TONSIL RATS AT FARSUND HOSPITAL

Tonsil rat

Summer 1946, we checked out the sanitary facilities at Farsund Hospital and found them under any criticism. We came from a furnished home on Bringsjord in Lyngdal, where it was installed properly toilet in a small enclosure under barn bridge where our father had fine planed a disk with two holes, with two round openings, one large and one small. The large hole, which was aimed at adult buttocks, was admittedly dared to sit on for a 5 year old, for if one was inattentive and plunged in through there, bar the flux into the darkened basement fertilizer.

With "grandma in the new building" there were much safer conditions, thus, since the fall height there was little. She had the toilet in the hen house and there was only a dirt floor with chicken dung and other muck as she chopped away and spread out over the potatoes in the springtime. There were still stubborn rumors that the roost toilets one could be exposed to rat attack from below, and all knew then that kid gear was most vulnerable...

The toilet under the barn was little used after bedtime. Who would shiver across the darkened yard on a dark autumn night? Then there wisely put forward a white enameled bucket for common use in a corner in the upstairs hallway. So everything went as usual on the farm, and everyone was happy and fresh until Kjell got a sore throat and could only drink hot milk with honey and eat porridge.

The mother was afraid that there was something wrong with the prospective farmer, and drew us to dr. Lande in Alleen. There we had to gape and swallow and the diagnosis was that Kjell had red, swollen tonsils as promptly should be removed. So what about me and mine, there was no red on them too? Oh yeah, dr. Lande had even twins, Gunnar and Per, and knew how such'd toured; just as well that Kjell and Finn were operated simultaneously, so it was done.

A few weeks later we sat together with our mother on the bus to Farsund. Bus driver Mr. Bryge had kindly stopped at Presthøl Bridge, when we eagerly thrust forward right arm and leg. The bus trip to Farsund was like a fairy tale, and it peaked when we got to the Girlmountains where the road crooked forward and Bryge honked angrily horn to potential oncoming to warn that now came the bus and that they saw getting into first and best meeting place.

Farsund Hospital on the hill. Photography: Finn Bringsjord

We were greeted at the hospital, examined, washed and groomed and commanded to bed, even the sun shone outside. We had not eaten anything the day it was uncertain whether we would be right on the operating table when we arrived. But now it was said that we should not be pruned until the next morning, so it was silly, but now it was too late to eat. It gnawed in villi, but we got a glass of water for consolation.

Our good-hearted mother, who would be with us until the operation was over, went to get a cup of coffee, but it lasted and slid several hours endlessly until she came back. Finally, we drew a warning line on the wall over the bed, and a sour nurse came and told that it was not allowed for mothers to stay in the hospital, so Lina had traveled back to Lyngdal with ½ five route. Then it was cast long shadows into the room and we looked rather dark throughout the hospital stay. Should we ever see again father & they and 5 newborn kittens to Bianka?

Having depress a while, came back discouraged, and we thought of the brother Ludvig had told about how easy it was to operate away some tonsils: "It is like picking cherries from the tree. The tonsils hanging on stalks, and then comes the doctor with a pair of scissors and cut them down as soon as you have fallen asleep on the operating table. No big deal! ". When I asked if we could get tonsils home to Bianka, this was laughingly dismissed, "Oh no, tonsils goes to the dark red tonsil rats in Farsund".

A while later came the sour nurse in and said that now we had to sleep because tomorrow we should get up early and operated, so she said "good night" and turned off the light. Slightly depressed we were lying there in the dark, feeling the tears pushed forward. No praised and evening prayer this evening. No circumspectly mother's hand through hair...

It should not be so long before we noticed that there were also other things besides tears that pressure on, we had to pee. Carefully we slipped down on the cool linoleum floor to look for the white bucket, but it was not there. Oh, of course stood out in the hallway! But there it was not. The only thing we saw was an old woman in gray-checked bathrobe that went into a door, way down the corridor.

Farsund was a strange city! They had no white bucket at the hallway; so whoever was going to the toilet had to go way out on the hen house toilet. No thanks! City’s rooster house and tonsil rats? There cracked courage...

Back at the room, we realized that there was only one thing to do; we had to pee in bed. But there we had stopped to do long ago. And we remembered how disgusting it smelled of straw mattress for days after unfortunate relapse. Fortunately stood a ready-made bed no. 3 until a wall, also were constructed of green-painted pipes. Caution and guilty, we climbed into the high bed, pulled aside the covers, and were just about to open the floodgates, as I saw it: a wonderfully beautiful black hole in the top of the U-shaped pipe in the front end of the bed; a side stopper was falling out.

Gods carry and comfort, what a relief. Something similar had we done several times through the knothole in the barn wall on Nodeneset. We picked up a stool and with steady hand, we filled up piping in bed.

The morning after I was killed, suffocated by an ether-cloth was pressed hard against the nose and mouth. Oddly enough, I woke up again about the same minute and had a terrible pain in the throat and difficulty in speaking and eating for days.

In the afternoon gave a smiling nurse from Spind us insight into water closet incredible mystery; that with pulling the brass lace poured water from a huge water tank under the roof down into the toilet bowl without this was filled with water that flowed across the floor with plimp and poo and paper. No; "sim sala bim", so was all filth disappeared down the bowl. The cheerful sister did not know where the unspeakable shit vanished away, but she was quite sure that it not ended up in a city roost house.

"Where do you have the dark red tonsils rats here at the hospital"? I wondered, "Are they perhaps in the hen house"? But then she laughed well and allayed laughingly that it was not tonsils rats at Farsund hospital.

"Do you think we can get our 4 tonsils with us back home?" whispered Kjell, a voice like a crow came from his knife scraped through, "you see that freshly boiled almonds are the best Bianka know about - and they will come in handy now that she has five kids to feed”. The cheerful sister of Spind promised to look into the matter, but she probably thought they were already washed down the drain...  Where our four dark red actually took the road we never know.

A few days later, two of our big sisters came to Farsund and fetched us. Outside the hospital was the neighbor boy, Erling, in his dark red Studebaker Convertible waiting on us, and with open hood, we drove all the way home to Bringsjord. That day it was served cream cake, topped with strawberries, in a garden party for friends and neighbors. The twins were home.

Finn & Kjell. The photo is taken just before surgery

This blogside was printet in paper "Lister" 4th July 2015

POOR BOY´S POLAR TRIP

(This is primarily a google translation).

 Winter 1953 was a heavy snow winter. First came the snow tumbling down, then came north-east wind and cold. It blew night and day for a week. Though it also snowed was impossible to say, the air was thick with snow anyway. For guys boys were outdoor life limited to school road; plunged into darkness when the morning hobbled us forward over snowdrifts and dusk when we came home in the afternoon.

When the wind finally died down, and the sun came up, the landscape changed. On the west side of the house and barns were small slopes, and almost all Kjerringdølda (a rift vally leading down to the river before Grandmas house) was almoust filled with powder snow; a paradise for adventurous young promising that jumped and dived out through the overhanging cornice - and made slides and tunnels reminiscent of today's water slide in Sørlandsbadet.

One day during storm weather laid the groundwork for this year's big defeat and disgrace. Initially was innocent enough; mother and twins in daily living; good guy in furnace and with large and small panes more or less iced and snowed, and then the incessant drone of wind that howled fjoget and around the house corners.

Kjell lay flat out on the sofa and read "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea," and I had manned "chair" father reading "Robinson Crusoe." Chair, standing in front of a radio apparatus of the type "Radionette", was highly sought after when it had an adjustable seat and back

While we dreamed ourselves away in alien worlds, the mother had occupied the entire dining room table and most of the floor. She had decided that a large dress in America package from Aunt Lydia, would reopened and sewn into two male escorts. But now it seemed that the entire project would overturn the home stretch. No matter how much she twisted and turned on the pattern, only managed drug to two shirts with three and a half arm. She called the girls, but neither they received the drug in the spawned america dress to stretch out.

My mother and sisters threw glances over at me - which was far away with Robinsons pursuit on the island - and discussed how they could get out of this scrape. The conclusion was that it was best to sew the sleeves of another substance, but that the bottom portion of the sleeve, cuff, sewn in the same fabric as america sleeves and collar. That would certainly shirt look decent out as long as I had it under a knit sweater.

I principle and sniffled excessively when the finished product was presented to me, and protested at the hottest toward going to school dressed like a wretch, lousy pauper! But nags did not help one bit.
"Just make sure you go with sweater," comforted Plata, "will go so well so. It is important that twins go dressed alike, you know." Then she went into the kitchen and opened jars of America drops. Aunt Lydia was very kind and had stowed a little of each in the package.

The depressed Pauper

...

Our teacher in the 5th - 7th grade, Thorvald Haugeland, had its historical favorites, and one of them was Fridtjof Nansen. He enjoyed reading aloud from the book, "Until the Arctic Ocean," especially the part that deals with Nansen and Hjalmar Johansen's attempt to reach the North Pole in 1895.

Nansen was an uncompromising man driven by an indomitable will to achieve their goals. In particular it made an impression to hear that he was not allowed Johansen to stop to change into dry clothes as this was unfortunate and fell into the sea. Nansen shall cards have rejected the request by lines: "Then we are not women either."

Fritjof Nansen was a man of guys boys, a real man did not seem to stop the forces of nature, and who was so bold that he jumped from floe to floe on their targets.

Then count the hour, an early spring day, was disturbed by loud bangs and rumbling down from Litleåna, we realized immediately what was going on; river ice was about to break up.
As soon as it was recess stormed all the pupils down to the river to look at the drama that unfolded. Larger and smaller ice floe broke away and became operational towards the place where Litleåna flows into Lygna.
But the ice had not gone in himself Lygna, so now piled ice floes up downstairs in the discus where they were contorted and twisted and sat upright so they blocked for river water that pressure on, and there was the sound of this "kvern" (mill) we heard up in the classroom. The left proppa discus bottom Litleåna got the water level to rise quickly along the entire stretch between Often Bridge and discus, and large ice floes was lifted up and broken loose.

Finally had guys boys the chance to prove capable of follow in his footsteps. Some "brave" 7th graders made halfhearted attempts to get out on the ice, but it was only window dressing. Along the banks there was little ice floes that hardly could carry a house cat, and it was more than enough that they gave up. But further out toward the middle of the river was larger floes operating as smoothly should wear a schoolboy.

Kjell and I saw the solution right away, but I was closest, and got me first in older tree. For hours we had trained in Erlings high bar in the yard of Jacob and Katrina, and could - hanging by the arms - climb like monkeys back and forth under the bar. I climbed up the tree and grabbed the branch that stretched out toward the middle river, and climbed slowly outwards, grip for grip. As branch thinned by, gave it under the weight and soon tøtsjet muzzle of Ski Boots a suitable ice floe.

In my thoughtlessness I dropped ceiling around the branch as soon swung least one meter up in their natural height, and I tried to jump for it with arms in the air, and some in the spectator mass up on Ofte Bridge thought I was looking for applause, as a winner of 10000 box; one Hjallis or Reidar Liaklev and girls waved back.
But Kjell immediately saw the danger I had come into and climbed as quickly as he could beyond the branch to bend it down, but the floe was growing, and before he could out of me, I was heading toward "iskverna" who painted and Gnura , stout and unstoppable.

The position was precarious, but as old-Sheriff John Wayne so aptly should have said it: "When the going get tough, the tough get going". No more frills I started to run inland on the small "housecat-flakes" and went straight to the bottom, but I got me now again and flailed and swam and plowed and crawled up on land.

All came somewhat delayed into the next hour, and Thorvald Haugeland sat and waited behind the catheter. He looked long at "the drowned cat" from Bringsjord and said, "You Finn, You Finn, you put gray hairs in my head."

"I'm very sorry," I said halfway sincere because I was still highly excited as the school's new "polar hero" and took my time to empty boots in the sponge bucket under the blackboard, and if possible, to impress girls from avenue even more , I turned toward the class; tore off me the green knit sweater and twisted ice water down on the scorching Jøtul oven ; which immediately transformed it into a gushing fountain.

When I came to cast a glance down at my shirt sleeves and got true the old Roman motto: It is a short distance from the Capitol to the tarpeiske cut, for here I was standing in front of the class and showed the shameful shirt to poor lice.

In a vision I saw for myself the next thing that would happen: The girls from Alleen would rise up in disgust and recoil back against the wall, while they pointed at me and start howling chorus:

"Finn, Finn! Poor-liceinn! "

"Finn, Finn! Poor-liceinn! "

o.s.v

And the boys would fall into the choir, and church singer himself would climb up on the catheter chair and directing choral with the pointer, and ... I went for the door, tore at me sweater and coat and ran down to the bike, and Kjell came by on the stairs and shouted and offered me the dry coat say, but I was in another world and Hoist back; "Then we are not women either!"

I remember not so much to his trip, but I remember that it was colder gradually on the two-kilometer-long bicycle ride.

It was good to come home and fall back into the kid role front floor heater in the living room and be pampered by the mother who came with towel and dry, warm clothes. And I bragged to my father about how I like a polar bear had swum between ice floes in the northern country, and father was with the notes and asked if it was true, as they had said on the radio, said it was well with sel in pack ice this spring. Then he shook me at isdripped hair and said with an exaggerated fatherly tone: "Yes, you Finn, you Finn ...»

But Thorvald Haugeland was well made when I came back to the school house a bit out in the fifth hour, and there came nod from the girl wing classroom.

My main lessons from this seedy incident was that the outside world did not matter whether Find gone orange yellow shirt breast with rødmønstrede sleeves. Soon it'll probably be the height of fashion?

This blog page was reproduced in the newspaper Lister 20th June 2015.