Charlie Wisti

Charlie Wisti at Veteran's Hospital in Seattle, 1942

Sue and Sandy at the blackboard

Jon:  Hi Aunt Kathleen, cousin Sue & I are here and were wondering if Dave & Sam can come out to play? The folks are all up at the grandparents, but Sue & I are too old to play with that bag of toys(?) that grandma keeps. (The Sanka with melted cheese is good, but Dad, Vake, & Grandpa have moved on to some other beverage.)

Arnold's not here because he's out doing cowboys & Indians with his buddies?

And Uncle Gene is driving the beer truck this week because Charlie Wisti is sick?

Based on our last visit, we kinda think Dave may be spending too much time in the library....or is there a bookmobile that comes around......maybe keep him in his room. He's getting too smart for us.

Well, we'll see you next time Aunt Kathleen,

jl & cousin Sue

Sue:  Funny memories! Since Tina was the youngest grandchild, and she came along 8 years after I, and I trail Jon and Dave by seven years, those toys got a great run for their money! (The toys were a paper bag with spools from crochet and sewing thread, an empty tub from Old Spice shaving soap, and a silver-plated cream pitcher that leaked.  They kept grandkids occupied for hours.)

I didn’t get melted cheese and Sanka: I got coffee with sugar and cream, and a slice of makea leipa with real butter and sugar sprinkled on top, much better!

I didn’t realize that Charlie Wisti drove a beer truck. Come to think of it, I never had any idea what he did for a living, except that he had been a logger in Finland before he immigrated, and his wife Polly packed fruit for a living. He and Vake were navy buddies, and when Vake was on duty in Seattle and Milly came to visit, Charlie showed her around. When I was a preschooler, he saw me drawing a picture of the devil on the blackboard that Sandy and I had in the kitchen of the Coos Bay house. My picture was based on the devil on the side of a Red Devil can of ham. Charlie thought it was so funny that he had me draw the devil on a piece of paper that he folded up and kept in his billfold, possibly forever. He showed it to me again when I was a teen-ager.

Some people thought David wasn’t the only one who read too many books. When Patty knew I was coming over to play, she hid the books first. She missed a few magazines, which is how I ended up reading “True” and “Argosy, the Men’s Magazine.”SueS

Dave:  Charlie Wisti worked for my dad for as long as I can remember, mostly driving a beer truck, including the pick-up for small orders near the warehouse. One day when I was working with him at the warehouse between my junior and senior year in high school, he and I were busting our asses on a carpentry job of some kind which took us from 7:30 in the AM until about 5 PM when Dad left for either the golf course or the Elk’s club; sweaty, hot and dirty but we got it done. Afterwards I was driving up Coos River to a swimming hole and meeting a bunch of my buddies that I had told Charlie about during the course of the day. When I went out to the jeep which I was driving, I found a half case of chilled Heidelberg and a couple bottles of ice cold Thunderbird. My buddies loved me and I loved Charlie!

Dad, of course, would have killed him if he had known.

Sam:  When I was about 7 or 8 years old, I did a delivery with Charlie in the old Sampson Distributing 1949 Chevy pickup to the Cooston store, which was owned by another old Finn, Vic Koski. On the way, we were driving down the dike that keeps the water out of the Kentuck Golf Course and I had my eye glued out the windshield on an huge Blue Heron that was flying real high above and in front of us. I pointed it out to Charlie and as he looked, the old bird did a mid-flight wiggle and flapped his wings a bit and Charlie said “Oh-oh” and laughed a little. I asked him what he was laughing about and he started to tell me when a big glop of Blue Heron doo-doo hit the windshield, all but obscuring our vision...we both laughed a lot on our unfortunate timing, then Charlie turned on the wipers and smeared it all over...Charlie let out some Finnish/American expletives and pulled over and cleared off the windshield with a copy of the Coos Bay Times. Funny, the stuff a little kid remembers.
SamS.

Dave: Thanks to God, Cows don’t fly!