I first started working one really hot summer in
1962 delivering soft drinks from a truck in the
countryside outside my hometown Eskilstuna,
Sweden. I was ten years
old and the driver was
from Denmark
and I thought his way of speaking Swedish
was very exotic;
Then -
there was a car
rally not far from our summer
house and my friends and I sold programs and
stuck ads on all the cars. I remember the
ads for Canada Dry – a soft drink that never made
it here in Sweden. And I was really too shy to
sell programs;
Then -
I worked as a
postman on Saturdays in Eskilstuna,
while in high school - sharing a district with a good
friend. I remember those really early Saturday
mornings climbing all the stairs. This was at a time
when we still got mail on Saturdays and a time when
I could still easily run up three flights of stairs
without getting out of breath;
Then -
I worked as a
lathe operator every weekend while
in college, making taps for oil drums at a small
workshop. The
manager was married to the owner’s daughter but still we made
fun
of the greedy old man
& I remember blood all over the floor and how I
almost lost
the top of my thumb on one of those dangerous machines;
Then -
I worked in a
store in the very center of Stockholm
in the summer of 1972, selling refrigerators and spark
plugs. On the other side of the street was a bookstore
where I bought Neil Young’s album Harvest and all
through the
summer I played the song Heart of Gold;
Then -
I worked as a
garbage man one summer. I hurt
my leg the first day on the job and I had to go to
the hospital to get stitches but I was back on the job
in the afternoon – this was a well paid job that
helped me get through the University and
I remember all the beer and soft drinks that
I brought home every day because people gave us
something for
picking up their excess garbage;
Then -
I worked at the
Arlanda airport cleaning the exterior of airplanes
at night all through
University, until the
strong smell of the cleaning liquids made us all ill.
I remember the trip back home in the early morning,
all of us in the car tired and dizzy from the smells;
Then -
one summer I worked as a driver for a large
pharmaceutical
company in Uppsala;
a smooth
job in a VW van, cruising the University town.
Then -
I worked in the
staff office at a large steelwork outside
Eskilstuna,
keeping track of salaries for
two hundred employees who worked in shifts and
on a piece rate. Many years after I quit I could still
remember
the employee numbers of some of the workers when I saw them
passing on
the street;
Then -
I worked as a
temporary teacher in college after I
finished University and it was strange since I was just
a few years older than my pupils;
Then -
I worked as a
driver and telephone technician with
Ericsson in Melbourne,
Australia and I
learned the
tradition of drinking a lot of beer at lunch and taking
it really slowly in the afternoon;
Then -
I worked as
painter for a month in Melbourne
and carefully and
very slowly painted a whole health care centre;
Then -
I worked in the
financial department of the Ericsson head office
when I returned to Sweden in 1977,
now being a serious guy with
a tie and no beer for lunch;
Then -
I was the
financial manager of a large electrical wholesaler for
three years and learned
a trade;
Then –
I worked as a
financial manager for a Swedish
independent record company and paid out royalties
to U2, Paul Simon, Zoot Sims and Chet Baker;
And now –
for the last ten years I’ve had my own company working
as a
business manager for Swedish artists.
Three years ago I started to write poetry and now
I try to remember what I have done all my life to
see if there was anything interesting to write a poem
about.
