Life is a Circus

Packages From Sweden             1945-1946                

School started again after the summer. Walking to school early mornings got colder, but being young kept me from thinking about it too much. School started promptly at seven, and I learned a lot in the next month. The biggest lesson I learned was to watch out with whom you pick a fight with. There was this red headed kid that had a fight with everyone. Soon he got to me, and we had it out after school just about every day. One day I had had enough, so after school I got the best of this kid. I really beat him good, he cried started to get up, when all of a sudden I got hit in the back by someone else, as I turned around I saw double, how was I to know that I beat up the wrong kid. No one told me that they were twins. Being tired from beating the wrong kid up, now I had to face both of them. This time I was outnumbered; they beat the tar out of me. Finally it was over, as one of the teachers broke up the fight. Going home beaten was bad enough, how was I going to explain to my mom that I got into a fight. On the way home I thought about my father, if he had been there he would have helped me, I really missed him, and he was gone now over a year. There were times when I stood in our front yard looking down the street hoping that was my father coming home, spotting someone coming toward our house, but then it was a stranger. So after that little incident I had snowball fights with my brother and my friends from the neighborhood. My brother and I had a real nice sled we rode down the hills over and over again; boy was that fun. We played till it got dark, heading home for supper and a warm bath. Mom read some bedtime stories then we both fell asleep. The next day I heard mom talking to her neighbor of how close they got to getting caught by the police. I found out that mom and her friend took the sled to the railroad tracks to pick up coal that dropped from the coal cars, they both filled several burlap bags with coal and ran all the way home, at a distance they could hear the police calling at them to stop. Mom and her friend kept on running, taking the long way home hoping to lose the police. They got home just before dawn, hid the coals and went to bed. We had a nice warm fire in the stove the next morning. My mom and her friend kept the fires going through the winter never getting caught. White bread at that time was a delicacy; all we ever had was rye bread. A baker lived down the street, and at times, hid a loaf of white bread in our hedge. If caught he could have lost his job. My father sent us a package now and then with coffee, sugar, powdered milk and sometimes a bar of Hershey chocolate. The chocolate bar was a real treat for us, each evening mom would give us each a slice or one cube of that bar, she made that candy bar last a whole week. Christmas was mostly singing songs and lighting candles on the Christmas tree. We each got a few gifts from our mom, and I found out some of our food came from the black market. My mom would go down town Hamburg to trade some of the items my father had sent us from Sweden, things like coffee, tea or anything that had trading value. This is how she told me that she made the trades, walking down the street passing another person she would whisper coffee or tea, the other person if they had anything would answer butter or meats of some kind. If the two agreed, a trade would happen in a safe place. It was not legal, if caught one could be fined or get jail. Mom must have been very careful, returning home she always had some food for the family. Winter was almost over, now the rains came, my brother and I played indoor most of the time.