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On Course for Adventure: The Exciting Life of a Young Danish Immigrant
On Course for Adventure: The Exciting Life of a Young Danish Immigrant
On Course for Adventure: The Exciting Life of a Young Danish Immigrant
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On Course for Adventure: The Exciting Life of a Young Danish Immigrant

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In 1958, Flemming Nielsen and his older brother Aage left Denmark to begin a new life in Canada.
Flemming was only seventeen, and he could not have guessed that his first job at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Toronto would lead to a forty-year career in the entertainment and cultural fields. During that time he wore many different hats: clerk, technician, producer-director, TV program manager and interviewer, cinema owner, magazine publisher and film festival president. His business life was full of exciting people, exploits and challenges.
He married Lorie Doucette in 1964, and three years later they moved to Calgary, Alberta, where their two daughters were born.
They retired in 1998, sold their home, packed a minivan with lifes necessities and headed for Los Cabos at the southern tip of the Baja Peninsula. Flemming had never been to Mexico. Neither he nor Lorie could speak Spanish. They didnt know anyone, and they had no place to live, but they were prepared for whatever new adventures lay ahead.
These recollections of an extraordinary life, lived to the full, have been assembled for the benefit of family, in Canada and in Europe, as well as for friends, acquaintances and anyone else who might like to know more.
LanguageEnglish
PublisheriUniverse
Release dateMar 23, 2011
ISBN9781462000173
On Course for Adventure: The Exciting Life of a Young Danish Immigrant
Author

Flemming Nielsen

Flemming Nielsen was fourteen when he taught himself to type on an old Underwood. Thirty years later he was publisher of a popular city magazine and owner of a repertory cinema. He founded a Canadian film festival and sold luxury real estate in Mexico. He has finally settled down to enjoy retirement in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

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    On Course for Adventure - Flemming Nielsen

    Copyright © 2011 by Flemming Nielsen

    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

    The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

    iUniverse books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

    iUniverse

    1663 Liberty Drive

    Bloomington, IN 47403

    www.iuniverse.com

    1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

    Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid.

    Cover illustration by Robert Wiebe.

    ISBN: 978-1-4620-0016-6 (sc)

    ISBN: 978-1-4620-0017-3 (ebk)

    Printed in the United States of America

    iUniverse rev. date: 3/21/2011

    Contents

    Preface

    Introduction

    Part 1: The Denmark Years

    Chapter 1 – My Entrance

    Chapter 2 – Babyhood

    Chapter 3 – A New Home

    Chapter 4 – Growing Up with War

    Chapter 5 – Roots

    Chapter 6 – Boyhood

    Chapter 7 – School Days

    Chapter 8 – The Working World

    Part 2: The Immigrant

    Chapter 9 – The Adventure Begins

    Chapter 10 – A Good Friday

    Chapter 11 – Easter Weekend

    Chapter 12 – Finding Work

    Chapter 13 – Getting to Work

    Chapter 14 – Assimilating

    Chapter 15 – Again and Again

    Chapter 16 – European Retrospective

    Chapter 17 – New Beginnings

    Chapter 18 – Co-habitation

    Chapter 19 – Toronto Life

    Chapter 20 – Creative Energy

    Part 3: Prairie Life

    Chapter 21 – On The Road

    Chapter 22 – In the Land of the McColls

    Chapter 23 – Christmas in Denmark

    Chapter 24 – SAIT CCTV

    Chapter 25 – Vista Canada

    Chapter 26 – Canada’s Arctic

    Chapter 27 – Fatherhood

    Chapter 28 – Cable Television

    Chapter 29 – Back to the CBC

    Part 4: The Plaza Years

    Chapter 30 – Getting down to business

    Chapter 31 – Branching out

    Chapter 32 – Venturing into Publishing

    Chapter 33 – Masters in our own house

    Chapter 34 – Plaza Live

    Chapter 35 – Never a Dull Moment

    Chapter 36 – Winding Down

    Chapter 37 – Planning Retirement

    Part 5: Immigrant Once Again

    Chapter 38 – Into the Great Unknown

    Chapter 39 – Viva Mexico

    Chapter 40 – Retirement Living

    Chapter 41 – Back to work

    Chapter 42 – Hurricane

    Chapter 43 – House Ownership

    Chapter 44 – Mexodus

    Chapter 45 – Home Again

    Preface

    While talking with my brother last week, he reminded me of an occasion when he and I had first arrived in Canada to begin life in a new country. I had forgotten this little incident, but it made me realize how easy it is to forget details of one’s past–things which may have been significant in shaping the lives we lead today.

    A few years ago I read a copy of a letter written by my father’s father, Hans Nielsen. He was born in 1871, and in eighteen handwritten pages, he recalled events and dates which were benchmarks in his struggle to earn a living for himself and his family. He owned several businesses and had a few business failures, but he always recovered and provided for his family, which included nine children. He was a dedicated social democrat, and had been active in the early union movement in Denmark.

    missing image file

    From those eighteen pages, I learned things I had never known about him and his fascinating history, and it gave me new insight and understanding, not only of my grandfather, but also of my own father and the rest of his family.

    So here I am at work, sitting in my office in this wonderful, sunny place, grappling with an urge to put some of my own life story on paper, so that kids, grandkids, other family members and anyone else who might be interested, may know about the many opportunities, challenges and abundant blessings that have shaped this, my most excellent life.

    San José del Cabo, Mexico,

    September 3rd, 2004

    Introduction

    Six years have passed since that September afternoon, when I sat in my real estate sales office at a luxury seaside resort in Mexico, bored and maybe a little lonesome, reflecting on the life journey that had brought me to this beautiful place.

    There was a lot to tell, but it soon became obvious that I could not possibly include everything I remembered–many events and incidents would of necessity have to be left out. The focus of the story would have to be me, and the things in which I had been directly involved, and which had somehow been significant in my life. To those many friends and associates, whose names appear in these pages, I hope my recollections accurately reflect history as it unfolded, and to the many others, for whom I could not find enough space, I want to convey my regrets.

    My life began in the fairytale country of Denmark, at a time when it was at war and under occupation. Those dark days ended when I was almost five. From the time I began school, I flourished in an ideal childhood, full of love, freedom and friendships. I was inquisitive, adventuresome and a bit of a risk-taker. I liked to challenge, to push the envelope just a little closer to the point, where it might get me in trouble. I don’t mean that in a bad way. I was mischievous, but basically a good kid and a hard worker, who was never afraid to take on a new or onerous task. I also had my share of lucky breaks.

    I was just seventeen, when my brother Aage brought about my first life-altering experience. He arranged for the two of us to emigrate to Canada. I did not realize this until much later, but numerous times throughout my life, I have found myself in just the right place at exactly the right time. Opportunities have seemed to pop up out of nowhere. Was this just luck, I wonder.

    Starting a new life in a foreign country is a formidable task, but for me it was almost too easy. Getting into broadcasting with an organization, which taught me the skills I needed, was a huge gift. Having an older brother, who provided encouragement, guidance and stability, helped make up for the loss of family and friends left behind and often missed. Being blessed with an ear for language and learning to speak English without much of an accent was also a major benefit.

    Meeting my wife Lorie and getting married to her were also life-altering events. Our almost fifty years together have been quite a journey, and most of our family, even our two daughters, don’t know the half of it. So there we were, both Lorie and I in our late fifties, for the second time pulling up stakes and heading for new adventures, this time in Mexico, having the time of our lives, making new friends, taking on new challenges, and trying–each in our own way–to make a difference. There was a story here, and I had to get it on paper. It has taken a while, but here it is. I hope you enjoy it.

    There are many people to thank, and first among these is my dear wife, Lorie, who has put up with me all these years, and believed enough in the importance of this project to act as sometime editor, proof reader and critic. My brother Aage, who took me under his wing and started me on an amazing excursion, and my late parents, who gave him their permission. Anita and Ted Jones, writer/historians from Fredericton, read portions of the early manuscript and made corrections and valuable suggestions, and novelist Fred Stenson, during his stint as Writer in Residence at the University of New Brunswick, took a shot at making my story more readable and focused. Thanks also to Robert Wiebe, Pete Harris, Peter Hatton, The Calgary Public Library and The Glenbow Museum and Archives in Calgary.

    Part 1:

    The Denmark Years

    missing image file

    Photo: visitsydfyn.dk

    Chapter 1 –

    My Entrance

    September 15th, 1940 was a Sunday, and Denmark was at war. Not that war had actually been declared, but on April 9th, the German army, on orders from Herr Hitler, simply walked in and took over, putting Denmark under its protection.

    It was still early in the five-year occupation, and daily life in the town of Svendborg, where our family lived, went on with relatively few aggravations. My sister, Else, had celebrated her seventeenth birthday the day before, but this Sunday night she had gone with her cousin Mogens to a community centre dance in the village of Tved, just outside Svendborg. He and his family lived there, and Else stayed with them overnight.

    My brother Aage was fourteen, and with Monday being a school day, he had been sent to bed by mid- to late evening. His sleep only lasted an hour or two, however, because our rather excited father rousted him out of bed and told him to go across the small courtyard to Captain Christiansen and his wife. They lived in another part of Skattergade 64, the apartment complex where I first saw the light of day–or rather night.

    All eyewitnesses to my birth have unfortunately departed this earthly life, and so, in reconstructing the events of that night, I am forced to rely on hearsay.

    My father, Herluf, was approaching forty-three when I was born, and Mum was forty-one. She was somewhat shy and embarrassed about being pregnant at that age. She preferred not to go out in public, but once, on a rare shopping trip in town with Else, they had stopped to look in the windows of a dress shop when a family friend, Jenny, happened along. As they inspected the merchandise on display, Jenny ventured the opinion that a certain dress was not suitable for her, because she was too fat. At that point Mum whipped open her coat and said, What about me then? Jenny looked at her in amazement and uttered: Don’t tell me that you are going to have a little one, Bertha?, at which both women broke out in hysterical laughter.

    Aage of course knew our mother was expecting. He has told me that, despite it being a cold night, the Christiansens regularly went out into the courtyard to listen for my progress–or actually my mother’s.

    There is no record of the time of my birth, but it was somewhere in the early morning hours of Monday, the 16th of September. I believe my birth was attended by both a midwife and our family physician, Dr. Bakker. The story goes that I announced my arrival to the entire neighborhood, including the German soldiers, who guarded the gas works on the other side of the street.

    When Else returned home from Tved Monday morning–she was attending a commercial school in the afternoons–she took one look at me and voiced her disappointment. But he should have been a girl!

    As was the custom in those days, Mum was kept in bed for a week, and her mother was called in to help with the housework. Bedstemor, as grandmothers are called, was indirectly responsible for naming me. In between chores she enjoyed reading, and she found several books in the house that belonged to Aage. Some of them were part of a series featuring a fourteen-year-old hero named Flemming. When Bedstemor came to a funny passage, her shoulders would shake, and she would chuckle out loud to herself. Somehow this led to my being given the name Flemming. A few years later, these books had become my own favourites.

    Chapter 2 –

    Babyhood

    Skattergade 64 was a complex of apartments, located on the corner of Valdemarsgade and Skattergade. The front entrance and the living room of our apartment faced the gas works. Beyond them was the sea. The kitchen and the bedrooms looked out into the courtyard behind the main house. From here a door led into a wash house.

    Mr. Christiansen was a retired sailor, and he and his wife lived in the wing of the complex facing Valdemarsgade, the same wing where Dad had his shoe repair shop. The Christiansens were childless, and through my baby years they took a strong interest in my upbringing. Much to my mother’s dismay, they were forever sneaking me candy or giving me money for goodies. I am told that, if I was being punished and cried, Mrs. Christiansen would come to the door and say, Oh, don’t spank the little boy.

    Mr. Christansen, in addition to having been a sailor, was a model maker, and he built intricate ship models inside wine and milk bottles, which he sold. He had also built a scale replica of a large four-masted sailing ship, accurate in every detail, and mounted inside a five-foot-long glass cabinet in their house. The entire cabinet could be attached to the side of a specially built tandem bicycle, like a side car with a third wheel. During the summer months, the Christiansens bicycled around the country showing off the model and selling postcards and little printed booklets about the building of it.

    My earliest memory is from the little courtyard. Just outside the gate, which opened out to the street, stood a large linden tree. Some of its branches reached over the wall into the yard. When it was sunny Mum put me out in my baby carriage, and I remember looking up at the sun through the leaves. I must have been about eighteen months old at the time.

    Dad’s shoe repair shop was at the opposite end of the building from the Christiansens’ apartment. Doors on opposite sides of a small entrance hall led into Dad’s shop and out to a fenced backyard with a couple of large trees. By keeping both doors open at the same time, Dad was able to work, and keep an eye on me as I played in the yard.

    My father’s shop held a sense of magic for me. It was just one small room and a tiny storage space under the stairs. Dad sat facing the window, but his view to the street was limited by advertising posters. In front of him was his large worktable, loaded with knives, hammers, and other implements I still do not know the names of. Sometimes Dad made a small space for me and I was allowed to use certain of his tools. I liked the punch, which cut neat round circles in pieces of scrap leather. In the storage space under the stairs Dad kept my favourite object: the projectile from an artillery grenade. The explosives had been removed, but it was dangerous enough that when I dropped it on my foot, I lost my big toenail.

    * * *

    I have relatively few memories of my first three years in Skattergade. The family has stories about me, and I will repeat a few of them here. I do remember standing on the back of a chair or a sofa, looking across the street at the gas works, where two German soldiers guarded the entrance gate twenty-four hours a day. On one occasion I got out on the street and ran across to ask one of them if I could borrow his gun. I doubt he understood me, but he lifted me up and sat me on the wall. I don’t know who finally rescued me, but I am sure such close contact with the soldiers was a bit of an unsettling experience for my parents. Most of the troops posted to Denmark at that time were older, conscripted farmers and business people, who no more wanted to be there than at the Russian front. They probably posed no danger to me at all, but still, they were the enemy.

    missing image file

    Wartime meant shortages, and one of the things we either couldn’t get or couldn’t afford was toothpaste. I clearly recall brushing my teeth with hand soap and gagging on it. I also remember hearing air raid sirens while in the wash house. Aage recalls that once, when he, Else and I were home alone, we took cover in the larder off the kitchen, with Else holding me until the all-clear sirens had sounded. This turned out to be several hours.

    Shortages meant quotas and ration cards. Things like sugar and coffee were in short supply, and one could only buy limited quantities. Each time a purchase was made, one had to provide a ration coupon along with payment. Meat was also scarce and expensive. Much of Denmark’s agricultural production was requisitioned and sent south to Germany.

    On one occasion, my father and another man arranged to buy a young pig from a farmer on the outskirts of town. The farmer was to butcher it and package the various cuts of meat. Before that could be done, however, the farmer had a serious disagreement with his neighbour, and he was now afraid that the neighbour might find out about the slaughter, which was illegal, and turn him in to the Gestapo.

    Mum wanted to cancel the deal, but Dad and the other man felt it should go ahead. A compromise was worked out. The farmer sold them the pig and crated it in a wooden travel case. Dad borrowed a delivery bicycle with a freight carrier on the front, covered the crate with sacks and blankets, and began the trip across town to our house. The pig would be butchered in our wash house. This was a pretty risky venture–first traveling through the town with a crated animal, and then butchering it with German guards patrolling not more than a hundred yards away.

    The pig arrived safely, its snout securely tied to prevent it from squealing. It was hung up and butchered, and the meat was divided evenly. Both families ate a little better than they otherwise would have, and no one was any the wiser.

    I imagine I was somewhat spoiled, being an afterthought. I am told that I hated being left out of anything. When Mum and Dad had company, I was put to bed at the normal time, but I would not stay there. Within a few minutes I was back in the living room. I then received a smack on the bottom, cried my face off and was put back into bed once more. This cycle could repeat itself over and over, and I don’t think intervention from Mrs. Christiansen ever had any effect on the outcome, although my crying sometimes brought her to our door.

    Despite the restrictions of the German occupation, we managed to get around. In the summer my mother would swim in the sea, practically at the end of our street, where the city had separate facilities for men and women, complete with changing areas and washrooms. Young kids went with their mums until they were about six, but, although I was never afraid of the water, I didn’t learn to swim until I was seven years of age, and I taught myself.

    A favourite activity on the weekends was bicycle trips to one of the many beautiful beaches. Dad had a little seat mounted on the crossbar of his bike, and here I sat comfortably between his knees. Mum had her own bike, and, with a luggage carrier on each, we could bring along a lot of stuff. A picnic supper of open-faced Danish sandwiches was prepared at home and placed in a metal cabinet full of shallow trays, made especially for this purpose. The space between trays was maybe an inch, leaving just enough room so a piled-high, open-faced Danish sandwich could survive the trip without being scrunched. By the summer of 1944, however, the occupation had made these outings too risky, and they were pretty much eliminated until the war was over and the German troops had returned home.

    The backyard of our house faced Valdemarsgade, and next to it was a small lumber mill. It was really a planing mill, where big Belgian horses brought wagons loaded with rough boards to be cut to size or planed. This work produced a lot of sawdust and wood shavings, which were blown through tubes into huge piles. These were great for jumping around in, and the shavings were sold for kindling and fuel. Dad bought them, one sack at a time, to light our ceramic stoves. They were also used to make fire under the big iron kettle in the wash house, where Mum did her laundry.

    missing image file

    During my visits to the mill, I became quite friendly with Mr. Lundsgaard, the owner. He worked alone or with one helper, and he didn’t seem to mind having an inquisitive kid around. Although he appeared a lot older than Dad, years later I learned he had a daughter only two or three years older than me.

    It was exciting to explore the nooks and crannies of the mill, which also contained things like stray cats having kittens. They made their home in the large sheds, full of dust and cobwebs, where many old and outdated machines had been discarded. Mice and rats were also attracted by the neglect and smell of the damp wood. Bushes and small trees with berries grew between the buildings, some of them carrying fruit in season.

    The sawmill office was particularly inviting–gloomy and damp, with large yellow and gold-colored fungus sponges growing in several places on the walls and in the corners. An old grandfather clock stood against one of the walls. It still worked, and once a day the weights, which provided the tension energy to make the clock go, had to be pulled from the bottom of the cabinet to the top. This was a perfect job for a kid. A couple of old couches with green velour upholstery, and a desk overflowing with papers and other stuff, were covered by a thick layer of dust. This and the cobwebs gave the place a delightfully haunted quality. What was perhaps not too spooky in reality, a kid’s mind could soon transform into something frightening. There were few workplace rules in those days, but Mr. Lundsgaard was cautious, and he taught me respect for machines with moving parts. Having me hang around did not seem to create any problems for him, and I loved the adventure of it.

    We lived in the apartment in Skattergade until the summer of 1944. I was three-and-a-half years old when we moved a couple of hundred metres up the street to the second floor apartment in Valdemarsgade 12. Dad borrowed a large flatbed pushcart from the sawmill, and the move was accomplished by making trips back and forth, the pushcart piled high with our belongings. Sometimes I ran alongside the cart, but whenever there was room I rode atop the load, excited to be moving to a new house.

    Chapter 3 –

    A New Home

    Valdemarsgade 12 was to be my home for the next fourteen years. We lived upstairs in a two-storey building which faced the street. It was separated from a similar two-storey building directly behind it, by a cobblestone yard, and as you entered the yard from the street, a small cottage sat to the right. These were all a rental apartments.

    We shared our building with another family of Nielsens, who lived on the main floor. Mrs. Nielsen had a small, one-room grocery store, and in the front window sat a fancy electric coffee mill, which filled the store with a delicious aroma. From the main entrance a hallway led to the stairs, which went up to our apartment on the second floor. This hallway was also the location of the toilet for the downstairs Nielsens, and all traffic to our apartment had to go right past this facility. Not a very private or pleasant arrangement. Our toilet was directly above theirs, but at least we had a window that opened to the outside.

    missing image file

    The grocery store had its little warehouse in the basement below the Nielsens’ kitchen. It was accessed through a trap door in the kitchen floor, or through a door from the basement wash house. The main feature of the wash house, which had steps going down from the cobblestone backyard, was a large iron kettle, built in over a cement fireplace. On wash day, a fire was lit under the kettle, and Mum would boil the whites. None of the houses had bath tubs, so once the laundry was done and hung out to dry, it was routine for any available kids to be tossed into the big kettle, one at a time, for a good scrub down. Soapy water should not go to waste.

    Mrs. Nielsen had been married before and had a son named Kai Schøsler. He was a few years older than I, but despite living in the same house, he and I never became friends. Mrs. Nielsen was now married to a carpenter, and they had two daughters, Ingelise, one or two years younger than I was, and Vibeke, born shortly before we moved in.

    In the house behind ours, the upstairs apartment was occupied by a family with three kids. There were two smaller apartments on the main floor. A single man, a recluse whom no one seemed to know, lived in one, and the other was occupied by a widower, a retired sailor. His windows faced a back garden, where vegetables and flowers grew. A goldfish pond at the bottom of the garden was a big attraction, and several times a kid had to be fished out and brought home to its mother soaking wet.

    Different families lived in the cottage over the years. One couple I cannot forget. The husband was an alcoholic, known around town as Harry the Warrior. His reputation was built on barroom brawling. He often came home drunk and had fights with his wife. She frequently displayed the battle scars and made no attempt to hide them. Harry sometimes disappeared for extended periods of time. He was once convicted of break and enter, locked up and sent away to the penitentiary for six months. Whenever he was gone, Harry’s wife entertained a variety of other male companions, but once he was back, she always took him in again. There are many stories about Harry and his wife, and even as youngsters, we followed with interest these domestic escapades.

    Added up there were about ten people living in the cottage and the house behind ours, and all of them had to use one toilet, which was accessed from the yard. Line-ups were common, and needless to say, chamber pots were the order of the day.

    I find it interesting how I remember these people–the things that stick in my mind about them. Mrs. Nielsen always smoked small cigars, cerutter they were called, and she smelled of them. Mr. Nielsen was tall, slim and very laid back. He had a good sense of humour and usually a smile on his face.

    Mr. Andersen has been completely erased from my memory, but Mrs. Andersen was a strong personality and she used to yell at both the kids and her husband. The old sailor, living below them, used to drink Stout beer–for his health–and once in a while he would give us kids money and empties and ask us to go to the store to get him a fresh supply.

    The stairs leading up to our apartment had a banister with spindles. Being inquisitive, already the day we moved in, I learned that I could poke my head out between two spokes and look down below. The problem was that I could not get my head back in again, and Dad had to come to the rescue. I never repeated that experiment.

    Halfway up the stairs was a landing, where you had to turn 180 degrees. On this little landing stood a cloth-covered, wooden crate with a padded lid. We called it Puffen. I have never known why. It was in fact a shipping crate, covered with cloth. My mother used it to store her vacuum.

    One cold winter night when I was around fifteen and had long exceeded the hour of my curfew, I came sneaking up the stairs to find our apartment door locked. There was usually a key hidden on a nail at the side of the door, but not so this night. Thinking I was being punished, and not wanting to ring the bell, I took the lid off Puffen, placed it in front of the door, and used it as my mattress. Hours later Mum woke up and remembered locking the door and leaving the key on the inside. She checked my room and saw the empty bed. She found me sleeping on the stair landing, and she felt terrible. She brought me in, made me tea, and put a hot water bottle in the bed to help me get warm.

    Using today’s terms, you could say we had a three-bedroom apartment. Heat came from coal-burning kakkelovns (translated it means tile ovens, although they were made of solid metal), one in the living room and one in the dining room. They were the only sources of heat in the apartment.

    Else and Aage each had their own small bedroom with a slanted ceiling. The master bedroom was a good size, and here I had my bed until Aage moved away and I took over his room. There was no hot water, only cold, and we had no bathrooms, only a toilet. The kitchen sink became the place where dishes were done, vegetables were cleaned, where one washed and brushed one’s teeth, and where Dad shaved.

    Two individual gas-burning elements, placed on a stone counter top, were used for all Mum’s cooking needs and for heating water. A rubber hose connected the elements to a coin-operated metre. To get gas you fed Danish quarters into a coin slot. Any time my mother wanted to bake, she got out a portable oven and placed it on top of one of the elements, usually cursing–as much as my mother could curse–the lack of even heat. When there was call for roast pork or duck, the same routine would apply, and, despite having only one other burner available for potatoes, vegetables, gravy and so on, she could put a full meal with three or four hot dishes on the table.

    We did not have a refrigerator or an icebox, so grocery shopping was a daily affair. Mum walked to various shops around town and supplies were bought for only one or two days at a time. To minimize food spoilage required inventiveness. If we had too much milk, Mum poured it into a couple of shallow bowls and let it sit to get sour and firm. Then she sprinkled it with brown sugar and rye bread crumbs, and we had a tasty starter meal on a summer day. Milk shouldn’t go to waste.

    The dairy made home deliveries seven days a week in the summer, and there were always a couple of bakeries ready to bring fresh-baked bread and rundstykker–breakfast buns–to our door on a Sunday morning. During the early years of the war an open-air market was held in the town square every Saturday morning, but the last couple of years of occupation brought with them shortages and rationing. Still, with the butcher, fishmonger and greengrocer close by, cold storage was not necessary and our meals were usually fresh.

    Putting meals on the table during the years of occupation must have been quite a challenge for Mum, but she was resourceful and knew how to stretch her money. We got by in spite of the difficulties, and in comparison to so many of the other occupied countries, Denmark’s civilian population got off lightly. No one was left starving.

    Chapter 4 –

    Growing Up with War

    The Nazi occupation of Denmark lasted five years, from April 9th, 1940 until May 5th, 1945. Air raids were a constant concern, and therefore all homes were required to have blackout curtains or blinds, so no lights could be seen from the air. Street lights were not turned on in the evenings. Although there were not many cars on the roads, their headlights had to be covered in such a way that only a thin slit of lens allowed a minimum of light to guide the way. Because Denmark is located quite far north, summer nights stay fairly light, so this was not a major problem, but in the deep darkness of winter, travelling at night could be dangerous. Most Danes were used to riding bicycles, but in the winter, without street lighting, it was safer to get around on foot. During the last years of the war, people tended to stay home as much as possible.

    When the German forces began the occupation, Danish resistance ended after a few hours that first day. The Danish army, parts of which moved around on bicycles, was no match for the Nazi panzers.

    In the beginning being a protectorate of Nazi Germany did not have a huge impact on the population. This peaceful occupation allowed the government to function on a limited scale and helped to create the illusion of independence. The monarchy remained in place, and King Christian IX continued the practice of riding his horse through the streets of Copenhagen, as had been his custom before the war, something which really irritated the Nazis.

    German military control over Denmark had several strategic purposes. Since naval access to the Baltic Sea is only possible through Danish territorial waters, Germany needed to have control over them. German seaports along the Baltic coast would otherwise be all but useless.

    Denmark’s agricultural products was needed to feed the German civilian population, because most of their own food production went to their armed forces. Danish shipyards and factories were also useful to the German war effort, but on the surface, life in Denmark continued much as it had before the occupation.

    By 1943, however, the Danish resistance movement had become quite well organized and was making life difficult for the German occupiers. The freedom fighters received their supplies by air drops from British planes, and what had begun as sporadic acts of sabotage, was turning into a well-planned, coordinated resistance effort.

    Danes were forbidden by the Nazis to listen to BBC radio, but many people tuned in anyway, particularly to news programs broadcast in Danish, which were the most reliable source of information about the progress of the war.

    Underground newspapers were also flourishing. Some were produced on real printing presses, others on duplicating machines, but they all contained war news, more accurate and real than what came through the official and carefully censored Danish press. These underground papers were, of course, highly illegal, and possession of one, if discovered by the German soldiers, could land one in very serious trouble.

    In those days my father used to spend his evenings at the billiard club, getting out of the house, but also making extra money by winning billiard tournaments. The prizes were gift certificates that could be exchanged for cash. The shoe repair business was providing only a meager living, and a side benefit of Dad’s recreational activities was the nightly card game in the back room of the club, in which he was a regular winner as well.

    One winter night, while walking home from the club, Dad sensed he was being followed. There were footsteps behind him, and when he speeded up, so did the footsteps. He became quite frightened. It could be just a mugger, but who knew, it could be the German civil police, the Gestapo, who were in the habit of hauling innocent people in for questioning without any reason. While Dad walked down Valdemarsgade, he saw an opportunity to duck into a laneway, from where he could jump over a low fence and get into a back garden. He took it, and for a while he just hung out, hoping he had lost the person tailing him. Slowly he made his way through the back yards and gardens until he came to our house. He entered from the back, made sure the apartment door was locked, and hung up his overcoat. It was only then he discovered that, while he was at the club, someone had stuck a resistance newspaper in his coat pocket. Was he being followed? We never found out.

    Air raid warnings had now become a regular occurrence. When sirens began to wail in the night, we were roused from our sleep and had to head to the cellar, where supposedly we were safer. Dad was an air raid warden, and he and the other men would venture outside to listen for the sounds of aircraft and watch the searchlights play in the sky. As a warden, it was Dad’s responsibility to alert the authorities if a bomb fell in the vicinity of our house. Fortunately, that never happened.

    The Allied air forces had been taking a severe beating when they flew across the English Channel on their way to conduct bombing raids inside Germany. Not only were German fighter planes taking their toll, but anti-aircraft batteries along the French coastline also downed many of the heavy, slow-moving bombers.

    Eventually the Allies acquired aircraft with a longer range, and in order to avoid the worst of the anti-aircraft fire, they used a different route that took them mostly over water. From Britain they flew due east across the North Sea. Over southern Denmark, they turned south and flew across the Baltic Sea to cities like Hamburg, Kiel and Berlin. There were few anti-aircraft installations in Southern Denmark, and at that point in the war, Germany did not have the resources to build any.

    Once the allied bombers were nearing their German targets, the danger returned, both from fighter planes and anti-aircraft batteries. After they had dropped their bomb loads and begun their return, it was not unusual for badly damaged planes to limp home at a low altitude behind the main force. One can imagine their crews hoping and praying they could make it back without crashing on enemy soil or having to ditch in the ocean. Quite a few planes did crash land in Denmark, and sometimes air crews bailed out while they were still over land. The Danish resistance tried valiantly to find survivors and smuggle them back to England, usually via Sweden, which was neutral. They were often successful, but scattered throughout the southern part of the country there are numerous graves of those who didn’t make it, or who died trying.

    Sabotage–striving to do maximum damage to the German war effort–was one of the main activities of the Danish resistance. Blowing up railway tracks and halting transportation of troops and material was disruptive, as well as a great irritant to the Germans. Svendborg, being a seaport, had a shipyard, where both merchant ships and small navy vessels were placed in dry dock for repair. The Germans were counting on these vessels for the war effort, and the yard was naturally kept under heavy guard. The resistance was well aware of this, and when repairs on a particular vessel were almost finished, shipyard workers would notify the resistance. Saboteurs then got onto the dry dock, often by swimming there in the night with explosives packed in sealed, watertight bundles strapped on their backs. Dock workers had placed secret markings on the hull of the nearly finished ship, indicating where it was most vulnerable, and this is where the saboteurs attached their magnetic mines or plastic explosives. Many freedom fighters were young men from the school for nautical navigators, which was located right near where we lived.

    Such sabotage was cause for retaliation, and sometimes innocent civilians were snatched off the street or out of their homes, subjected to brutal questioning and torture, before being taken out and killed. Memorial markers can be found throughout Denmark in places where bodies were found.

    The Germans were well aware that nearly all Danes were sympathetic to the resistance movement and supported sabotage as a necessary form of opposition and protest. Hoping to sway public opinion against the resistance, a group of Danish collaborators, attached to the German SS, set out on their own secret mission to blow up and damage venues that were popular with the population. In Copenhagen, the Schalburg Group, as it was known, destroyed a favourite concert hall in Tivoli Gardens. In Svendborg, a daily newspaper building, a wine distribution firm and its warehouse were victimized. The idea was to make the population believe this was the work of the resistance, but people knew better. Not only were the underground newspapers efficient in passing along the truth, but Danes are also talkers, and word of mouth soon had people properly informed.

    I was awakened by both explosions in Svendborg, and I remember standing on our kitchen counter, looking out of the window in the slanted roof, watching flames shoot into the sky as the buildings burned. I also remember Aage, who must have been about 18 at the time, having a major altercation with our mother, because he wanted to go out to see for himself what was going on. Mother was vehemently opposed, and Dad wasn’t taking sides. In the end Aage won the argument, a first for him, much to Mum’s distress.

    One sunny day, some time in late 1944, I was playing on the floor in my parents’ bedroom. My mother was at her sewing machine near the window, which was opened a crack. All of a sudden we heard what to me sounded like a load of board lumber falling off a wagon–I thought it was from the saw mill down the street. I jumped up and ran to the window, opened it wide and looked out. There was nothing unusual to see, except for two men, who were running up the street in my direction. I only looked for a few seconds, because Mum snatched me away from the window and closed it.

    The sounds I had heard were of machine pistols being fired. A Danish informer, a man named Rasmussen, had betrayed resistance fighters to the Gestapo. To protect the lives of others, it was necessary for the resistance to eliminate him. Rasmussen was a bricklayer. He was walking down Valdemarsgade with his tools in a push cart, when he spotted two men wearing trench coats and realized they were waiting for him. He was just about level with Dad’s shop, when he suddenly dropped the push cart and ran into a laneway leading to his house. But the men were fast. They pulled out their guns and arrived at the lane in time to shoot him as he ran. Fearing there might be people in the back yards, they aimed low and hit him in the legs. He fell, badly wounded, and his screams could be heard until an ambulance arrived and picked him up. Dad was one of the first on the scene, and in spite of his military background, he was deeply affected by the episode.

    Rasmussen was taken to Svendborg Hospital and treated. Concerned that the resistance would try to finish him off there, he was kept under guard but soon moved to Odense, some 45 kilometres away. He died there a day later. His only son was a year younger than me, and after the war we occasionally played together.

    The Germans were big on punishment. One day in March of 1945 all the windows in our house were kept open for the entire day. This was most unusual. It wasn’t a warm day, and at the time, I did not understand what was happening. I just remember Mum telling me that we could not shut them. The previous night the Germans had raided a house in Skattergade, a short distance from where we lived. A resistance fighter named Mathiesen lived there with his family, and he had been betrayed by a Danish traitor. German soldiers had attacked and broken up a meeting of the small resistance cell. Mathiesen was caught, and one or two of the group’s members were shot trying to escape out the back, but at least one got away. Mathiesen’s parents, who owned the house, were sleeping and had not been involved, but they were both shot and died in their beds. Mathiesen was tortured and killed, and his body was dumped in a ditch along the highway to Odense. A stone memorial marks the spot.

    The following morning, it was announced that in retaliation, the Mathiesen house would be blown up some time during the day, and people were warned to keep their windows open to avoid having them shattered by the concussion. I don’t recall the actual explosion, which leveled the home, but several more such incidents linger at the back of my mind.

    As young as I was, I can recall the feelings of fear, but also the impression, no doubt received from the adults, that the bombing attacks and air raids were a good thing, necessary to bring an end to the war. That didn’t keep me from having nightmares, however. One bad dream, which persisted for about a year after the war was over, involved our whole family.

    In the dream we had been warned that big, black birds were coming to hurt us. I was watching them through the window in Else’s bedroom as they flew towards us, getting ever closer, and the only place we could be safe was a storage room under the sloping roof. I stood there, holding the door open, urging everyone into the little room, but when it was finally my turn to enter, I could not move, I was paralyzed. I always woke up screaming and bathed in sweat.

    During the war years, several winters were very hard by Danish standards. Snowstorms and colder than normal temperatures took their toll on the population. More than once Dad had to climb up into the attic, which was not insulated, to clear away snow that had blown in through openings between the roof tiles. When it melted, water ran into the walls and stained both them and the ceiling.

    Water in the sound at the end of our street was frozen over, something that almost never happened, and it was quite an event when the ice breaker came through to open up a channel for the shipping. With the heavy frost Mum’s washing froze on the line, and several times we went to bed with large, stiff-frozen sheets and other laundry draped over whatever furniture could accommodate them to help the drying process.

    Fruit was difficult to come by, and I did not taste a banana or an orange until the war was over. Even fresh air was a commodity during those last years of the war. You simply didn’t go to the park or out for a stroll, so Mum spread a blanket on the floor where the sunshine reached in through the windows. She undressed me, so I could sunbathe while we had a picnic on the rug in the living room. She told me stories and read from books, and I felt very much loved.

    The war ended with a declaration of surrender announced on the radio in the evening of May 4th, 1945. I vaguely recollect the excitement in our house, and hearing about a celebratory torchlight parade to the town square.

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    The next day, and for some time after, resistance fighters were busy rounding up collaborators and war criminals, as well as women who had fraternized with the German soldiers. It was another little while before British and American soldiers arrived in Svendborg, and by that time most of the regular German soldiers had left town for Germany.

    They were a sorry lot. There was little transportation available, and many went on foot.

    That fall, around the time of my birthday, Baker Pedersen and his wife Marie, a sister of Mum’s mother, came from Copenhagen for a visit. They had driven in their Ford T automobile, which created quite a reaction among the kids while it was parked in the street. They had brought me a present. It was a papier-mâché steel helmet, a freedom fighter armband and a wooden machine pistol replica. They became prized possessions. Even though we were only young children, we knew about the accomplishments of the resistance and took pride in them.

    War, no matter where it is found, has cruel side effects. When the concentration camps in Germany were liberated, many children, mostly orphans, were found near death from starvation. The Red Cross brought some of them to Denmark in order to restore their health. Denmark had been spared severe deprivation, and, more fortunate than most, its agricultural industries were more or less intact.

    One afternoon in the fall of 1945 I was among a small group of kids playing near my father’s shop. At one point, some of us were keeping several other kids prisoners in the courtyard. We held the gate to the street closed from the outside so they could not get out. There was much shouting and verbal taunting going on when a young gypsy boy, probably nine or ten years of age, came walking up the street and spoke to us. He was obviously from the camps, dressed in shorts and a thin shirt. He wasn’t wearing shoes, and he carried a wicker basket filled with crepe paper roses, which he was selling. He interrupted our noisy confrontation and told us–I think with both words and gestures–that we shouldn’t be fighting, and then he gave each of us one of his paper roses. We were taken aback and stopped.

    The full significance of his simple gesture didn’t hit me until later on, when my mother put the rose on our Christmas tree as a decoration. This little boy was destitute, but, to make us stop fighting, he had shared with us the only thing he had to give. That rose became for me a meaningful symbol, and an annual reminder of a young boy, who should never have had to endure what he did.

    Chapter 5 –

    Roots

    Dad’s parents, Marie and Hans Nielsen, had nine children in all–five girls and four boys. Dad was their third, born on December 16th, 1897. He was christened Herluf Aage Eskild Nielsen. The family lived in the village of Stenstrup, not far from Svendborg, and I loved to visit there with my grandfather, known in Danish as Farfar, meaning Dad’s Dad. Unfortunately, I never knew my Grandmother, because she died in the fall of 1942.

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    In this photo from about 1908, Dad is second from the left. Another brother will arrive in 1910.

    When we visited Farfar, we often took a walk to Grandmother’s gravesite in the church yard just down the road. We were at the cemetery one Sunday afternoon in 1945, shortly before the end of the war, when two British fighter planes came swooping in low. Their machine gun and rocket fire destroyed a freight train which was stopped at the railroad station, just a few hundred yards away. Sometimes the war came uncomfortably close.

    Farfar worked at many different things during his life. He was active in politics and in the union movement, and he could always be counted on for an opinion on current affairs. In the years I knew him he was a bakery salesman and delivered baked goods in a specially adapted car. One of his daughters, who had never married, lived with him and took care of both him and the family home. After he reached the eighties, one of his unmarried sons also moved in to help him with the bread route–Farfar drove and my uncle did the running. In March,1960, one afternoon after work, the old man went into the basement, where he suddenly keeled over and died. He was two months away from his 89th birthday.

    Mum’s parents were Anne Damgaard, born in 1866, and Mads Hansen Slot, born in 1868. Mum’s birth date was April 23rd, 1899, and she was named Bertha Hansen Slot. Her birthplace was a farm known as The Cliff House. It sat right on the coast near the town of Faaborg. Still there today, it has been restored and is now a weekend and summer home for a doctor’s family from Jutland.

    By the time I arrived, my grandparents were living on a small farm–more like a small homestead–just outside Svendborg. Their fields were leased out, and some of the living quarters were rented out, but they kept a few chickens and a garden. When I visited with them, my favourite treat was a raw egg yolk with a little sugar stirred in. This was eaten out of a cup with a spoon.

    Bedstefar, Mum’s father, wasn’t born with the name Slot, which in Danish means castle. It seems his grandfather had been a hired hand at a castle near Svendborg, where he was known as Max from the castle. This was eventually shortened to Max Slot. Bedstefar liked the name, but when he tried to change his name legally, he found that a family already had the birthname Slot. He contacted them and received their permission to have the name legally registered for his use. It still carries through the fourth and fifth generations of our family.

    During the war, as the resistance efforts in Denmark intensified, the old couple grew afraid to live alone on the farm. They were well into their seventies by this time, so Mum and Dad brought them to Svendborg to live with us. This put quite a bit of pressure on our small apartment, and it raised the stress levels within the family significantly.

    Else and Aage had not yet left home, so Mum and Dad gave up their bedroom to the Grandparents, and I had my bed in the room with them. Mum and Dad spent the next couple of years sleeping together on a narrow divan–really just a couch without arms, barely large enough for one person. This was a difficult time for them, and especially for Dad, who found it hard to tolerate Bedstefar’s left-leaning politics. To avoid arguments, Dad chose to spend his evenings in the Billiard Club, where discussion of politics was not tolerated.

    My earliest memories of Mum begin when I was about three. When she put me to bed she usually told me a little story, and the day always ended with one or both of us reciting the Lord’s Prayer. It was a ritual I remember asking for, and one in which Bedstemor would sometimes substitute for Mum while they were living with us.

    Unlike Dad, I thoroughly enjoyed the company of my grandparents. I loved hearing their stories. I have fond recollections of winter evenings, when apples were cooked in their skins on the heating grill in the Kakkelovn, while I learned something of the Old Days.

    There were also many amusing incidents. One night concussions from the Allied bombardment of the German port city of Kiel–about 200 kilometres across the Baltic Sea–rattled our windows. Bedstefar woke Dad, worried that it was the Germans trying to get in through the bedroom windows.

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    My Grandparents moved back to the farm during the summer of 1945, and in 1946 they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary there. They both spent their last years in Svendborg in a home for seniors citizens. Bedstefar died there in March, 1954, and Bedstemor passed away just ten months later. I only vaguely remember their funerals, which were held in the village church at Vester Skerninge, where they are buried in the church yard.

    * * *

    Dad only had six years of schooling, and at the age of twelve he was sent to a farm some distance away to work as a hired hand. This not only brought in a little extra cash for his family, but it made for one less mouth to feed at home. The farmer’s wife, however, was extremely stingy, miserly in fact, even with food. Dad, then a growing boy, was forever going hungry.

    You expect to eat very well on the farm. The hours are long and the work is hard and physical, and you need sustenance. The morning meal was the best for Dad. It usually consisted of hot oatmeal accompanied by bread, coffee or home-brewed beer. One large clay bowl of porridge was placed in the centre of the table, and everyone had their own wooden spoon, with which they ate directly from the bowl. Not very appetizing, and I imagine a little aggression was necessary if one was to quell the hunger. This may not have been an easy situation for a twelve-year-old boy among a group of adults. When the meal was over, the spoons were cleaned by a vigorous scrubbing with sand and then rinsed and hung on the window claps, ready for the next meal.

    As Dad told it, the quantity and quality of the food went downhill after breakfast, and he finally had no choice but to return home to Stenstrup to beg his father’s permission to leave the place and move back home. From then on he hated even the idea of farm work.

    In those days, when they had finished school, it was customary for young men to seek an apprenticeship with a journeyman in order to learn a trade. Apprenticeships could last up to four years. In the seventeen- and eighteen-hundreds young journeymen, who had finished their training, set out on foot, along with their wives if they had already married, to find a village or a town that was in need of their services. Some walked long distances before coming across a suitable situation for themselves, but then they would set up shop, often with the help of the local population, and begin practicing their trade.

    Dad served his apprenticeship with a boot maker in Århus. He learned to make hand-sewn boots, which were fashionable and also very practical in those days. It was a profession that required knowledge and skill.

    Then as now, there was conscription in Denmark, and Dad’s apprenticeship was interrupted while he was in the Danish army. He served as an artillery man, shooting off cannons and such. That’s the impression he gave, but at least a part of his time in uniform was spent as aide-de-camp to a Lieutenant Colonel in the town of Slagelse, where they were stationed.

    He must have served at least two years, because his stint ended in 1918. That was the year of an awful influenza-like pandemic, known as the Spanish Flu, which killed many millions of people around the world. Dad fell ill, but he was given treatment and survived.

    Unfortunately, by the time he finished his apprenticeship, the industrial revolution had taken over, and leather boots were being mass produced by machines. Dad was still able to apply some of his experience in the construction of orthopedic shoes and corrective footwear. He maintained and used these skills throughout his career, but it was not possible for him to earn a living this way. That left only two career choices open to this grade six drop-out–either return to farming or become a cobbler.

    He was not thrilled by the idea of working on other people’s old, smelly shoes,

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