No Room for Lazy People - Mildred (Somero) Kuusisto
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.
Chapter 4 - No Room for Lazy People
If I would be a young man again and had to decide how to make my living, I would not try to become a scientist or scholar or teacher. I would rather choose to be a plumber or a peddler in the hope to find that modest degree of independence still available under present circumstances.
Albert Einstein
Mildred (Somero) Kuusisto
We did not come from a sweet-tempered background. But I think psychologically this is good to know because nowadays people think, “Oh, these beautiful, big Finnish families all grew up in such harmony.” They didn’t. In spite of the difficulty of earning a living, poor health standards and healthcare, and inadequate housing, the Finnish people with their stubborn natures and sisu raised honest, industrious, and good citizens. Finns were noted for paying their bills.
In the Leander Somero family of seven boys and four girls, there was no drunkenness, no divorce, no problems at school. Leander, along with Isaac Aho, another immigrant, established the Apostolic Lutheran church in New Ipswich in 1905. Christianity and the Bible were very important and their successful establishment was attributed to respect for God’s Word. One daughter of Leander and Amanda, my Aunt Arline, was a little ashamed of the crudeness of the household she grew up in. They weren’t as clean as she liked. Arline was a go-getter, but she wasn’t allowed to go to school. In those days, there was no law yet. When Arline was around eight or nine, she had a job babysitting and house-cleaning on Poor Farm Road a few miles from her home. People in town used to come to Amanda and ask for one of her daughters to work for them, doing domestic chores. Because Arline was the ambitious one, she often got sent. One day a neighbor came to Amanda’s door. This lady was about to have a baby and needed a girl to help her. Arline said to her mother, “Why don’t you send somebody else?” “No. Get going.” Arline had to shake rugs and wash floors and this lady had a lot of kids and was real sick. One day when Arline was working, her brother Eino came over. He said the truant officer had come to the house and told Leander that he had to send Arline to school or be sued. And Leander was a law-abiding person. Arline ran all the way home, she was so thrilled. And she learned quickly. I lived in Michigan at the time and when Arline wrote me a letter, it was perfect. Spelling, punctuation, indentation. I think if she had had more schooling, she could have done a lot of things. Years later, when she was in a nursing home, Arline would recite poetry to pass the time. She knew Longfellow’s poems: “The Village Blacksmith” and his poem about his three little girls, “School Days.” When Arline came home from school, she’d straighten up, especially if she was bringing friends over. Her mother was of a more untidy nature: it didn’t matter if a towel was here or the floor was dirty; anything was fine. But when Arline turned 16, her mother said, “No more wasting time on school benches. Out to work. There’s no room for lazy people in this house.” So Arline and her sister Annie, who later married Gus Seppala, went to work in the tack factory in Jaffrey 10- or 12-hour days with no lunch break. The sisters boarded at a house and walked a mile or two to work. They got maybe three dollars a day each in wages. Arline told me she was so tired one day that she sat on a box to eat her homemade sandwich. The foreman said, “Get up.” She had to eat while she worked. There were no bathrooms especially for ladies. No protection against fire. No matter how you felt, there were no days off. There were no insurances if you got hurt. The big shots took advantage of the working man and the working man bowed down and took it. Coming from a country like Finland, these people are submissive anyway. But hard-working like the Italians. I came to this area about 28 years ago from Upper Peninsula, Michigan. Not long after I married, my husband got ill. I asked relatives in New Ipswich if they would rent me a place. I asked Seppala & Aho Construction if they would give me a job because I had taken a secretarial course, an Associate in Arts. There was no work in Michigan.I called Marty Seppala but his partner Hjalmar Aho answered. I said, “I’ve had a course at Suomi College in business and I find it very difficult raising these boys without their dad and they’re idle, picking up bad company.” It was nice to work for S&A. Whenever I came to visit New Hampshire previously, I always felt wanted. And I liked the religious background in the community. But my boys were very disappointed. My son felt really bad to think he had to leave his hometown. But had a ‘teen-age’ job at Seppala & Aho and when he got his first paycheck, he said, “I ain’t lonesome for Michigan no more!”
Love readings these stories of how things actually were in those days. If Patricia's book was written in 97 and Mildred arrived in New Ipswich 28 yrs earlier. That makes it 1969 which is interesting. Finns were still migrating to New Ipswich long after I left. In the early 1900s my grandfather also worked at the Tack factory, I still have a small cardboard box of tacks from that era (Cross tacks). When he had enough $ he bought the farm on Niemi Rd (around 1925). Things were better in the 50s. We had 15 min for lunch at Tricnit but you had to work until 3:15 to make up for it. There was some leeway in the morning, if you punched in at 7:03 AM, it still counted as 7 AM. We also had a coffee break from 9:30 to 9:40. Also excessive talking while working was discouraged. I rotated through many jobs at Tricnit as a 'fill-in' for women on vacation (unpaid vacation). For 2 wks I was assigned to the mating crew. I was working next to an attractive young lady about my age. Enjoyed talking to her when Billy Thayer came up to me and said: "I'd like to see less talking and more mating".