Schooldays - pondering on how my world looked 1979

Part four of schooldays will be right here with links to the others. I will add pictures, just wanted to get started!!

Before I start this I will do some digging and see what I can find about those days and the places that are now long gone.  In Sweden we mostly graduate from high school at 19, but some programmes went on for four years and in those days, just as now, people came and went, took time off, went to the states to study or work or just plain dropped school altogether and started working at 16.  It was much easier then, today every line of work demands many years of studies, if you have no head for books, you have to be very strongheaded, determined and naturally skilled to get a job. It helps if you have connections too. If not you will be set aside, perhaps even have to retire at 25 because your health grows bad when life comes to a halt.  Money is scarce, you have to depend on savings, parents, social wellfare aso.  I see it from time to time, but also some young people are quite good at getting odd jobs and constantly have a positive outlook on things.  Some are not. 

1979 there was still lots of work to find, second generation of immigrants from Hungary, Yugoslavia and Italy were firmly established. We also had a large amount of people from Finland, some arrived here during the war, as children, some established themselves in the decades to come. That is why we have whole communities where the finnish language is spoken by 50% of the population. We have sisu-radio and sisu-tv and many congregations advertice for bilingual ministers and deacons, swedish-finnish.

We now got used to Chinese restaurants and pizza-bars, panpizza as well.  Hamburger bars could be found all over and downtown was a proper paradise for teenagers with no money, at least I never had any, unemployment and failing health made the following years tough for my mother, the block where we lived had started to decay, people were moving, mums best friend Eva moved to Stockholm with her husband and her children, leaving us in a vaccuum.
My hometown had begun it's change, old blocks torn down, new, modern , anonymous buildings took their place, the areas with 8-16 storey buildings with small apartments, started to pop up every where in the outskirts. It started already in the 1960's.

I applied for the most popular schools, the one with most prestige was Latin School, but there was also St Peter High School.  My oldest cousin, wanting to become a physician, finished at Latin School and went on to the University in Lund.  But I was accepted at Pildamms skolan. If you remember the great park where I spent much time, partly because of the outdoor theatre, you may also recall the ponds once dug out by prisoners .  Those ponds gave name to my school, but first it was called St Johns.  The more modern school was built close by in the 1960's, very close to the church where I started to sing in choir.  It housed about 2000 students, a huge establishment . I knew absolutely no one and was terrified!