Eli, "Pappy" Tells His Story

Eli was born April 10,1880,  in Finland to Samuel Holmesaari (or "Halmesaari," his own spellings vary), born in 1836, and to Hedviiki from Kolisto, born in 1838. He was a youngest child of seven children, so had no prospects for an inheritance, and according to Vake, his father was somewhat of a son-of-a-bitch. At one time, his father gave the family's pet dog to the gypsies, who used dogs to pull sleds, but the dog ran off and came home.

Eli wrote his biography during the 1930s and 1940s, and updated it in 1969.  I had it translated from the Finnish by a friend's bilingual cousin during the 1970s, and Vake helped out with some of the words she didn't get. She said Eli's spelling was phonetic rather than formal, so was difficult for her. Here is the summary:

The  Halmesaari children were spread over many years: Eli was only 3 when his oldest brother Jussi married Tiina, had an argument with their father, and left home. His other siblings were Edla, Samuel, Akseli, Thomas Victor (called Victor), and Lyydi. In 1895 Akseli and Victor left for the USA. In 1896, Lyydi left for the USA. In 1899, Samuel left for the USA.

There was only one school in the District, but Eli could not enroll. He was home-schooled from a religious primer until 1896 and 1897, when he went to Confirmation School. In 1887 Samuel came home and took over the farm. When he turned 18 in 1888, Eli left home to seek work in the town of Vaasa. He had never been beyond the borders of his parish before. His plan was to drive horses for room, board, and money, then to move in with Edla and her husband and four kids in their 1-room house. There, he soon found himself crawling with lice, and was a witness to the married couple's constant arguing. He moved in with a different young couple, only to find that they argued constantly, too. He was standing at the edge of a dance when he was stabbed in the back by a man who had no reason to do it, except on a bet. The man was arrested and sentenced to 8 months in jail, but never paid the damages.

Eli returned home in 1899, but the Russian General Borikov had become Sovereign of Finland, and Eli was concerned that he would be drafted to fight a Russian war.  He left for the USA by ship in March 1899. The ship followed an ice breaker, and took three weeks [ Not likely. Three days? SRS] to reach Hull, England. From there, he took a train to Liverpool. He crossed the Atlantic on the ship Ubria, and says the crossing took 7 weeks [Not likely; this was a coal-fired steam ship. Seven days? Translation error? SRS]. He landed in New York, then went to Worcester, Mass, to his sister Lyydi. She returned to Finland that same year.

Eli got a job digging foundations for a building for $5.00/day for a 10-hour day, but got fired for not working hard enough. He got a job in a chair factory for $1.10 per day, and held it for one month before he joined Akseli in Calument, Michigan, and became a carpenter for $1.50 per day. He was there a year and a half.

In 1900, Eli caught typhoid and was bedridden for four weeks, and unemployed for six months. [ Vake said that he caught typhoid  by drinking water from a clear mountain stream, and that's when he lost his lush brown hair. He had been kind of a dude before that. The timing for the hair loss is a little off, though; there are pictures that are later, with hair.]

By 1901, Eli was digging in a copper mine, but was fired. He became a traveling salesman for newspapers and books in Minnesota. In 1902, he was back in copper land, trying to be a carpenter, but was fired again. This time, he moved to Duluth and worked for $3.00/day for an 8 hour day. In November 1902, he married Sofia. Their son Arn was born Sept. 19, 1903, and their son Eli was born in February 1905. Jobs were sporadic, so they left for Chicago where there was work right away.

Never the less, in 1906, they left for San Francisco where Eugene was born on New Year's Eve, 1906. They had a house and were doing well until the "Roosevelt Panic" of 1907 [That would have been TR, not FDR]. They sold their house and invested in a business with Eli's brother  in Rocklin, CA [but he never says what business or which brother.] He found work building a Finnish Socialist hall in San Francisco, but was paid only half his wages; the rest was to be paid later. They decided to return to Chicago.

It was a mistake to return to Chicago. They lived hand-to-mouth, and that's where Sylvia was born in 1909. In 1910, Sofia took the children to Kaleva, Minnesota, while Eli remained in Chicago to work.  However, he fell ill, and joined the family in Kaleva. That's where John was born, just before Christmas, in 1910. When he recovered sufficiently, Eli sold photo enlargements, but felt that his friends and fellow socialists were ducking him, because he was poor and needy and had a large family to feed.

By 1912, he was able to work in Chicago again, but in 1913 the illness reoccurred, and was diagnosed by a professor of medicine as tuberculosis; but that was before X-rays.  He decided to go west, and was heartbroken at having to leave the family behind. [According to Milly, Sofia thought it was hypochondria.] On the train, a stranger, a lawyer, berated him for not living up to his duties. In Butte, Montana, a Finnish doctor who had seen miner's lungs told him that his lungs were fine. Amazingly, his sweating stopped.  He continued to Portland to another Finn's clinic, where he was told that his problem was his legs.  He figured that was nonsense, but took cold baths at the clinic for a month before catching the boat to Marshfield [Coos Bay]. His brother Sam was operating a grocery store there. He tried mill work and carpentry, but he was still weak and shaky.

Sofia and the children arrived in Marshfield, and they bought a house on the edge of the marsh [in the Inglewood neighborhood, on Minnesota Street], and got a cow and some chickens. That's where Veikko was born on April 19, 1914.

In the following years, Eli worked at Chandler's Summer Resort on the Coos River, in Astoria building houses for Finns, and in the Navy Yard at Bremerton, WA. [Vake recalled that during those years, as a stunt to sell bonds, a man in a King Kong costume climbed up the outside of the Smith Tower, which was the tallest building in Seattle at the time.] Eventually, they purchased a homestead on Ten Mile Creek. Arno fell ill during those years, and after 7 years of illness, died in 1930 [of tuberculosis or its treatment. Eli also died in the 1920s of TB or its treatment, collapsing a lung. Sylvia had it during the 1950s, and Eli had an active case when he was in his late 80s.]

In 1925, they sold the Coos Bay house and left for Berkley, CA for a year, then returned to Coos Bay. In 1931, Eli and two other Finns decided to pan for gold in California.  They fastened his box of carpenter's tools to the car, loaded on 7 tires, and had four or five flats before they reached Medford. It took three days to get to Rocklin. There, the men earned about $.50 per day from their gold panning venture.

Down to $1.50 in his pocket, Eli bought $1.50 worth of malt syrup, and made beer. He told his friends that he was broke, but he had beer. "Why didn't you say so?" they asked. In two days, he had $10.00. After that, he kept 20 one-gallon jugs brewing at all times.

His conscience bothered him, and he feared the law, but he reasoned, "If I don't do it, somebody else will."

[Eventually he and Sofia returned to Coos Bay no later than the 1940s, where they lived until the end of her life in 1963 or 1964. Eli then moved to Florence, where Sylvia, Johnnie, and Vake were living, until he died when he was in his early 90s.Vake said that he was just days short of another birthday, he was surrounded by his surviving family, he was distressed by a lesion on his face, and simply lost the will to live any longer.]

Eli signed off on his biography in February, 1947. However, in August 1969,  he added a postscript. He said that he had been living in an old age home for five years, two months. That day he had watched the return of the first astronauts who had walked on the moon. ###