porch, laughing. My daddy says, “You people have to have some fun. You let them to play home, then they don’t run away, they stay home. You don’t have to worry; you know where they are.”
I went to private schools. They don’t have too many, what they call here grade schools. My neighbor boy and me, we was same age; we have a private teacher. We didn’t know city life. I had been two times inside of city before I came this country.
We celebrate Christmas in Finland just almost like here, but little better. Here, people more careless, they don’t care how they dress. But we Finnish, came Christmas, it was so big honor. We fix ourself, best clothes, and we try to act really nice way. We went to church.
My mommy and daddy, they was really religious persons. When I read the Bible stories, I get the craziest ideas; and then I went asking to mommy those crazy things. Then my mother have temper. She pulling my hair. Then I start asking daddy. My daddy said, “Mommy’s not mean to you, what? She have only one girl, she try to teach you be just as good woman like she is.” He put it such nice way. He was really active at church. Every Sunday, he used to sing in the church.
Just before I left [for] this country, my cousin’s wedding and I was best girl. We used to have three days dancing and celebrating. We make outside, flowers and branches. When we have a wedding party, we have sixty-three couples. We walk hand in hand. Then they give a soda pop to us and others they was drinking wine and some mans they was drinking whiskey. Then we started dancing about two o’clock. We was through six o’clock; it last four hours before we was through. We have many violins and accordion.
I didn’t come to work here. I just came see my brothers in Naselle, Washington, just across the [Columbia] river. I have been three months old when the oldest one left home and the second one I have been already a year old. I came here I was eighteen, 1907. They wanted me to come, see. My mother and daddy, they have let me to go, and give me money.
I had been born in the farm country and I hadn’t learn to do anything but just sweep the floors and mop the floors and cook a little bit something. I used to say, like snails with horns, you have to have those horns a little bit ahead and listen and go slowly. That’s what I try to do.
I have been here now seventy-two years and I get these kind of spells, just like sickness. I get so lonesome for Finland. I tell truth, I like here and everything good; but I don’t stay here if I don’t have my daughter here and if I don’t have two grandson and four great grandchildren and I love children. I can’t go. I love Finland and everything so good there. I have good friends I like to visit there. I have first cousins and lots of second cousins. I get once in a while letter from Finland. And I have tapes, they playing to me tapes and singing.
I can talk a whole week. I have in my mind, when my daddy say good-by to me, when I left Finland. He gave a prayer. We went to Kokkola, where the train left. The steps for the train, I stand there, and he stand one step lower. Then he put his hands over my head, and he say, “Now our little girl is going to the world. I can’t give you riches or gold or silver, but take my blessing and keep it. Remember the old folks’ prayers and this will always help you.” No matter what happens, I have my father’s blessing.
*Resistance to Russian domination has been a constant part of Finland’s history; especially significant in this context was the policy of Russification begun by the tsar in the 1890s. Strident Finnish demands that their self-rule be respected had little effect, until the Russian Revolution of 1917 provided the opportunity for Finland to declare itself an independent republic.
†Karelia refers to the region along the Russo-Finnish border.
Martin Rasmussen
“When I was a child, we ate out of a common big dish.”
Martin Rasmussen was born in 1896 to Danish farmers living in what was then German territory. He went through a traditional apprenticeship and served in the German army before his path led to Denmark and on to the United States in 1923. After several years in the Midwest, Martin moved to Tacoma, where he designed and made machinery for a plywood plant.
It was Germany at that time. North Slesvig, the Germans called it. Now the name is Sønderjylland [southern Jutland]. It used to be a Danish province, before 1864, that’s where they had the war between Germany and Denmark. It went back to Denmark in 1920; I saw the king driving over the border to take possession.
My father was born in Denmark and my mother in North Slesvig. I had four brothers and one sister. My oldest brother, Søren, inherited the farm. We brothers were all in German military service between 1914–1918, in World War I. One of my brothers fell in Poland—Peder Rasmussen; he was around twenty years old.*
My father had a nice farm. It was good-sized—a hundred and fifty acres or something like that, fourteen to eighteen cows, and six or seven horses. You had to work on the farm. You had to get the cows out in the field and everything in order before you went to school in the morning. Later on, you had to be out and pull up the rutabagas and turnips and so forth. We had some hired help, too.
Martin Rasmussen’s unit, German Army, World War I
Potatoes, we’d get a special vacation for potatoes, two weeks in September or August. Then the whole family was in the potato field; that was nasty and cold. Had a wonderful appetite when we got home at five or six o’clock. There was a couple of men digging; the rest of us were gathering the potatoes in sacks. In many cases, there was dug a big hole in the ground, the potatoes down there, and straw on the bottom, and straw on the top, and dirt on it, and they would last all winter. There would be quite a few rotten ones, though. That was the same way with rutabagas—hauled to a hole and then covered up, but you didn’t dig down as deep.
In those days, we didn’t have much machinery, so we cut the straw for the horses by hand, with a hand machine. Out in the fields, the rye was harvested first. There would be four or five manfolks with a scythe cutting down. The women, they would gather the grain; they had some kind of a fork, and then they didn’t have any string, so they would use a handful of straw and bind it. I did that many times; it takes a certain amount of skill. Later on, we got a harvesting machine; we would have to go after and tie it up.
The womenfolks, they would be out helping in the field quite a bit. And they would do the milking of the cows. They had to be milked three times a day: in the morning, at noon, and around eight o’clock at night. A milkman came around in the morning and hauled all the milk from that village to the dairy to be processed. When the cream was taken out, the skim milk came back to feed the hogs and the calves. That was the ordinary procedure. The milk was the main income, and selling hogs.
In wintertime, snow would be plenteous; sometime the snow would go up to the roof. We would play in the snow. We did some skiing in the meadows. For entertainment, we kids did card playing, what was called sort peder [sorteper = Old Maid], blackjack, something like that. In summertime, the boys would all go bathing. We had a creek that went through there. And we played this here football, soccer. That was our entertainment. And then, of course, we all had a bicycle. But the cattle had to be taken care of on Sundays and every day. Work was the main thing. On Sundays, we would ride the horses sometimes. Sometimes my dad, he would buy a wild one that nobody could stay on.
My mother, and then there was usually one or two girls, they did the sewing. My mother did the weaving; she was a good weaver. The clothes, of course, was made by a tailor, usually very heavy clothing.
And then, of course,
