FINNS: An Oral History- Marrying a Finn
Becoming Americans - Interview with Dorothy L. (Patat) Somero
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.
Becoming Americans - Dorothy L. (Patat) Somero
Dorothy L. (Patat) Somero
When you think about it in history, there’s never been anything bad said of the Finns. All I knew about them before I met any was what I had learned in school: they were the only country to pay their [World War II] debt. I encountered Finns through my roommate Bertha Somero during my freshman year at Keene Teachers College. Bertha’s mother Arline used to send Bertha’s brother Martin over with goodies. Martin would bring his cousin Veikko Nyland and I liked Veikko. Martin was kind of shy, so it took awhile for us to know each other. When I started dating Martin, my father, who’d been a train conductor, gave me his impression of Finns. My father spoke five languages and had been all over the world. “The Finns are a sober people. They are very honest and good providers and you’ll always have a home.” He told me about two Swedes and a Finn who sat at the back of his train. The Swedes fooled around, laughing and telling jokes, and the Finn was as sober as could be.
When I moved to the Monadnock Region, the Finns lived mostly in New Ipswich and Dublin and Ashby in rural neighborhoods. The Yankees were in big white Colonial houses in town. Although there was some interaction, they were separate culturally. There weren’t any rules; it just happened. Martin’s cousins were curious because he was marrying outside the religion. You know, the only son marrying a non-Finn. But they wouldn’t ask me anything except how I got along with Martin’s mother. She was a smart woman. All the Finns I met in New Ipswich were smart. They would go to school not knowing English and come out on top. Like Rose Somero; she graduated from Appleton Academy in 1935 and gave the valedictory speech in Finnish, English, and French. Sometimes I was more proud of the Finns than they were. I wrote a college term paper on Finnish folk tales.
I was amazed at the Finnish customs, though. My folks had taken my brother and me to dine out in Boston so we would know how to eat properly. I thought some of the Finns’ method of drinking coffee was not-very-good manners. After pouring it into a saucer, they would kind of pull the coffee into their mouths like slurrrp. I found out later they held a sugar cube in their mouths that they filtered the coffee through and it cooled their coffee. But the thing that really amazed me was this nine o’clock coffee in the morning, three o’clock coffee in the afternoon, and nine o’clock coffee at night. It seemed when I first got married all the wives did was make coffee and meals all day long. At home, if my father wanted a cup of coffee, he went and poured one. The pot was on the back of the stove. But
Finns would never drink coffee by itself. They would put out coffee bread. The Finn house smelled of baking and they were always scrubbing; very hardworking with a dry sense of humor. We went to Finland in 1993. It’s beautiful, people were friendly, and we had no problem speaking English and Martin’s fractured Finnish. Even the woods were clean. I wouldn’t mind living there. There was no graffiti. Helsinki was cleaner than any other city I visited in 11 countries. People were polite. A quarter to a third of Helsinki is in parks; that’s a law. They have an open flower and vegetable market by the Amanda Statue [Havis Amanda Fountain, Beloved by the Sea] and it was open from seven o’clock until noon. Then everything shut down. The cobblestones were washed and all debris collected, leaving no sign that anything had been there. Then the market re-opened, nice and clean, at two.
We left Finland the day after Midsummer Night’s Eve. The night before, the sun didn’t set. We had to hang a red blanket across our hotel window so we could sleep. I wasn’t feeling well yet I was supervising the baggage and things we bought. We had to get our value-added tax back and all that. We were looking for the airline counter and I felt on my shoulder for my pocketbook. It was gone. In front of me there was an information booth. I was almost in tears and said in English to the gal, “I left my purse in a taxi.” She wanted to know what taxi company. I said, “I don’t know.” The hotel had called the taxi for us. She found out what hotel and asked what the taxi driver looked like. I said, “Well, he was tall and blond and blue-eyed.” We looked at each other and started laughing. The airport was 10 kilometers out of town. She said, “Go out that door and the driver will be back with your purse in 10 minutes.” And he did. Now, in what other country would you get your purse back at the capitol airport after leaving it in a taxi during a holiday?
Loved this! The Rose Somero that Dottie spoke about was my Dad's sister, my Aunt. Dottie and my Mom Dorothea taught school together in Peterborough, Na
On the topic of marrying a Finn, my mother's story has some similarity Dorothy's. She met my father at Duval's store next to her home. She saw this tall handsome 20 yr old man with black hair and grey eyes and was determined to get him. She was 14. On one of his visits to the store she started a conversation with him. That led to a date at the movies and a series of love letters (2 of which I found in a box of papers). My father never made to high school but the letters were well written with proper grammar and better handwriting than I ever had. They married when my mother was 17. I was in college and I had a mother in her 30's. At the time I thought over 30 was over the hill.