Uff da, it's been a busy week then

I've hardly had time to come up for air. You know how those weeks go. But today is Friday and I managed to sleep in and loll around the house this morning, read a few blogs, the newspaper and now I'm feeling guilty because I should get busy. You know what a normal characteristic feeling guilty is for a woman, but when you grew up Norwegian Lutheran, it's even a heavier load to carry. I think that's the biggest gene that those Norwegian Lutherans sent down the pipeline to the next generation was how to feel guilty correctly.

Well, then, let me tell you about my week - if you're interested that is.

I'm one of the officers of our women's church group - LWML for the rest of you Lutherans - Lutheran Women's Mission League for those of you who aren't. We found out two weeks ago that it was our turn to host the Spring Rally. Now that's not a LOT of notice, but our group works together very well and we managed to pull it off successfully.

Because I'm the treasurer I got to do all the grocery shopping for the lunch we put together. The standard statement is always, "Well, you've got the checkbook, you go get the groceries." Groceries for 75 people gets to be a lot of groceries to be hauling around, loading, unloading and putting away, but Ole was kind enough to help me. So I spent Monday afternoon doing that. Then came Tuesday when six of us got together in the church kitchen and spent the day preparing all the food for the next day. Tuesday started at 10 o'clock and ended about 4 o'clock. Then came Wednesday, the day of the Rally so we were all there bright and early at 8 o'clock and by the time we finished cleaning everything up it was 4 o'clock again.

For me that was three days of being on my feet on a concrete floor and the old bod' told me so, too. We were all "Pooped Puppies."

But the ladies and the five ministers that attended from other churches raved about the food. Ministers are always hungry, I think. At least ours is and I don't know where he puts it because he's so slim and trim. In his former life he was a Marine. Didn't become a minister until he was 44 years old. VERY interesting fellow.

I must tell you about our entertainment. It was a skit entitled "Olga and Lena Go to Church." Here's a picture of Olga and Lena. Lena is in the stylish orange hat. (Actually, that's me - they didn't know I wasn't just PLAYING the part - I actually LIVE it!)

Olga and I used our very best Norwegian brogue and they all laughed at us. Someone should tell them it's not nice to laugh at people when they're trying so hard to speak English (snicker). The synopsis of the story was that Lena always sat in the back pew, always in the same seat. But today when she came to church someone else was occupying her seat and unless she sat in THAT seat she couldn't listen to the Pastor's sermon. Then it went on about what happens in the back pews - all da coughing and da nose blowing and the snoring, and how Ole always takes a nap in the back pew during the sermon. It just wouldn't do to sit in the front pew with Ole because when he wakes up he doesn't know WHERE he is or WHO he is and how high he jumps when Lena pokes him with her elbow.

Anyway, Olga finally convinces Lena to move to the front pew and the story goes on as to what she experiences up there. Lena can actually SEE and HEAR what's happening from the front pew and some of the remarks that she makes made our Pastor blush and in several instances burst out laughing. We made him sit in the front pew on the other side so we could look at him and point fingers.

Anyway, it was hilarious and both Olga and I had a hard time to get through it without busting up ourselves. I just about lost it a couple of times and had a hard time to continue.

We had a great time. But I had to spend yesterday recovering as I felt like I had been run over by a truck and then it backed up over me again. Today is better.

Have you been following all the news about the volcano erupting in Iceland? Well, Ole and I have probably because we have a special interest in it because we used to live there. I'd like to share a video with you that I have posted previously so some of you may have seen it. It's what Iceland looked like back in the dark ages and the days of the Vikings when Ole and I lived there. Hope you enjoy it.

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Love you all, Lena

Living in the Past

They say you can never go back – and I guess that’s very true. Things are never the same as “they used to be.” When Ole was in the Navy we lived in Iceland for just over two years. One of our greatest desires has always been to go back and visit again; to make the trip with dear friends of ours that lived there at the same time. Unfortunately, when you’re young, busy raising a family and trying to get ahead in the world, those kinds of things get put on the back burner. As of September 2006, the NATO base was closed – turned back to the Icelandic government, as it should be. But it would have been fun to see it once more in full operation.

Ole was an Electronics Technician, responsible for the maintenance of all the microwave gear that was used to communicate with all the submarines, airplanes (spy planes –shhh – don’t tell anyone) and various ships that were patrolling the North Atlantic during the time of the cold war with the Soviet Union. The North Atlantic was a busy place then, and Iceland was in a very strategic location. Ole had an extremely high security clearance at that time, so he really couldn’t talk about a lot of the stuff that he did. I remember when he was investigated for that security clearance – they did everything including look down his shorts (hope they saw something interesting!) along with everyone else’s shorts that he knew – both presently and in the past.

I was fortunate enough to get a job working as the secretary for one of the Commanders of the NATO base. (Back then we were called secretaries – not administrative assistants. I guess we were secure in our status knowing that we, in reality, ran the offices, and didn’t need any new and improved titles to make us feel important.) Commander Davis was in charge of the Supply Office – the location where EVERYTHING that the base used to function was kept and disbursed. There were six divisions within the Supply Office, and each division was supervised by an officer of a lower rank and a secretary, along with a number of enlisted men. There were a total of 300+ enlisted men working in the Supply Office at that time, a number of Icelandic Nationals, and seven American females – one for each division and myself, the Commander’s secretary.

My specific office consisted of the Commander, myself, two yeomen (male secretaries), a mailman, and a couple of chiefs. In my opinion, a Chief (E7, 8, 9) is a disposable entity in the Navy – their sole purpose in life is to hold a coffee cup (snicker) and sit with their feet on their desk.

You would think that in a situation like this our office would have been very busy – but I have to say this was one of the worst jobs I’ve ever had due to the lack of enough to do. I would accomplish my workload within a couple of hours in the morning and then had nothing to do for the remainder of the day. I have to say that the Commander was well trained in holding a coffee cup and sitting with his feet on his desk also, as were the other six division heads.

So my days got very long. I read magazines, wrote letters, paid bills, anything I could think of to make the time go faster. AND I played Ann Landers to a lot of the guys in the entire Supply Office. THAT got to be quite interesting. I didn’t apply for that job – it just happened. I must have some kind of sign on my forehead that says “good listener” because people have always unloaded on me and still do. I heard everything from stories about married guys that were having affairs with Icelandic girls (Iceland is the land of “free love” – more on that later) – to guys who were trying to get a Section 8 (just like Klinger on Mash). Most of the time it was an information overload, believe me. One young man, in particular I struck a tight bond with. He was a fellow Minnesotan, an 18-year old from the Iron Range, who had just found out his girl back home was pregnant by another guy. He still wanted to go home and marry her. He finally did, but wasn’t granted leave until after the baby was born. He came back to Iceland, served his time and then got stationed stateside. I often wonder what happened to him. I should try to look him up sometime.

Then there was a guy from Royal Oak, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. He was a true hippy and I often wondered what he was doing in the military at all. He was tall and slender with a handlebar moustache that would wrap around his head and meet in the back when he stretched it out. He used a lot of wax on it and coiled it to keep it in order. His best buddy, from New York City, was a short red head with rose-colored granny glasses. They made quite a pair, and when dressed in civies (civilian clothes) you would never have guessed they were part of the military with the exception that they didn’t have ponytails. I have to say the military standards back then were quite different for haircuts than they are now. And especially in Iceland, things were much more relaxed. Most of the guys had big moustaches, LONG sideburns, and hair that touched their collars. Not the clean-cut shaven, shorthaired military you see now.

Then there was Chief Conroy – one of those Chiefs that had a permanently malformed hand from holding his coffee cup all day. He was probably in his late 30s or early 40s, with a beer paunch and an attitude that thought he was God’s gift to women (yuck). He was constantly trying to put the make on all the young females in the department. Fortunately being non-military, I could tell him where to go.

For some reason sailors drink a lot of coffee – probably out of boredom or something. At that time Ole didn’t drink coffee. Each week one of the sailors in his office was assigned the job of coming in early to make coffee in the big 100-cup pot so that it would be ready by the time the officers came in to the office. Well, when it was Ole’s turn, he didn’t like doing this because he had to be there by 6 a.m. in order to have it ready by 8. So one morning when he was there alone, and before he got the coffee going, he found a dead cockroach, stuck it in the spigot from the inside to plug it, and then went on about his business making coffee. The first officer came in, managed to get a cup of coffee, but it didn’t come out very fast. More officers came in, and the coffee was running slower and slower until finally it wouldn’t come out at all. They knew the pot was full, so they started poking around in the spigot and cockroach parts started coming out!! Ole didn’t get out of making coffee, but he got a few chuckles out of that one.

Here’s a picture of me in my office – freaky glasses, huh?

They say you can't go back - but I sure wish I could go back to being that thin!!

Love, Lena

A Look Back in Time

In yesterday's entry I made mention that I didn't go out for orchestra in my senior year because this dude named Ole had entered my life. Here's a bit of history from a long ago entry - just for my newer readers:

Ole and I were high school sweethearts. We met in first hour study hall of our senior year. He sat in the front of the room, and I sat about mid-way back. He was well over six feet tall and had the most beautiful brown eyes - his mother called them "bedroom brown" - (I'm not going there!) Every morning during the Pledge of Allegiance (yes, we said the Pledge back then,) he would turn around and give me a big smile with this perfect white teeth.

Ole had kind of a reputation back then. He was one of those "hoods" as they were called back in the 60s. A bad guy, he smoked and had been "requested" by the principal to not attend classes on more than one occasion. Must have been the mystique that drew me to him, because by the time Sadie Hawkins Day came around I asked him to the Sadie Hawkins dance, and from that point on we were a "thing."

I was 20 by one week, and he was 20 by 26 days when we were married. The Viet Nam War was raging, and lots of our high school friends were being drafted. About a year after Ole and I were married we knew his number was getting close, so he decided to enlist in the Navy where he would have some choices about what he would do, instead of being drafted and sent into the infantry. Luck leaned our way, and following basic training and additional school, he was sent to the NATO Base at Keflavik, Iceland.

You can't imagine the chagrin when he came home with his orders for Iceland. Neither of us even knew where the place was, let alone whether or not I would be able to go with him. After a short leave, I put him on the plane, not knowing when I would see him again.

As things went at that time, there was a postal strike for all APO/FPO addresses, and even though I wrote to him every day, I didn't receive ANY mail from him for over six weeks. I was SURE that that was the end of our marriage and that he had found some little chickie and had written me off. And that was back in the days when making an overseas telephone call was extremely difficult and much more costly than a seaman in the Navy could afford. At this point in his military career he was bringing home $32.46 every two weeks. Even back then that wouldn't buy many groceries.

FINALLY I received six weeks worth of mail all in one bundle. Somewhere in that stack of letters was one telling me that I would be able to join him, but that it would be at our own expense - because he was only a seaman, the military wouldn't pay for any of my travel expenses or shipping any household items. So I sold everything we owned, paid off all our bills and bought an airplace ticket to Reykjavik, Iceland. At this point, I had $100 to my name and I started off to an unknown location halfway around the world.

Now remember, at this point I'm a pretty naive little girl from Minnesota, and have NEVER in my life been on an airplane. I remember the tears in my father's eyes the morning he brought me to the plane and said goodbye. I was going half a world away, and he didn't know when he would see me again. I flew into JFK in New York where I had a 12 hour layover before I could board the plane to Iceland - Loftleider Airlines flew from New York to Iceland only once a week at that time, leaving at midnight. This was in June, and as we flew north and east, within two hours of departure the sun was rising, and never set again for about a month.

Of course, Ole was there to meet me when I got off the plane. He hustled me through Customs and the extremely intimidating appearing Icelandic police, and brought me out to a car he had managed to buy. A 1959 Opal with bald tires, cracked windows, almost no muffler and a jury-rigged stick shift on the floor that was supposed to be on the column.

He had managed to find a one-bedroom apartment on the upper floor of a residence in Keflavik, where we lived for about a year. We spent the second year in Iceland in a beautiful house a little farther from the military base. Even though he made rate rapidly and we would have been able to get housing on the base, we chose to live out in town to get away from all the military BS that can take place on a NATO Base. By this time I was also working Federal Civil Service, so we both needed to get away at the end of the day.

We spent just over two wonderful years in Iceland, made a number of great friends that we still communicate with and see on occasion today, some 35 years later. The time spent in Iceland certainly made us who we are today. It broke those "apron string" completely and made us into two very independent people.

Here's some of my fondest memories from Iceland. I hope you enjoy them.

PS: You'll want to turn the sound off on my jukebox before you click on this video. It has its own sound. Thanks.

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com