Excerpt from the 1976 publication of “Keeping Our Heritage Finland, Minnesota 1895-1976”.

Greeta’s Memories

In the fall of 1921 I came to Finland to teach at the Finland School – a one room school with 32 pupils in eight grades. Coming from St. Paul, Finland looked like the end of the world to me. In those days the teacher had to stay with one of the families and walk to school. I stayed with the Walter Thompson who lived just east of the present school where the Halvorson place is now. The house was a two-story, finished downstairs but not upstairs. My sleeping room was upstairs, and since that winter was a cold one, I suffered. The school was located about where the new Finland School is, so my walk to school was not too long.

My day started about 7:00a.m. as I had to get to school and start a fire in the basement furnace, then get the school ready for the day. Janitor service was provided by the teacher. Among my first pupils were the Haveri children, the Tikkanens, the Nikulas, and a little girl named Aili Jarvinen who walked alone to school along the lonely road from her home. The children all walked to school, and in winter came on skis. All the children were eager to learn and were very cooperative, so there were no discipline problems.

At Christmas time we always had a beautiful Christmas tree which the children helped to decorate. We had a Christmas program in which all the children joined, and the parents watched proudly. Afterward everyone joined in a lunch provided by the parents and served in the basement.

I taught two years at the Finland School, and then in the fall of 1923 I went to teach at the Park Hill School located on the Little Marais Road. That was a much smaller school. Among my pupils there were the Kalander girls, the Ali children, the Lehtinen boys, Maki, Leppanen and Leskinen children. I remember Ruth Kalander (Himes) about age 6, a little roly-poly girl who was always freezing her face. One day she came to school with a mask her mother had made, and that finally solved the problem. The children all came to school on skis in winter, and sometimes I would also don skis and accompany them to Finland for an outing.

We turned the girl’s cloakroom into a kitchen so we could have hot lunches, and the older girls took turns cooking, two at a time. We had a small gasoline camp stove to cook on. Cooking detail was a privilege earned by completing all necessary morning school work. I taught the girls to cook various things, among them mashed potatoes, stew, and sometimes pudding. The children brought the food from home. One day it was Tauno Lehtinen’s turn to bring meat, and he arrived at school with a big packsack full of frozen meat. This lasted us some time.

I could always tell when Tauno was coming as he was preceded by his pet crow, which would fly from tree to tree ahead of the boy, calling “Tauno! Tauno!. The crow would stay around the school all day and then accompany Tauno home im the afternoon.

In addition to “reading, writing and arithmetic”, I also taught the girls to sew. We also had many enjoyable Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas parties during my time at the Park Hill School.

At this school, also, we had a wood burning stove, and the wood had to be carried in from the woodshed. The water had to be carried from a spring over by John Pine’s place, which was a goodly distance to carry water. There was no Indoor plumbing, of course. The girls had accommodation in a cubicle at one end of the woodshed, and the boys at the other end. I lived in a little house about a half-mile from the school and walked back and forth. The roads were not plowed in winter then, so sometimes I waded snow knee-deep, but that was all part of the teaching job, along with the janitor work, etc.

I taught at Park Hill School for four years, and then went back to school for a refresher course at Duluth Teacher’s College. I taught one more year at Isabella and then retired.

Greeta Haveri