There are a handful of secrets and rumors I've learned about my family going back a couple of generations. Most of them that I've heard are third party stories from random people who shopped regularly at the family business, but some I picked up from family members. There's my paternal grandfather's first wife in NYC who couldn't have children so he divorced her (there has to be more to that story). There's his brother dying of complications related to syphilis, and his wife selling her interest in the family business and then heading for the hills (she is burred next to him so this story is probability bullshit). There's my father's uncle (same gentleman) buying my father his first car no matter what my father said to me about financial responsibility. There's another about my father going out to cruse for girls only to end up punching a transvestite. None of these thing are flattering, but most can be taken with a grain of salt, as they may have all be concocted by an drunken and vindictive great-aunt for all I know.
The latest story I've collected comes more or less first person, and it was a cause of great embarrassment to her when she told it to me. It was the story of why my mother and her family traveled from the small village of Lemböte outside of the city of Mariehamn on an archipelago in the Baltic Sea known as Åland to the golden promise of tomorrow that was a Philadelphia suburban part of New Jersey. And this story centers around her father, my grandfather, who's name was Anton.
Anton, originally from the village of Karlby on the island of Kökar, had spent about 4 years in the United States in the late 20s. He was a carpenter, and he had come to America to earn money to start his new family. According to my mother he became a member of an "international carpenters union", which I can only assume is the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners. He returned to Åland in 1929 at the beginning of the depression. When he returned home he built his small "subsistence" farm, and worked as a handy-man and caretaker for an estate owned by Gustaf Erikson, a sailing-ship company "magnate", through the 30s and the war years of the 40s.
(Quick aside: Gustaf Erikson at one time owned and operated the Moshulu, a sailing vessel that is parked on the Philadelphia waterfront and which I visited quite regularly at one time in my life - as a supplier of AV equipment I ain't no rich guy.)
It was in 1946 that Anton was walking with his friend when he came across a pallet of plastic rolls, which appeared to have washed up on shore (they have a lot of shore on these islands). He took what he had found home with him, with what I can imagine him thinking of as a "nice score", but I guess he was as familiar with the laws of the salvage as I am, because the owner of this plastic came looking for it, found it in his position, and had him arrested.
My mother, who was 12 years old at the time, tells me he spent the night in jail, and it appears that charges were dropped, as he was released the next day. He continued to own land in the town well into the 1980s, so I can only assume his "debt to society was paid", but in a town as small as you can imagine Lemböte, Åland was in 1946 (and whatever you did imagine, imagine it even smaller) his social goose was cooked.
He was an embarrassment, and may have been in danger of losing his job. So he wired his cousin in the states, packed his bag, and left his wife and two children behind in short order. My mother recalled that in her "one room schoolhouse" that she was teased by the other children for her father's arrest, with the tacit approval of their teacher.
Anton returned to Åland in 1950. During the intervening years he had secured a carpentry job with Barclay White Inc. construction and built a small three bedroom house in Pennsauken, NJ. Once back on Åland, he collected his family, had a son, sold what he could of what was left, and returned to American.
I cannot stress enough of how my mother was embarrassed when telling me this story, confiding in me that it is possible that his surviving and youngest son might not even know about this at all. She made me swear I wouldn't tell anyone. So I am posting it to the internet. Because it is history. And history deserves to be remembered.
As for myself, I have my own share of secrets, but if you want to know them you will have to wait until I pass on. Then maybe one of my sons will post it to the internet.
Yes, this has been a big wall of text to climb. So I place this Michael Palin Monty Python song about Finland as restitution for my long-windedness. I know it use to drive my mother crazy (along with the Swedish Chef, but that's another story). I hope it drives you crazy, too.