Dirk Fosgaard was the wheels for most of their activities. He'd learned most of his skills driving crates of fish in the family's old Saab truck, from their home near Lom back and forth across the icy Sognefjellet pass.

The family had a long history as fish merchants and, as a boy, Dirk had always dreamed that one day he would drive his father's truck full of shiny, bright eyed pike clear over the pass and not stop till he reached the great ocean at Bergen.

As it turned out, he did make such a journey one clear summer's night, but as a hitch-hiker, drunk, at the age of twenty four, having driven the old Saab into a drainage ditch, leaving Pere Fosgaard without transportation and Lena Olmstead without a solid plan about who'd be helping her to raise the baby come December.

from the The Burnley Street Gang archives.

Photo credit to:

Jarle Wæhler / Statens vegvesen