In the years of regret ..? 25 5 13
...so used to say my old friend Osku's "Ukki" a man, his father, in maybe his 70's when in 1964 around Christmas time I visited the family home in Eastern Karelia and met his older brother Arto, his Äiti-Mamma, and of course Ukki. 38 years later I would be calling Osku on the phone on Monday 27th May during the day, relating my "tale of woe" regarding the heart attack I had just sustained, when he told me how lucky I was, because he added it wasn't his coronary ateries that were blocked, but the arteries in his neck, maybe the so-called carotid ateries? That is the last conversation we shared before he passed away on May 31st from blocked arteries, not a week later, and prescient in the sense he never spoke a truer word.
Ukki had a few things to say...for me personally he told the joke about how the Russians, "Russe" in his parlance, invented the samovaari but Saksa, the Germans its "hanna" or tap!
The Hyppönens had not had it easy as a family having to vacate their homestead and farm in Soutavala in the Eastern part of Finland lost during WWII to the Soviet Union as it was then in so-called war reparations when the dispaced were re-located to other parts of Finland, in their case to Liperi not too distant from Joensuu. I can only ever bring Ukki to mind dressed in his form of what I shall call riding jompurs, in a manner of speaking his uniform as a farmer. The family proudly had ownership of a horse, a great towering beast as it appeared to me, with sledges and a trap to pull, in addition to many many more duties: a ploughshare for the spring-time sowing season, etc. Mrs Hyppönen the head cook and bottle washer in a family of herself and three grown men: her Karjalan Piirakka the stuff of legend I had never tasted such delicacies as these rye flower made casings, for the boiled rice she filled them with, eaten hot with butter melting on top. Imagine, with minus 40 deg C/F outside there modest farmhouse.
I really don't know so much more about Ukki's years of regret that from time to time Osku referred to? Only the fact that of the two brothers it was he who shined at school to gain admission to Helsinki Technical University to study Chemical Engineering, completing his studies in the same company as the one I was employed in, he as a diploma student doing his diplom project asignment of analysing the composition of cellulose in terms its different monosaccharides: glucose, galactose, arabinose, xylose and fructose?
I recall that he was paid a very modest salary compared to my own, and that midweek we would always talk about the upcomping Saturday, when how nice it would be to have a house party in our shared Bachelor Common Room area, buying a crate of 24 bottles of IVA beer strength >5%, far too strong for me together with some beer No III at 4.8%, my preferred strength, and cloer to my native British beer of similar strength.
But come the weekend he would always shy away: no doubt because he didn't have the funds to support our earlier plans, when I guess I would waive the charges and buy the beer with my British Passport as proof of age, etc. Then for the parties themselves my friend Jokke and Kirsti would quite often partake, occasionally Jouni and Sirkka, and then very occcasionally Osku and a girl friend he had for a time, whilst my main girlfriend was an English Teacher fresh from her University course at St Andrews MA programme in Scotland, who possessed a famous Scottish surname, Wallace.
Once much later when he had graduated and he was instrumental in my getting a summer job during my University course, the roles were reversed and he was in a superior position financially. With a summer salary of FMk 1000/month, about £100 in Sterling meant our family of man wife and child didn't have a lot of money to live on. Including motoring here and there in our Morris Car we had driven all the way across the Pennines to Immingham for our ferry to Göthenburg, thence motoring across Sweden NE to either Stockholm or Norrtälje, then more motoring from Turku to Gammelby and on to Lappeenranta in the East.
So very generously helping me when my chips were down, and concluded when he gave me FMk 250 a princely sum in those early days and allowing me to take his third year Radio Students at the nearby Ammatti Koulu (Trade School) for their English Lesson from 8 am to 10 am, after our last night out which became two of the logest hours so hung over from excessive dring of alcoholic beverages: not years of regret for me the next generation to Ukki's but living through what I'd come to look back on as a Golden Age in my Old Age, lol!
Ukki had a few things to say...for me personally he told the joke about how the Russians, "Russe" in his parlance, invented the samovaari but Saksa, the Germans its "hanna" or tap!
The Hyppönens had not had it easy as a family having to vacate their homestead and farm in Soutavala in the Eastern part of Finland lost during WWII to the Soviet Union as it was then in so-called war reparations when the dispaced were re-located to other parts of Finland, in their case to Liperi not too distant from Joensuu. I can only ever bring Ukki to mind dressed in his form of what I shall call riding jompurs, in a manner of speaking his uniform as a farmer. The family proudly had ownership of a horse, a great towering beast as it appeared to me, with sledges and a trap to pull, in addition to many many more duties: a ploughshare for the spring-time sowing season, etc. Mrs Hyppönen the head cook and bottle washer in a family of herself and three grown men: her Karjalan Piirakka the stuff of legend I had never tasted such delicacies as these rye flower made casings, for the boiled rice she filled them with, eaten hot with butter melting on top. Imagine, with minus 40 deg C/F outside there modest farmhouse.
I really don't know so much more about Ukki's years of regret that from time to time Osku referred to? Only the fact that of the two brothers it was he who shined at school to gain admission to Helsinki Technical University to study Chemical Engineering, completing his studies in the same company as the one I was employed in, he as a diploma student doing his diplom project asignment of analysing the composition of cellulose in terms its different monosaccharides: glucose, galactose, arabinose, xylose and fructose?
I recall that he was paid a very modest salary compared to my own, and that midweek we would always talk about the upcomping Saturday, when how nice it would be to have a house party in our shared Bachelor Common Room area, buying a crate of 24 bottles of IVA beer strength >5%, far too strong for me together with some beer No III at 4.8%, my preferred strength, and cloer to my native British beer of similar strength.
But come the weekend he would always shy away: no doubt because he didn't have the funds to support our earlier plans, when I guess I would waive the charges and buy the beer with my British Passport as proof of age, etc. Then for the parties themselves my friend Jokke and Kirsti would quite often partake, occasionally Jouni and Sirkka, and then very occcasionally Osku and a girl friend he had for a time, whilst my main girlfriend was an English Teacher fresh from her University course at St Andrews MA programme in Scotland, who possessed a famous Scottish surname, Wallace.
Once much later when he had graduated and he was instrumental in my getting a summer job during my University course, the roles were reversed and he was in a superior position financially. With a summer salary of FMk 1000/month, about £100 in Sterling meant our family of man wife and child didn't have a lot of money to live on. Including motoring here and there in our Morris Car we had driven all the way across the Pennines to Immingham for our ferry to Göthenburg, thence motoring across Sweden NE to either Stockholm or Norrtälje, then more motoring from Turku to Gammelby and on to Lappeenranta in the East.
So very generously helping me when my chips were down, and concluded when he gave me FMk 250 a princely sum in those early days and allowing me to take his third year Radio Students at the nearby Ammatti Koulu (Trade School) for their English Lesson from 8 am to 10 am, after our last night out which became two of the logest hours so hung over from excessive dring of alcoholic beverages: not years of regret for me the next generation to Ukki's but living through what I'd come to look back on as a Golden Age in my Old Age, lol!
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