Winter…
Nevertheless, I did live in Sweden for 25 years, which meant
that I experienced 25 winters, so there must be something I remember from these
cold, dark snowy times. By the way, I
have my own theory of living in a place that experiences “real” seasons; I call
it a Winter Personality followed by a Summer Personality. (I did a quick Google search around this
topic, and for once I didn’t find much, so maybe this could be an area for
“real” research. However, Seasonal
Affective Disorder is recognized as a mood disorder, which is usually
associated with reductions or increases in total sunlight hours that occur
during winter or summer). At least for
me, my Winter Personality is introverted, gloomy, pessimistic and misanthropic. However, my Summer Personality is just the
opposite; extroverted, optimistic, enthusiastic and humanitarian. As you can well expect from somebody that has
chosen to live in sunny Southern California for over 40 years, I’m much more
comfortable with my Summer Personality than my Winter Personality, and my
Winter Personality has pretty much disappeared altogether (except for those few
occasions that I see snow).
So, for a devoted Summer Personality like myself, winters
were usually tedious, and for the most part just involved waiting for spring
and summer. Also, if you aren’t
interested in winter sports like Ice Hockey, Bandy (which is a Scandinavian ice
sport played on an iced-down soccer field, with 11 skaters on each team chasing
a red ball using field hockey sticks) or Skiing (or like me, maybe you aren’t
interested in sports at all), then winters involve a lot of staying indoors,
warming up, eating and sleeping. Also,
just the sheer craziness of the logistics of winter can be overwhelming with
the winter clothes, winter boots (that never seem to dry out), overcoats,
winter hats, and gloves, gloves and more gloves! Burrrrr! When we went back to Sweden for a visit in early April 2024 I was freezing, and my dear friend Lennart was laughing at me for wearing gloves in April! By the way, if you are interested in our little trip to Sweden, you can check out my son Michael's blog Korvmikael.com for a little travel log; he documented our trip very nicely!
But, winter memories I have, and I’ll try to catalogue them
below in some sort of chronological order, to give some idea of what the
winters back in Sweden were like for me.
As usual, I’ve borrowed freely from my other blog posts as I see fit,
but I make no excuses! If you can re-use
something, then go ahead!
One of my first memories ever probably took place around the
winter of 1958, when I was three years old.
My dad took me down to Hökarängsbadet (our local Hokarangen swimming
beach) and the frozen Drevviken lake. I
remember there was a row boat on the shore, all covered in snow, and I was all
bundled up in the usual one-piece snow suit that pretty much all kids wear in
cold weather.
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Hökarängsbadet in winter. |
My next winter memory is probably around the same time; however, this memory is probably just a phantom, because I was told about this little incident by my dad numerous times. The story goes that me (the supposed ringleader) and my friends had covered up the drain in the apartment house basement where we lived with a piece of plywood, turned on the water, and dragged Christmas trees down in the now flooded basement to use the trees as canoes. Later the apartment superintendent came up to scold me and my parents, and suffice it to say, we never did that again…
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Me and my little friends probably looked something
like this… |
I was about four years old when we moved to my grandparents apartment on Stiernhielmsvagen in Kungsholmen, Stockholm. I remember making igloos with my friend Ralf on the little embankment outside my grandparents’ apartment where the snow was piled high waiting for spring. Also, I remember wearing a knitted gray woolen winter hat with a pom-pom and matching woolen mittens, which had a long woolen string that attached the two mittens. The idea was that you would hang the mittens around your neck, and then put your winter jacket on and the string would ensure that you wouldn’t lose your mittens. Because we played in the snow, the mittens were always damp…
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Woolen mittens on a string. |
In the fall of 1962, at the age of seven, I started school
at Kristinebergsskolan, which was probably some 15 minutes away from my
grandparents’ apartment, as fast as a seven-year-old can walk. There were probably 20-25 kids in my class,
and in the winter, after our little recesses when we played in the snow, there
would be 20-25 pairs of woolen mittens and 20-25 pairs of woolen socks on the
back radiator, to be dried until the next recess.
In the video below, at about 15 minutes in, you can see Kristinebergsskolan on an unusually nice
and sunny winters day.
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Kristinebergsskolan in winter. |
Crazy enough, my next winter memory was around 1967, when I was about twelve. I remember sledding with Lennart, Chino and Thomas, and we would take our sleds from Russinvagen down the walkway down to the Kryddboden playground. It would take about 10 minutes to drag our sleds up the hill from the playground to Russinvagen, then some 30 seconds to go back down. If nothing else, we got a lot of exercise!
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Russinvagen in the winter. Bleak... |
I also remember taking my bicycle out in the snow, even though it was very difficult to pedal, but it was really hard not to ride a bicycle for some six months, when during the summer we pretty much lived on our bicycles. Nevertheless, riding a bicycle in the winter is hard on the lungs, breathing all that cold air, so our bicycles usually stayed in storage between October and March. I also vaguely remember playing ice hockey, but I had weak ankles, and I could only turn to the left, so I did not play much…
During the late 60s, we were issued tooth guards and ice
hockey helmets by the schools, in an attempt to cut down on injuries. How about just not playing hockey or
bandy! Also, unless the temperature got
down to minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus 4 Fahrenheit), we were expected to get
outside during recess, and play ice hockey for phys ed, no whining
allowed. Brrrrrr!
The bane of shoes and boots in the Swedish winter is the
salt that is used to melt the snow on the sidewalks, and as the snow melts, it
leaves a salt ring on your shoes and boots.
Around 1969, we started going to clubs and discos, using our fake
IDs. We also started to be interested in
fashion, and I remember trying to brush out the salt stains out of my
fashionable boots with shoe polish.
Also, it was important to have cool-looking overcoat, and we never
wanted to wear hats!
Cat Ballou, our favorite disco at the time, had a cloak room
where you would hand your heavy jacket or overcoat to the cloak room attendant,
and in exchange you got a little claim ticket so you could get your stuff back
after an evening of disco dancing. Then
it was back out in the snow; good thing the subway station was really
close!
Oftentimes memories that involve embarrassment sticks with
us for a long time, and my memory of a ski trip that we took in ninth grade is
one of those memories. This must have
been the winter of 1970-1971, and we took a trip to one of the local skiing
hills in Stockholm. We probably went to
Hammarbybacken, which is a little ski resort very close to Stockholm proper,
which can be easily reached via the Stockholm subway. Since I didn’t own any downhill skis (due to
my disinterest in skiing in general), I had bought myself a pair of K-Tel Mini
Skis, which could be strapped onto pretty much any winter boot. I also didn’t own any proper ski clothes, but
I just dressed in my jeans and jeans jacket, and I thought I looked really
cool! Now, the K-Tel Mini Skis are not
for beginners; they are super slippery, and unless you really know what you’re
doing, they don’t offer any control whatsoever.
But, there were girls on the trip, so I had to show them what I could
do! I went up to the top via the T-Bar
lift, and on the way down I lost control, turned backwards, and the little
short backends of the K-Tels went into the snow, and I fell backwards on my
back, SPLAT! Not only did I get wet from
the snow, but if I remember correctly, there were a bunch of kids and girls
looking at me, which added to the embarrassment. I may have gone up to the top a couple of
more times, but I know I left early, and I took the subway back home to
Hokarangen, tail between my legs. I
don’t think I skied after that, until I got drafted into the Swedish Army in
1974.
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K-Tel Plastic Mini Skis. No metal edges, and slippery as glass. Also, since they were strapped onto your
winter boots with those skinny little straps, they were of course wobbly and
pretty much uncontrollable. |
After I got my driver’s license in August of 1973, I had bought a 1962 VW Bug in the fall, and when the first snow came in October of 1973, my friend Lennart (who drove his old Ford Anglia of Harry Potter fame) and my friend Chino (who, being Italian, drove an Alfa Romeo 1600), we went out to “practice” driving in the snow. My VW Bug did not have snow tires; in fact, the tires were probably pretty bald. Well, long story short; I lost control and drove right into a metal fence, and smashed in the front of the car. Fear not; I got a chain which I wrapped around a light pole, and then wrapped the chain around the bent front bumper, and with some vigorous backing up, I managed to pull out the dented front, enough so that at least the lights pointed forward. I do remember driving my old VW bug in the winter of 1973-1974 to my part-time job at Farsta Hospital, listening to my home-made cassette tapes. Driving the old VW bug in the winter was an interesting experience; no heat except for the heat vent which kept my left foot steaming hot, which the rest of the cab stayed ice cold. Same with the defroster; you got a little oval of clear sight in the lower left hand corner of the windshield, but that was about it. It was not unusual to have to scrape the inside of the windshield while driving, and all the winter clothes stayed on! However, being that the VW bug had a rear-mounted engine with most of the weight in the back, I hardly ever got stuck in the snow, and if I got stuck, it was easy to get unstuck! Just put the VW in second gear, and then get out and push, and when the old bug got going, just jump back into the driver’s seat and off I went!
I had started to play with our band Synd ock Skam in the
fall of 1973, and after our rhythm guitarist Sten left the band, we jammed a couple of times with Marcus "Mackan" Petterson who played guitar, and who was friends with Janne and Bjorn since middle school. Mackan wore an eyepatch, since he had had some sort of accident at work. I went with him in my VW bug to his house on
the outskirts of Stockholm to pick his amplifier, and as I was backing down his
driveway with the drivers side door open, there was a pile of snow in the way of
the door, but I didn’t care, it was just snow after all! No it wasn’t; it was a snow-covered boulder,
and as the door hit the boulder, it crinkled up my car door. Yet another ding to the poor old bug, but
such is driving in the snow!
I also remember walking across the school yard at Gubbangens
Gymnasium in the winter, and slipping on the ice, and my feet went straight up
in the air, and I landed flat on my butt and back. Good thing I didn’t break my head!
I got drafted into the Swedish Army in the fall of 1974, and
we were stationed about an hour’s drive north of Stockholm proper. The winter of 1974-1975 was unseasonably
warm, and we got no snow around Stockholm.
So in order to complete our winter warfare training, we had to travel up
to the northern parts of Sweden for a couple of weeks’ worth of winter
training. First thing we were issued was
wooden cross-country skis, probably from the 1930s. The key to wooden cross-country skis is the
grip wax or kick wax, which is selected for various snow conditions, such as
wet or dry snow. If you choose the wrong
grip wax, the snow will either stick onto the bottom of your skis, and you
won’t get any glide, or you lose traction altogether, and you won’t be going
anywhere.
Next thing we had to learn was how to be towed on our skis
behind a big truck, called “tolka”. So,
some ten of us from our platoon strapped on skis, grabbed the rope that was
tied to the back of the truck, and off we went.
As long as there was snow on the road, everything went well; however, we
hit a patch where the snow had melted and there was just gravel, which pretty
much stopped us cold. Needless to say,
we all crashed in a big heap, and that was the lesson for the day.
In the service, I was training to be a medic (maybe because
I had worked at Farsta Hospital), and as such I had to learn how to drag a
large sled behind me, which would mimic dragging a human body. I strapped on my ancient skis, and I also
strapped on the sled, which was probably 6 feet long and loaded with dummy land
mines, which probably weighed some 200 lbs.
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You get the idea I’m sure… |
In addition to the sled, I was also loaded with my medic bag, and of course my rifle and ammunition bags, and dressed in heavy army woolens. Well, we were heading downhill, and as you can expect, I wiped out and ended up in a snowbank. I was stuck in the snow waist-deep, and with the sled tied to me, I couldn’t get up. I called for my platoon buddies “Help, Help, Help”, and they had to dig me out.
We also spent a night or two out in the snow in our big tent; a giant yurt-looking abomination made from the heaviest canvas ever. It came in a big box that took at least two of us to carry, and it slept 16 of us, all laying in a circle. In the middle was a stove with a big chimney that also held up the tent, and we took turns feeding the stove throughout the night for warmth. The idea was to find a reasonably flat area, pack down the snow, erect the tent, and then cut fir tree branches to sleep on. No sleeping bags, we just used our heavy winter jackets for bedding. Now that was indeed roughing it!
Other than that, my army winter warfare training involved
being out in the snow all day, and then getting back to the barracks in the
early evening and spending an hour or two in the sauna to warm up. I just don’t like the snow and the cold…
I started working full-time as a driver in the spring of
1976 delivering newspapers and magazines to the little tobacconists, kiosks and
convenience stores in and out of Stockholm, and of course we worked in the
winter, I just don’t have many winter memories during this time.
However, in September 1977, I got tired of working the split
shift as a driver at Pressbyron, and I got a job as a dairy delivery driver at
Mjolkcentralen (the milk central) Arla.
The central dairy was located pretty much in the center of Stockholm,
and from there we would deliver all kinds of dairy products to stores and
restaurants such as milk, yoghurt, cream, etc.
The main loading area was a giant cooler, which was kept at a steady 2
degrees Celsius (about 36 degrees Fahrenheit), and to get to our dressing room,
we walked through the cooler. That fall,
it was warmer in the cooler than it was outside, so I would go through the
cooler and take off my beanie and gloves and open my jacket to warm up!
In late January 1978 I was back at Presam as a driver, this
time working day shifts, starting at a reasonable 8AM. Initially I was delivering newspapers, but
later on I had the good fortune to get transferred to the big trucks,
delivering candy and chips exclusively to the Pressbyron kiosks. The candy and chips delivery was heavy work;
there were two of us to our truck, and we would alternate driving every other
day. We had special hand trucks that
would carry a heavy load, and going down the stairs to the subway stations, one
of us would be in front with our backs to the hand truck and the other in the
back, holding on to the hand truck (this was before all the subway stations
were retrofitted with elevators). In the
winter, we had shovels to clear the snow from the stairs and steel rods to hack
away the ice, just so we could get down safely.
Also, our truck was equipped with boxes of sand, which were located near
the rear wheels, and the boxes could be opened from the cab, to spread sand in
front of the rear wheels, so we wouldn’t get stuck in the snow. Furthermore, the locking rear differential on
the truck helped if we got stuck.
Fast forward to the brutal winter of 1978-1979, which was one of the coldest winters that northern Europe had experienced in the 20th century. As far as I remember, it stayed below -20 degrees Celsius (-4 Fahrenheit) for six weeks, which was highly unusual, since during my military service in 1974-1975 we had experienced what we call a “green winter” with pretty much no snow and mild temperatures. So, the winter of 1978-1979 came as a cold surprise. In fact, it was sooooo cold that the lawyers kept their hands in their own pockets! Ha, Ha, Ha! Since I had the habit of buying a $500 clunker car every six months, during this time I was driving an old Opel, which had an automatic transmission. Since it is very difficult to push start an automatic (as opposed to the old VW bugs, which you could put in second gear and pretty much push yourself to get started), and since I parked outside by my little condo, I would take the battery out of the Opel, put it on a little plastic sled, and drag the battery to my condo and put it on a charge overnight, so that I had a freshly charged battery in the morning to start the Opel. This went on for weeks and weeks... I couldn't wait 'till spring!
Since at the time I was an impressionable 24-year-old, the Global Cooling (yes, that is Cooling) dogma has stuck with me, very much like the Global Warming and then the Climate Change dogma has put an indelible mark on Gen X and the Millennials. Maybe we all just need a bit of healthy skepticism of the media, which lives and dies by the next crisis and tells us that the apocalyptic annihilation of humankind is just 10 years away, UNLESS WE TAKE ACTION NOW!!!!!! Much
later when I was teaching at Cal State Fullerton, I would tell my students that
back in 1978 we were worried about global cooling, not global warming, and they
would look at me incredulously! Tongue-in-cheek I would tell them "don't worry about global cooling, we boomers fixed it for you!"
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This is the news we got in the late 1970s. Couple that with the brutal winter of 1978-1979, and you can understand why we thought that the next ice-age was imminent! Like David St. Hubbins of Spinal Tap fame said, “I believe virtually everything I read, and I think that is what makes me more of a selective human than someone who doesn't believe anything”. Well said! |
Now, my friend Janne from our old band Synd ock Skam had moved to California around 1979, to pursue a music career in Los Angeles. So, in the fall of 1980, my friend Anders and I had decided to take a little vacation and go and surprise Janne, who was living in Long Beach at the time. So, in November of 1980, Anders and I indeed surprised Janne in Long Beach, where we stayed with him for around 10 days.
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Visiting Southern California in November 1980; no snow
on the ground, the sun is out, and I’m wearing a tee shirt! I must be in paradise! By the way, I think this picture was taken
in Irvine, where Janne had an aunt. |
Well, I loved everything about Southern California (especially the weather), so by the end of January 1981, I was back in California for good, to pursue my own adventure, and so far, I’ve never looked back! Now, a little caveat; if you wanna live the good life in Southern California, you better be prepared to work hard… Whatever they say, the sun is not free…
On that note, you can check out a couple of my other blog
posts (and you’ll get the idea):
Working for a living Part Two: Working like crazy; a tale of despair and
redemption: January 1981 through
December 1996.
Working for a Living, Part Three: Pretending to be a professional, January 1997 – Summer 2025.
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