VOJENS

I promised to tell you about the old Vojens as I remember it. I am now looking deep into my early memories and let us se what I find!

First, there is the old mill. I am there with my father when he is having sacks of corn milled. We are inside a huge, rumbling cave and I am afraid of getting lost between sacks of corn and flour larger than me, because I am only four years old. The miller looks like a cross between a troll and a ghost and wears a large, white apron like mother's Sundays apron.

The next to emerge into the light of my early remembrance is the midwife. One morning we would, quite unexpected, find that she had brought mother a baby during the night, and now had taken over our home. It was quite all right, because mother and all the other women we knew, always mentioned Hanna-Midwife with the greatest respect and admiration. They said that when the wife of a prominent person had let her young daughter have all their used baby clothes for her doll, Hanna had claimed it for a poor mother and with Hanna, there could be no discussion about it.

Doctor Nybroe was another great authority and took care of all complaints, big and small, in both Vojens and its surroundings. Once, grandfather went to him to have a tooth pulled. Doctor Nybroe charged one crown for pulling the tooth and the anesthesia was one crown. Grandfather did not want to waste money on something he could manage himself. What about if the doctor took care of the anesthetization and grandfather himself pulled his own tooth? Doctor Nybroe said "no" and grandfather let him pull the tooth without using anesthetics. –But he later admitted that he would never try that again.

Our neighbor had a problem with their child eating dirt and asked the doctor for his advice. "Give the boy a spanking!" said Doctor Nybroe, and he did not charge for that advice. His daughter, Eva, started smoking when she was 16 years old, just like most of her friends, but for her it was with her father's blessing, "because the smoke will fumigate the lungs." He had tried without success to cure so many patients with TB, and probably hoped that it, perhaps, could be eradicated with smoke like wasps and other varmints.

The third authority was Andersen, the police officer. He, alone, took care of all order and security in the whole area, and there always was order and security. He even took time to accompany a drunk to his home, although it was a two miles walk. Police officer Andersen pulled his bicycle steadily next to the singing and swinging Peter Lauritzen one summer evening, without giving the impression that he was doing more than his duty. Our neighbor, Hans Andersen's little, old farm went up in flames because Hans had burned some wood refuse much too close to his thatched roof. The insurance helped him to be able to build a nice, new farm. Police officer Andersen did not do too much about investigating the reason for the fire, probably because the two Andersens were old classmates. Besides, everybody should mind his own business.

-Haderslev was our big and venerable market town where we went for serious shopping, as for an engagement ring, a new carpet or a radio; while Vojens was sausages from Butcher Kratz, curlers from Jul-Ca and sewing threads from Kurt  Jensen. The hairdressers in Vojens and Haderslev competed for our attention and did their utmost, but all used too strong chemicals for our delicate hair. We always came home with a cloud surrounding our heads of something looking like fleece, and we cried from sorrow and shame.

Our little grocery shop in Styding had a hold on us, as we delivered all our eggs to export through him. However, he got himself a golden nose, as my aunt from town told us, when comparing his prices with other shops in town. That is why we sometimes sneaked to buy from the grocer in Vojens. He not only came to us and took our orders but also delivered them together with a bag of candy, which, with our modest lifestyle, lasted a week for the whole family. Our local grocer had never stooped to use such bribery.

My brother, Andreas, was only three years old when he taught himself to read and would read everything written wherever he went, often without understanding what he read. He came home and told us that the name of the owner of a new shoe shop in Vojens was Herz-Medi-Angelus-Star-shoes. However, we always called him "The Fly-snapper," because the poor man had a nervous tic, which made him look as if he was snatching a fly out of the air and then enjoying it wide eyed. It was a performance that made children go into the shop and ask for rubber boots during the war, knowing that none was available.

At that time, everybody talked the local dialect at home. However, in town we renounced our powerful home language and used the Danish we learned in school and heard over the radio. The result was that both the customers and the sales clerks communicated in a language none of them mastered very well, and a person from Copenhagen would have had difficulty in understanding them.

A book and stationary store and a tobacconist shared a large building on the main street, which the two brothers had inherited it from their father, a prosperous businessman. The bookstore owner was blind and his handsome young son was the caretaker, but his father always hovered in the background. We would let the young son advice us if we wanted to buy a book for a present, and he would help us get the right book for our parent's birthday. It happened to be on the same day, which was convenient and economical for us, as we only had to buy one present. Overall, there was an air of the sublime in a bookshop, books were for me something to venerate, and I found the atmosphere in the store quiet and solemn.