A police officer's upbringing

In his autobiographical novel The Event on Kungsholmen, published in 1951, working author Ivan Oljelund recounts his childhood in a house that no longer exists at Fleminggatan 42, which corresponds to today's Fleminggatan 40. Oljelund writes: ‘The slush was swept away towards spring. February clung to the winter image even on Fleminggatan with the slippery pavement and broken shins and snowstorms, which were refreshed now and then, but by mid-March there was only lamenting at the dim light of the evening shadows and the black tread of the hundreds that poured in and out of Separators and Bolinders in the morning, at noon, and in the evening. In the densely sticky, as if frigid and young March atmosphere with cold blue evenings, the Right felt more tired than ever. He walked or traveled his usual way and the long Fleminggatan seemed to him like a glance in a backward telescope with unattainable limitless perspective. Only when he traveled, he saw correctly in the telescope and got the street in compression, but it cost ten pennies to look’.