Swedetown

marg, joyce, gram at swedetown

Lunch Ladies

judy roepke, julie kangas, carol kangas, pearl loukus, ellen at judy's park ave apt for new year's eve lunch

Message from Pete

hair cutting days. back in the mid 40's i sometimes ventured to hunnel's barber shop on 1st accross from pat's market. it was a fun trip for several reasons. but first to say that we usually got cut at home from vaari. the first cuts were brutal cuz we didn't have electric clippers but clippers that operated kind of like scissors. and they pulled and pulled, especially if they started to pull and you jerked your head away. vaari would say oh, oh. usually you said oh oh if you left a good one. so oh oh had at least two meanings back then. what a great day when vaari came home from niemela's store on tamarack with electric clippers. but now back to hunnel's but first to say that shypoke hillstrom would get cut by his mom and after she was about half done and he well butchered, she would send him off to mc kinstry's barbershop on hecla with 50 cents and have him finish the job. back to hunnels. hunnel was cheap. sometimes only 15 cents if you gave him the customary quarter. which meant ten cents went accross the street to pat's market for a cone. the shop was sometimes filled with about 10 people waiting. and that was good cuz each time hunnel would finish a customer and say next a new customer would take the chair and during that time hunnel would pass out camel cigarates. what a treat not to have to have a gutter butt. so sometimes you could have many treats. whenever a drunk was sleeping and his turn came up, hunnel would whisper to the next guy to take the seat and let the drunk sleep it off. when your turn finally came, hunnel would say very softly, "how are you today young man, how's the family and are you doing good in school?" his voice was so soft that we secretly called him the 'she' barber. and all this and a dime left over for a cone accross the street. mes

Message from Pete

naasko's (wally and viola) who lived on us-41 in their old age next to a steep cliff which separated their home from lake superior were a neat couple. after he died she moved to county hospital to spend her last remaining years. when i visited her she related of her growing up experiences in liminga. one thing she mention which stuck in my mind being it is christmas time was her going by horse and sleigh to the liminga church sunday school program. probably in the 30's. hay was put down in the sled bottom and a blanket over the hay to keep at least some of the hay from their church clothes. the horse had a bell which jingled with each step of the journey. they sang christmas carols along the way. remembering this when i took several grandchildren to liminga program on a moon lit nite. i shut off the lights and told the kids to open all the windows, then picture a horse sled ride, listen to the horses hoofs and the sleigh bell ring. then i shut the car motor off and coasted along liminga road toward the school house. what especially came to mind was that times changes, transportation changes, many things change, but we know that one thing will never change. we know in our hearts what will never change.

Christmas

a blessed christmas to all from pete and ellen
the little old lady in green is ellen's latest carving on basswood. the santa ornaments hanging on the tree are carved in basswood and sugarplum (which grow on the casita property).

Christmas

we were married 51 years ago today (12-21) in calumet. paul married us with one boot on and one boot off. we honeymooned in bootjack on portage lake at granroth's camp. i was a senior at tech and grad. in june. then on to seattle for our first job. some things change and some stay the same. what is amazing is that the same friends that we had then, we still have today. some are living and some are not, but they are still all the same friends.

gram thought to crop it, Papa thought not. but I did what I did. ~Pie

Message from Pete

when doug's spencer was about 4 i took about a doz of his cousins to lac la belle to our camp. we ate when we wanted, slept when we wanted, swam and played what we wanted. it was pretty much a stress free couple of days with no parents telling us anything. when everyone was around the fire pit telling or listening to stories and falling asleep one at a time i either covered them up with a blanket or carried them into the camp floor. but what stuck in my mind from that trip was lunch time. i made p and j's and said come and get it. a few of them took one bite and said "i don't like crunchy." i said no problem, just leave the table and go play so they did. ten minutes later they came to say they were hungry. i said your sandwich is till on the table. they took another bite and said we don't like crunchy. so i said no problem, go play. about ten minutes later they said we are hungry. i said go help yourselves. this time they ate the whole sandwich. about an
hour later the whole gang said they were hungry. so i made another round of p and j's and they all ate and then went back to their play. i think this tells us something.

Message from Pete

many years ago when steve kangas was about 4 he came from the lake (lac la belle) carrying a clam. the clam was alive as it was closed. when closed they are very hard to open especially for a little boy. it requires a sharp knive type object to pry the two halves apart. i was sitting between lana's and vaari's camps passing the time visiting with bill tolkkinen. steve comes up to bill and asks him "how do i get this clam to open". bill said you have go hold it in the palms of your hands and say "open sesame" three times and the clam will open. steve looked at bill and first off he didn't believe bill and second of all he didn't know what sesame meant (neither do i). so he stood there for a time and then wandered off behind a small stand of balsam evergreen trees a few feet away from us and then we looked and saw the clam in steve's hands and he was saying "open sesame" many times over. then of a sudden he throws the clam in disgust on the ground and
mutters to himself "ah nuts". it was a genuine real life humorous moment.

Message from Pete

years ago in atlantic mine church i had several grand children with me. while i was trying to preach and the kids were on the balcony steps carrying on something fierce, making all kinds of racket, laughing and giggling i wondered why the people sitting close to them didn't hush them up. but no, and the noise became worse and worse. so finally i couldn't take it any longer and left the pulpit and as i was stepping down the few steps to the main floor i tripped and went down hard right on my belly. (when i trip i can't stop myself cuz of having had polio which wiped out my trunk muscles). even then after all that commotion the kids still didn't notice and quieten themselves. so i continued on to the balcony stairs and give them the what-for and then back to the business of trying to wind down service. i think the kids in question still remember who the were. but those were fun times.

Message from Pete

more on junking. my world class two wheel cart is ready to go again. now i'm about 10 years old and raring to go. i begin in the alley between pewabic and tamarack. headed north i scan everybody's garbage for metal, preferably aluminum, copper, zinc and lead. these treasures are hidden somewhere in the alley if they are close to home so i don't have to lug a heavy load going away from home. never pick up iron or cast iron going away from home as this was the most prevalent and heavy to transport. after going maybe 6 or so blocks, maybe down to 1st street, i would turn around and retrieve my cached items and add them to the cart. all my treasures would be separated into little heaps, copper with copper, lead with lead, gold with (just kidding). when i had enough booty i would call one of three sheenis, sullivan and corey, percy ross, or kuha. they came with their scale on the back of a pickup truck and weigh the junk and pay on the spot. you had to have a certain amount before calling the sheeni so it wasn't wasting his time.more later as junking was a major part of my childhood.

Message from Pete

people are still asking for the only webpage address that they will ever need, so help them out and send the homeless page url to everyone on your personal email list. if you have material for the homeless, send it to me at my new email addy (torola [at] sbcglobal [dot] net or directly to pie.) or then go to yahoo search and type in pete torola's homeless page and the url will come up on pie's blog listing.

junking we called it. during the aftermath of ww2 all kinds of metal scrap and natural rubber was in high demand. most of my peers who were living in poverty (but no one told them they were poor so no one knew it) would scrounge the laurium dump for stuff. i had a real neat two wheel cart with large metal wheels about 2 feet in diameter, ideal for hauling my booty. one time i spotted a rubber car innertube and jumped from the top of the dump to its vicinity not knowing that the dump was burning underneath. i sunk about 2 feet into hot ashes and as a result got pretty badly burned. by the time i walked home about a mile, my legs were full of water blisters. my dad had me stand in a washtub and cut the blisters with a razor blade, then went to the drug store and got salve and bandage wrapping material. he took care of me changing the dressings about 4 times a day. i had no after effects from the incident. but more about junking later......

Message from Pete

people are still asking for the only webpage address that they will ever need, so help them out and send the homeless page url to everyone on your personal email list. also torola [at] sbcglobal [dot] net is the email addy to use when sending material for the page unless you go directly to "pie" theranch [at] wcta.net with your info.

back in the late 40's we had an 80 of land where ruonavaara's now live on m-26 east of laurium. we milked a few cows there in the summertime and made several acres of loose hay which we stored in a barn on the property. when thimbleberry season would roll around in late july i would hitch a ride with the folks to the farm and then walk to the calumet and hecla railroad grade where berries grew sometimes profusely. if not next to the grade they could be found in secret patches in the woods. at any rate i would pick a two quart coffee can with a thimbleberry leaf on the bottom of the can to soften the bottom somewhat (it never really helped but was soaked in juice when the pail was emptied). then i walked about 2 miles home to laurium along the railroad track and made my way to tebor's market on hecla st. he paid me one dollar and then called one of his customers that he now had berries for them. i never did find out how much he got for them but i was often amazed that "who would pay more than fifty cents a quart". this was one of my ways of earning spending money as a boy.

Sunday photos

pete keranen (plutch) lives in mpls area. he is a tech grad and grew up with our neighborhood kids

craig kangas, tom sturos and matt halonen

Message from Pete

back in the late 40's we had a 40 of land with a haybarn next to bill kero's place on the gas plant road. it was about two miles from home. we kept a couple cows which we milked in the summer months in a stable made of poles and a thatched roof. we didn't have much water on the land so we carried what we needed from home for washing utters and for the cows to drink. our first cow was kukka. in the winter i remember taking the manure sled down the unplowed gas plant road, through the hard packed snow drifts loaded with manure from our home barn on pewabic street where i grew up. the barn was in the backyard. then after spreading the small load of manure on the field we would either put loose hay on the sled or then quite huge bales of hay made with a hand baler. the horse would run all the way home. i can still hear the squeak of the runners on the cold snow and the squeak of the harness.

Pete's Prognosis

we just got back from checkup in mqte (dec. 2) with the surgeon. he said all was well and making good progress. lungs are functioning well. will go back in a month for another followup with the surgeon and in two months with the pulmunologist who will check the operated lung to see that the connections are good to the airway.

Dog Greeter

this is a dog greeter at the mqte hospital. very friendly

gram and marg at an overlook in mqte

Christmas Tree

the boys hauled our tree out of storage and gram trimmed it on turkey day.

Charlie Brown tree

bucko brought us a first class charlie brown tree for our winter birds to find protection from the winds. he also shot a 10 pt buck. he is still looking for his doe.

Thanksgiving

doug's spencer and preston and bucko came for thanksgiving dinner