FINNS: An Oral History- Keeping Services - Ralph Kangas
New Ipswich Historical Society
FINNS: An Oral History of Finnish-Americans in New Hampshire’s Monadnock Region
Excerpted from FINNS: An Oral History... by Patricia Kangas Ktistes, 1997, all rights reserved.
Ralph Kangas
People ask: like my kids say, “How come you don’t like cards?” We weren’t allowed to play with them. If we came home with cards, they would have been destroyed. I didn’t know how to play Old Maid or any of those. I think my mother did buy a pack of Old Maid cards when we were in high school. But we could not play cards. That was evil. As far as the Finnish religion [Independent Apostolic Lutheranism], we used to bring a speaker from Minnesota out. It was all on a Sunday afternoon. We’d go down to Eino Somero’s house dressed up in a coat and tie and because they had such nice food: cold meats and reikäleipää [rye bread] and nisu [cardamom bread]. You’d hear those ministers preaching like crazy, cracking the whip, and my father and grandfather would sit, listening.
We kids would be eating and eating because there was so much good food. We’d spend the afternoon running around and playing. There were tons of kids. Freddie Rauhala: he would show us all the ropes of being an older boy. My father would bring us and the minute we got out of the car, we were on our own. We never, ever argued about going; ‘course, I don’t think we had a choice. We used to go swimming in their brook. I remember I had a brand new pair of jeans back then, wicked heavy and stiff. All the kids went in and I looked at my mother and she said, “Go in with your jeans on.” I did and those jeans were so heavy because the cloth was 10 times denser than it is now. I always remember one of the Somero boys lying in bed because a tractor had run over him and had his chest crushed. They brought his bed in the living room so he could participate in the services.
We used to go to my grandfather’s brother, Great-uncle Matti’s, for services, too. The porch had a swing where you had three sit on each side: we used to really rock that thing. I would have been about six when we stopped going to services. I don’t know if my mother put the kibosh on it; maybe 12 they figured the kids were making too much noise or something. But I still remember my father going to those services up to within fifteen years before he died.
“To put the kibosh on: to finish off…” Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: University Press, 1933), 687. 12
Interesting. A view of New Ipswich Finnish life that was unknown to me. My interactions with Finns were 'weekday' interactions, not Sunday interactions. Never knew they were so religious. I encountered Someros installing electric lines, maintaining roads, coaching baseball, neighbors of my grandfather like Toivo Heiskaanen, the Rauhalas, Linnas, Kerulainens, Sondra Heinonen, my father's relatives that included some from Maine, and my aunt's relatives, the Ahos. In Smithville the Tokos and Lindroos (who welded my broken bike), in town (broadly speaking since I didn't know really where some of them lived, the Kivelas, the Parhilias (one day I got lost hunting in the woods on my grandfather's farm, I walked until I came to a road, I put my thumb out to the first car that came by, it was Mrs. Parhilia. She picked me up, gun & all, and drove me to my house). Ray Kivela helped my father dig one of his wells. He had a jackhammer and dynamite. I can picture him, face covered with granite dust (no mask) and his body shaking as he put his weight (all 300 lb) on that hammer. The well hole became a giant cannon, with rocks sent up a 100 ft. Never once did I hear a conversation about religion.
So many memories. i already shared about playing cards, same as Ralph. Freddie Rauhala was my cousin. They lived on Temple Road at Bonnie Brae. Eventually his family moved to Florida. My Mummu (Rose Somero) also had church services in her home.