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