“Oh, children,” Mrs. Johnson would say, “take more. Here,” and she would put a slice of bread and a cake on a small plate for each of us. When we finished, we always said, “Thank you, Mrs. Johnson,” and we meant it with all our hearts.
Sometimes Ronny would come with us to cut and split some wood for her kitchen stove, but she never served him with the china cups and plates she used for us. He got a cup of coffee in a regular mug, but with it she offered him, too, the delicate treats. He didn’t really enjoy going there. When we left, he said, “I didn’t know what to do with my hands and feet. I was so afraid I’d knock something over or break something!”
We commiserated, but the visits to see Mrs. Johnson remained one of the highlights of our lives even though they didn’t bring Ronny the same pleasure.
* * * * *
For graduation, Mother had ordered me a special dress from the Sears & Roebuck catalog, with white shoes and white stockings to wear with it. I couldn’t wait to see it! Aini and Mother and I had spent hours pouring over the Sears catalog, trying to decide which one we should order—and which one we could affod. The one I really wanted—with short sleeves and a ruffled top with a ruffled collar cost $2.51, which was more than Mother could afford, and so I settled on a simple shirtwaist with short sleeves, a round collar, buttons down the back, and a drop waist with a pleated skirt for $1.98. Add to that the ninety-nine cents for the white shoes and the fifteen cents for the white stockings, and I was set. We sent the order in as soon as we received the spring catalog so there was plenty of time for the package to arrive. We had pondered long and hard over the size to order, too. I was fifteen, but a lady’s size eight seemed it would be too big so we decided on a young lady’s size eight. I was skinny and small for my age, and I prayed it would fit.
Once it came, it was a little too big, but Mother was skilled enough with a needle and thread to take it in a little bit on the sides so it fit perfectly. The shoes, too, were a little bit big, but Mother said that would be good: “You have some growing room left,” was her pronouncement. And the stockings, too, were too large, which was good because I could fold the toe up under my toes to make the shoes fit better.
The package containing the examinations arrived at our teacher’s house about the first of April. She didn’t bring it to school until the third, which gave us two days to finish them and to have them graded by the superintendent of schools, before the graduation exercises, which had been scheduled for April 6.
As I worked on my examination, carefully diagramming the sentence they gave us and writing the sentences using “there/their” correctly, I felt relatively confident. Looking over at Ronny, I could see he was struggling. I hoped and prayed he had listened to the advice I’d given him: to try to decipher the main clause first and to diagram that, then to add the subordinate adjective and adverb clauses once that was done. The sentence turned out to be not really difficult—not nearly as hard as the ones Miss Tierney had been putting on the board! I shot her a grateful glance as I drew the lines carefully, using my ruler.
I had already memorized the important dates in Minnesota history—evidently a common question in the examinations—“ Why are the dates 1783, 1803, 1849, and 1858, and 1861-1865 important to Minnesotans?”
I was so grateful for the part I had copied out of our history book about the part the First Minnesota Regiment had played in the Civil War. I could have written pages and pages about that alone!
I had to think for a minute about 1783, which seemed earlier than the more relevant dates, but tracing back, I finally remembered that it was the time when Great Britain granted eastern portions of Minnesota to the United States.
The reading section held a surprise. Instead of asking for one piece of memorization, they listed a number of famous authors, asking us to tell something they had written and, if possible, to quote a line or two from the work.
I was so grateful for my One Hundred and One Famous Poems because, thanks to that book and the time I’d spent reading and memorizing from it, I was able not only to name the work but to quote more than a few lines from each one. They listed, as I remember, not only ones I had expected like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Abraham Lincoln but also others, like John Keats, William Wordworth, and Harriet Beecher Stowe—eight in all. I was familiar with at least one poem or a bit of prose from every one and so filled that page with ease and joy.
The arithmatic questions were challenging: I remember we were asked to find the square foot of a parallelogram and to explain how to measure a hexagon.
Spelling caused me no problems: They listed a number of words they had misspelled, asking us to correct the errors. Some of them were tricky—like “cemetery” and “acquaintance,” and I had to stop a minute to figure out the difference between capitol and capital, both of which were there. They asked us, also, to provide the meanings.
The civil government question made me grateful for the textbook Miss Tierney had supplied those of us going to take the examination. It was entitled Lessons in Citizenship and contained not only chapters on “Work and Prosperity Depend Partly on Foreign Countries” but also “Getting into Trouble with the Law” and included questions at the end of each chapter. Questions from that book made answering the examination questions much easier. For example, we had already learned where a dispute about a will would first be tried—not in a district court or in the Supreme Court but in a probate court.
And “Using what you remember from the Constitution as your guide, indicate the paragraphs that tell (1) what powers the nation has and (2) what powers the nation does not have and (3) what powers are given to the states.”
Thanks again to Miss Tierney, who had made us memorize the entire Constitution, those questions, too, wound up being simple to answer. Again, I glanced over at Ronny, who was nibbling on the tip of his pencil as he considered a question. I wondered if he had ever finished the memorization I had forced him to start.
All in all, when I handed my examination in two hours later, I felt confident I had passed it even if I might not have gotten every single answer correct (like the arithmetic ones).
Thank God we did not have to wait long for the results. My score was a ninety-five, meaning I had answered ninety-five percent of the questions correctly. A passing grade was seventy. Ronny made it by one! His score was seventy-one, and after he found out, he bounded out of his seat, even though that was strictly forbidden, and came over to give me a big hug. “If it hadn’t been for your constant pushing that I hated at the time, I’d never have made it!” he exalted.
And I hugged him back, as happy for him as I was for myself.
Elsie Hauala was named valedictorian of our class for earning a ninety-eight percent. I became salutatorian. That meant I would have to give the welcome at the graduation exercises!
“Oh, dear,” I thought when I heard about that development, “I’ll never be able to get up in front of everyone to give a speech!”
But Mother and Miss Tierney both surprised me with their encouragement and their offers of help. Miss Tierney suggested that, since I enjoyed poetry so much, I build my speech around a poem I really liked. I wound up using “Abou Ben Adham” as my theme. My message was that it was less important what religion you belonged to than it was the kind of person you were. Just as Abou Ben Adhem had been put by the angel at the top of tbe list of those whom God loved best because of the response he had given her, I said, “It is very important that each of us lives in such a way that we all ‘Love thy (our) fellow man.’” That was my conclusion. Everyone clapped when I finished so I must have done all right!
Preparing for the graduation exercises had taken us all of April sixth. We put up the sun we had contrived out of yellow construction paper with its rays leading out in every direction. We managed to make that stick to a background of dark blue construction paper.
In front of our eight chairs—f
or everyone, even the Rahikainen boys, to our complete surprise, had passed the examination—we placed the picket fence, which we had painted white and to which we had pasted lots and lots of yellow, pink, and blue flowers.
We had also made yellow and pink flower corsages not only for the girls but also for Miss Tierney. She almost started to cry that night when we pinned it on her. She looked so beautiful in a soft yellow chiffon dress that fell almost to the floor and then looped up to tie at her waist above another skirt that stopped below her knees. Her hair, which she had not cut even though short hair was becoming the fashion, was pinned atop her head in a lovely chignon (I had learned that word during our vocabulary study, and I was so happy to have a chance to use it!).
The rest of us had also put our hair up instead of wearing it in braids as we had done all year. Mother fastened mine into a low “bun” with hair-pins and placed a ribbon she had made herself out of the last bit of silk around it. I felt very elegant!
Veiko Rahikainen even told me—sotto voce—(another word I had picked up from our vocabulary study) that he was sorry he had dipped my pigtails in ink and that I looked “very nice.” From him that was not only a huge compliment but also a huge act of contrition.
The graduation exercise went by in a flash, it seemed. Mother, Aini, and Eino sat as close to the front as it was polite for them to sit. All of them were dressed in their best clothes—even Eino in short pants and a white shirt and even a bow tie!
Because we couldn’t afford to buy a suit for Ronny, he wore a white shirt with a red tie we had ordered from the catalog, above his very best pair of jeans.
I’ve kept my graduation diploma all these years and have it framed now. It’s really beautiful: The cover, made of brownish leather, says “Saint Louis County Public Schools Diploma” in lovely script. Inside is the diploma itself. An ink rendering of an eagle high in the clouds is flying above a seal of the United States showing the red and white stripes and the dark blue dotted with stars.
Underneath in shadowed bold print are the words “St. Louis County, Minnesota” and below that “This Certifies That” with a line below it where “Maria Jackson” is written in perfect Palmer method script. The text continues as follows: (all written in the same script) “has completed the Course of Study prescribed by Law for the Common Schools of Minnesota and therefore merits this—DIPLOMA—(in bold shadowed print)—“which entitles the holder to admission to any High School in the State. Given at Alango, Minnesota, this eighth day of April 1918.” On a line below “Arthur Lampe,” County Superintendent, had signed it, with a foil seal for the St. Louis County Schools on the left.
Altogether it’s very impressive—far lovelier than the diplomas given out nowadays—but equally meaningful.
For me it meant I was ready to start a new chapter in my life in the fall—as a freshman at the Alango High School—School #45—of the St. Louis County Unorganized Territory.
I couldn’t wait.
6: Our Native Language
One element of my elementary school years I forgot to mention was the “Speak English” campaign. Almost all of us entered Prairie Star School speaking only Finnish, the language our parents spoke at home.
A concerted effort was begun by members of the St. Louis County School Board the year I started school to replace Finnish with English, both at school and at home.
Since the teachers assigned to our school rarely spoke Finnish—in fact, the Finnish ones had intentionally been sent to non-Finnish communities—we began the first year with a kind of gesture-filled communication. Our teachers, including Miss Tierney, always had on hand a pile of flash cards with English words on them. These they pinned to everything in the classroom so from the beginning we were not to call school our “koulu” but “school,” our blackboard, books, maps, dictionary, the music we sang and all of the words to each piece, everything, in short, had been given its English name, and for the first few weeks we struggled to learn and to pronounce those strange words.
It was the same with our names. “Minun nimi on” had to be replaced with “My name is… her name is… his name is… their last name is… our last name is…” Where it was possible, everyone took an English name as close as possible to his or her Finnish one, but there was no equivalent in English of either ‘Ronny’ or ‘Aini.’
The little ones caught on quickest so I found the change much easier than Aini or Ronny did. And Eino caught on almost right away because by the time he started school we were already using English for most of our vocabulary.
The trick was to bring those lessons home. At first Mother categorically refused to learn English. “Minä olen Suomalainen,” she insisted. “I am Finnish.” And Finnish she would stay for most of her life. Eventually we became accustomed to the language switch—Finnish at home, English at school.
But that is not to say that the change was easy. Sometimes I thought I would go crazy trying to remember the English equivalent for the Finnish word that came so easily to my tongue. And, once I had learned to speak English, I resented the need to slip back into “Finn” when I got home.
“Why won’t you just start?” I asked Mother. “We can help you. We can teach you some of the words and phrases we’ve learned in school.”
She simply refused. Adamantly. As did most of the parents of the kids we met during our days in school. It seemed as if the adults in our lives were intentionally blocking us from turning from Finns into Americans.
I think they even resented our saying the Pledge of Allegiance, once we learned it, and our singing of the “Star Spangled Banner” instead of “Maamme.”
They clung to their Finnishness as if it were a life-line, as if replacing any part of it was somehow to deny its existence, the existence the country had fought so hard to attain and finally had in 1917—just a year ago. “Finnish” had not been allowed in the schools in Finland until just recently. Students were forced to speak Swedish—or, what was infinitely worse, Russian.
The only “written” language we had was the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala, which Mother and the other Finnish people who lived in Korvan Kylla revered. They memorized whole parts of it, which they took turns reciting during get-togethers at the Hall.
Finland had been occupied and ruled by Sweden for whole generations until the Russians had won it a little more than a century ago, and every “educated” person in Finland who wanted to get ahead did so by speaking Swedish.
By the educated adults, even in Finland, Finnish was considered the language of the “common people.” The fact that it had survived during the hundreds of years when there was no Finland had been, in large part, because of the “runes” sung by Finnish versions of minstrels or troubadors who traveled around the country. Not until Elias Lenroot had set those words onto paper in what became known as the Kalevala—in Swedish, of course—was the language considered at all important. In fact, its presentation—in Finnish—to the Helsinki Cultural Society—had been the cause of great exultation by many many Finns.
I suppose it was not surprising, given the history of her country, that Mother clung so to her native tongue. It had been suppressed for so long that she joyed in using it!
I think the problem was compounded by the fact that we didn’t belong to the Finnish Lutheran Church, the “official” church of Finland. There, gradually, English made inroads. But not among Hall Finns!
In fact, we who refused to accept that official religion were, for a time, shunned by those who did. We “Hall Finns” were considered by many to be of lower class and less important.
That everyone in our neighborhood was a Hall Finn was unusual, perhaps, but also it was likely that like drew to like when they began their homesteads after arriving in Chisholm or Hibbing, originally intending to earn just enough to go back to Finland, but eventually coming to love this “New Land” and the opportunities it offered by way of farmland t
o be homesteaded. All that was necessary was that the family built a “livable” edifice during the first two years. Of course, our first building had been the sauna, followed quickly by the barn and last, in order of importance, the house. Father had spent much more time on the barn than he had the house although he had chosen the logs wisely—from the tall, straight white pine that still grew in groves all over the Northland. Thank God they had started their homestead before the big timber boom began, or we would have had a much smaller, less well-constructed home. He had dove-tailed the corners of the house, in correct Finnish manner, but he had not built a wall-oven made of bricks into the wall—an error Mother regretted every time she made bread or biscuit during the winter because the full wall of bricks held the warmth from the oven so the entire room stayed warm even after the bread was out. Moreover, provident husbands automatically also built their wives a “summer kitchen” where they used a big black woodstove, leaving the house cooler. Instead a big black stove filled one corner of our kitchen. During the coldest part of the winter, we had to go to bed with warm bricks wrapped in towels near our feet to warm the bed and ourselves until we fell asleep. In the morning, during the winter, we often woke up to frost not only on the windows but also on our bedclothes, and our first early morning breaths were white.
But we were fortunate, Mother often told us. Father had had a good occupation—he was a tanner—and his services were much in demand as every man had his trap lines and saved the skins for Father to tan and use afterward—like rabbit fur to decorate mittens and the fronts of hoods and to make prized rabbit jackets, and deer hide to use for moccasins, mittens, gloves, and vests.
Gifts of the Spirit Page 7
