Price County, Wisconsin

I grew up in Clifford, WI. All my neighbors were of Finnish heritage. The Clifford Co-op store was just across the tracks from our property. The Finn Hall and park were right across the road from the store. I can remember going to doings at the Finn Hall several times a year, there would always be entertainment, a meeting, and coffee afterwards.

Usually the entertainment was provided by local talent like Izzy Wakkinen who sang and played beautiful ballads and popular songs on her guitar or Billy Saari who played accordion. Bill was about five years older than me; I watched him improve each year with that accordion until we all thought he could be playing for Lawrence Welk if he wanted to. Isabelle could have been on the Grand Ole Opry, she was our resident Kitty Wells or Loretta Lynn. Often we younger talents would be asked to sing or play our instruments, too. It was a wonderful experience. When I was very young I remember my grandfather, Gust Korpela, singing some Finnish songs at one of the meetings. I also remember my grandparent’s funerals being held at the Finn Hall.

Each summer there would be a picnic with the main course being chicken mojakka, (pronounced moiyaka), a hearty chicken soup. My dad’s cousin, Irene Maki, was usually the main cook for that. She was a wonderful cook. When we were older, my friends and I helped set the tables, wash dishes, sweep floors, clean, be gofers, dish up food and watch the younger children.

That was the most fun; we discovered that there was an unseen stairway in back of the kitchen that went upstairs to the back of the stage. We discovered the prompt cubby at the front of the stage and we pretended to put on plays, played hide and seek, and until the men came up to set up the chairs and benches, enjoyed just chasing each other around on the hardwood floors upstairs the same as our grandchildren do now in large halls.

My dad often mowed the park with his tractor and mower and many people helped spruce up the place outside and in. Then on the day of the picnic people would begin coming from all over. They parked on both sides of the narrow road and on the lawn in front of the hall and the old creamery buildings that were owned in my time, first by the Art Koskela family and then by my aunt and uncle, Toivo and Helga Korpela. They parked on both sides of the road across the wooden bridge that rumbled like thunder every time someone drove over it. They parked in front of and around the store, up by the proprietor’s house and the shortcut road to Hwy 8 and on Old Hwy 8 alongside the tracks. I remember times when it was rainy and muddy but still the people came, it was always a fun day.

There was a wonderful mural at the back of the stage upstairs that depicted the very lake and island you see when you drive through Phillips, Wisconsin along Highway 13. There was a screen or sheet in front of it that would be rolled down sometime so we could watch Finnish movies. Occasionally these movies would have English sub-titles; Mom and I liked those kinds best. The movies were very popular.

After I was grown and in college, the Finns in the Brantwood area branched out and invited Finns from all over the Central Wisconsin area to doings at the Tripoli school gym.

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