(Posted September 9, 2010)
Sunday morning. Labor Day weekend. Most guys are loading up their fishing boats, lashing canoes to their cars, or tuning up their mountain bikes for a long ride over the long weekend. Me? I’m headed north again, up Highway No. 4, towards Brimson, Minnesota, a little hamlet an hour north of my home. Kathy Unger, a lady I’ve bumped into from time to time amongst the Finns of NE Minnesota, invited me to come to the Hall’s annual Labor Day Pancake Feed as a guest speaker and talk about Suomalaiset: People of the Marsh, my book about the Finns coming to Minnesota. If you’ve been following this blog at all, you know it’s my best selling book and that Finns buy it with a frenzy. I may not be much of a businessman (check out the pool of red beneath my Cloquet River Press ledger), but I know a good thing when it’s offered. Of course, I said “yes.”
The sun is rising as the wheels of my Pacifica turn and tires hum against asphalt. The ditches are lined with specters of morning fog; wafting ghosts of summer fighting against the advent of autumn’s chill. I turn on the radio and switch from nauseous talk radio to KUMD, a local college music station. “Tent Show Radio”, a program recorded in Bayfield, Wisconsin in a big blue and gray tent, is on. Charlie Parr, a phenomenal roots guitar player and songwriter is playing slide. His fingers dance on frets. Music echos inside the car. And then, the main event takes over the Big Top stage.
Greg Brown, an Iowa singer-songwriter married to an equally talented singer-songwriter, Iris DeMent, strums his battered acoustic. His sparse guitar style is accented by his deep bass voice; a voice that recalls the antique diaphone foghorn in Duluth’s harbor. If you’ve never heard the foghorn or Greg Brown, try to hit the lowest note you can imagine; and then take it down another octave. That’s Brown and the foghorn at their respective bests. Add creative lyrics and music that recall the pioneers of folk and country, and, well, it’s a winning combination. I nearly drive off the pavement listening to “The Fat Boy Blues” (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9je4m_movie1-fatboy-blues_music), chortling out loud at the line: ” I don’t know how it happened, I ain’t no Elvis P., I woke up one morning just as fat as I can be.” Music and the road; ain’t nothing I like better…Well, maybe one or two things but I can’t talk about ’em here!
Google maps has me driving straight north on Highway No. 44 past Indian Lake, past Hugo’s Place (if you haven’t had a beer at Hugo’s, you haven’t lived), and taking a right hand turn at the end of 44. I arrive at the highway’s terminus. Pavement continues to the west, towards the Mesabi Iron Range. But I have to turn east, towards Two Harbors. I’m staring at gravel.
Shit. No one said nothin’ about a gravel road.
I turn onto class five. My apprehension at facing miles of dusty rural road are unfounded. I see cars and trucks parked along both ditches just a short jaunt ahead.
“I’m the speaker guy,” I say to a man directing traffic.
“Kathy’s got a special parking spot reserved for you, up by the building, so you can unload.”
I wave “thanks”, follow the guy’s directions, and park my van on the grass next to the building.
A couple dozen folks are eating pancakes under a big awning on the lawn of the old hall. I stop and admire the handiwork of the building. A sign on an obvious addition to the original hand hewn dovetailed log building, a structure built by the Finnish settlers of the region, reads “Petrell Hall, 1912.” I wander into the old hall. I’m immediately impressed.
The wood floor is newly sanded and varnished. The darker wainscoting shines from polish. The old tin walls and ceiling are freshly painted. Row upon row of folding chairs await an audience. At the far end of the room, a stage rises from the wood floor, complete with an ornate lectern that I learn was crafted from the cabinet of the hall’s original piano when the tuner said the instrument had given up the ghost. Behind the lectern, a painted screen depicts the region; a bright green and blue landscape dominated by white birch. The screen is familiar to me: I’ve seen countless other painted screens, just like this one, in countless other Finn halls across the U.S.; remnants of the Finnish social and theater groups that once provided entertainment for the settlers of these isolated burgs.
I find Kathy, confirm my arrival, organize books for sale on a table, and grab breakfast. I have a nice time chatting with a guy named Tom, a retired graphic artist originally from South Dakota, who has a cottage on a little lake nearby. That’s the thing about this little traveled area of northeastern Minnesota: The lakes are small; tiny jewels of glistening silver set against miles and miles of new forest. Folks that buy or build a lake cottage in Brimson, Minnesota aren’t thinking jet skis or MacMansions; they’re after peace, tranquility, and a snippet of bygone era. Petrell Hall fits that notion.
Folks come and go. I worry that no one will stay to hear my talk or buy my books. A local politician works the crowd, seeking votes for her re-election. I say hello to the candidate and then, it’s time for my reading.
I’m amazed. The little hall, hidden from most everything, built in the middle of nowhere, is filled to the rafters with folks who want to learn more about me, my writing, and Suomalaiset. All the seats are filled and then some. There must be a hundred folks crammed into the space. I read a few selections and talk about my research into the death of Olli Kinkkonen. We share some laughs. I take questions, wrap up my talk, and sell and sign more books in the following half hour than I’ve sold at any event, anywhere.
Kiitos, Kathy.
Mark
