THEIR TOP PRIORITIES - 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
Every night my grandfather John Kangas had the sauna going. He’d start a good fire around mid-day, maybe one or two in the afternoon. Then later on we had to do it. We had to lug the water in, put it up on the stove where the rocks were. We had this big tub we had to sit in and my mother would wash us. We didn’t go in the sauna as little kids. They would heat up the water in the sauna, bring it out and wash us up in the back room off the kitchen.
I think that sauna got partially destroyed and in 1952 my grandfather built the one that’s there now. Went down to Greenville and bought all the lumber; built the whole thing himself. Did everything; poured cement, lugged all the rocks. We also used to go to Peter Heikkala’s house and take sauna on Saturday night. We’d take a sauna, then sit down there in the living room and watch Lawrence Welk.
My father remembered when one of the Granfors boys came out and stabbed the other one in the shoulder because they had a fight in their sauna. Stabbed him with a butcher knife and there he was, lying down, steaming and bleeding, with this knife stuck in him.
I find it interesting that the sauna was so significant to many Finns. Maybe it's because I was in a hybrid household that it had less significance. Mention of the Granfors boys reminds me of Mrs. Granfors. She was a home 'looper' for Tricnit hosiery. I delivered unfinished socks to her and picked up the finished ones.