by Tami Erickson

Created on: May 19, 2009

"Commie radical!" he said disgustingly under his breath as he led me into the principle's office to be disciplined for a small infraction in the classroom.

I had no idea what that meant, or why he said it. I was in eighth grade and wasn't all that interested in history or politics. I ignored him at the time and tried to brush it off, but his words were forever burned in my mind and I wasn't even sure why.

Growing up in a poor rural farming community there was a distinction between families that I also didn't understand. As I got older, I attributed it to economics but years later the true reason slowly revealed itself and the seemingly innocuous comments and issues of my childhood began making sense.

Whispered conversations between my mother and father; unidentified emotions of feeling "less than" and being shunned by some families became clearer to me as I became educated on the dynamics of the place I used to call home.

"This town used to be a lot bigger than it is now," mom used to reminisce quietly on occasion. "Logging was a big industry here and there used to be two hotels and two stores. Your grandpa was a founding member of the co-op businesses here," she added with pride in her voice.

It was hard to believe that the little rural community had ever been more than a tiny speck on the map and I couldn't wait to leave it as far behind as possible. I hated that place! People gossiped and said hurtful things behind your back and I didn't understand any of it. I didn't want to understand any of it. As soon as I turned eighteen I left and did not look back for many, many years.

When I finally did go back to the community where I was raised, I was in search of answers. I had been bitten by the genealogy bug and returned to visit family members, do research and visit the cemeteries.

During my visit I met an interesting community member, who like me, had moved away when he was young and had only recently returned. He, too, was doing genealogy but had also become interested in the history of the community itself.

We had a lengthy conversation over a cup of coffee and some of the tidbits he shared caused my eyes to widen and my interest to pique. Later, with my curiosity raised to a new level, I dug a little deeper and began to uncover the mysteries that not only prompted that comment by my teacher so many years before, but shed new light on several other aspects of my youth as well.

In the early 1900's the Finns, along with other immigrants,

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