A letter means so much (71)

I began working when I was fifteen. Then it was easy to get a work. The industries in Sweden cried for labour. I took my moped and went to a pulp mill. There I went to the staff-office. I spoke with the boss and he said: “Go to the workshop, speak to Sixten Jonsson, he´ll tell you what to do”. And so I was employed. My first work was hard and dull. I had to stand inside a tower of iron with a heavy grinding machine and grind the welding seams on the inside of the tower. What a damned job. Day after day. And for a bag of bones like me the arms were of cement when I came home. After that i grinded tubes with grinding machine as big as the the other one. But I could at least sit down. Sometimes a big rat watched me from his hole. Everything was just great! I worked in the workshop for two years. It wasn´t easy to mobilize any enthusiasm for such work. Luckily enough, or unluckily, I don´t know which, they fired me for another occupation. The new job meant bleaching paper pulp with shift work, day and night all day a week and sometimes with gas mask through the shift. Why? Because they bleached the pulp with chlorine and sometimes the tubes were broken and the gas leaked out. It all was wonderful! Those days I had a friend, Urban. He had begun study on a folk high-school, its name was Wik. He sent me a letter to tell me how fun everything was, studying as a grown-up. And he proposed that even I should start studying. And so I did. I studied for nine years. Two years in the folk high--school, three years in evening classes, three years at the university and one year in a teachers training college. Spanish I studied later. Now when I´m retired I think of how my life would have been if I hadn´t changed my life. Days and nights in air spoiled of chlorine, with sleep problems and all, without the knowledge I have now. And have You ever passed a pulp mill, You know what stench there is. To tell the truth, it smells shit. No, I prefer to work with paper in form of books. Not to produce it.