Confirmation, Hermes and Shoplifting

On these confirmation class days, we all rode our bikes and there were

Arvid and Jon Hermansson, obviously a bit
before their confirmation days :)

kids from everywhere. For a lot of us, confirmation was really the first time we got out on our own, away from our part of the forest, meeting new people. The kids who had gone to school in Kjettestorp, of course, I had known before, but there were a lot of new kids from other areas who I got acquainted with. Astor had two friends who were twins, Arvid and Jon Hermansson. They were good kids and we got to know them real well. There was also one boy named Stig Berg. In later years here, he and his wife have been real good friends with Lennart and Annika. There was also one girl named Harriet; I had never heard that name before and thought it was so lovely.

When I was going to start confirmation, Mom and Dad gave me a new bicycle, a Hermes, and Oh that was the Cadillac of bikes! I was so proud of my bicycle. In my albums somewhere, there is a picture of me standing in front of the house holding a bicycle and I have a white summer hat on. That's one picture I actually wanted to take because I was so excited about that bike. It served a practical purpose too. It was almost necessary for everyone to have wheels when we lived 7 kilometers out of town. (That's something over four American miles, I think!) So I rode my bike to confirmation lessons once a week and to church on Sunday. 

Mixing with kids we didn't know didn't always turn out well. One time when we were going home, it was just Brita i Grönliv and I walking out at the same moment, and she wanted to go next door to the little store next to the Mission House and get a candy bar. This little grocery store was owned by an old man but he was kind of modern because he had a vending machine outside the store. I said, "I don't have any money." She said, "You don't need much money" and showed me that she had a couple of copper pennies which was not the right kind of money for the machine. She showed me how to do it: you put a penny in the machine and it would get stuck. Then you went into the store and said to the old man that the machine didn't work. He came out and said, "Oh look, someone has put a penny in here. No wonder it doesn't work." He opened up the machine and gave us each a candy bar. Well, I knew this was wrong, but I went along with it. We ate our candy bars while we were going home but it didn't sit well in my stomach. I knew I had stolen a candy bar and I had fooled an old man. I felt so bad about it that I never did anything like that again.

Here are a couple of ads for Hermes bikes from around the time when Mom got one -- their slogan is "cycler med delar av rostfritt stål" or "bicycles with parts of stainless steel"