(The following are excerpts from hand-written manuscripts borrowed from the Ishpeming Public Library. They are part of an ongoing research project about N. Cecelia Kettunen (1896-1992) – see my other references and research on Kettunen here (past blog posts). See images of Kettunen’s work that is in the collection of the DeVos Art Museum here (the museum’s Flickr page). I evenutally hope to have all 300 or so pages in the manuscripts transcribed (i.e., typed) for the Kettunen archive at the DeVos Art Museum. I will be posting these as they are typed (by me!). Please forgive the bad translation of Finnish words and names – these are handwritten and I do not have a background in Finnish language. If you have suggestions for any of these words, please let me know!).
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My birthday falls on September 15th and I was born in 1896 at Mud Lake on Park Street, Ishpeming in the little home owned by my parents. I was the second one of their children born there at that time and one of Mama’s sisters had come from Finland. Her name was Elsa Kreeta. She was selected to be one of my godmothers – and I had Mr. and Mrs. Peter Koski also for godparents. Of her babies mama exclaimed Babe and I were the biggest crybabies.
In 1898, we moved over to the corner of division and first streets to live in a large apartment, second floor of the business building mama and papa had purchased. Among childhood memories stands out one quite clearly. As I recall it was in the morning and I was the oldest of the children at home with auntie. She had joined our family in the early 1900s and mama must have been out shopping alone, or was helping at the church with the ladies sewing circle. Auntie needed baking soda, so she sent me to a grocery store which was about a block from our door, but not on the same block as our house, so it meant I had to cross a street. She had me repeat to her several times the name of the article “Arm and Hammer baking soda, Arm and Hammer baking soda”. When I arrived at the corner of my block before crossing the street, the fire engine, which was fiery red in color and drawn by its handsome black horses, dashed by. Of course I had to stop not only to admire all that but also for safety’s sake I realized I had to stop. When all this excitement was over, “Arm and Hammer baking soda” had fled my mind but I proceeded to the store and went in. I stepped up to the counter and surveyed the shelves of groceries. Hilja Kandeliu, later Mrs. Herman Koinsto, clerked at her brother’s store. She waited on me and I chose a large can of tomatoes – it had a gorgeous label of fiery red tomatoes on it. With that in my arms, I returned home. Auntie kept the can of tomatoes sent me off again repeating “Arm and Hammer baking soda”. This second trip I decided on the large size oatmeal package and went home with it in my arms. By this time I guess auntie had decided she was going to train my memory if nothing else and sent me off again repeating, “Arm and Hammer baking soda”. This trip turned out differently from others. Hilja I guess could see I was non-plus and decided to go home with me to find out what it was that auntie wanted. Auntie rewarded her with 10 o’clock coffee and cakes and I returned with Hilja to the store to pick up “Arm and Hammer baking soda”.
In April of 1902, I fell victim with four other children in Ishpeming to Poliomyelitis, which in those days was called infantile paralysis. By this time I was in kindergarten. For a few days I had run a temperature and was kept in bed. Our family doctor was called immediately on my case. After a few days in bed, I was allowed to stay up and wait for Dr. Picotle, who had promised to call at our home before he reported to afternoon office hours. For noon desert the family was having strawberry shortcake. Mama advised me to wait until the doctor came before I was given any of it. When he came, he sat down on one of the chairs in the dining room where I was waiting for him. He took me up on his lap and I slipped my arms around his neck and asked him if he thought I could have some shortcake. He gave his permission and while still on his lap, I started on my share of the shortcake. Soon he had to leave so he settled mean on the same chair and I was enjoying my desert when I heard Papa call my name. He was in his bedroom giving each child money to spend at the circus, which was in town that day and he wanted me to get my share. I slipped down from the chair and instead of going into the hallway and onto his room, I proceeded to the door through the kitchen and the dining room and there on the threshold I was felled by polio. And not until late summer did I walk again. I was a baby all over again – I learned to crawl and finally to walk again. I was taken out in a type of stroller for fresh air. We had one of the collapsible wooden high chairs, which could be covered to form a type of stroller. It was in this mama used to take me for fresh air and occasionally call on her friends. I was massaged and massaged. Of the five of us whom Polio hit in Ishpeming, I had the mildest case for by fall I was back in school, and entering first grade with others of my kindergarten mates. I was massaged and massaged all the years until I went away to school. While grandmother lived with us, she massaged my left leg from the knee down every evening. Once a week I was in a stylish by Finnish masseuse. They massaged my entire body. They were women who had had training in Finland and four are the 10 years I taught in Virginia, Minnesota, I was able to have massage once or week at the hands of Mrs. Hilda Mattsou – very very capable in her field.
I am a collector of sorts. It was from Arnnie (Finnish word for grandma?) I acquired the first object for my collection – an old knife. For her to travel all those miles from Finland to this country with that little knife included with her belongings indicates she had an appreciation of worthwhile objects. By many it could have been considered junk. Way back in childhood, when I was the age that grandmother, after tucking me in bed for the night, listening to my prayers and then turning off the light and leaving the room, my collector’s instinct was aroused and first realized. One evening after all that ritual, she asked me if there was anything I wanted before she turned off the light. “Yes Arnnie,” I answered, “will you let me hold that little knife that is on top of your cupboard”? “Here it is child,” she said, “and not only may you hold it but you may keep it.” And thus I became the proud of owner of a little knife that dates way back to the iron age. My youngest step aunt, as a little girl in Finland, had been treasure hunting in the fields with her children. In the course of their hunt, they found an immense iron tub buried in the ground. The tub, among other objects, yielded this little knife. Instead of leaving it in Finland when she came to this country, Arnnie brought it with her and kept it on top of a high cupboard in her room. The knife is all iron, pockmarked with rust holes, it’s only 4 ¼ inches in length and on the handle has a primitive design of double lines repeated four times. The shape of the handle adds to the interests the general design. A cross-section cut of it would be a diamond shape. The handle terminates in a little heart about 3/16 of an inch in diameter. If little Finland were secure from invasions by the Russians, I would send the little knife to the National Museum in Helsinki. But not trusting the Russians, I have planned to offer it to the Art Institute of Chicago. The knife eventually was buried with the other articles and that a to avoid their falling into the hands of some plundering gang of whose approach they had been warned. Countless finds of that sort have been made in Finland, where the most interesting ear ornaments, rings, pendants etc. have been brought to light of day since 1900. Reproductions of these finds are in the market in Finland. Interesting to note many of the designs involved remind me of the designs found in the crafts of our American Indians. A coincidence some would say, but maybe all primitive design speak to the same language when its modes of expression are so limited.
My second great find would have been a beautiful handmade cradle. My first teaching job after graduation was running the art department of a fine little Christian college in Bluffton, Ohio, called Bluffton College. A Mrs. Fox did my laundry. One day as I sat in her kitchen, I spied a darling baby cradle. It was handmade and not of local talent. It was getting coats of paint applied to it. Upon inquiry, I found the cradle was being prepared for a grandchild of Mrs. Fox, who was to pay a visit to the grandmother with her mother. At the time I did not say anything about wishing to acquire it for my own, but for two weeks I went about the campus with the same dream of acquiring it - the beauty of that cradle for myself. But at the same time I came to a “thump” with my dreams. What would people say if I, a single woman, would purchase a cradle!
But in later years I did acquire a cradle and though I am single, it graces the hearth in my living room. For years I have been a very close friend of Mr. and Mrs. Ed Nara of Mass [City], Michigan. All his life he had been interested in painting and collecting articles of interest and eventually had quite an interesting collection of beautiful furniture, paintings, dishes, silverware, rocks and even a piece of cork salvaged from the wreck of the Titanic. After Mr. Nara’s death in the early 1940s, Mrs. Nara gave his collection of rocks to the Michigan Technological Museum at Houghton, Michigan. I was a guest in their home frequently and they were guests in our house so, they seemed like a second pair of parents to me. Mr. Nara and I, with others, made frequent painting trips to the Mass [City] and Three Lakes area. Mrs. Nara was a registered nurse before her marriage and came from the same village in Finland from which Mama came – this made them feel as if they were related. Both she and her husband had innumerable cultural pursuits. After he had passed away, on one of my visits to Mrs. Nara, she took me up into the attic to look for frames, which I could purchase from her for my use. In the attic we ran across a handmade cradle with dolls in it be longing to Mr. Nara’s niece whom they had raised as a foster child but who Mrs. Nara had sent packing to Oregon. I of course admired the cradle. Some days later Mrs. Nara inquired if I would like to have a cradle to place at my fireplace at Three Lakes. I told her I liked it very much but hesitated to ask to buy it because there were so many nearer to her than I was. She told me nobody was nearer to her than I was and that she wanted me to have the cradle.
It had been made for her in Finland. She was cradled in it until a new baby arrived. Her parents were planning on leaving Finland to travel to America. The second baby called Anni was ailing so the mother of the father of the child suggested that that they leave the baby with her and when the baby got better she would send her to the parents in America in the company of people from that area who were making the trip to the New World. But the young mother couldn’t entertain the least thought of leaving her ailing child, so the mother-in-law suggested the child be taken to America in the cradle. And the mother-in-law said “if Anni dies on board ship, you stay by the cradle rocking it, and when the ship’s doctor comes by tell him little Anni is sleeping, you do not want her disturbed. Because if they find out she is dead, they will take little Anni’s body and fling it into the ocean and the sharks will get her little body.” Well Little Anni arrived safely in America with sister Mary and their parents. Anni eventually became a Salvation Army worker and later married a Mr. Darlington in Racine, Wisconsin. Traveling by train after leaving the ship that had sailed thru across the Atlantic, the father would grab one end of the cradle and the brakeman of the train the other end of the cradle and lift it on the train and thus Anni traveled to Calumet, Michigan where twelve more babies followed her in turn to be rocked in the cradle which had been made years before for Mary. The cradle is constructed so as to have a handle opening at each end. The floor of the cradle has a regular interval of small openings about one half inch in diameter bored into it and each of these holes connected by an incision about one inch wide. There was a purpose for all this boring and incising. In Finland, the cradle was used with straw for a mattress – straw which was changed daily. Over this straw was placed a blanket or sheet. As the child urinated, the urine would seep through the straw to the floor of the cradle but with drainage provided did not stay there but drained down to the bare floor of the room. The cradle was painted with earth red and tar right from Pudasjärvi where the cradle was made. It still has the original paint on it. The maker of the cradle, a bachelor, I understand, traveled from Finland to this country where he eventually landed in the state of Oregon – where he continued making cradles. The cradle I have, I use for a sewing cabinet with a lid which simulates a cradle set up for occupancy of a little one.
The coverlet is from a peasant apron from Finland given to me by Rousa Hilkka Salmineu as a token of appreciation for an art exhibit of public school art which I prepared for teachers in Helsinki schools. The apron is woven of home spun yarn of many beautiful fibers. The sheet for the coverlet has a decoration; a bit of mama’s bridal linen – “A.L.K.” worked out out in red felt paint on her white linen – “A” for Andrew, “L” for Leenu and “K” for Kettunen. She had worked up a pair of pillow slips and a sheet with those letters at the edge of the sheet and ends of the pillow cases was several lace four inches wide, which she herself had crocheted.
On the underneath side of the floor of the cradle, Mrs. Nara wrote information relative to the cradle; also a statement that I happen to have. As I mentioned, Mr. Nara was quite a collector. On one trip to visit his in-laws in Calumet, he discovered the cradle out in the alley, where it had been place for garbage collection. He asked for the cradle and hauled it to their attic in Mass City. Pastor Heidenau of Hancock had asked to have it for his summer house but the Naras did not comply with his request. For one of my assignments in story writing in college, I wrote the enclosed story of the cradle. When Mrs. Nara bestowed the cradle upon me, Debbs was to come and pick me up for a return trip to my home in Three Lakes – so in the back seat of the car the cradle made its trip from Mass City. The next morning, when my chore-man came in to attend to chores, I of course showed him the cradle which was in the living room where he had to carry wood for the fireplace. It was the habit of this chore-man to propose marriage to me several times a year, which proposals I managed to laugh off. When he saw the cradle he said, “Now my poor woman, you are mistaken”! Propose the statement an elderly peasant woman makes in “The Peasants” – a novel of Polish country life, namely – “I do not trust any man unless he is paralyzed and only God knows what he is thinking about.” Only one thought seems to drive on the minds of men.
