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to talk me out of the pawn ticket for my guitar. I regretted many times over that I let him know I had that pawn-ticket. I let him use it to get a few bucks for rent and assumed he would pay me back in a couple of days. He was the son of a police chief in a northern town called “Burträsk” so when he promised to pay me back I believed him. I got him a job as dishwasher and after one or two paydays we took of for “Saltsjöbaden”. I got my old job back and my “friend” got a job as porter. I was happy to a point but some of the friends I had before I left there earlier in the year, were gone and never got close to the new ones. And by the way, I was never paid back for my pawn-ticket and lost my guitar for ever and never bought another one, pity.
   On one of my days off I went to Stockholm by myself and sitting on a bench by the train terminal, “Slussen”, There was this cute girl walking by, staring at her feet as she walked, I thought ; “she looks familiar” I stood up took a better look, it was my dear Mariana(Marianne). We soon reconnected and I was on fire. I was happy again. It turned out we had lots to catch up on. I soon went looking for a job in the city and got one at the “Grand Hotel” in Stockholm. I managed o get hired as a “third cook”.
   I had a job in the city with minimum pay and no place to sleep, in “Saltsjöbaden” they supplied with living accommodations but in the big city you are on your own. I slept on park benches and shelters and sometimes in the hotel change room, it was winter and cold, sometimes snow. I kept this up ‘till my first payday, then I found a type of youth hostel where you could stay ‘till your 18 or 19^th birthday, I can’t remember which. The rent was very reasonable. I managed to get my friend “Kalle” (Kurt Karlsson från Gävle) to stay there also although he was really a year too old. Eventually we were asked to leave, reason; “old age”!
Mariana at this time lived at home with her parents and they had a reasonably small home and definitely no room for me, When we met up that second time, she had given birth to Roland and as I was no-where around and was unaware of the “happy “ event, we did have a lot to catch up on. We managed to find time to get engaged on May the first that year, (1947) we went to a “konditori” ( pastry shop with restaurant facilities on “Kungsgatan” in central Stockholm and treated ourselves to some coffee and fancy French pastries, I went down on my knees and popped the question. Very ceremonial!
    Well Kalle and I managed to find a place to rent in a fancy neighborhood that we couldn’t afford so had to move again but didn’t know were to because we couldn’t really afford anything, so we sought and found a job with accommodation , in “Mellbystrand”, a beach resort on the Swedish westcoast. It turned out to be a good job and all but was only good for the summer months. I talked Mariana into coming with me there and take Roly with us so we could be together and live as a “married couple” (family, after all we had a baby).
   We all really enjoyed Mellbystrand, we lived like tourists very close to the waters edge, white sand and beach grass and we enjoyed swimming and laying in the sun every chance we got.
   But like everything nice it doesn’t last, so in a few short months it was time to close up the resort.
The owner hired us to work in a restaurant in Göteborg. I shipped Mariana and Roland off to Malmö, on the train to Kulladal to be exact, and Kalle and I went to Göteborg but he tired before I did and took off for Söderhamn where he had a girl friend, Britt. I thought it was time for me to join Mariana and Roland in Kulladal, where they were staying with my parents in a small house, the same house they lived in when I was born, it was located on the same yard and very close to the bigger house which my dad had built and finished by the time I was five years old. The small house consisted of one larger room a tiny “hallway” and a very small kitchen with a coal and wood fired cook stove, the “living/sleeping room” also had a coal and wood fired heater. Not much but it kept the cold and the rain out.
I tried my hand at cooking in a few lower grade restaurants with just as low grade of pay and when tempted by a casual friend that I accidentally met up with to check out the “seamen’s” union office for work .I took the bait and went with him, basically to just see what it was all about, he got hired as a deckhand and talked me in to hire on as a cook because they needed one and that was it. The name of the ship was M/S Frigg. We were bound for Gdynia, Poland, with mixed cargo and picking up coal for the return trip. It was fall and started to get cold. We made it down there and back. It was a totally new experience for me. The cooking part was reasonably easy but still different from what I had been used to so far. The ships “Stewart” was   a lady who liked her booze and would have a “glow on” for days. On the return trip the ship went to Stockholm to unload the coal. When we docked there were several people on the dock waiting and one of them was Mariana, I was both happy and concerned, (worried) that something might be wrong with Roland , well there was but it turned out OK. He had severe ear infection. Well he was being looked after by my mother and sister. Anyway Mariana came with me on the ship to Poland and she was invited to be “St. Lucia” for the crew on the ship but I think she declined. It was nice to have her there I must say. The crew was delighted also cause it was not a common thing in those days to have a young chick on board an old ”rustbucket” like this one . We docked in Oscarshamn on the return to Sweden a week or ten days later and Mariana took the train back to Malmö. I stayed till we got to Hallstavik where I left and took a job on another old “tramp” , as these old vessels were called. It was a little better ship but on it I stayed only two trips to Poland. On one of these trips we went to Gdansk where I got to know a family who had an “Inn” or “Pub” and the man in the house was also the local radio announcer. I made a deal with him to I would bring a full sheet of cow-hide and he would give me a full set of twelve servings of “Rosenthal” porcelain dishes
That at home would be worth a fortune... In the process of bringing it aboard, the Swedish custom officer became wise to our smuggling attempt and notified the customs in Poland, so in Gdansk it was confiscated and I lost the leather I had hidden under my bunk, where they never ever looked before, so they knew it was there. So much for making wages at sea. In consolation we went to a restaurant -bar with music. Some people I didn’t know, but who knew my so called. “Host”, the steward and skipper of the ship. I couldn’t speak Polish nor German very well so had to resort to other peoples interpretation and the outcome was : I and a few of the crew ended up helping some Polish people get smuggled to Sweden .(this was in 1947). One of the young fellows a deckhand and I, ended up bringing some of our clothes , we dressed ourselves in double of everything and delivered it to a grandmother of one of the girls they were actually sisters, that planned on “escaping”. We were to meet them behind the Bodega (pub) and they were to follow us and behave as part of the crew. In those days Russian soldiers were the guards at the docks and we had to be very careful because if caught it was 10 years in the “brig”. It wasn’t so bad for the male “escapees” because they didn’t have to disguise themselves to look like crew members. We managed to get them aboard and we hid them in the kitchen (galley) first, and then moved them to a lifeboat, then in to a cabin, then back to lifeboat, then the chain locker (the final hiding place). We had to keep moving all the time because the Russians were on to us and kept searching and we had to be a step or two ahead of them. The success was the work of a polish crew member, who himself at one time had done the same thing to get to Sweden. As luck would have it we were delayed seven days at anchor just outside the harbor because of really bad weather. We eventually made landfall in Luleå, near the Finish border, were we, who had been involved in this smuggling, were told by the first mate that we better not go back to Poland as the Russians had us pegged. We took farewell of the ship and boarded the train for Stockholm and eventually Malmö for me. It had been interesting to say the least.(On the way down we stopped over in Härnösand and went to a restaurant to “celebrate” and have dinner ,We had a big platter of “Pölsa” Tastes like “Haggis”) There were about 8-10 stow-a way’s, some had been hidden under the coal in the hold, others in the chain locker, the two girls we had helped were the ones in the chain-locker and one hidden in the skippers or stewards cabin, I never found out in which. And yeas, a couple in the lifeboats. While in Härnösand I got a temporary job for a day or so to help a guy who had a small “dockside” restaurant, he had to go for a treatment (varicose veins) at the hospital and needed someone to give him a hand and keep the business open.
    I got work in Malmö for a short period in not so exciting restaurants with very low pay and I had “got my feet wet” with being on the ships and at sea, and now I was looking for a ship that would go to AMRIKA I had heard enough about the ships that went there and been told they made more money and a fact remained; we, Mariana and I and Roland still had no home of our own It also had a lot to do with the fact that I had an aversion to live that close to my dad, who always seemed to “get my goat” somehow.
Well you know, the fellow who got me going to sea in the first place did it again. He sort of asked if I would go with him down to the docks where he wanted to take a look at a ship that was bigger than the previous once we been on and it was a America bound ship, the name of it was “AIDA” , it carried paper-pulp and mixed cargo and headed for Philadelphia, Baltimore and Newport news in the states.
As We were talking to some fellows there on the ship it became evident they needed a second cook and I was hired “sight unseen” , I had no aspirations of going on another unannounced trip like the first one, but I figured that the ship would stay in Malmö long enough to notify my family at least. I had no work clothes no personal belongings other than what I had on me so I was definitely not ready for immediate take off, but that is exactly what happened. I had barely got aboard the ship and it was casting loss from the dock and we were on the way to the U S of A. about a day out I was able to make a radio call to home and explain my situation. It was almost as if I had been “kidnapped”, at least “bamboozled”. It was a nice ship and excellent lodgings, Cabin on the main deck and good people to work with; I really liked it but knew I was in the “dog-house” back in Malmö . It was for the most part a rather uneventful trip; it was interesting for me as a first-timer to the “States”. Lots to look at, a few sight-seeing trips around Philadelphia and Baltimore. In Newport News We had a bit of an interesting happening in that the entire “Galley-Crew “, (four of us) went down town it happened to be my birthday and the “boys” wanted to celebrate and we had a few drinks before going ashore
and eventually ended up in the recreation area of a local Church, they had Ping-Pong tables there and we played “Ping-Pong”. One of the windows was open and the only Ping-Pong ball we had went out the window and its late evening and dark outside. One of the fellows, a Danish young guy (“mess-kalle”) and I went down town to see if we could find a “drug-store” that may have some. But we tried a few and no luck. On one of the street corners we were stopped by a policeman, we were asked a bunch of questions, I didn’t understand a word but this Danish mess boy understood a little and it became clear the cop thought we were drunk, which we weren’t just sort of happy and enjoyed each other company and joked and laughed a little now and then. In a few minutes the so called “black Maria” (police -van) showed up and they hauled us of to the jail (geol.) We sat in there all night , no sleep and had about 50 other “prisoners “ as company”. Who were there for an offence of some sort or another, mostly drunkenness? In the morning we had to appear in front of a judge and he fined us $25.00 each. The shipping lines agent came and got us and he paid our fines ($25.00) and cost, plus taxi, which we had to pay back to them from our wages. We just made it back on time before the ship left for Sweden. They had already pulled in the gangplank. We were loaded with coal destined for Malmö. Were I had another interesting occurrence, with the customs, I and several other crew members were about to smuggle a few cartons of cigarettes and sell to make a few “bucks”. I had a customer waiting, a fellow I used to know from long time ago in Kulladal, He worked as a truck-driver for “Kropps Järn o Diverse handel” (Hardware and food store) that was located in “Per-Albin Hanssons old birth-place” on Lindesborgsvägen. Anyway, the custom officers new his “gambit” and new what he was up to so when we sent our “smuggle-goods with a coal truck to unload, my customer followed the truck, the customs-officers followed him, they got their man the cigarettes and we lost our money, We learned that it’s tough to be a smuggler and not always profitable and lucky for me the chief customs officer was a neighbor of ours in “Kulladal” and he did say that had it not been for him knowing me from when I was a “kid” they probably would have prosecuted. I had a bottle of Bourbon a carton of cigarettes and a tin of tobacco for my dad and he was happy. Lucky also that the cigarettes were reasonably cheep in the states so we didn’t loose all that much money, but for me it was enough, I felt bad because I had hoped I would get a good foundation to pay for our eventual wedding.
      On the M/S Aida I was offered the job as chief-cook, if I had taken it I would have been the youngest chief-cook in the Swedish merchant marine, I was 20 years old at the time. I declined because the ship was headed for a world circumnavigation trip and I would be away for 6 months or more. It was tempting and the pay was a lot better than I had. Instead I took a job on an oiltanker, M/S Oceanus, bound for Antverp to load up fresh-water and then to Curacao to unload the water then on to Amayabay in Venezuela. It too was rather hastily arranged and my wife (fiancée’) and mother got the news when I was just past Scotland in the North Sea. We were not permitted to use the “radiotelephone” until then; it had something to do with international clearance for safety codes, or something to that effect. We had a very calm trip down through the Atlantic and Caribbean. It began to get hot as we neared the equator, it was 120 degrees (Apr. 50-55? C) On deck for a few days, and it was hot. The only really interesting thing during the trip was watching the flying fish skim over the water and some of them landed on deck. We didn’t know if they were edible, but they were beautiful and shimmered in all rainbows color.
   We got to Curacao and unloaded the water and a couple of crewmember got in “hot water” with local authorities because they were picking fruits and coconuts from private property, they didn’t know it was private and they didn’t get to keep them and no charges where laid. I did not go ashore there ‘cause we took turns taking leave. In “Amayabay” (I think I got it right), It was my turn to go ashore and I joined the rest of the crew and we got a lift on the back of a truck in to a small town or village. When we arrived there was a whole lot of commotion on the beach, we found out from the “bosun”, who was cognizant in Spanish that a small girl, 8 or 9 I think , had been snatched off the beach by a crocodile .To the best of my knowledge she was never found. The country (Venezuela) was in a turmoil as there happened to be a civil war going on at the time but where we were it was reasonably quite. Never-the-less we saw soldiers everywhere and was checked for weapons when we entered the town and bodegas and a “hacienda” where there was a dance and refreshments going on. One of the fellows in our group had a smoke pipe in his back pocket and the guard got a little “excited” when he search us because he thought it might be a gun. Later on when we were about to leave and go back to the ship we had hired a taxi cab, and were only waiting for the “bosun” (sort of “lead hand” on the ship in charge of the deck crew). He eventually came running full speed with some soldiers chasing him, he was also loaded down with 4-5 bottles of cognac, which was “dirt cheap” in Venezuela, about one dollar a bottle. Anyway, the soldiers were shooting their rifles, the “bosun” jumped in the cab and screamed; “get going, hurry. Apparently he had offended someone in the store when he bought the booze. Well we got away unscathed. The ship left Venezuela and ten days later we were back at “Oxelösund” to unload the cargo of oil and I took farewell of the ship, even if I was offered the job as “chief Steward”, I would have been the youngest “Chief-Steward in the Swedish Merchant marine had I accepted. The one (steward) we had, got fired for “drunkenness”, he was an alcoholic and totally useless. We had run out of food supplies along the way home and had problems keeping the officers and the crew happy with the meals, due to the shortage of supplies. I declined the job because I had told Mariana that I was coming home to stay and to get married. We got married two weeks (or was it one?) after we arrived and I brought with me my two “buddies from the ship, one was my “second “ cook, the other Was the ships electrician, Whose apartment in Abrahamsberg we borrowed for our “ honeymoon” that lasted two days ( and nights). I don’t even remember their names at the moment but they are the ones we had as witnesses at our wedding, so they are on our wedding certificates. That was July 31st we got married and have been “Happily Married” ever since. We had given ourselves such short notice to get married that we hardly expected to have anyone from Malmö attending, but lo-and-behold, who