THEY DO LOVE THEIR CARS - Patricia (Kangas) Ktistes
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.
Patricia (Kangas) Ktistes
I remember trolling the streets of Worcester, Massachusetts, with my father’s sister, Aunt Tita [Miriam Kangas Ahti], a wonderful woman with a heart of gold who always haggled with merchants. Her favorite stores were Catholic Charities and Spag’s, an off-price DMZ of a place. She braked foryard sales and, claiming to sellers that she was down to her last dollar, walked away with bargains. Watching Lincoln Square disappear out of Tita’s car windows, I thought, “This must be what it’s like to be rich: spending your life shopping.” In the passenger seat sat Tita’s friend, Bette Granfors, also a product of New Ipswich. There was a period later during which Tita and Bette weren’t on speaking terms. I heard it was because when Tita’s husband, Charlie the Barber, died, Bette insisted Tita throw an Irish wake—complete with upright casket—which Tita found offensive. In 1965, when Tita and Bette were still inseparable, Bette would call over the front seat of Tita’s car to my sister and me that we had her blood in our veins. Decades earlier, Bette was ordered by my grandmother (“You, Redhead! You give blood!) to donate when our father needed a transfusion upon being trampled by a workhorse. How did my grandmother know their blood types would match? As a kid, I thought Tita drove ‘Caddies’ because she constantly talked about them, but she probably drove an Olds. Automobile marques didn’t matter to me. What mattered was Tita’s cars were shiny with plushy seats and little ash trays with lids that tipped up (we put gum in them) and arm rests that tipped down. The back seats had thick cords you hung onto. After Tita took us to see a new film, Dr. Zhivago, it was Tita and Bette in the front seat versus my sister and me in the back. Tita and Bette thought Omar Sharif should have gone back to Geraldine Chapman but we were for Julie Christie because she looked more like a Finn. Bette sang Lara’s Theme all the way home. Tita and Bette seemed frozen in the ‘40s. For eons, Tita bought the same bottle of Jergens lotion and kept it on her bathroom shelf. She wore hats with little veils, stockings with seams down the back; white gloves; and even a mink stole. Her blonde hair was rolled in hairnets. She wore red nail polish and lipstick, which left marks on glassware when she sipped ‘highballs.’ She owned an intriguing collection of gloves, scarves, and costume jewelry. All the stuff fashion magazines said you were supposed to wear but no-one, except for Tita, seemed to own. I remember a girlfriend’s motherlaughing when I mispronounced the word “lingerie.” Tita had lots of that, too. Bette wore her flame-red hair in a French twist and rumor had it she’d run away from home during World War II to waitress and sing for servicemen at the Valhalla Bar in Worcester. Because Bette was constantly singing, and because Tita always was with her, for awhile I thought they were part of the Andrews Sisters. They were the most cheerful adults I’d ever known. Childless. Impulse spenders. City slickers. Dog fanciers. An air of danger lingered about them. My cousin Ralph Kangas remembers Charlie as lovable but my sister and I were vigilant around him. Women scolded men in those days for harassing girls but men did what they wanted. When we were little and Tita and Charlie would visit family gatherings, Charlie threw money on the floor and laughed as the children scrambled to pick it up. My mother made us give back every cent because she said Charlie was too drunk to know what he was doing. I never once saw my father drunk but I grew up frightened of drunks. By day, my sister and I listened to Tita and Bette speculate over what it would be like to sell everything and live in a shack but drive a Lincoln Continental. By night, we barricaded the guest-room door because Charlie, grizzled in his undershirt with a five-o’clock shadow and smelling of beer, wanted a goodnight kiss. We pushed a cedar wardrobe against the bedroom door and leaned against it. Charlie would call, “Oh, Girls!”No way were we opening that door, despite his talent for doing the finest imitation of a trumpet, with or without a mute, ever produced by human voice. When Charlie left for work in the morning, we explored the house, full of bric-a-brac. China dogs, fishing plaques, doilies, bottles of Galliano, strange lamps, and massive ceramic ash trays. One Memorial Day, Tita and Charlie made a pilgrimage to New Ipswich. It was the custom to throw red paper poppies on the central cemetery pond’s surface while an announcer read over a loudspeaker the roll call of those sacrificed in the American Revolution, Civil War, Great War, and World War II. Finnish names were listed among the ‘Yanks:’ Appletons, Barretts, Champneys, and Kidders. VFW members wore old uniforms and fired a salute; then a bugler would play taps. When we marched as Boy and Girl Scouts in the town parade, we carried laurel wreaths to place on veterans’ graves. I wanted to decorate my Uncle Leonard Kangas’s memorial plaque but could never run fast enough to beat the boys up the hill. Leonard was among the first New Hampshire men to die in World War II. Three generations after his death, people still speak wistfully of him. For years, I hoarded his old dictionary. In its margins, he’d scribbled poetry to someone he addressed as “my dream.” At this particular Memorial Day, our family all squeezed into Charlie’s car to go to the cemetery. We cruised through granite posts marking the front gate, where a police officer motioned for motorists to turn around and park on the main road instead of entering the cemetery. Charlie muttered something about the Jews owning the world and the Irish running it and called over his shoulder, “Watch this.” He rolled down his window and bleated, “Oh, Officer!” The policeman, red-faced, with arms akimbo, approached. Charlie whimpered about how the family could get together only once a year and all we wanted was put flowers on his mother-in-law’s resting place and couldn’t we park inside the cemetery so these ladies wouldn’t have to sink down into the dirt with their high heels and he could park under the tree a little while because his back was sore from driving up from Worcester? The cop puffed up to his full height and proclaimed Charlie could park wherever he wanted. Charlie cranked up his window, did his trumpet imitation, and roared up the one-lane dirt road through the cemetery to the family plot.