THEY DO LOVE THEIR CARS - Debra (Halbedel) Johnson
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.
Debra (Halbedel) Johnson
The Apostolic Finns only have two real vices. One is cigarettes. The other is driving too fast. What is it with them? They do love their cars. I would want to say Ford might be a favorite: Mustangs. I don’t know if it’s so much the make or just if it’s got to be a fast, showy automobile. They always had the fanciest, loudest cars they can afford. Or not afford: who knows? When we were teenagers, the Apostolic boys would always be driving, you know, really fast, and we just thought they were jerks because they were endangering themselves and everybody else. Course it always seemed to us like there was this Finn kid who looked about eight years old with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, sitting behind the steering wheel of a souped-up car going a hundred miles an hour. All these things were what we were brought up not to do. Not to say that we didn’t have fast cars, but the majority of us were told to be reasonable and safe and to go from here to there and nowhere else. Most of us had little foreign cars; VW Bugs or something. And the Apostolics always had these huge, wwohhhmm, powerful muscle cars. Awhile back, there was one Apostolic boy who came from a home with a little more trouble, a little more poverty. And he had a very fancy car. Everybody said, “He’s going to get hurt.” And he did; he died in a car accident. He was 17, maybe. It’s almost getting worse; I don’t know if it’s because the cars are going faster or the kids have more money or what. And it seems it’s always the guys alone in the cars. Maybe that does make a statement. Once in a while you might see a short blonde girl snuggled up to some guy driving, but cars are what the guys seemed to dwell on.Walter Paajanen: that was my father’s cousin. Annabelle, his daughter, was an ice-skater and he was an absolute genius. Weird, eccentric, dingy, but smart, oh my God. Just the way he spoke. His eyes seemed very intelligent. Just so quick and keen. Just so observant and interested. You couldn’t shut the guy up. I think it’s because he had such an incredible interest in life and how it worked. And I swear to God if that guy had had access to education, he would have been the next Edison. And I only knew him at the age of twelve, and so for me to pick up on that, he had to have something. Just the fact that he knew how to fix everything and he was into photography, which was kind of unusual in those days. He played the accordion, my “favorite” instrument. He tinkered with everything. He came down and fixed our television. He just never stopped talking. I think he was one of the first to have a movie camera in the area. I think he had a short-wave radio. You just knew the guy was different: special. Also, he owned Citroens, which also was kind of unusual in those days. I probably had more exposure to old Finns than young Finns. And they all have stories about the old days when the snakes in New Ipswich were so huge that you’d have to drive your car right over them if they were laying across the road because they stretched from one side of the road to the other. That’s how long the snakes were. I’ve heard that from at least two sources—my grandmother and another woman. You had to slow down and bump-bump your car over these huge snakes. Speaking of snakes, I can remember my neighbor saying there was a big snake in their farmhouse, in their kitchen. You would want to say these neighbors were poor, but he had money. They were rolling in dough; brother and sister. Finns. Their farm has been renovated, but it wasn’t anything to look at then. They just stashed the money. I don’t know if they didn’t remember they had all this money or what, but it would be hidden everywhere. This is what people told me who went to help move stuff after her death. But when he died, they had fistfuls of money stuffed in washing machines, bags, and in the trunk of his car.
Walter Paajanen was a genius. My father could fix almost anything but when he was stumped he called on Walter to help him. Walter repaired our radios and tvs. Did the plumbing for my father' general store, including the cooling system for the walk-in meat cooler. He sure did talk a lot. He was not only a good mechanic but designed engines to run on alternate fuels including propane.