The Teacher Was Supreme - 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
I remember everyone around us speaking Finn and I was wondering why we couldn’t. We were taught English. Yet I could understand what they were saying because my father spoke Finn around all his friends. I always wish we could have. I don’t think it was because they didn’t allow us to speak it. They just didn’t encourage us.
I remember going to Central School. In third grade I had my mother for a teacher. A lot of people say they don’t like their mothers, but I was proud. Here I am: king of the hill. I didn’t get away with murder and I always got Cs because I didn’t care much; I should have started school a little later.
I liked having my mother around. It was a comfort knowing she was there. She had the most incredible handwriting. It was so beautiful and perfect. My mother was a nice person. She was very gentle and kind. I wish she had taken better care of herself; she would have lived longer. She worked hard, too; she never got to really enjoy retirement.
Diane Maki, boy, she was brutal at recess on the Giant Strides. She was so light she’d get going way up in the air. She’d have a dress on and we could see under when she’d fly by. She and Leona Korpi would get on and Candy Peltonen and they would get that thing spinning. You think back how dangerous that was but we never got hurt. You’d hook your arm in and just keep running.
Every time you’d eat lunch, you’d go to the store. We wouldn’t go every day, but almost. No questions asked. No-one ever stopped you. And we came back to the school. We had money; a nickel or a couple of pennies. A penny bought a pack of baseball cards. We’d find a bottle on the side of the road—we’d get two cents a bottle. A Coke cost seven cents. A comic book cost a nickel or a dime. Some kids would come to school with a buck even.
We used to buy Fireballs. Also those little throat lozenges. You’d put them under your tongue and they would burn like crazy. It was a little wafer-type thing—brownish. And if you had a sore throat it would soothe it. Susan Boutwell bought a Fireball and got it caught in her throat. And Pearl Thompson [the principal] happened to come in the classroom and tipped her upside down and went boom-boom! Hit her head on the floor and you saw the Fireball roll out.
Yes, I too wished I could speak Finnish. Whenever my father & I visited, usually on Saturdays, my grandparents, their conversations were always in Finnish, I never understood what they were saying. They no longer had cows at that and my grandfather had suffered a stroke in 1954 that affected the use of one arm. Our visits were at that time were mainly to check on them. My grandparents were resident aliens, they never became citizens. No health insurance and minimal Social Security. No luxuries like visiting nurses etc.
On the topic of school, Ralph had it better than I did. I remember being wacked on my left hand by a wooden ruler because I was writing with my left hand. Also if you 'forgot' to do you homework you stood up, palms up, and got a wack on each hand. If you talked in class while the teacher was teaching you had your lips taped shut with these white paper tape. If you pressed your tongue against you could easily make a hole. So it was more symbolic, no chance of suffocation. I went from C's to A's by the time I reached 8th grade. Actually we had numerical grades, I graduated with a 98.3 average, highest in the class.
On the topic of athletic Finnish girls, in addition to Diane Maki and Leona Korpi, I would add Susan Korpi and Linda Somero (now Kivela) as well. I was a first base umpire in 1960 for the girls softball team and admired their athleticism.