Royal Castle in
Stockholm for a 48 hour guard duty.
This was probably taken early spring 1975. I’m second from the left. Around 1972-1973, there had been a lot of
complaints that the soldiers drafted into the compulsory military service had
to cut their hair, so by the time I served in 1974-1975, we could keep our
long hair, as long as we wore hairnets during formal exercises like this
one. |
 |
|
Our full platoon, dressed in formal uniforms. This was probably spring 1975. I’m middle row, second from the right. Top row, first from the right was my friend
Lennart Duvsjo (not the singer); we would carpool on the weekends. One Saturday driving home from the
barracks, I had insisted on driving his car, and lo and behold, I crashed it! All the money I had saved up from working
at the Pressbyron on the weekends was gone; it all went to repair his
car. Nevertheless, he never held a
grudge, and we stayed friends throughout our military service. Unfortunately, as so often happens, after
our military service, we lost contact.
|
 |
|
My final performance review from the Swedish Army, May
30, 1975. My behavior in the service
had been really good, my overall competence satisfactory, and my ability to
serve was great! |
Chinatown, released in June 1974
Murder on the Orient Express, released in November 1974
Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, released in December 1974
The Towering Inferno, released in December 1974
Young Frankenstein, released in December 1974
The Return of the Pink Panther, released in May 1975
Fast forward to late May, 1975, after I had fulfilled my military
service. Since I had a pretty good
record working at the Pressbyron convenience stores, I got a summer job at the
Pressbyron newspaper and magazine delivery hub on Nordenflychtsvagen in
Stockholm, driving a stake bed truck. I
remember going to the interview still wearing my army shirt (which, after about
a hundred washes, had become super soft and comfortable), and I pretty much
went straight from the Army discharge to my summer job. My boss was a little apprehensive, since I
was the youngest driver they had hired, but I got the job nevertheless. I mostly delivered pallets of books from the
hub to some location that I can’t remember (this was 1975 after all), and I
stayed there until late summer 1975, when I entered the University of
Stockholm, studying music theory. One of
the cool features of the building on Nordenflychtsvagen was the pneumatic tube
delivery system, which delivered intra-office messages and mail. The system relied on air pressure to deliver
cylindrical capsules filled with the mail through a tube system in the
walls. Each office had tube hubs, where
you would place the filled cylinders and send them on their way. Even much later when I was working at Home
Depot in Laguna Hills, CA, we had a similar system to carry cash and checks
from the front cash registers to the back room, where the bookkeeper would
reconcile the money.
In the middle of the summer of 1975, I had (or rather my dad
had) found a little studio apartment in Gubbangen, that I could sub-lease for
very little money.
 |
|
My first apartment on Gubbangsvagen 108(ish). |
The studio apartment was probably all of 200 square feet (about 18.6 square meters) with a little kitchenette built into a closet, and a powder room with a toilet and a sink. But it was cool; I was just turning 20, and I had my own place! For showers I would just make the 20 minute trek to my parent’s apartment, or shower at Gubbangsbadet for a dollar. I stayed in that little apartment for at least a year, until I found a bigger apartment further south.
 |
|
My final proof of employment from Pressbyron as a
summer fill-in driver, dated 22 of August, 1975. Since my employment had been just short of
three months, no performance review was given. |
So, that kinda concludes this Part Three of Things I Think I Remember, I Think… Looking back, I had a great childhood, great parents who tried hard and great friends, many of whom I still see today whenever I go back to Sweden for a visit. Funny, even though Sweden is blanketed by snow for at least six months out of the year, I don’t have many winter memories, which probably explains why Southern California suits me so well! If you by chance have enjoyed this little journey, you can check out the continuation in some of my other blog posts, such as “Working for a Living, Part One” and “For the Love of Music, Drums and Lifelong Friendships, Part One”. Enjoy!
Comments
Post a Comment