English below.
Elmegades Boghandel.
Elmegades Boghandel er bygget i skala 1:24, og det er halvt så stort som de ting, jeg har lavet tidligere. Det betyder, at f.eks. bøgerne, som alle er lavet individuelt og sat på hylderne én efter én, er mellem 7 og 10 mm høje.
Boghandlen er bygget af miniature-mursten i korrekt skala, og vinduerne er glas, med rammer lavet af 2 mm mahogni.
Disk og reol er lavet af 1,5 mm mahogni. Jeg har fået en masse finer-stykker forærende, så dem kan jeg lime sammen, og få træ i den tykkelse, jeg har brug for.
Kasseapparatet havde jeg lidt mas med. Det er andet forsøg på billederne, og jeg kommer nok til at lave nogle flere. Det lykkedes at finde billeder af de gamle, store tingester, men eftersom de fungerede med en slags ruller, så var der et hav af knapper, nærmere bestemt fra 1-9 i både enere og tiere til decimaltallene, og også fra 1-9 i rækken til énere, tiere, og hundreder, hvis modellen i kasseapparat kunne håndtere hundreder – det kunne alle ikke. Men intet “0” – det tog mig et øjeblik at regne ud hvorfor. Jeg har aldrig betjent et kasseapparat. 😉Men knapperne skal være under 1 mm, så det er lidt bøvlet. Hele kasseapparatet er 16 mm bredt.
Året er 1967, for der skulle være “nye udgivelser” i disken, og så måtte jeg bestemme mig for et årstal. Det blev 1967, for det dengang jeg for alvor begyndte at opdage verden og bevæge mig frit rundt i den, dog med det skånesomme hensyn til min mor, at jeg kun fragmentarisk orienterede hende om det liv, der viste sig at foregå uden for hjemmet. Og eftersom jeg har arvet et strejf af min mors fantastiske fortælleevne, som hun i øvrigt sjældent lod anfægte af pernitne hensyn, der kunne ødelægge en god histories momentum, så lykkedes det mig som regel at fortælle mig i sindrige snirkler længere og længere væk fra mine faktiske forehavender.
Avisen, der ligger på bordet udenfor, er Aalborg Stiftstidene, og det er den avis, hvor man kan læse om Steppeulvenenes sidste koncert, som blev afbrudt af Aalborgs resolutte politi. Politimesteren mente at have begrundet mistanke om, at bandet var i besiddelse af narkotiske stoffer… 🤪
Fra Aalborg Stiftstidende, 15. Oktober 1967: “Steppeulvene kom kun til at spille 30 minutter af deres to-timers engagement i Aalborg. Deres honorar på 1200 kroner blev skåret ned til 450.”
På bordet ligger også et eksemplar af “Maos Lille Røde”, som for første gang udkom i dansk oversættelse i 1967. Der ligger også en anden nyudgivelse fra samme år – “100 års ensomhed” af Gabriel Garcia Marques, som med sin bizart smukke, surrealistiske poesi stort set omgående blev bestseller. Og så ligger der et par ungdoms blade fra samme år – “Børge”, som kun ganske få vil huske, samt “The Beatles”, Sgt. Pepper special fra 67.
Op ad træet står en Velosolex, som var det mest hippe køretøj i de kredse, hvor jeg færdedes.
Inde på disken står på hylden med nye børnebøger 5 værker, der for alvor kom til at præge børnelitteraturen. Det er “Snøvsen og Eigil og katten i sækken” af Benny Andersen, “Halfdans ABC” af Halfdan Rasmussen og Ib Spang Olsen, “Silas og den sorte hoppe” af Cecil Bødker, “Cykelmyggen Egon” af Flemming Quist Møller og “Lille Virgil” af Ole Lund Kirkegaard.
På voksenhylden med nyudgivelser står, ud over førnævnte “100 års ensomhed”, “Barndom” af Tove Ditlevsen, “Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?” af Martin Luther King, “On the Logic of the Social Sciences” af Jürgen Habermas, “Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics” af Ludwig Wittgenstein, samt “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” af Tom Stoppard.
Der skete mangt og meget andet i 1967, blandt andet blev momsen indført, hvilket kan ses på et skilt på disken – 10% moms – alle forventede, at detailhandlen ville gå rabundus… 😉
Herhjemme blev Venstresocialisterne dannet, og håbet om et socialistisk Mellemøsten spirede efter 6-dageskrigen, og folk, der var blot nogle få år ældre end jeg drog i kibbutz. Min hensynsfulde doseren af information om min gøren og laden rakte dog ikke til, at det var en mulighed for mig. Jeg var 11 år gammel i sommeren 67.
Che Guevara døde, Sgt. Pepper blev udgivet, og teenagetidens normale turbulens blev accelereret af de hvirvelstrømme, der førte til ungdomsoprøret, rødstrømpebevægelsen, mikro-makro-mad og den generelle stemning af anarki, der blev klangbunden for min ungdom og mit tidlige voksenliv, som mine sønner blev født ind i.
The Book Store on Elm Street is built in 1:24 scale, half the size of the projects I’ve made in the past. This means, for instance, that the books, each made individually and placed on the shelves one by one, measure between 7 and 10 mm in height.
The bookstore is made with miniature bricks in the correct scale, and the windows are made of glass with frames from 2 mm mahogany.
The counter and the shelves are made from 1.5 mm mahogany. I was gifted a lot of veneer scraps, which I glue together to get the specific wood thickness I need.
The cash register gave me quite a bit of trouble. The one shown in the photos is my second attempt, and I’ll likely end up making a few more. I managed to find images of those old, bulky machines, and since they operated using a system of internal rollers, they had a multitude of buttons. Keys, numbered 1–9 for units and tens (for decimal values), as well as keys for units, tens, and hundreds (provided the specific model could handle hundreds – not all of them could). Interestingly, there was no “0” key – it took me a moment to figure out why. I’ve never actually operated a cash register! 😉 Since the buttons need to be less than 1 mm in size, it’s quite a fiddly process. The entire cash register is 16 mm wide.
The setting is 1967. I needed to include a display of “new releases” on the counter, which meant I had to settle on a specific year. The year was 1967, when I truly began to discover the world and move freely within it, though out of consideration for my mother, I only gave her fragmentary glimpses of the life I was living outside the home. And since I inherited a touch of my mother’s fantastic gift for storytelling – a talent she rarely allowed to be curbed by petty attention to details that might spoil the momentum of a good story, I usually managed to weave elaborate, winding tales that took me further and further away from what I was actually up to.
The newspaper lying on the table outside is “Aalborg Stiftstidende”, the local paper in my home town. This issue reports on the final concert by the band “Steppeulvene”, which was cut short by Aalborg’s resolute police force. The police chief claimed to have reasonable grounds to suspect that the band was in possession of narcotics… 🤪
From *Aalborg Stiftstidende*, October 15, 1967: “Steppeulvene only managed to play for 30 minutes of their two-hour engagement in Aalborg. Their fee of 1,200 kroner was cut down to 450.”
Also on the table is a copy of “Mao’s Little Red Book”, which was published in a Danish translation for the first time in 1967. There is another new release from that same year, “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, by Gabriel García Márquez – which, with its bizarrely beautiful, surreal poetry, became a bestseller almost immediately. And then there are a couple of youth magazines from that same year: “Børge”, which very few people will remember, and “The Beatles, Sgt. Pepper Special” from ’67.
Leaning against the tree is a Velosolex, the hippest vehicle in the circles I moved in.
On the counter, on a shelf displaying new children’s books, sit five works that would go on to profoundly shape children’s literature: “Snøvsen og Eigil og katten i sækken* by Benny Andersen, “Halfdans ABC” by Halfdan Rasmussen and Ib Spang Olsen, “Silas og den sorte hoppe” by Cecil Bødker, “Cykelmyggen Egon” by Flemming Quist Møller, and “Lille Virgil” by Ole Lund Kirkegaard.
On the shelf for new adult releases, alongside the aforementioned “One Hundred Years of Solitude” are “Barndom” by Tove Ditlevsen, “Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?” by Martin Luther King, “On the Logic of the Social Sciences”by Jürgen Habermas, “Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics” by Ludwig Wittgenstein, and “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” by Tom Stoppard.
A great deal happened in 1967; for instance, the VAT (value-added tax) was introduced, as noted on a sign on the counter: “10% VAT.” Everyone expected the retail sector to go bust… 😉
In Denmark, the Left Socialists “Venstresocialisterne” were formed, and following the Six-Day War, hopes for a socialist Middle East began to blossom, leading people just a few years older than me to head off to a kibbutz. However, given how sparingly I shared details about my own life and activities, that was never really an option for me. I was 11 years old in the summer of ’67.
Che Guevara died, Sgt. Pepper was released, and the normal turbulence of the teenage years was accelerated by the swirling currents that led to the youth rebellion, the women’s liberation movement, the macrobiotic food trend, and the general atmosphere of anarchy that became the backdrop for my youth and early adulthood – the world into which my sons were born.
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