THEIR TOP PRIORITIES - Toivo 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.

Sauna or spacecraft?

CHAPTER SEVEN

THEIR TOP PRIORITIES

Come now, God, into the vapor father of the sky, into the warmth so as to bring about health, to establish peace.

Wipe away the sacred sparks, extinguish the sacred infections; have bad vapor struck to the ground, end away evil vapor so that it will not burn your sons, harm your offspring.

Whatever water I keep throwing on those hot stones, may it be changed to honey, ooze out like honey. Let a river of honey flow, let a pond of honey surge through the pile of stones, through the moss-caulked sauna.

“A Sauna Bath Charm,” The Kalevala

The mineral drops that explode To drive my ton of car Are limited to the road. They deal with near and far, But have almost nothing to do With the absolute flight and rest The universal blue And local green suggest.

Robert Frost, The Middleness of the Road

Sports do not build character. They reveal it.

John Wooden

Toivo Kangas

Growing up, we’d have sauna on Saturdays. Every family had their sauna. It would have been unpardonable if some Finns didn’t. It was their top priority. Non-Finns in town thought it was prettycrude to have that type of thing to wash in. They thought it was horrible. You’d go in and have the big barrel right in front of the fire chamber with pipes going in and water would circulate and heat. We’d have a basin where we would wash. My father used to bring soap home from Worcester. That was powerful, I’ll tell you. It was red and white. We used to call it “the stinging soap.” You take a bath with that, your skin would be burning just like you had put liniment on. That shouldn’t have even been on the market. We used it anyway. It was cheap. My parents also used birch twigs. Personally I don’t know what that was supposed to accomplish, but it must have brought some comfort to the old folks. Flick those twigs on the hot rocks to release the scent of the birch oil. They had a round pan with hot water and dipped the twigs in it and then whacked themselves to improve the circulation. We kids went by ourselves into the sauna after we were big enough. You’d get steam first, then dry heat. Boy, it would get hot: 170, 175, 180 degrees. After it would cool down, we’d throw more water on. It was blasted hot and we would sweat. You could take your thumb and rub your thigh down to your knee and see the old skin peel off. So the mites wouldn’t have nothing to eat. Softens the dead skin up. If there was nothing that came off when you rubbed your thumb, that showed you was clean.

Then we’d soap ourselves up and wash our hair with stinging soap. I was glad when my father didn’t buy that anymore. He bought Fels Naphtha (tm) and Big Ivory (tm) and that was a lot better. We’d rinse off with two or three pots of water. I didn’t roll in the snow; I said baloney with that. Then we’d go into the dressing room and wipe ourselves off with Pillsbury XXXX flour and grain bags. We didn’t have any towels. That made you nice and clean and you could sleep. You get used to sauna; you never get over it. That was a way of life. A must.

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