My Father Spoke Finglish at Work by Noreen Sippola Fairburn

Author:Noreen Sippola Fairburn [Fairburn, Noreen Sippola]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, History, Americas, United States
ISBN: 9781631010446
Publisher: The Kent State University Press
Published: 2014-01-20T05:00:00+00:00

Oliver Kaura

My father, Victor Kaura, left Peräseinäjoki, Finland, for economic reasons. He arrived in Ashtabula in 1901 because he had friends there. My mother, Minnie Sippola, came from Ylistaro in 1903 when she was twelve years old. Both families had friends here and chose to come as things weren’t very good economically in Finland. My mother and father met in Ashtabula and were married in Bethany Lutheran Church.

My father was a carpenter, and my mother worked at the dry-cleaning place on Joseph Avenue. I remember she would wave to me out of the window when I came home from school. I was born on August 7, 1912, when they lived on Bridge Street. I grew up on Bridge Street and went to Washington Elementary School. I didn’t have any brothers or sisters, just cousins. My father had a brother and sister here, and my mother had three sisters in Ashtabula.

My father was a carpenter, and he built our first house on Ohio Avenue, so I went to school at the Jackson building for one year. Then he built another house on West Fourteenth Street, and that’s where we lived the rest of my growing-up years.

My father played first-chair clarinet in the Humina [Murmur] Band and some other relatives played in the band, too. I played trumpet with the band, and when they went on their Finland tour in 1927 I wanted to go along, but my father wouldn’t permit me to go because I wasn’t quite fifteen at the time.

I joined the Keefer-Smith Orchestra in Erie while I was still in high school, and that’s when I joined the musicians’ union. I played for other dances when they didn’t interfere with the Erie band’s schedule, which was every Saturday night and on holidays. It was my first paying job.

After my 1930 high school graduation, I played with different bands and was earning twenty-five dollars a night—more than my father was earning at that time. I first joined Markko and the Californians. Two of us guys were the only ones who weren’t from California. Then I joined with a Southern band and played all over: New Orleans, Florida, and one summer we played by a lake in New Jersey. They had the blue laws in effect there, and we couldn’t have any jobs on Sunday, so when we got done at midnight one Saturday night several of us went to New York which was about thirty-five miles away. So then I stayed in New York and started to play there at different clubs and with different bands. In fact, I played at the Roxy Theatre. I spent twelve years in New York, from 1933 to 1945. I played with bands while studying at Julliard to become a classical cellist.

Then the war broke out. Guys were drafted or enlisted and bands began to break up. I had four weeks of training at Great Lakes Naval Center in Illinois, but by then the war was over and I didn’t have to serve.

In 1945 I came back to Ashtabula and was staying with my parents when Charlie Potti came to see me.

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