I am thinking, with flashbacks, about a trip Eileen and I are taking next week to Michigan. Here is where I tell you that when I graduated from the University of Oregon back in the weird 1960s, I had no firm idea about how I would find employment or make a living. I slipped through my undergraduate years taking liberal arts courses and reading poetry. So, in my last month on campus, I stumbled upon a table set up by recruiters for a Lyndon Johnson Great Society program called Volunteers in Service to America. Now that sounded very preferable to military service in America’s most unpopular war in history – the Viet Nam War. And in no time at all, as I was used to the speedy answering of test questions, the fine art of determining what the test administrator wanted to read and the ability to nimbly supply some pretty arty sentences and a few obscure words and references, I had signed up for this noble-sounding service to my country.
Very soon afterward, I received a billet-doux saying “Your country needs you” and I was in. A couple of weeks later I was on a train to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Here, the story turns good for me. After some training, I was turned loose in a strange country, very Appalachian-like, and populated by an American sub-culture made up primarily of hoards of “Finlanders”, a few Italians, and fewer Polish persons. In my three-quarters of a century, I have never been among a finer group of people. They may now be called “Yoopers” according to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.
So, back to the title of this essay, it took me a little while to get the hang of the speech-dialect-slang of my dear Finnish friends. And as time went on I grew to appreciate the straightforwardness of their speech patterns.
About eighteen months later and shortly before I left the Upper Peninsula, I picked up a book of regional poems which has become a favorite of mine. I wish to share a delightful, Finnish dialect poem by Jingo Viitala Vachon, a skilled raconteur, and poet from this area. This poem involves a Finnish girl from the tall timber of the Upper Peninsula, a wildlife encounter, and a well known type of architecture which Kent Haruf in “Plainsong”, his novel of life on the Eastern Plains of Colorado called “the stepout” and which my Kansas raised father-in-law called “the Eleanor”. We called it “the outhouse” when I was growing up.
LINDA’S BEAR SHOOTING
Up nort vere ta voods meets ta town of toivola
Now Linda ta housevife is sarp sooter tere,
An’ here is ta story of Linda’s great glory
See von on tat morning see sooted ta bear.
Vas early vun Monday, ta day after Sunday
Her husband vas leaving for vork vit no care,
Now, how could he know tat as soon as he’d go
See vould haf a new caller, a black saggy bear.
Her dog gafe her varning tat October morning
Tat something vas eating her garbets outside;
He started to bark an’ altough it was dark
See could tell tat big bear by his black saggy side.
In all ta commosen ta kids took a nosen
To also get up an’ see vhat vas ta fuss;
Ta ports light vas on, but ta bear vas not gone,
An’ he simply kep’ eating an’ stayed vere he vas.
See opened ta door vit a ear splitting roar
Ten ta bear slowly rose vit a sad injured air,
Ta dog sent him loping but Linda vas hoping
Ta nex’ time he came see vould soot her a bear.
See vent to see Charlie tat evening to parley
An’ see if he’d skin him if see sot him dead;
He said tat he vould, an’ see tought, “Vell, tat’s good,
Cause I want nutting else but his hide an’ his head.”
Tat night tey vere sleeping, tat bear he came creeping,
An’ Linda got up an’ vent to ta john.
See saw tat big sadow, an’ boy, see vas glad, oh,
See’d pick up ta rifle tat October dawn.
An’ bang-bang ta bullets let fly.
Ta bear squealed and started to sviftly depart, it
Yust yumped in ta bushes and lie down an’ die.
So tis is ta story of Linda’s great glory
Ta people vill alvays remember her name,
An’ nuts to Ann Oakully, Linda is locally
Toivola’s sarp sooting lady of fame.
Ve’ll alvays remember her every November
Ven rifles are pewing an’ sots fill ta air,
How see, in October, vit face grim an’ soper
Sat down on ta toilet an’ sooted ta bear.
Jingo
Viitala Vachon
