YOU WERE IN FINN COUNTRY - Debra 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 Johnson

I became conscious of the Finnish element when I was really young. I was a Greenville kid, and Greenville was mostly French-Canadian, but my Finnish grandmother lived in a place attached to our house. She is the treasure of my life. Everything in me that I like either came from her or through my father to me from her. To visit my grandmother, I had to go through our boiler room. Her wall was made of cardboard and there was a hole in the wall. I would crawl through into her kitchen sink, into her tiny house. And she was poverty-stricken: she had a two-holer. But her house was clean. She married my grandfather Halbedel from Bavaria. He stowed away and I guess that’s how they got together over here. I remember stories about how they lived in Fitchburg and were very poor. About my father sleeping on the floor and getting bitten by rats and wearing women’s shoes because there was nothing else. About my grandfather taking my grandmother’s tonsils out with a spoon. My grandmother had a woodstove and was always cooking and did a lot of crafts. She loved animals and picked blueberries and was generous and took time for me. She was way ahead of her time; what a brain. That woman had nothing, but with the few things she had, she was incredibly creative. She had drawers full of beads and feathers: she used to make earrings. She sewed all our Halloween costumes. She made my brother a magician’s costume with a top hat and everything. She used to make flowers out of paper and sell them at the drugstore: that’s the major way she made money. Poinsettias and tulips and roses. She tried to teach me, but I was too young and flaky. She would take paper and cut it into perfect shapes; hundreds of them. Different sizes for different petals, like peonies would have graduated sizes. She’d press her thumbs to make the cupping of the petals and it would stretch and was just beautiful. Then she’d take wire and wrap it with green florists’ tape and it would be a bouquet. It was really something. She had artwork lying all around the house; I guess she was taking a course through the mail. She did pen-and-ink and silhouetting. My grandmother had a Finnish cultural slant I didn’t have in my own house. Old home ways: making kidney stew on the woodstove. I didn’t have that at my house. I loved it, though. And homemade mincemeat with venison and that funny little yogurt: viili. She’d put it in what I thought were beautiful glass cups in her cupboard and it looked like custard. They made it look so good, I said, “Oh, let me try it!” “You won’t like it.” I tried it and almost barfed. It was sour and stringy. I still make kidney stew once in awhile. You soak those kidneys until the cows come home. Soak them and drain them, soak them and drain them, and cut off that core thing. When you know they’re clean, nice and fresh, then you make them like a beef stew. I make a thick gravy sauce but my grandmother actually used to have a crystal-clear broth with carrots and potatoes and it was delicious. And I was a little kid when I ate this: most kids turn up their noses at that stuff, but I loved it. There was always coffee bread, the braided loaves, at my grandmother’s. She brushed them with coffee to make them dark on top. She might have sprinkled them with sugar, but I imagine she was pretty frugal with it. She made a lot of boiled coffee in a battered enamelware pan and put eggshells in it. Her third husband, whom I knew as my grandfather—my Bavarian grandfather had died—was a Finn and used to drink her coffee. He put a sugar cube between his teeth. Pour that coffee in the saucer. Extend his pinkies and go slurp, “Ah! Raha!” Whatever that is. [Loosely translated: “Good coffee is wealth in itself.”] But he was a strange guy. Never talked. Spooky, too” used to walk around with a scythe. That’s what he did for a living. I don’t know if he was cutting hay in our field or across the way but he always carried that big scythe. Up and down the streets. Once a year he’d take me on his knee and sing “Raatikko on, raatikko on. Vanhat piiat pannaan... [To Raatikko—that’s where old maids are sent]...” The annual display of Finn affection. He was not a man I enjoyed. He used to drink those big quarts of Pabst. Always grizzled, suspenders, and day-old undershirt underneath. But they say my grandmother thought he was the cat’s meow. Her Pillii: Billy. I heard he took an ax from the fire station and tried to kill her with it once, but I never saw it. They’re high strung: it’s just one of those family things.

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