message from pete

one of my best childhood friends was roy mukka. he was usually called poika cuz he was the youngest of the family. it was a finnish tradition thing. poika means boy. poika lived about 2 or less blocks from our house on south pewabic. he lived on calumet street, probably the only street in laurium that wasn't paved. it was next to a field bordering the c & h rail going to lake linden. poika came running over to my house with some important news. "we are getting a phone hookup right this minute, the guy doing it is there in our kitchen. but i ain't allowed to use the phone, only if someone calls me. so i will run home and you ring me up. the number is 263m. but give me a minute to get home. so i waited about a minute and picked up the phone. operator said number please and i said 263m. she said that phone was just barely installed. she rang 2 longs. poika's mom picked up and said hallo. i said is poika home? she said, "hmmm, already, here it starts, poika, telephone. so we talked for a couple minutes, then he ran back to my house and told me how neat that was to be able to talk to me from his kitchen.