A fish story

A rather large herring

OK. I buy that stuff in a jar...with the white sauce - tangy - with onions and I mush it on crackers on Sunday mornings when my cholesteral level is in reasonable shape which I am happy to report is that of someone lesser than my age.. 

I'm what you could call a fish in a barrel fisherman. ... as in those damn things need to be in a barrel before I can catch one and then only with a net. So when I saw this story and having lived in Stockholm for years I was more than impressed.

I had been to Sweden perhaps a dozen times before moving there about 30 years ago to this day.  It was a strange set of occurances to say the least but Stockholm in early February is hard to describe as a 'treat for the senses'. The sun came up at 9 and set at 3.  The 6 hours were filled with trying to get things done and get myself arranged before I lost my sense of direction and got lost in the gloom of night.  

My flat was on the third floor of a turn of the century building on Valhallavagen just west from Sturgarten and across from the 1912 Olympic Stadium.  There are any number of good stories from that time - most of which I am forbidden by law to recount - but I moved in after a month in the Doremus Hotel down the block and felt very cosmopolitan almost immediately.

Stockholm isn't like New York or for that matter, any world city that I know of.  The dry cleaner down the block always wrote my name "Hus" on my laundry ticket because she was convinced I was from Germany and wouldn't do the Haus spelling on a bet and when finding out I was from the US, she adopted me as a Swede of sorts.  I had a phone in the flat -118091 to be exact - and now, almost 30 years later, I remember it and its position on my desk like yesterday.

The subway/metro was nearby but mostly I walked as the path from my flat to the Opera House took me through a wonderful park, past the Coq Roti restaurant down to the central square with giant chess pieces and a bandstand where the most god-awful community band played nightly in the summer.

Stockholm is on a series of islands near the town center (old town) and the water was clean and people fished all the time or at least on the tides. I never saw a whopper herring like in the picture but having nothing to do one day I gave in and rented a pole and some bait from a vendor and gave it a whirl.  The trick was you were supposed to toss it out into the real current but that skill eluded me so I just dropped it almost at my feet over the cement walkway.  A few kind hearted Swedes wanted to help me but I had no desire to catch anything - just to sit in the then April sun and watch a harbor scene with the old town in the distance that was a view unchanged for 6-700 years.  Folks had come to that spot (Nybroviken) for 7 centuries to catch fish and to look at the old town.

I got extremely lucky (for me in particular as I can't catch fish in a barrel) and simply caught a whopper - I mean a whopper.  My fishing gear was no match but I was also in 10 feet of water so there was little time.  My now colleagues came running to help - Amerikanen fångat en fisk - and they landed the beast and I was suddenly Nimrod. One old fellow who I had spoken to nearly daily for a month or so was shy with envy so I asked him if "he would mind cutting me a fillet for my dinner and perhaps if he would like to take the rest home for his home to enjoy I would appreciate it".

He looked at me with amazement and I made a friend for life.  "Perhaps you should come with me to my house for dinner tonight to enjoy this wonderful fish".   My honor.  He scratched out his address and left with the fish.  I went back toward my flat and stopped at a little pastry/bakery shop in Osterralm that I silently frequented for my morning sugar fix.  Feeling quite the fisherman and now having something to say I recounted my adventure to the counter person who had been kind enough to exchange chit-chat with an American with horrible Swedish skills for the past months. I had to draw the "fiske" now as long as I am tall and with great gesturing she felt in the presence of Ahab and the Great White Whale.  For the next years I was known as Amerihanan yrkesfiskare.  A local honor.

I went to dinner that night somewhere past the wonderful art museum with its Rembrandts and down to a little house with only 4 rooms and very low ceilings. It was very old. His wife, was completely shy and said almost nothing as I was the "as she finally announced" first American to ever be in their home. She never thought that the day would come and admitted that she was anxious about having an American visit because her home was so plain and we lived so well as she had seen on her TV.

The fish was poached in milk and dill with some other ingredients that she had found in the market. I had purchased the very best Aquavit at the control store I could afford and we had some with herring that was not from a jar but some that she had put up from her husband's catch and with a recipe she said was as old as the city..for curing and keeping so not to waste. 

Aquavit is, in my opinion, Scandinavian Grappa and to be consumed only by the teaspoon and not by the bottle. Liquid death is another name it goes by. The Swedes call it the drink that loosens all tongues. No kidding.  We - the three of us - consumed a lot of that wonderful stuff to my host and hostess's glee and anyone that thinks that the Swedes are stoic folks who sit around and go "hmmmm da ser gut" have a surprise in store. We all liked Sibelius - a Finn and thought Rembrandt was perfect for here and not in the Dutch area.  They had a deep seated dislike of the Germans per WWII and decried the neutrality of Sweden during the war....dirty swedes...was the term.

The hour grew late and I left them to find my way back. April or not it was snowing when I walked out and up the street to the underground to find my way home.  To this day I have not made any further contact although I have their address in my keepsake box but I am certain that they are long since gone.

I write this remembrance in that a friend from the past made contact with me or me with her on facebook of all things after being missing for 35 years or so. Her sister appears to have lived in Stockholm for a bit and I knew her well and can remember her after all this time..both of them really...Gail and Linda..both absolute genius and special kids back then...the ones you look at and say "oh my..how lucky to be that gifted".

The simple life of a Swedish fisherman and the complex lives of gifted kids.