kurt1

Memoirs from a “Kulladalare”                                                                                                                                                                      .                                             Hi; My story is this;- - -. I was born in “Kulladal” a little suburb to Malmö, a city in the southern part of Sweden. The date of my birth was March 30, 1927.My parents where Ruth and Oscar Nilsson, my dad was a “crane-operator” working for the city of Malmö unloading ships that came with coal and the coal was transformed into “coal-gas” and   to fire the turbines to produce electricity.   My mother’s parents were fishermen and her dad was a part time preacher in the local church, I don’t remember him very well, he died when I was around six or seven (I think). My dads parents were farmhands on a big farm, “Goods”, that had a castle on and belonged to some nobility (this is what I gather from stories that I have been told). I never saw my grand father; he died before I was born, my grandmother on dad’s side died when I was around 10 or 12.
I left school at the tender age of 14 and went to work as a delivery boy for a warehouse, delivering paper goods using a hand-drawn two-wheeled cart, Heavy work to say the least. I lasted the better part of three months or so, tried a few other jobs in offices etc. and eventually became a bus boy in a summer restaurant in Höllviken, then at Restaurant “Amiralen”, which was part of a big “amusement park” that housed rollercoaster, outdoor zoo, a couple of arcades, one big dance arena for modern contemporary music and another one out in the “park area” for old style dances, a flower garden and a bunch of “kiddy”-rides./
I joined the navy 1943; it lasted 2-1/2 years, ‘till the “big war” ended .in 1944. I met my true love who was to become my wife and life’s companion and mother to my three children. We met at a dance hall called “Nalen”, which had two large rooms and two orchestras, one for s.k. “old style music (polkas, schottische’s (?) Etc. the other, modern ballroom dancing, including the new fad the “jitter-bug,” in which we became somewhat proficient in doing. The war ended in April 1945 and I was sent home to Malmö by the navy, My dear Mariana and I became separated and it took about a year and a half before we again became an item”, there was a period where I was pursuing a variety of work, including Jobs on the “High Seas” as a cook after that I found a job in a hotel in saltsjöbaden, east of Stockholm. During this time apart, she had given   birth to our son (Roly).I became a waiter, a cooks helper, a cook and In July 31/1948 Mariana and I Married, the reason it took so long was; I did not want to ask my dad for permission to marry, (we had to be 21 years old by law to get married without the consent of our parents), and we had no money as we had to pay for it ourselves. We eventually had one more child; this was “Kikia” (Eva Christina Desiree’). (Whoever said that “newborn are beautiful” was my thought when they brought her out for me to see just an hour or so after she was born), well eventually my opinions about that changed.
     By now I had a cook’s job with the “Grand Hotel” of Stockholm. I moved around to a variety of hotels to gain proficiency in the “culinary arts”. We then immigrated to Canada in 1951. I was the first to leave, my family would catch up later, all due to “shortage of funds as well as I had no idea or concept of what it would be like out there in the so called “wild west” , This was an exiting time for me, I had no desire to emigrate to Canada, but a friend of mine ( Harry Holm) did, so he asked if I would go to the Canadian embassy in Stockholm and inquire how to go about becoming an immigrant to Canada. The only way to do that according to the staff at the embassy was to apply to become one. This I did and in less than two weeks I stood there with tickets in my hand and a travel itinerary, the tickets were issued for passage on “Cunnard “ lines “M/S Georgic” to depart from Southampton, England, July 12 1951 to arrive in Halifax 5 days later-, and I had about three weeks to get ready and the total sum of $ 35.00 as travel funds. ,- were I was to board a train to take me to Vancouver and subsequently to Victoria BC (but I didn’t get to Victoria ‘till September 1972) . However my friend never made it to Canada! He ended up in Finland. I made it to Vancouver with the total sum of $ 27.00 still in my pocket. My dear wife, and the reason for the emigration (one of them), Roly and Christina, were to follow in November, which they did. We settled in Vancouver and eventually Burnaby. My, first job as a cook, was with CPR as a cook on a work train up in the Kootenai , a place called Altamere, near Lake Windermere and the village of Invermere, I lasted ten days. The biggest reason for me quitting so soon was that all my belongings were at the receiving dock in Vancouver CPR station and I was charged a fee for everyday it was held there. No one advised me, or helped in any way shape or form, at the immigration office. Once you landed you were totally on your own. Next job was with the Hotel Georgia, In Vancouver, where I stayed better part of a year. I then moved on to the “Hotel Vancouver”/
That was the first part of my so called “book”/. A more comprehensive description of my entire life is to follow although not as comprehensive as I would have liked it to be.
.The “Highlights” of my life after I was 79.5 or 80 years old would look like this:
Starting as far back as I can remember , about age two,( so I was told by my parents): I was sick in bed , apparently suffering with Chickenpox, whooping-cough and measles, all at the same time and was not expected to survive. But I did not know I was sick, my brother Bertil had gotten a wind-up train running around in circles, half of the tracks run under my bed, I cried because I wanted it or at least play with it also. Next, on my third or fourth birthday faster Eva gave me a little celluloid doll on a “sucker”, a girl visiting with her parents grabbed it and crushed it, I think I cried for an hour. I also remember about that time the walls and roof of the house were up but still a lot of clay and mud in piles were laying about and I suppose ready to be backfilled around the house and my brother had a little wheelbarrow and a decent little shovel and allowed to help filling the dirt next to the house and I wanted to help. Someone gave me a rusty old little spade or shovel so I would quit my crying and “bellyaching” Well the stupid shovel lasted about two three minutes and then broke in half, it was rusted all out, so here I was crying again. I don’t remember what happened after that, but the house got built anyway.
    I remember moving in to the “big” house my dad had just finished building, we did not have steps in to it yet so we used a ladder in through the back door. We had a cat named Max, He “pooped” on my mother’s foot once and she kicked and it landed ten feet away. One day my mother was going to bake and opened the oven door to a coal and wood fired stove and there was Max, dead, he had jumped in when the oven door was left open and there was no heat yet but warm from earlier use, so he laid down and my mother closed the door to it and proceeded to make a fire, and Max died. He was buried below our front room window.
This all was when I was very young, between 2 and 6.roughly.
     At seven years of age I started school and I had already learned to read because my sister Inga-Brita and cousin Maj-Lis who lived with us then taught me to read and print (writing using block letters),so for the next two years I was one of the “smartest“ kids in our class. Elementary class teachers name was “Julia Pålsson”. In grade three 1 slacked off ‘cause’ the teacher only seemed to like kids who had “well-to- do” parents, he was also a “Nazi”-sympathizer, no connection. Teachers name was”Sievert Hallgren. We also had the principal half day, His name was Sjöholm an older guy, to old for the army, nice and “mellow” sort of a guy.
     I left school at the age of 14 (grade seven) and went to what was called “fortsättnings skola” (school after regular elementary school) one day a week for two years, were I learned a little “home-economics,” cooking and woodwork. At this time I also got my first job as a delivery boy at a paper company warehouse, then after three months and hating every day of it I got a job in a ‘summertime only’ restaurant, near the beach of “Höllviken”, as a “bus-boy”. I loved it because I had my own room nestled way into the pine-trees; I shared the house, not the room, with three girls who also worked there as pantry-girls, i.e. cold-kitchen, also called “gardemanger”. Then I got a job with a combination Amusement park-Tivoli-restaurant, Called “Amiralen” (the Admiral). It had a huge Dance arena which I learned to love , learned to dance and spend all my spare time and money for a few years. The park was called “Folkets Park” (The peoples Park) Then after that I got a job with a big insurance company as an “office-boy”, there were about 25 of us “kids”, in this big office, running back and forth with all sorts of papers from one office to the other, up and down elevators, long hallways to negotiate, good job but low pay.
A Former Busboy I used to work with at a restaurant, talked me into taking over his job at another office, a “long-shore” company. That was the job I had just prior to joining the navy in 1943 October. I was accepted as a “volunteer” at the age of 16.We had to spend a few days at the Stockholm Navy Base, called Sheppsholmen and go through a series of aptitude tests. The testing carried on for three days, physical, mental and academic. I cleared the test #3 from the top, (except for the physical were I am sure I just made it,) out of 600 applicants. (I was proud!). I liked the first six months or so. I had applied to become a Radio-operator but failed, mainly because I had a “lousy” handwriting that was hard if not impossible to decipher during testing of Morse code skills. I was picked for sonar operator because I had very keen ears and eyes and was considered ideal for submarine as a sonar operator on submarines and I had no desire to be on a submarine,-ever. I was very disillusioned and decided I wanted out of the navy and proceeded to try to brake my 4 year contract, which could only be done by “misbehaving”, a little. Small bouts of insubordination, “a.w.o.l.”(absent without leave) , coming back late from leaves done the trick but it took a long time, about a year, but the war ended, luckily   for me or it would have taken a lot longer. One interesting part of my navy day was that I spent the summer of ’44, at least part of it, on the world’s smallest “full-rigger/square-rigger, a sailing ship named
“Jarramas”, it had a crew of 90 of which 70 where from the Sea-mans school to which I belonged. It was “unique” in many ways; it had no machinery at all, no weapons except the skipper’s side-arms, a pistol. That was used to target shoot seagulls by the officers, of which there was three, and there were about 4 non-com officers, a few corporals and sergeants. It was a good experience, we learned about navigating, sailing and seamanship. We learned how to climb the rigging without falling down, even when it was storm. We also had a sort of “race” climbing to the top of the masts, up one side and down the other and last man down got hit by the end of the signal flag and it was laid on rather hard by the “master corporal”. (Furir in Sweden).We had one curious incident to be sure, a German “stuka”plane came out of the sky and diving straight for us, we thought for sure he was going to bomb us or at least pepper us with machine gun fire. But he didn’t, he pulled out of the dive and disappeared. At one point we had no wind for a few days and we ran out of provisions, all we had was some moldy sweet-buns, tea and maybe some “hardtack” (rye-crisp bread). 27 nautical miles out of Visby, on the island of Gotland, we put our two life boats out , hooked up a towline to each and manned it with us “green-horns” and we had to row in shifts , each turn at the oars lasted about three hour’s or so.
I remember that the palms of my hands bled quite a bit and so did most of the guys’ .We made it in to Visby after about a day and a half. I was made a corporal anyway after about a year, which increased my pay by about 75c a day. There were a few other “extenuating” circumstances why I wanted out, one was that the admiral, who was in charge of the base, promised me and my buddy, Kalle, that we were going to be sent back to school and be able to pursue another “trade”, more to our liking, for me I thought I would like to try being an orderly or male nurse, but alas we were sent out on a “Destroyer” to chase Russian submarines that where harassing our ferry traffic to the island of Gotland. I was made what was called in Swedish “siktinställare”, which meant I had earphones and connection to the officer in the “tower” and he located and sighted all targets for the guns to aim at then we got his co-ordinates and set our individual gun-sights. While there I had a harrowing experience that could have ended my life, why it didn’t was pure luck and had nothing to do with the skill of the naval officer on deck but rather with the crew that helped me aboard. I was ordered to move the skippers personal skiff from the inside mooring when docked and to the outside of the ship in order to ready for take off to “chase more submarines”. There was a gale blowing and I didn’t have enough power in my arms to bring it around so I drifted out to sea and was about a kilometer away by the time it was discovered that I was missing, this was in mid-January in the northern part of the “Baltic” sea. A power-sloop was sent to retrieve me but they had problems with the weather also and just threw me a line, I had no rudder so had to hang on for dear life in the bow, I was plowing the water and was soon filled to the gunnels and eventually I was holding the tow-line with one hand and the skiff with the other till we got close to the “destroyer” (actually over here they call it a “Corvette”) “HMS Sundsvall, where they made three tries at throwing me a line for the rescue, which I finally managed to get hold of but I had to dive and swim for it. The reception I got from the officer on deck was: Go and get something dry on and get a cup of soup from the cook then report on deck for further orders! I don’t have to mention that I had no soft spot for that officer ever again.
I didn’t like to be lied to by a high ranking officer. Admiral Wachtmeister seemed very sincere but he let us down. I also didn’t like the doctors they had there. Butchers. I had a bad knee and a broken tooth amongst other things but particularly these, the doctors were totally unable to fix properly. And they didn’t seem to care. I had the “mumps” the day the war was over and was laying in a hospital bed listening to all the celebrations down town Stockholm and was very sad about being “stuck” but happy about the end of the war , which meant I could be dismissed from the navy vary soon and was.
   I was discharged and turned in my duffel bag with all navy belongings, got my “civvies” was handed a ticket, I wanted one for I think “Gävle” but was given one to Malmö were I hailed from. It saddened me because I had a girlfriend there, in Stockholm”, her name was Mariana (Marianne). I did take the train to Malmö, (Kulladal). It was strange to be back “home”.
      I didn’t stay long, I went to a dance that evening, slept one night, next day my dad came home and had been drinking and was spoiling for an argument and I decided I did not want to accommodate him. So while he was entertaining company (an uncle) I think I took his bicycle ( because he was using mine for going back and forth to work), I set off for Gävle or Stockholm , it’s a distance of 650 km to Stockholm and 850 to Gävle where I had some friends. About one day out of Malmö the few cents (ören) I had were gone, another day and one of the pedals on the bike fell off, the threads wore out, no money to fix things so I plugged along best I could, Walked uphill and coasted downhill, stole milk from the farmers that they had put out along the road for the milk truck to pick up in the morning and take to the dairy. I had a bottle and just dipped it in filled it up drank one bottle and filled it again for later, it kept me alive for a week. That ‘s how long it took to get to Stockholm .Another Day and a night and I was in Gävle , I had an address to one of my friends and found out that my friend worked at a bakery and was out delivering baked goods to stores, I caught up to the two of them as the city wasn’t that big and they gave me a 10# bag of cakes and pastries that would normally last a couple of weeks but in a couple hours I had consumed it all and felt “stuffed “ for the first time in a couple weeks.
      I was invited to move in with the family who were good friends of one of my “navy buddies” (Harry Holm) who was the “other” guy who delivered baked goods, his friends name was Nisse (Nils) Pettersson My friend from the navy was “Harry Holm”. I got a job in a restaurant washing dishes. Shortly thereafter I got a job in a hotel as a busboy, had done it before so were right at home. I also got a job in a factory making leather goods for horses, but that was later, after I returned from Dalarna. The job as busbouy got me ready to tackle a job as a full-fledged waiter at a winter resort in “Dalarna” (Tällberg). I enjoyed it tremendously, with going on a horse drawn sleigh to a local “barn-dance”, or “sockhopp” and almost every evening take a “sparkstötting” (a sort of push-sled) and the whole staff would “pair Up, two to the “spark” and we would roam the country side, up and down hills on many a clear night, the sky was loaded with brightly shining stars and the snow glistening in moon-light, it was beautiful .
     It was only good for the snowy season so by march it was back to Gävle. On the way back to Gävle I stopped over to visit my dad’s cousin, they were lease-owners of a farm, between Borlänge and Orsa-Ornäs, it had some sort of history attached to it. The Swedish King, Gustav Vasa in the 1500 ‘s once hid there trying to get away from the Danish Kings forces that were going to kill him, because he was a threat to the Danish rulers in Sweden. I stayed over a night or two and they took me to the theater and a few sightseeing trips around the neighborhood. I then headed back to Gävle, when I got there I bought a guitar ’cause I thought I would like to learn to play it because my buddy who I stayed with played a little accordion so I figured we could somehow get together and play eventually..
But lady fortune had other ideas; my friends they talked me in to pawning the guitar and buy tickets on the train for Stockholm for all of us (three). They had tired of the “small” town of “Gävle” and wanted to try “big City” I resisted but had to give in because I couldn’t see myself staying in Gävle all by myself ,well I couldn’t afford it . We did get to Stockholm and stayed with Harry Holms mom and step-dad, we slept on the floor, got a job with a factory that made “Primus” portable kerosene (white gas) stoves and blowtorches. I hated the job with a passion and left after half a day, didn’t even pick up my wages for that half day. I took of for downtown and ran into a fellow that was in need of a cigarette and a bunk I had rented a single room for a night and we both stayed there, this fellow had heard about a “resort” in Saltsjöbaden that might be looking for help, we walked all night on the railway-tracks and got there in the morning. We got a job, I as a fish and poultry-cleaner and sometime pot washer, he as a dishwasher, It turned out to be a place I really liked to work, but it wouldn’t last very long because my brother showed up with tickets to Malmö, my dad had sent him to fetch me home because he wanted all the family to help celebrate his 50^th birthday.( I think that was the reason). I was extremely disappointed and vowed I would be back, which I did eventually after working in some 3^rd class restaurants as cooks helper to save up for the fare. Here is where I made another big mistake. Another s.k. friend from the navy showed up right outside were I worked, were I ran into him after work on my way home, he was broke and hit me for money , I had non but he managed