Brought by the train at Puputti's corner

Riihimäki became a city on January 1.1.1960, 50. In honor of the XNUMXth anniversary, the Riihimäki library produced a website that presents Riihimäki as a venue for fiction. Puputi kulma has been a popular meeting place for young people from generation to generation at the corner of Hämeenkatu and Keskuskatu, where a traditional textile shop is located. Puputi's corner appears as a place of events in the texts of several writers.

The railway gave birth to Riihimäki, on September 11.9.1870, 1922, the Riihimäki–Pietari railway was opened for traffic. The small village located on the western side of the Hausjärvi reservoir grew along the track into a busy crossing station. The growing station village separated from its parent and became an independent township in 1960. The railway brought more residents to the ever-growing township. Those brought by the train came to work at Paloheimo's sawmill and many factories in addition to the railways. We also traveled along the tracks to the garrison and the prison. Kauppala became a vibrant city of glass and crystal in 2002. Today's Riihimäki commuters commute to work south and north - "knees are on swords in a rush hour train" (Herkman, XNUMX). The Helsinki–Tampere highway quickly rushes people from one place to another.

Along with the fictional texts, the timeline is drawn from the 1890s to the 2000s. Juna tuomia Puputi kulmassa website presents fiction related to Riihimäki, there are also poems. The description of Riihimäki appearing in the works of various authors has been used as the selection criteria. The earliest work related to Riihimäki is Karl August Tavaststjerna's "Hard Times" (1891), which tells about the construction of the railway in Hausjärvi and its surroundings. The most recent ones included are Reko Lundán's "Ilman suuriu suruja" (2002), set in the Riihimäki garrison, and Olli Sirkiä's commuting poem "Seuravaana Pasila" (2010).

The website presents 19 authors and excerpts from the descriptions of Riihimäki in their works. There are also works in which Riihimäki is mentioned as a place of passage. The subjects of the works related to Riihimäki are often the glass factory (Aaro Vakkuri, Samuli Paronen), the garrison (Reko Lundán), the prison (Kauko Valta Ylänne), schools (Anja Vammelvuo) and the railway (Veijo Meri). Riihimäki is a young city that cannot boast of a great literary heritage. There are no more glass factories - modern times have swept the old factories into history. The trains are still running and Riihimäki's name flashes on the pages of literature.

The website is part of the Riihimäki 50th anniversary year and its implementation has received a grant from the Ministry of Education. The site's information sources have been the extensive materials donated to the library by home district councilor Kalevi Penttilä and the library's own collections. The website was announced during the Riihimäki week on September 7.9.2010, XNUMX.

After 2010, all found Riihimäki descriptions have been added to the Pienia paloja Riihimää page. Last supplement 13.8.2014 August XNUMX

 

Authors

• Sirkku Seinä, computer scientist
• Ritva Kuisma, special library clerk
• Riihimäki's sixteen decades: Timo Salminen, FT, dos.
• Technical implementation and graphic design: Niina Räsänen
• Scanning of images: Anna-Maija Ahola, special library clerk

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Author directories, literary history works and magazine articles from the collections of the Riihimäki City Library.

The materials of Riihimäkä writers donated to the library by home district councilor Kalevi Penttilä.

Pictures

• Ecochem
• Author photos: publishers, private collections
• Collections of the Riihimäki City Museum RKM
• The city of Riihimäki
• Ruskeasuo school
• Anita Elomaa
• Jari Lehtoväre
• Timo Salminen
• Terho Siltanen
• Raimo Virtanen
• private collections

Irma Airisto, b. Isola (14.12.1920 – 31.3.1990) belonged to the well-known peasant and artist family of Isola. She matriculated from Riihimäki joint high school in 1939 and graduated as a visual art teacher in 1945. She worked as a visual art teacher at the old school that became Riihimäki high school from 1957 to 1984. Irma Airisto was a versatile artist – poet, playwright and visual artist. Acting was also close to him, so it was only natural that he founded a drama club at his own school, where many future professional actors started their careers. Irma Airisto founded the Ermina Theater in connection with Civic College. As a poet, Irma Airisto debuted in 1945 in the poetry collection Nuori runo, where eleven of her poems were published.

Along with dozens of plays, Irma Airisto's most important productions are poems about her home region in the collection Poems for Riihimäki (1989). The landscapes of the poems are both Isola's house with its courtyard and the center of Riihimäki with Puputi's corner. Historical subjects, which often move in the world of fantasy, are also characteristic of Irma Airisto's poetry. In the poem Suon Neito ja Suksimiei: Ballad, based on the discovery of ancient skis in Riihimäki, there are both earthlings and a maiden born from the mist, whom the Skirmisher falls into.

I hang out in Puput's corner,
although it's a bit cold in winter.

I'm venting this spring as well
and of course most often in the summer.

And when the leaves fall off in autumn,
I can't get away from this.

I'm venting; that I could see You
which I have dreamed of all my life.

It was written in the stars,
that Puput was seen in the corner.

(Poems for Riihimäki, 1989)

Tuulikki Alsta, who was born in Riihimäki in 1946, but spent his childhood and part of his teenage years in Pori, published his first work Serious Games in 1966. The subject and characters are located in Riihimäki, where the youth of the 1960s spent time in the then Katriina bar in the city center, because "there was no other place to go .” In an interview with Riihimäki Sanomie (April 5.4.1966, 1967), the young writer stated at a writer's evening organized in Riihimäki library that "youth do not live in the kind of society they would like to live in". The next book published in 1960, Häilyvä säuret, also continues the same topic, now time is spent in Valio's bar. Both works reflect the detachment, uncertainty and desire for experimentation of the youth of the XNUMXs. We want to get away from the tight circles of the small town, but at the same time the future feels scary.

"Lisse sat in Katriina with Kali.
- It seems as if the coffee drinkers are scattered, he said to the boy.
- How come? wondered Kali
- A little bit of disagreement between everyone."
(Serious Games, 1966, p. 45)

"Friday. Anu sat in Katriina again. What was he always slouching over there? But there was nowhere else to go. And in that weather."
(Serious Games, 1966, p. 134)

"Anu had drunk a bottle of Sprite. There were more people at Valio than usual on Friday nights. But all were strangers. Really, Anu didn't know anyone from this town. This was a strange place for him. Full of strange people he didn't even want to meet. He wanted to be alone in his own world. - It would be summer soon. He would come back to this city. No, he would never come back here. This place was too painful.”
(Shaky relationships, 1967, p.132)

Tuulikki Alsta's two novels are excellent samples of the colloquial language of the 60s. Riihimäki's youth sat in Hämeenkatu's Katriina bar and Valio bar, pondering their complex relationships. In the 1960s, bars were a fashionable thing instead of the former cafes.

Mauno Arjavirta (until 1936 Arffman) was born on June 23.6.1918, 1918 in Sotkamo, in the hometown of his father Hemminki Arffmann, where his parents had fled from Helsinki during the turbulent conditions of 1920. In the 1920s, the family moved to Riihimäki, whose mother Hilma was from the neighboring farmer's village Lopen Kormu. Hemminki Arjavirta founded a tailor's shop next to the house he built on the side of what is now Arjavirrankatu. Hilma Arjavirta made a significant career in Riihimäki's municipal politics as a representative of the Labor Party and as the first woman from the 1960s to the XNUMXs. Mauno Arjavirta got his enthusiasm for the world of literature especially from his mother.

After studying at Työväen Academy in 1946 – 47, Mauno Arjavirta was a journalist for e.g. In Turku Päivälehti and Hämeen Kansa. In 1958, he joined the service of the Suomen Siviili- und Asarmelövlusuusinliitien Liito, from where he became the editor-in-chief of the Invalidityö magazine until his retirement age. Mauno Arjavirta died on January 31.1.2012, XNUMX

Mauno Arjavirta published his first novel Bridge over the Gap in 1955 under the name Jussi Sotkamo. A windy place was published in 1960, and in 1964 the children's book No immediate danger to life.

Arvo's homecoming from the war

"A little after six, Arvo picked up his backpack and rifle from the station's luggage compartment and hopped on the train. There, he snoozed at the end of the bench in the night area, leaning on the other half of his buttocks, all the way to Savikylä, where he pushed himself from the sleepy, cigarette-smoky, soldier-smelling carriage to the dawn station, threw the backpack on his back and the rifle from the strap to his shoulder, and to revive the blood circulation, he began a fierce march through the quiet town to the roads where the street turns into the road leading to the glass factory . There, he turned from the siren bush to a house with a pitched roof and painted red, where he had grown from a child to a man. He rattled behind the locked door until he woke up his parents, and after a while, he ate a substitute in a familiar kitchen, at a familiar table. The tailor Rantalainen's son had come from the war."
(A Windy Place, 1960, p. 16)

Pässi locomotive to Kesijärvi

"Arvo's childhood home was located on the edge of the Kuraine township, exactly in the same area where the settlement center and the countryside are nested. Räätali Rantalainen's yard could be seen from behind the trees and forests, the chimneys of the glass factory, which forms its own community, belching black smoke, and almost next door was the state cartridge warehouse, which received the popular name of the bomb factory. In front of it, a small locomotive of the Savikylä - Suvijärvi railway, a ram, was chugging along its narrow track following the side of the road, pulling behind it freight wagons and passenger wagons loaded with bricks, sewer pipes and supports. On Sunday, benches were put in the freight wagons and the people of the dry town traveled in a group of hundreds with a jubilant snake spewing smoke and steam to the cooling waters of Suvijärvi, the young in the dusk of the evening to try out new clay villagers and the older in the sunshine to spread sandwiches on the already born.

The road to the glass factory ran along the side of the Rantalai house, and behind the hill on the other side was Elantola, which made beer, lemonade, ear buds, kisses and paakelses, whose dump pile with labels and bottle-mouth iron wires was an inexhaustible treasure trove for little boys. Once there was a box of balloons intended for licorice straws, which had mistakenly fallen into the trash, but kept the boy approaching the pile on his discovery trip always hoping: if even now... Once Elantola burned down and the labels used as play money suffered bad inflation for the same reason as real money; there were too many. Once a bomb factory burned down, and afterwards, when we were near a sunny hill sharpening bark and shoelaces with glasses, wild stories were told, how the fire almost reached the powder cellar and then the entire corner would have been in the air."
(A Windy Place, 1960, p. 49)

Life around the glass and bomb factory

"The road to the glass factory was driven by Kallela's sleds in the middle of winter, sometimes on rattling wheelbarrows, sometimes lying relaxed on top of a load of hay or livestock with a red-striped sweater under their head, sometimes pulling a sledge behind a load of rotting clay, blue from the cold. The glass factory workers walked the same road, many with wooden cabin shoes on their feet and a bottle of beer, French bread and a piece of ham sausage in their bag or shirt. The slightly higher-ranking bomb factories passed through it, because all of them had to be trusted white people and the men had to belong to the protection corps. But a few openly red people and a whole bunch of people secretly confessing the color had joined the group. There used to be a forest on both sides of the road, before Kallela's vaniai, where the glass factory's akas would turn to empty when they returned from the shop at the end of the day of reckoning, and where the young men would go to the dances in the evening to swallow down a stout slurp of Estonian. But rental plots were measured on the other side of the road, on one of which the tailor Rantalainen built his house with a pitched roof. Yrjö Lahtinen and Vanha-Lahtiska, lineman Saarinen and the other Saarinen who had a horse, stoneman Eemeli Kallioinen, axeman Vihtori Virtanen and brush master Pesonen had also built their dwellings on that soil, bubbling as blue clay, sometimes drying into a cracked chamber, but always tormented by groundwater. Everyone built according to their own taste and needs, according to the drawings printed on the lid of the paper box, and in addition, later ribs, pig pens, chicken coops and snuff boxes, so the buildings and the whole region got a carelessly changing tone. For modern city planners, who want to ban all personal preferences, especially on their outskirts, and order houses to be the same right down to the yard trees and window flowers, such a self-created settlement is of course an abomination, but at that time people were not tormented by architects, civil engineers, land surveyors and other sticklers, so everyone did what they saw fit and what they could do with their money."
(A Windy Place, 1960, p. 50)

"People lived their own, free and personal lives, and there may have been more to that fact than Arvo's golden memories. The inhabitants of these villas came from rural crofts and hilltop huts, the apartments of the peasants, the common nests of the maids and the ringers. They naturally didn't have very many traditions or something to stand up for, and when society had been confused quite thoroughly during their lifetime, and when the movable people of the countryside were thrown into village heads created by industry to become sawmillers, glass factories or build houses, hammer stones and knit clothes, the threads were badly broken."
(A Windy Place, 1960, p. 52)

A windy place is a description of a man who grew up near the Glass Factory and the Sako Arms Factory and was hurt by the war about the search for one's own life. The setting of the novel is mainly Helsinki, but the surroundings of the main character's childhood and youth in the meadows of Glasitehta and Sako are vividly conveyed from the early years of Riihimäki township.

Jarmo Herkman, a philosophy graduate born in 1964 who spent his childhood and youth in Riihimäki, and a psychologist who also worked as a piano teacher, has published two poetry books Valo mykkä karnevali (2000) and Pirunpostia (2002). In the poems tinged with music and philosophical themes, there are also descriptions of train journeys to the hometown: "I'm on my way to a funeral. This is already Kerava, in half an hour I'll be there" (Pirunpostia). As the train passes over the Patastenmäki bridge, the poet can only say how "even the 20-meter-high stilt hill next to the Patastenmäki bridge is only four meters high" (Valo kkä karnevaali).

Jarmo Herkman's childhood memories of Riihimäki are related to the Jokikylä neighborhood located on the side of the railway. Nowadays, he works at Kymenlaakso University of Applied Sciences.

It's so good to be home again

The road signs are foreign, the houses are shrunk
or lost, even the 20-meter high sledding hill
It is near the Pataistenmäki bridge
only four meters high.
Only my playmates are now big trees in a geometric forest, the branches are swaying
babies and black briefcases.
For over thirty years I have searched here
advice point, but wherever I step
a silent meadow opens up, with an anthill in the middle
like a living culture
surrounded by forested fanning and eye-brake lights.
I'm going back to my amusement park.
The eyes in the hall of mirrors are different in each book
and ear passion for two lonely horns.
At the top of the roller coaster, the whole city opens up
into a dark tunnel with millions of shiny carpets
from each of whom someone has died.
In the maze, the route is clear
and the wanderer lost.
I get sick on the carousel
but in the ferris wheel, the eyes breathe.
On the ghost train I'm not afraid,
identities appear in glimpses
to disappear at the next bend.
Cotton candy is wiped from the eyes at the gate,
the squares are filling up,
the anthill petrifies,
the hug turns into a hug
and brake lights into candles,
everyone gets one free ticket, that
which has already been used
(The Silent Carnival of Light, 2000)

Tapani Immonen was born on November 30.11.1945, XNUMX in Helsinki, but in her early childhood she spent time with her grandparents in Riihimäki. He especially has memories of the railway from his childhood. He is a public school teacher by education. Nowadays he lives in Outokumpu. The books published by Tapani Immos are suspense and police novels.

Tapani Immonen got the subject of his work Death in the Time of Flowers from his mother, also a writer from Riihimäki, Kyllikki born. About the old stories told by Pelline. Many stories are related to the street along which Kyllikki Pellinen had lived in his youth. In the book, instead of Kallionkatu, the street has changed to Junailijanjakatu, and the status of the town hall is talked about in the city.

"Valaka's lip hung long as it slowly and dignified turned onto Junailijanjakatu. The milk driver of the Kerimäki manor sat looking carefree at the front end of his carriage and looked as close to the sun as he dared. Mäkinen was good to be. Even this early, the sun was beating motionless on the roof of the trainman Lahti's house."
(Death at the time of flowers, 1969, p.1)

"The houses on Junailijankatu were usually small detached houses, single-family apartments, only this fifth one made an exception. there was only one two-room apartment, but the conservatory rooms were so spacious that even a family could fit in them when it had to. From time to time there were some disagreements between families in the house, the rumors of which carried over to the street and to the yards of other houses and made the residents of the other houses on the street look down their noses at the residents of the fifth."
(Death in the Time of Flowers, 1969, p. 10)

"The forest behind Junailijanjakatu was like the common hinterland of the entire street. Of course, it belonged to the city, but no one ever remembered it or seemed to remember it. From there we picked berries, folded sauna curtains, took Christmas trees, and on Midsummer's Eve we gathered on the rock to make coffee and play circuit games. A schoolboy took his sweetheart there, and there a guy also gave another guy a drink from a canister he bought in a clandestine shop."
(Death in the Time of Flowers, 1969, p. 17)

Arvid Järnefelt was born in St. Petersburg on 16.11.1861 November 1870 as the second child of Elisabeth and Alexander Järnefelt. Arvid and older brother Kasper started their schooling in Vyborg. The family moved to Helsinki in 1880 and the Järnefelt brothers continued their schooling at the Finnish Elementary School. Arvid graduated in XNUMX and began studying law at the University of Helsinki.

Elisabeth Järnefelt's interest in the Finnish language, literature and art gave birth to the so-called discussion circle. Järnefelt school. Arvid Järnefelt and fellow students, e.g. Juhani Aho and Eero Erko's topics of discussion were related to Finnishness and literature. However, his legal studies changed to the Russian language and philosophy, and Arvid Järnefelt graduated with a bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1885. Later, he completed his legal studies as well and acts as a representative of his family in the legislature. Arvid Järnefelt also founded and edited Päivälehti.

The "awakening" in 1891 according to the teachings of Tolstoy led him to abandon his life's career and wash himself in the shoes of a shoemaker. In 1893, the first novel Isänmaa was published, followed by the accounting novel Heräämiseni. In 1900, the novel Veljekset was published, which describes the railway workers and their living conditions in Riihimäki. Arvid Järnefelt moved with his family to Rantala in Lohja, becoming a small farmer. Elisabeth Järnefelt also moved to Vieremä's house next door to Rantala, where she founded Lukutuva with Arvid's support. Arvid Järnefelt's last novel, the classic of Finnish biographical novels Vanhempieni novela, was published between 1928 and 1930. Arvid Järnefelt died in Helsinki in December 1932.

The life of a railway worker in a station village

"Henrik kept his word and traveled to Riihimäki towards the end of the summer.
Gabriel had a very small but two-story building there inside a high board fence. When he escorted Henrik from the train to him, Henrik didn't suspect anything until Gabriel suddenly stopped at a certain point on the village street and said:
- Here.
He opened the gate of the enclosure and they slipped into the small yard, where they had to pass the plate down the corridor, between the chicken coop, the slats, with the thousands of dahlias, the seedling tray, and other messy narrowness."
(Brothers, 1900, p. 509)

"Henrik then also threw on his coat and went to escort her to the station.
They walked quickly without speaking a word to each other. The thoughts went so completely that there was no need to speak.
Only when they were already approaching the large, semi-circular locomotive shed did Gabriel say:
- And if you don't come back in the morning, send a letter towards St. Petersburg, on the oncoming train number 12.
- I electrify.
- No, no, it costs a lot and is more difficult to deliver.
One of the large gates of the locomotive shed was open and the light of a small lamp flickered in the darkness.
- You go over there and wait for me, - said Gabriel, pointing to the gate and went himself to an office room, where a little light shone from behind the extractor.
When Henrik got closer to the gate, the mighty figure of Gabriel's locomotive roared right out of its mouth. Its Head Lanterns weren't lit yet, but it hummed quietly and spread warmth around it. Henrik went inside the stable. There, the shapes of the other locomotives were also separated from the darkness, all of them looking fairytale-like in this dark silence. But no one sizzled like Gabriel. The lamp burned on the stern wall, the sooty plaster of which it illuminated far up. The heater went with the oil container on a vandrink, a small lantern in hand. Then he jumped down and went to light the locomotive lanterns. There were no other sounds."
(Brothers, 1900, p. 513)

Arvid Järnefelt's Brothers (1900) depicts the political and social conditions of the 1890s through four brothers Johannes, Henrik, Uuno and Gabriel. The novel follows the lives and spiritual growth of the brothers, who come from a rural parish in Savoia. From Veljeks, Gabriel applies to become a locomotive driver through a machine shop in Turku and moves to Riihimäki. According to researcher Juhani Nieme, the novel describes the class society of the last century in a socially critical manner. Especially the descriptions of urban environments in Helsinki, Turku and Riihimäki show the division of society into different classes. Gabriel's apartment in Riihimäki is sooty and cramped in the eyes of brother Henrik, but Gabriel seems quite satisfied with his conditions.

The description of Riihimäki's train depots with their smoke and steam is transmitted from a time when train traffic was still quite young and the then Hausjärvi station village Riihimäki was becoming a settlement inhabited by railway workers. Arvid Järnefelt was familiar with the Hausjärvi–Riihimäki region since childhood, as the Järnefelt family spent summers in Hausjärvi and Lope in 1870–1873.

Born in Lahti in 1967, Marcus Karppi (Jarkko Karppinen) studied theology and political science at the University of Helsinki. As a child, Marcus Karppi spent a lot of time in Riihimäki with his grandparents. He has worked e.g. as a postal operator, in HTV's customer service, as a grave digger and as YTV's station manager. In addition, he has completed the Ekochem course in Riihimäki. Nowadays he lives in Helsinki.

Marcus Karppi himself says that he entered the Finnish detective scene through a long-term detective hobby and a sociological examination of crime. Murder at Sea (2009) is his fourth detective story. The main character of all crime novels is Supo's ex-agent Kurt Kopra, who still receives assignments from Supo. Kurt Kopra is a flexible, tongue-in-cheek anti-hero who solves murder cases all over southern Finland.

Murder investigation in Riihimäki

"Muurimäki met Santa next to the old oak of the Riihimäki railway station as agreed, who was smoking a thick cigar from the protection of a slightly raised face mask. Although Riihimäki is a well-known crossing station where trains and people look for quick maintenance and the right tracks, for Muurimäki Christmas Eve was the last stop of life."
(Murder at Sea, 2009, p. 10)

"On the map I grabbed from the Riihimäki train station, only one puddle of blue was visible. The railways have been of great importance to the city of just under 28 inhabitants, which is also known for its garrison, glass and top design. The line from Riihimäki to St. Petersburg opened in 000 gave birth to the country's first railway junction. When there are no lakes or aquatic life in the localities, the Ragnar Granit square with its performance stages and events serves as the living room and meeting place of the people of Riihämäkä.
(Murder at Sea, 2009, p. 116)

"According to the brochure I browsed, Ekokem utilizes, renders harmless and disposes of more than 100 tons of problematic waste by destroying or utilizing the rest as matter or energy sources. After pretreatment and classification, the problem cargo ends up either on the firing lines or in the furnace. Refrigerators and fluorescent tubes have their own facilities, as well as a final disposal site for substances that have been rendered harmless and cannot be used. The water plant treats wastewater, and there is a cleaning process for clear and black fuel oils, as well as electrical and metal scrap."
(Murder at Sea, 2009, p. 128)

"I ate a yellowish soup in the library that had cauliflower in addition to cheese. I drank a glass of buttermilk and enjoyed a piece of wrapped tart and a cup of black coffee. It was an hour before the train left, I found the matriculation for RUK's course 211 with the help of the clerk. I sat on the couch, borrowed Donald Fagen's Morph the Cat album and headphones against ID. I noted with pleasure that foreigners were also served in Riihimäki's library."
(Murder at Sea, 2009, p. 139)

Ekokem engineer Juho K. Muurimäki from Riihimäki disappears on Christmas Eve 2003. He was last seen getting into the car of a person disguised as Santa Claus at Riihimäki railway station. The car was refueled with Ekokem's petrol card. Kurt Kopra begins to investigate the case, which is also connected to the murder of Kopra's acquaintance at Kotka Meripääi.

Kurt Kopra arrives by train to Riihimäki to investigate the Muurimäki case. First, Kopra goes to the stands of the Peltosaari baseball field to meet Muurimäki's wife. Next, he visits Ekokem to talk to Muurimäki's colleague. From there, he continues to the library to look for the RUK course publication he needs.

In Marcus Karp's multi-threaded detective story, in addition to the railway typically connected to Riihimäki, Ekokem and the library are described as workplaces. In the book, the library clerk (Helinä), who uses the usual snarky language, sneers at Kopra's question:
"Moukka, I won't deign to answer. Follow on your heels, Heliná snorted as she galloped a short distance to the half-empty shelves."

Matti Lahdenperä was born on October 26.10.1943, 1967 in Riihimäki. He grew up near Riihimäki prison and went to school and vocational school in Haapahuhta. Matti Lahdenperä worked in Riihimäki Central Prison as a guard and head guard and had a long career from 1996 to 1996. In XNUMX, he moved to Konnunsuo Central Prison as head guard.

Lahdenperä's first book of poems, Yö etsii kankilaa, was published in 1991. In this book of picture poems, Lahdenperä reflects on prison life. Prison life is hard and rough – for both prisoners and staff. Prisoners write a lot, guards less. Some of the poems describe the experiences of the guard, but Lahdenperä has mostly reflected on the lives of prisoners and the world inside the prison. Lahdenperä has been able to hear the feelings of prisoners at night in the cell, when no one else is listening. Yö etsii vinkilaa was the first book of poems written in Finland about prisons. The book was delivered to all prison libraries in Finland and has been a popular read in the hands of both guards and prisoners.

Later, three works by Matti Lahdenperä have been published. In addition, his pen has produced numerous magazine articles, plays and plays. After retiring in 2001, Matti Lahdenperä moved back to his hometown Riihimäki.

Seven locks to open
before I get to work.
Seven locks to close
before I get free.
Often twenty-six
I open and close.
Together we move
many times.
I open - I close - again I might.
I was made a locksmith
against my will.
If you want, I can carry
these keys for nothing.
I can't remove the keys alone.
Come with.
Now I'm just a lock for you
translator.
Unless you show up.
(The night is looking for a prison, 1991, p. 15)

Reko Lundán (2.4.1969 – 27.10.2006) was born in Janakkalan Tervakoski and spent his childhood and part of his youth in Riihimäki. Lundán mainly set the events of his debut novel Without Big Sorrows (2002) in his former hometown. The work received Helsingin Sanomat's literary prize for the best debut novel and was nominated for Finlandia in 2002.

Reko Lundán went to Haapahuhta school and graduated from Pohjolanrinne school in 1988. He graduated with a master's degree in theater arts from Teatterikorkeakoulu in 1994. He applied to Teatterikorkeakoulu because it was the only institution that offered university-level writing education. He was not a theater person when he was young, but first practiced judo and later orienteering.

Many places familiar to the people of Riihämäki are glimpsed in the book "Without big sorrows": for example, Shell Karavaani, restaurant Pohjankaari, Hatlamminsuo, Uramo, Peltosaari and Puputi's corner. Despite that, the author assures in an interview with the Riihimäki newspaper in 2002 that the people of Riihimäki cannot find themselves or their acquaintances among the people even with a magnifying glass. The book was born from Lundán in five months, but required years of maturation before that.

"The closed milieu has influenced me quite a lot. The people of the later production have been easily found in the army club or in the school class." (Option 8.12.2005 December XNUMX).
"Riihimäki garrison, closed community, harsh growth environment."
"Etelä-Häme represents Finland to the public. Riihimäki is equally beautiful and looks the same in summer and winter" (Aamuposti 30.7.2007). Such characterizations of his former home region can be found in the production of writer and theater director Reko Lundán.

Reko Lundán wrote six plays, three novels, the last together with his wife Tina, and plays. Lundán compared writing to elite sports – practice is required. Reko Lundán was not only a writer but also a dramaturg and theater director. He had the skill to combine everyday tragic and comical things in such a way that they reveal something very essential about humanity. He has also received recognition as a social debater and stimulator of ideas. Reko Lundán has also been characterized as the Minna Canth of our time. According to Lundán, social responsibility also belongs to art and theater (HS 8.10.2006).

You had no names

"Takakasarmi, as its name suggests, was further away from the city. It was bordered on three sides by the forest, only from the west side, two roads led to the railway line and over the level crossings to the civilian area. Although even in the north, the road leading to Lahti was only a kilometer away, but Aki and Liisa never realized it behind the dense forest."

"In the garrison, you didn't have names, the addresses were simply: garrison, that building and that apartment. Most of the houses in the barracks were built by the Russians in the 1910s out of fear of the Germans. They were orange-red, large and decorative brick houses, there were similar ones in several Finnish garrisons. The residential buildings in the rear barracks were numbered from four two to four eight. They were usually three-story. The main staff, the military home and the message museum had two floors. Of course, the Russians knew how to build a similar house even on one floor; that was evidenced by the officer's club and the exception of residential buildings, four-storey. The four-thirds still warmed with wood, the others had district heating and radiators."

"There were four apartments on each floor, the front doors of which opened onto a wide landing. The stairs were wide and smooth stone, the banisters dark stained wood. The wrought iron patterns under the railings were intricate and decorative. You could get down the fastest by sliding along the railings rather than running, you just had to be careful not to jump into the gaping gap in the middle of the crab."
(Without great sorrows, 2002, p. 21 – 22)

Garrison – Hämeenkatu – garrison

"Before the shop, Aki went to the forest. From a good vantage point, he saw the corner of the shop, the canteen and the headquarters at the same time. The roads coming from the officers' club below and from the level crossing past the radio company were also under control."
(Without major sorrows, 2002, p. 43)

"Ripa drove up the hill to the roundabout and down Hämeenkatu. Everywhere there were children and their parents in festive costumes. In the corner of Puputi, Ripa waited for the mother to cross the crosswalk with her three children. The youngest could barely walk, still wearing shiny leather shoes and a tie around his neck. Mother had a summer dress. The bare calves were as round as a roll of earring dough."
(Without major sorrows, 2002, p. 55)

"-A little bit of mine. I mean a hangover, Hanna said as Ripa turned the car over the level crossing to the side of the garrison. - Isn't that school on this side of the track anyway?
- It doesn't matter which way you go. Besides, you can throw the bag in, answered Ripa.
- I don't have that many measurements o.
- That's the Varuskuntakirkko.
- So it seems, Hanna answered enthusiastically.
Ripa sped past her father's Ford up the non-commissioned officer school hill and from there on a long wooded straight towards the rear barracks of the relay regiment: past the radio company, the canteen and the shop up the hill of the main staff and the officer's club to the residential buildings.
(Without major sorrows, 2002, p. 58)

The father of the Rinne family, Ripa, drives between the center of Riihimäki and the garrison, goes to a restaurant in Pohjankaari, sings in a male choir and sometimes "forgets" his own ways. The mother of the divorced family, Hanna, who suffers from alcohol problems, has come to visit her former home in the garrison. The novel Without Big Sorrows is also a description of the change in society from the boom period of the late 1980s to the recession of the 1990s.
Without major sorrows, there is also a story of two siblings surviving the Rinne family's tangle of divorce, alcohol and mental health problems. The environment is the garrison of Riihimäki with its barracks and residential buildings. The garrison built by the Russians has influenced Riihimäki's life for over a hundred years. The garrison as a closed area has been a distinctive growth environment that has shaped the people living there in many ways. Reko Lundán accurately describes the childhood and youth of the 1970s and 1980s in this unusual environment. The nameless roads of the garrison, which are marked with just numbers instead of street names, gave the name to the successful play You had no names (1998). This and the play Aina joku eksyy (1998) were the basis for the novel Without Big Sorrows.

Ryttylä's toughest guy in Puput's corner

"On May Day, Aki and Liisa had met Irma for the first time. At half past ten, Jutta came to pick them all up from the garrison and drove to the town hall, on the steps of which the Male Choir sang Anttila ampaisi and two other songs. Ripa sang baritone. They drove a short distance to Juta's home while the Men's Choir was having lunch."
(Without major sorrows, 2002, p. 162)

"At five, Jutta had asked them once again to think about where Ripa could be. He had called Pohjankaare, but the Male Choir had already left. Ripa hadn't arrived at the officers' club either. Jutta wondered if she should call the regional hospital's emergency department. Liisa told him that May Day was the same day for male choir members as Independence Day and the National Defense Forces flag celebration for officers. Jutta nodded seriously, but still asked after a while what kind. Liisa said it was a big party."
(Without major sorrows, 2002, p. 163)

"Suvi had started dating Henka, who was three years older than her. Henkka was considered Ryttylä's toughest guy. It was no small feat, the school home was located in Ryttylä. Everyone in Riihimäki was afraid of him. On Friday evenings, space was created around Henka, when she went down to walk the circle of Hämeenkatu between Puputi corner and Pohjankaari."
(Without major sorrows, 2002, p. 219)

"Aki finished and played the new album of the Soul Brothers, it sounded like a lot of albums at the beginning. The pain from a whole winter in Riihimäki made the members limp. Aki thought that the whole city was wrapped in nothingness, like the corner of a shopping mall in rotting plastic. He envied Ruutti, who had said that he really missed seeing his friends."
(Without major sorrows, 2002, p. 272)

"Aki looked at Marja's glowing slender arm in the Cocks handball player's armpit and felt no longing for the boy he had been the previous winter. He now had Ruut and he would not spoil that relationship with his childish desire to cling. With Ruuti, he would know how to live without worry, would be happy in the moments together, but would also be able to live apart."

"At one point, Aki picked up his bike in front of Sokos and slowly drove home. He had passed the last hour's two-hundred-meter stretch of Hämeenkatu together with Haahti and Jaska. They laughed if someone was really upset and straightened across the street to the ring, when a fight was brewing somewhere, they urged the brawlers to hit harder and in the face. Aki had laughed along, but only at himself.
Jutta was also sleeping at home."
(Without great sorrows, 2002, p. 302 – 303)

Riihimäki's youth weekend has traditionally included "sawing" Hämeenkatu even back. The meeting and standing places were Sokos and Puputi's corner. Reko Lundán himself has characterized his novel as a description of the world of a 17-year-old in Riihimäki in the 1980s. The novel's theme is how grief shapes a person and how tragic events of the past can be overcome.

Kalle Manninen was born on December 20.12.1977, 2008 in Ristina, but spent his childhood and went to school in Riihimäki. He moved from Riihimäki to Hyvinkää and currently lives and works as a classroom teacher in Hämeenlinna. Kalle Manninen has written pieces for Aamuposti magazine and Hämeenlinna Kaupunkuutis. These have been compiled into the book collections Vessalukemi (2008) and Mies hatu alla (2009). In XNUMX, the hardcover collections Elämäntyö and Nääitä kulmillat were published.

When living in Riihimäki, Kalle Manninen lived in the suburb of Peltosaari – the only one in Riihimäki, which he describes especially in his book Vessalukemi. The book tells about the life of a schoolboy from Peltosaari from the early 1980s to the first years of the 1990s. Adventures glimpse the old inland swimming pool, the glass factory, Rytmiriihi and the Sokos department store. But even more than nostalgic reminiscences, the stories are defense speeches of the vilified neighborhood. In the text, the familiar street names of Peltosaari are glimpsed: Otavankatu, Merkuriuskenkatu and Tellustori. As the author himself writes "Peltosaari was like a miniature Rome. It was our base. All roads led there and from there, how ever.” Kalle Manninen warmly describes the colorful adventures of the neighborhood boys in the foothills of Peltosaari and the city center, in the era when the Commodore 64 was the world's most popular computer and skateboarding was just beginning.

The boys of Pelts - from Tellustor to the center

"Peltosaari was like miniature Rome. It was our base. All roads led to and from there, how ever. If the school or club didn't have a disco, you could find one in Petsamo, Rity-talon Montu or the youth center; They were still organized in the 80s and early 90s. The other centers of nightlife were where the people lived, Tellustor, the area of ​​daycare centers and the school, under the shelter of the roofs of which the big guys gathered to show off their motor vehicles and drink beer. They always remembered to show us little ones where to look for bottle catches in the rose bush."
(Vessalukemi, 2008, 003 Looking for a better half)

"Peltosaari bridge is a fast route to the city center. It's not interesting, just useful. Fascinating is what happens under the bridge. Graffiti, bottle shards and natural obstacles – rivers and bogs – offered us explorers not only an unusually diverse and eventful adventure site, but also a super-fast shortcut to the coin machines in the center. If you want to play three marks in the pot, you should dare to cross the train tracks, which seem to be endless under the bridge."
(From Vessalukemi, 2008, 011 Hooked on excitement)

"New phenomena and hobbies landed in Peltosaari quickly. When our parents appeared on the streets with skateboards, we had to get ours too. At Säästö-Kare in the center, two hundred mark boards were sold, which we used to get started. Far behind were the days when I walked along the Merkuriuskatu sound barrier in my Dingo gloves with my fingers cut off and hummed the band's songs from memory. I also no longer walked over the Pelts bridge towards the city to buy rivet bracelets or Iron Maiden back tickets from the youth shop located at the foot of the bridge."
(From Vessalukemi, 2008 017 Skateboarding and rough art)

Basketball and cook

"It is the case that the best things in life happen in consciousness. Or at least they happened Early 1990s in Peltosaari. I was playing on the school's basketball court in the evening of the summer vacation, because at the same time the people of the houses bordering it were getting nervous about our nightly tournaments and complaining about the balls. If one of the visitors had obtained a curfew for the field area, Meikämann would have missed the ecstasy of first love."

"I got a sweater from home. In the stairwell of the Merkuriuskatu house, I told them that I would soon be moving to Hyvinkää. My stomach felt weak. It dripped from the corner of the eye. We proceeded along Otavankatu towards the Tellustori grill. I took the Poriyan when I couldn't think of anything else. We kissed at the fountain. I tasted the yeasty taste of cider, which I had no experience with at that point, but which I did get to know later."
(The Man Under the Hat, 2008, 54 First Love)

"In the good old days, the center of Riihimäki was dominated by Sokos, whose downstairs you could hit the electric pajazo and upstairs you could take part in every weekend's coffee drinking sessions with the papparai club. To get to the cafe on the upper floor, you went through the convenience store, past Hedelmäpeli and the mechanical shop. I was more than happy to be a part of these private sump rituals where the drink was slowly sipped through a piece of sugar stuck between the lips. We discussed current events in the city, laughed and chewed comb wine."

"The Sokos cafe stood out in my mind because of the product sold there. That product, a soft drink, tasted like either pineapple or orange, but, more importantly, it didn't contain stomach-irritating carbonation. Vaari's way of enjoying Soft was interesting and original in my opinion. I personally don't remember tasting the kind, I liked the edgier stuff like kokis. Back then, you could also get it in a reasonable size."
(Man under the hat, 2008, 57 We live in unreasonable times)

Back in the 1980s, there were two department stores in the center of Riihimäki – Sokos and Ahjo/Centrum. Both cafeterias were located on the second floor and the upper floor was reached by escalators. We spent time in department store cafes meeting acquaintances and playing games.

The residential area of ​​Peltosaari began to be built next to the railway in a city plagued by a housing shortage in the 1970s and 1980s. Residents from all over Finland moved to the area filled with apartment buildings. Apartments were quickly needed to meet the needs of both the industrializing city and residents commuting elsewhere. Over the years, the neighborhood's growing population also brought many social problems. At the end of the 2000s, the Peltosaari project was started, in which the neighborhood is renovated to be more energy efficient and its image is improved.

Veijo Mere's southern Hämä roots lead from the farm of Riihimäki's mother keeper Hausjärvi's Ryttylä manor to the independent Uittamo farm. Uittamo was the home of Veijo Mere's father Väinö Mere, where his father Esaias Meri had once become a reng and married Alina, the daughter of the farm.

Veijo Meri was born on December 31.12.1928, 1941 in Vyborg, whose father Väinö Meri served as a sergeant in the nearby garrison in Valkjärvi. Veijo Meri started her schooling in Valkjärvi, but spent all her vacation time in Uittamo. In the spring of XNUMX, Mere's family moved to Riihimäki after Väinö Mere was assigned to the Riihimäki garrison.

Veijo Meri says:

"I lived in Riihimäki from Easter 1941 to summer 1946, but in Ryttylä Uittamo until the end of September 1956, the summer growing seasons and harvest times. Even before the wars, I was occasionally in Uittamo as a little boy. It was good to be in the care of four aunts and grandma. When I was three months old, I was in Ryttylä for the first time at my oldest aunt's funeral. My father got a cold and I had a cough too. Dr. Harjola was the municipal doctor and the Riihimäki garrison doctor at the same time, who visited us. The Doctor was Renny Harlin's father.”
(Letter to Riihimäki City Library, 2009)

Riihimäki memories

Veijo Meri continued her schooling at Riihimäki Yhteislyse from 1941 to 1946. Meri had both pleasant and unpleasant memories of her school years in Riihimäki. The most annoying must have been what the future writer got from Nelone's mother tongue and subject writing. Instead, Aimo Turunen's mother tongue lessons and e.g. exercises from the language pictures of the Seven Brothers The sea remembers fondly. The 15-year-old schoolboy got his first touches to literature from the book Uuno Kailaan Runot, which he borrowed from the Riihimäki municipal library. Riihimäki was an important growth environment for the young Mere:

"We used to go shopping in Riihimäki and watch raves, it was a necessary part of my home region. There were barbershops, movie theaters. The family grave is in Hausjärvi."
(Letter to Riihimäki City Library, 2009)

Meri's family moved to Hämeenlinna in 1946, where Veijo Meri enrolled as a high school student in 1948. Veijo Meri studied history at the University of Helsinki and worked as a publishing clerk in Otava in the late 1950s. He published his first work, the short story collection Ettei maa viheriöisi, in 1954. Since 1960, he has worked as a freelance writer. Veijo Meri received the title of academician in 1998.

Veijo Merta has been considered a leading name in modern Finnish prose and a reformer of the language. His extensive production has been translated into more than twenty languages. The war novel Manillaköysi, published in 1957 and awarded with the State Literature Prize, has gained the status of a classic in Finnish literature. Hannes Sihvo has also characterized Mere's production as a Hausjärvi saga. Meri herself has mentioned that she has told about the cases related to her family for a hundred years. War, the army and the railway often appear in Mere's productions.

Riihimäki explosion on April 22.4.1918, XNUMX

"When the town started to appear, it rose so high in the air that even the ridge behind it disappeared from view. The force of the explosion was so great that it even lifted the goods wagon into the air, and up to here the ditch embankments gave way. The roof of the small cottage was lifted from its place, smashed against another building and shattered into pieces. It was seen but no sound could be heard, because the burst of exploding projectiles prevented even the hissing of the ears from being heard. In the far field, hundreds of little black people were running towards Peltosaari. A high cloud of explosions seemed to have stopped in the air. However, you could see small black dots on it that kept falling off."
(The events of 1918, 1981, p. 97)

"Suddenly an armored train came from the south and drove like it was the last day to avoid German grenades. It was going to blow, blowing its smoke to the ground, the men lying between the rails coughed in chorus. Some stood up and tripped over the rails.
One of the Red Guards ran along the track yard to them and crouched behind the rail fence. Immediately the same man ran back to the station building.
- Hello there, shouted the Red Guard standing on the roof of the wagon. Get out of there quickly. right now, run. The bridge explodes.
– What bridge?
- There is a bridge at that point. Come back already. It's staked.
Like a herd of sheep, the men hopped over the rails and hopped across the yard to the field. They didn't dare go towards the shop because of the red ones in the station building. They ran like mad to get out of reach of the explosion. But there was no explosion. The man standing on the roof ran along the roofs to the other end of the line of carriages."
(The events of 1918, 1981, p. 102 – 103)

"The chief took the wire and threw it on him. He lit himself. Then they ducked briskly into the shelter of the station building. They ran out the back door into the street and from there behind the nearest stone pillar.
The explosion shattered the center of the track yard. The shock and pressure threw the wagons together, and pieces of rail and nails flying through the walls blew up the ammunition wagons. The air pressure killed the guard standing on the roof of the carriage and threw the body over four pairs of rails into a small trench filled with water. He was not found there until the trench had dried up. The projectiles detonated and detonated others. The wagons caught fire and the fire spread to the large wooden market hall, which began to burn simultaneously in every part. It looked like the whole town could burn."
(The events of 1918, 1981, p. 103 – 104)

In his novel The events of 1918, Veijo Meri describes the last, violence-filled days of the civil war in Riihimäki in April 1918. At that time, Riihimäki was the last stronghold of the Reds in southern Finland. Conscripts from foreign communities, female soldiers and white prisoners had been gathered at the barracks. On the morning of April 22, German troops appeared on Riihimäki. The store became a battle tank. The Reds tried to send a train loaded with weapons and explosives to the east. The Germans on the Herajoki noticed movement in the railway yard and aimed their cannons there. One projectile hit a stationary railroad car loaded with explosives at the Vantaa road level crossing. The explosion was huge, raised flames tens of meters high and sent parts of the wagon flying kilometers away, and ignited several fires. "Riihimäki bang" remained in people's minds for a long time.

Wartime stories

"There were several unofficial memorials at Riihimäki barracks during the last wars. I hope they are still in stock. There were the stone gateposts of the field artillery regiment stationed there before the war, with brass insignia and the regiment's number, on the hill between the large barracks building and the track, there was a man-tall ground stone with a cross painted in white on the side and a text saying that there were 6 recruits who were killed in the bombing of the Winter War. a large Russian text on the smooth hewn side of a high rock. By the front barracks kitchen. A Russian officer had ridden to the edge of a cliff and fallen down. The man and the horse were killed. They also told of an ordinary soldier who had fallen from the same cliff, and who had experienced the same thing. The Russians must have been very fond of high cliffs when they had built their barracks in such an impossible place. The front barracks are like the Alps. There are two high hills, the road goes around the first but climbs over the second one. In places it goes along the exposed rock, which is dangerously slippery in winter, as well as in summer when it has rained and the rain has brought and spread sand on the rock."
(Goethe's oak: short prose, 1978, Prisoners of War, p. 95)

"During the war, some horse unit was stationed at the stables of Riihimäki Etukasarmi, I don't know what, maybe it was a collection center for the wounded. The chief was a fine horseman, a stylish and handsome man. Although not a professional soldier, he was more military than anyone else. A member of a well-known capitalist family. He lived in Seurahuone in the township. In the mornings, one of the stable men harnessed his horse there. It was a thoroughbred horse. Because the master of the horse then rode the one and a half kilometers to the barracks, his work trip was no longer than that. When he wasn't riding, he rode a two-seater stroller. The horse was the same. He always steered himself, drove at breakneck speed. When I was conscripted and waiting for surgery in Tilka, I read in the newspaper that the same horse master had shot himself and his daughter in the Aulango hotel. Her divorce case was settled and the girl was assigned to her mother."
(Goethe's oak: short prose, 1978, Handsome men, p. 99)

Riihimäki's more than hundred-year-old garrison has provided subjects for many prose stories by Veijo Mere. Riihimäki garrison was also the milieu of Mere's childhood years, whose hilly terrain he describes as similar to the Alps. Both Prisoners of War and Handsome Men are true stories that took place during the war years

"I decided to disappear from the village on the first train, wherever it went. It went north. I came to Riihimäki and went straight to the corner of the liquor store and bought two bottles of liquor in one go. It wanted to buy for me, it had no other option to go to the store when the money ran out. Now it could step in wide, to the horror of the sellers, and take two bottles of table liquor. It deserved a lot of joy. We went to Riihimäki Sanomi's yard and had a drink there. Newspapermen are so grounded and free thinkers that they didn't sweat it. Ukko drew quite a shortfall in the bottle. It was a man with a peat mouth like that, his face glistened with grease."
(One Night's Tales, 1967, p. 15)

"On the back cover of the cigarette box was the woman's name and address. "Is this an important address for you?" I asked and showed the text. It was an address from Riihmäkelä and the name was also from Riihmäkelä, Signe Lehtonen. Ukko looked at the address and scratched his head. "I haven't even seen this," it said and was surprised. "Then you didn't write this yourself?" I asked. "I didn't even notice that there was something like that," the old man said. "I'll keep it then," I said. "Did you get this box from someone?" I asked. That would have been good to know. "One soldier gave it at the station in a restaurant or it was left on the table when it left." That way. "To the bathroom or not?" I asked. "I don't know," the old man said. I didn't get any more information than that, but that was enough. I frowned and started walking along the market.
I once walked by the house whose address I had. It was the same dirty-looking brown-painted house, as is customary in Riihimäki, a small boarded-up wooden house surrounded by a little grassy yard and one birch, if you can say it was around the house, it's next to it."
(One Night's Tales, 1967, p. 16)

"I got to Riihimäki with the dirt and took the suitcase from the shelf and started carrying it. The girl lived in the attic of a single-family house in Patastenmäki, there were houses so tall that they had an attic. It took the suitcase from me in the yard and shook my hand and thanked me profusely and I thanked it and its entire family. "Yes, I'll carry it all the way inside," I said, referring to the suitcase, but the girl complained that she couldn't invite me to her room when her roommate was sick there. I asked if he wanted to go to a restaurant with me for coffee, but he said it was so late that the places were closed. I asked to see him the next day. He smiled enigmatically, took the suitcase from my hand and went through the door. I started walking back to the station."
(One Night's Tales, 1967, p. 52 – 53)

Veijo Mere's stories are told in a peacetime military hospital. Muua's corporal tells a wartime holiday story, where coincidences follow one another in a wild avalanche. The cases transport the corporal on trains from Riihimäki via Hämeenlinna and Lahti back to Riihimäki. In Riihimäki, the story revolves around a wartime market town on the corners of the liquor store, Riihimäki Sanomi and the station restaurant, and goes on a picnic in Patastenmäki.

Memories from Riihimäki High School

At school

I didn't see the teachers
face profile.
They were always towards
like a tree or the sun.
Many of them started
at school in year ten,
which year forty.
In the seventies
all were dead
Väpa, Tanta, Reksi, Heta.
The school burned down in the Winter War.
Alvar fell in the continuation war.
The priest promised to tell
about an exciting woman.
Phew, it was Saint Teresa.

I drew a picture of Salme.
Koisten with a long pen
messed up her hair.
I combed it out on paper.
Koistinen, you are a heathen,
I wrote on a ruler.
I threw it in front of the dude.
Teresa became a terrace.
Koistinen got to read the message
out loud to the whole class.
I apologized.
Koistine crossed his arms,
beautiful legs Salme.
(Together and alone : collected poems, 1986, p. 115 – 116)

In the poem at school, Veijo Meri remembers the teachers and classmates of Riihimäki Yhteislyseo at the time. Riihimäki Yhteislyseo burned down in March 1940 as a result of a bomb that hit a neighboring house. JH Rantama was the headmaster (Reksi) at the time, Väpä (Wäinö Warmanen) was the history teacher. Heta (Paula Oksanen) was a mother tongue teacher, from whom Meri learned Nelonen's subject writing and Finnish grammar. The biology teacher was Alvar Kopperi, who was killed in the Continuation War.

Samuli Paronen was born on May 23.5.1917, 14 in Virolahti, the only child of shoemaker Väinö Paronen and Ida os Tasa. Väinö Paronen, an active supporter of the labor movement, died in Tammisaari prison camp when Samuli was only one year old. Ida's mother also died when the boy was 1937 years old. After public school, young Samuli traveled around southern Finland working in agriculture, forestry and construction. Later, he washed into the sea, e.g. For seine fishing in the Arctic Ocean. In 21, Paronen stayed in Helsinki and married his landlady, Aino Meurone, who was XNUMX years his senior.

Samuli Paronen got the spark for writing after reading Samuel Beckett's work Millaista on. Paronen changed both his place of residence and his profession frequently in the 1940s. In the 1950s, the Paroses acquired a small farm in Janakkala's Saloinen village, where their first novel Kesä Aataminkylä was born. However, the work was not published until 1964, when the author was already 47 years old. After rejecting WSOY's next manuscripts, Paronen turned to Otava, where the young publishing clerk Hannu Mäkelä took him under his wing. Hannu Mäkelä became Paronen's lifelong friend and supporter.

In the early 1960s, the Paroses moved to Riihimäki, where the writer's tall, dark figure was a familiar sight, e.g. at the station and in Riihimäki library. Living difficulties overshadowed Paronen Riihimäki's years and made writing difficult. The apartments were in wooden houses, where it was often so cold that even the water in the buckets froze. In addition to his writing work, Paronen still worked, e.g. At the Lahti power plant. Paronen's last job was at Riihimäki Glass as a window glass lifter. In the last remaining novel, Kortteeri (1974), work is described in the glass factories of both Riihimäki and Lahti.

A room in a wooden house

Samuli Paronen's most successful work is House in a wooden house (1971). President Urho Kekkonen also brought up the work when discussing housing difficulties in his New Year's speech. The author's housing and financial affairs improved in the late 1960s, when he received library allowances and grants. A small apartment building was also arranged at Lopentie 10 in Riihimäki. As the quality of life otherwise improved, Paros began to suffer from many diseases caused by heavy physical work. The most serious was the lung cancer diagnosed in the spring of 1974. Samuli Paronen died in Ahvenisto Hospital in Hämeenlinna on August 26.8.1974, XNUMX.

Eleven works by Samuli Parose have been published, of which the collection of thoughts Testamentti compiled by Hannu Mäkelä was published in 1999. The collection of thoughts Maailma on sana, published in 1974, the year of his death, has been published in several editions. Paronen received State literature awards in 1969 and 1972.

"The old houses visible from the window lean in different directions, compared to those built without wadding and lead wire. The street between the houses is probably a later invention, sometimes it goes behind the house sometimes in front and does not take a straight line to fit. This house is like an old wooden castle, more overhangs and recesses, corners and curves than are properly suited. It was once a sign of wealth, I thought. The house is lived in on four floors from the basement to the attic. As the places have become dilapidated and the residents inside have become poorer, the initially large apartments have been reduced in size by nailing up the intermediate doors and making new partitions. When the height of the rooms has remained the same, they look like large closets. The wealthy would not have lived to come to these apartments for free."
(A room in a wooden house, 1971, p. 32)

Samuli Paronen's apartments changed frequently throughout the 1960s in Riihimäki. The living conditions of the idyllic wooden houses were often inadequate. One of the many apartments in Parone was located on Valtakatu, along which the view from the window of the wooden house was still typical for Riihimäki in the 1960s. The winding street between the houses was popularly called "Rommikuja" because of the liquor sales in the area.

From the station to Lapsenlikka statue

"People came and went seemingly endlessly in and out of the station doors, sitting, eating, walking, standing, reading newspapers and schedules, looking at each other; to pass the time. There seemed to be a little more of them today than last time. I looked, I tried to see a little of what their life is like in their faces, but they put on a nondescript general face in such public places, but something could be glimpsed, like behind a curtain through a window. All of them had come from somewhere else, after all, this was a temporary place, here they prepared for the journey or to continue it, if not to end it, there was no time left for getting to know each other more deeply, getting to know each other, making trade deeds or drawing up rules, everyone remained strangers to each other. The dung beetle was halfway across the floor when someone stepped on it and the cleaner pushed it away with a wide brush. Nothing remained solidified. Here, only a small part of them moved, the rest somewhere else, at other stations or between stations, or playing home, kinship, law making, fulfilling customs, and then it's their turn to travel too, otherwise this wouldn't last long. It's snowing again, I'm thinking, it's spring again, a black spot melts next to the anthills, there they go with a stiff birch to peek at the development of the situation. There seemed to be other frustrations. They looked at a young woman sitting at the low baggage claim counter that was covered with a sheet. Its hem was above the knee so you could see, I don't know, not to this point."
(A room in a wooden house, 1971, p. 51)

"...What weather are you going to?
- To Kerava, working there, I would move if you could get an apartment there. I have to go to that pier already.
- I see. Well hello.
- Hello.
It went towards the platform, I went out the other door. The wind blew snow in gusts on people's necks from corners and roofs, in other places the snow slid very low against the ground for long distances and suddenly rose vertically up somewhere high. There didn't seem to be any real directions. People walked seriously, but in this kind of weather it was difficult to wear a respectable basic look with much dignity. It seemed as if everyone had a great sadness, funerals, weddings, childbirth, separation from a loved one... what could not be serious. A black wide car was taking what looked like the prime minister somewhere, perhaps to an important national meeting. I guess it's not as far from the Swedes here as you might think.
The silhouettes of the houses looked calmly sturdy, the eyes rested in them with the wind, a large area of ​​intact snow on the ground and a few trees in the middle, and in the middle of them a dark bronze child with a snow-covered child in her arms, a cold-looking, collared puppy whining when it couldn't get its way. It was taught the basics of civilization, it's true, the power is overwhelming, subjugating, it still doesn't understand that man is the dog's Lord. There were almost ten different times in the window of the watch shop and I had nowhere to check which one was the most correct and I didn't go in to ask, I went to the pharmacy and asked for headache powder. The seller had a cute little mustache. He asked how many, looked very brave and I didn't feel like laughing like I did when I was little at those pictures where mustaches were made with a soot or pencil."
(A room in a wooden house, 1971, p. 53 – 54)

Riihimäki station was the place where Paronen repeatedly went on his walks. No doubt he was fascinated by the station's constant flow of people on their way from somewhere to somewhere. Perhaps the temporary nature of the position felt close to him, used to temporary nature.

"Every time I've been to the train station and come out, it's felt like I was leaving." (A room in a wooden house, p. 96)

From the station, Paronen often continued towards the center, passing Ankkapuisto and at the corner of Valtakatu and Kauppakatu the bronze Lapsenlikka statue depicting a woman and a child. He often went to the magazine room of the library on the opposite side.

Samuli Paronen lived at Lopentie 10 from 1968 to 1974. There is a plaque commemorating the writer on the wall of the house.

Ilkka Remes, real name Petri Pykälä, was born in Luumäki in 1962, where he also studied as a high school student. Ilkka Remes graduated with a master's degree in economics from Turku University of Economics and has also studied communication in London. Remes has worked in the communications industry in Finland and abroad. Nowadays he lives in Belgium and is a full-time writer. The author has said that he uses a pseudonym because he does not want to be profiled only as a thriller writer and wants to write more in the future.

Ilkka Remes started his career in 1997 with the suspense book Pääkallokernääjä. He is one of the most popular Finnish authors, whose sales of works exceeded the million-copy mark at the beginning of June 2006. Ilkka Remes has also written books for young people.

The events of the suspense book 2006/6, published in 12, begin in Riihimäki prison. Ilkka Remes tells about his book 6/12: "I have never come up with a story before that forced me to write more intensely than this one. I believe that the same feeling is transmitted to the reader as well."

"The access control card dangled around the neck of prison guard Mikko Räsänen as he climbed the metal stairs In the B wing of Riihimäki prison. The last sunrays of the day reflected reddish from the narrow window behind the bars onto the blue-green floor and pure white wall of the recently renovated building.
Miko's phone rang, Heli appeared on the screen."
(6/12, 2006, p. 8)

"The director of Riihimäki prison, Pekka A. Laine, stood in front of the floor plan of his facility. He ran his finger from Jankovic's cell towards the outer door of the B wing. Three minutes, he estimated, and started the timer on his wristwatch.

He straightened his posture and looked out the window. It was very quiet. A passenger plane could be seen in the heights, drawing a white line in the deep blue sky.
This was his first real challenge. Here, his judgment and pressure tolerance were tested. How he would act now would have a decisive influence on his later career development.
Laine let her cheeks bulge as if the pressure of thoughts had built up in her mouth and released the air between her lips in a long puff.
The decision was unequivocal. It was dictated by two facts.
The life of the guard's wife should not be endangered.
There would be no escape from his prison.
He took his official weapon from the desk drawer, picked up the receiver of the phone and called the police emergency number."
(6/12, 2006, p. 9-10)

"Quick, hasty steps echoed on the concrete floor of the third floor of the prison. The sounds got even louder as they hit the light gray stone walls.
Mikko knew that he should have secured the locking of the large bar door between the departments, but now he was content to just push the door shut and quickly continued on his way.
He came to a high hall, the walls of which were decorated with cell doors on many floors. The clatter of iron plates could be heard from the prisoners' strength training area below. Mikko grabbed hold of the railings and ran down the metal stairs. He ran past tattooed men lifting weights and stopped breathlessly in front of the next large bar door.
He hastily fumbled with his fingers for the key card from the string hanging around his neck and inserted it into the lock of the gray metal cabinet."
(6/12, 2006, p. 11)

From Vankilanmäki to Riutantie

"Prisoner Laine ran along the echoing corridor with a younger man by his side. Despite his age, Atte Salmenperä had been appointed deputy director, to the chagrin of his more experienced colleagues. He was also part of the inspection and security team Tatu, which searches for drugs in prisons, among other things.
"You drive the car behind the equipment shed and keep the engine running," Laine ordered a breathless Salmenperä. “You're waiting for me, but if the hijackers' car leaves before I come, you'll follow. But carefully, so that you are not noticed at all."
"Is Räsänen's wife in the car?" Salmenperä asked.
"Possibly."
The men stopped at the main door.
"Walk outside calmly, they may have someone watching the area," Laine said and opened the door.
The bare branches of the birches stood out in the quiet courtyard, sharper and sharper against the deep blue darkening sky. Nothing out of the ordinary was visible.
Laine nodded to Salmenperä, who started walking to the parking lot around the corner.
Laine himself headed behind the old plastered watchman's booth protruding from the wall. From there, he could see door B, where Jankovic was handed over."
(6/12, 2006, p. 12 – 13)

Laine, the warden, stared at the bend in the road, fearing all the time that they would be spotted in the Nissan. A slowly darkening sky spread over the spruce. The police chief was currently driving with a few of his men through Riuta from the south with the intention of getting in front of the Nissan.
Laine's phone rings.
"We are at the intersection of Launonen, the Nissan is coming this way," the police chief said. "I received an order from Helsinki to stop the car with a spiked mat if necessary. You can stay far away with popularity. The bear is already on its way here."
(6/12, 2006, p. 21)

Remse's book 6/12 was Finland's best-selling domestic novel of the 2000st century. In the book, a Serbian criminal group infiltrates Linna's party and takes the invited guests hostage. The book begins in Riihimäki prison, where a Serbian colonel is serving his sentence. The colonel's son, Darko Jankovic, takes the jailer's wife hostage and tries to free his father from prison. On the escape route, we move around Riuta, Lahdentie, Lope direction and Riihimäki hospital.

In people's imaginations, the prison is as closely associated with Riihimäki as the garrison. Riihimäki prison is a closed institution with 223 beds, established in 1929. Riihimäki prison has changed from a prison for first-time offenders in the 1970s to a place of detention for repeat offenders. The prison has been a significant employer in the Riihimäki region. The prison with its mighty surrounding walls forms its own closed milieu, like a garrison.

The writer, who remained unknown, recorded humorous incidents from the days of his conscript service in the Riihimäki garrison.

"It was already dark when we reached Riihimäki and said goodbye to those going to Helsinki.
- Hello people from Riihmäki, you can see the house! Out!
- Hey!
– Hello, hello! - Hey!
- Live like people and send your children to school.
- Likewise. Stop by Riihimäki when the war starts.
- Just thank you, we'll come. So don't panic when that day comes.
- Unnecessary fear! We are not bottle-fed in Riihimäki.
- That was twenty years ago.
- If you are not at home in Helsinki, then come here.
- Goodbye, "mosaic trampers"!
- Just don't drown, prawns!
The locomotive whistled and the train rolled slowly into the darkness of the evening.
The people from Riihimäki started to move north along the road, then turned from it to the barracks area and stopped in front of a building as ordered. What the hell could they have inside, or was it intended to sleep the newcomers the first night in the rapaka - in any case, it took a long time before they were forced to move on. Of course, another barracks building was found in the darkness of the night, where they had to spend the night according to the report of the officer on duty."
(Vääpeli Kempas: memoirs from the birth of our defense establishment, 1929, p. 18 – 19)

"The wizard mapped the barracks area, made floor plans and all this both well and carefully, so Kempas felt that he could trust him to notice the demanding and responsible position of the company scribe. Vääpeli explained that through this event, his military status had risen to such an extent that he too had to treat himself to a celebratory dinner every now and then in the company of snuffers and blacksmith students in the public kitchen. And that's how friends were often seen heading towards Riihimäki station after the end of the service."
(Vääpeli Kempas: memoirs from the birth of our defense establishment, 1929, p. 49)

Yrjö Salmela's Vääpeli Kempas is a light-hearted depiction of life in the Riihimäki garrison from the early days of the Finnish defense establishment. The story begins in October 1918, when a train leaving Turku brings recruits to the infantry regiment to Riihimäki. The friendly scumbag Kempas and the theology student get into a lot of trouble both in the barracks area and among the girls of Riihimäki, until the train takes the infantry regiment away from Riihimäki and the friends end up on new adventures.

"White cloths flutter in the park as a farewell. - Goodbye Riihimäki! The locomotive breathed one cloud of pain after another into the darkening evening sky and sped up. Sweat – Oitti…”
(Vääpeli Kempas: memoirs from the birth of our defense establishment, 1929, p. 78 – 80)

Olli Sirkiä (b. 1965 in Helsinki) has lived in Riihimäki since 2004. He works as an accountant in Helsinki. Olli Sirkiä has been writing poems for several years. Next, Pasila (2010) is his first poetry collection. He has previously participated in the anthology Kevät, kesä, kitsankäpälä : runoja from Kanta-Hämee (2005). Olli Sirkiä is one of more than two thousand people from Riihimäki who travel to work in the capital region every day by train.

Next, the Pasila collection contains raid poetry from a commuter's point of view. The me of the poems observes its surroundings as the monotonous southern Finnish landscape flashes by: "Trees, fields, trees, fields, trees, fields..." Different types of people populate the train cars: "The train freak in the topcoat", "the man with the beard who looks like a professor."

The poem Glowing on the Earth describes the atmosphere of Friday night, the beginning of the weekend, on the IC train to Tampere.

Streaks of light on Earth

Posted in IC-train with tags hooting, the earth is strange, there is a wild spray on the earth, dachshunds and tentacles, my head is spinning, Friday, to Tampere, a bottle of liquor, they tune in to a song in the station hall, it's September 21.
Note that it's Friday. Lots of people out and about with dachshunds and tentacles.
The boys shout orders to Alko into the phone. On the left bench row, a bottle of liquor was raised and a Mountain Dew cocktail was made. A lonely man in a suit. The sweet smell of booze wafted past me. I miss that grandma next to me, she digs out her cognac bottle from her handbag and takes the huikas for warmth. The train is going to Tampere. By then, everyone is in a daze and giggling, giggling with their hands on each other's shoulders. They tune the song in the station hall so cool. They spend the night in the warm tube of the Tampere police.
The sky is still, but the landscape moves beneath it. Do I stay put on this train and the scenery moves past me? The Earth is strange. The ball rotates in space with other balls. The balls form a whole that somehow also rotates. I am sitting in a train that moves in a landscape that rotates in a rotating space. Head is spinning.
There is a wild spray over the earth as the world's inhabitants move by cars, trains, airplanes, bicycles, horses, downhill skis and snowmobiles and boats and ships. Still with rockets, shuttles and formula cars. If every mover had lamps in front and behind, the world from space would look like an exciting jumble of thousands of millions of trajectories.
At 19.47:XNUMX p.m., people are still in a good mood, even though that man in the suit is trying hard to do otherwise. Mountain Dew is halfway there. Me in Riihimäki.
(Followed by Pasila, 2010 p. 23 – 24)

KA Tavaststjerna (1860 – 1898 ) was born in Mikkeli's keeper Annila's manor to the family of Carl Johan Tavaststjerna and Catharina Fredrika Granfelt. Later the manor was sold and the Tavaststjernats moved to Hausjärvi to the Ryttylä manor owned by their mother's side of the family. Mother Catharina died shortly after moving to Ryttylää after contracting typhus in the hospital she founded, where beggars wandering the streets were cared for as a result of the famine years of the 1860s. After the death of his father, colonel Constantin Ruin became the guardian of young Karl August.

Tavaststjerna graduated as an architect in 1883, but the calling of a writer prevailed and he published his first poetry collection För morgonbris (For the morning wind) in the same year. Tavaststjerna stayed in Sweden and elsewhere in Europe at the end of the 1800th century. The first novel Barndomsvänner (Childhood Friends) was published in 1886. The work has been considered the first work of Finnish-Swedish realism. Hårda tider (Hard Times), published in 1896 by Juhani Aho, caused indignation with its socially critical description. Tavaststjerna got the topic for his work from the fates of the masses of people who migrated to the Hausjärvi region for the construction work of the Riihimäki-Pietari railway in the hope of a better life.

Tavaststjerna also published several works of poetry, but eventually had to give up the work of a writer and became a journalist. KA Tavaststjerna died of pneumonia in Pori at the age of 38 in 1898 after mistakenly receiving lamp oil instead of medicine.

Double murder in Uramo's farm

"There were plenty of idle mowing people that autumn in Finland, because not many places had it spent the effort to harvest half of the harvest from the dried-up, pale fields, whose grain was not even suitable for livestock feed. Jobseekers from the coldest regions in Ostrobothnia and North Häme flowed south. All the movable population collected their few belongings and left in long lines, men, wives and children, to look for work at the railway construction site. Farther on, it loomed in their eyes as a source of bottomless earnings and salvation from hunger and frost.

The railway construction board hired hundreds, thousands of workers. But the construction of the railway is not a charitable institution, they were not prepared for such a rush of people, they were frugal for the sake of principle, and so they began to speculate on the basis of a lack of work. Wages dropped to half of what they were before, there were more idle people than needed and more came."
(Hard times: a story from Finland's last years of hunger, 2. p. 1960, p. 122)

The year 1867 was a lost year in Finland. It caused thousands of hungry and destitute people to migrate south to work on the railroad in the hope of a better life. The construction site of the Riihimäki–Pietari line claimed countless lives.

The background of the novel's events is also a tragic double murder case that happened around 1867 near present-day Riihimäki. Kalle Pihl from Ostrobothnia leaves his family and wanders south to look for work. On his way, he takes the scraps he has collected to the Tervakoski paper factory. Later, he gets a job at two Ryttylä mansions in Hausjärvi, which are called Kotkai and Herrasaari in the book. The owner of Herrasaari had built a farm near the neighboring mansion, which was named Uramo after the nearby stream. The lord of the manor wants to settle his croft and marry Anna Mellilä, the dairymaid of Kalle Pihli, who lies about herself to be familyless. Kalle Pihl buys the priest's book from another native of Ostrobothnia, Kalle Lehtimaa, who, after noticing the success of Uramo's farm, is convinced that the farm and beautiful Anna belong to him. In the end, the events culminate in a double murder, and Lehtimaa is sentenced to Siberia. At the end of the book, there is a scene where the funeral procession of Mrs. von Blume, who died of typhus, meets the chained Lehtimaan Hausjärvi church.

"We came to a yellow-painted church, whose black roof and top bell tower could be seen from the top of the hill far beyond the landscape of cultivated fields. We stepped down to the ground, and the prisoner driver's cart, which up until now had been allowed to ride with the others, began to move forward, rattling badly. But just as they arrived at the church gate, Miss Louise ran to the prisoner four large white roses, which she had folded from the most beautiful funeral bouquet."
(Hard times: a story from Finland's last years of hunger, 2. p. 1960, p. 234)

In hard times, it has been seen as criticizing the Runebergian and Topelian understanding of the causes of famine, according to which God, by punishing people, tries to make sinful, poor people repent. Criticism was also directed at the indifference of the upper class to the plight of the poor. Tavaststjerna also wrote the play Uramo's farmhouse on the same topic, which was performed at the National Theater between 1892 and 1896.

Aaro Vakkuri (1943 – 2002) spent his childhood in Riihimäki in the surroundings of a glass factory. Vakkuri's family moved to Hyvinkää in 1955, but Aaro Vakkuri continued his schooling at Riihimäki Lyceum, matriculating in 1962.

Aaro Vakkuri had a master's degree in civil engineering and worked, e.g. as managing director in large construction projects in Iran and Egypt. In his later years, he worked as an export consultant. The author's work began in 1973, when he achieved great sales success with his book The Man Who Goes in 12 Hours. The following novels are set in the Middle East and the Mediterranean, such as The Greek Gift (1975), Sirocco (1975) and Pelilauta (1980). In addition, he wrote non-fiction related to the management of work communities. In his last years, he lived in Provence, France, and wrote the work Village in the Sky of Provence (1997) about his stay there.

"Akka came out and started screaming to the whole street about who broke that window. It screamed so loud that it could probably be heard across the glass factory field to Pätkätalo. Pätkätalo was Glass Factory's biggest building, even though it had such a strange name. It had come from when the house had been built from pieces of board left over from the factory as workers' apartments. The Pätkätalo had three floors, and all the families had a room and a kitchen and many children, and everyone's fathers drank booze. We were not allowed to play with the children of Pätkätalo, as they always fought and beat the younger ones. Our fathers and mothers didn't notice that we were always fighting with whoever it hurt.
Pätkätalo looked handsome when you looked at it from behind the Glass Factory's field. The factory always repainted it yellow after the walls had turned gray. We still didn't play with the children of Pätkätalo, when it was a long way to get there and there was a field in between."
(My Life with Freda, 1990, p. 11)

In the yard of Pätkätalo and Lyseo

"The joy of the glass factory was that it burned down at least twice a year. If the fire was big enough, so the whistles of all the factories began to howl the alarm. That's when you knew it was worth going to see, when the handsome flames shot through the roof of the factory and the firefighters fought the fire. Tomorrow we read in the newspaper that the factory burned down when someone had dropped molten glass into some fat, and that was how it started. In another way, Lasitehdas didn't get into the magazine, even though they made the most beer bottles in the world."
(My Life with Freda, 1990, p. 12)

"To the teacher's surprise, I got into lyceum, and that started a different kind of life. We went to public school with a backpack, but for vocational school we had to buy a briefcase. It was leather and smelled good. There were only boys in the Lyceum, and the first graders were bullied in the fall and in the winter they washed their faces with snow, as was part of the school's customs. In class, every teacher used our last names, and some teachers even called us names. On the street, you had to remember to bow and lift your cap to all the teachers of different subjects when they met you. The teachers of the girls' high school also stopped me on the street if I didn't greet them, even though they didn't even teach us. However, the biggest difficulty was that I was only ten and I always felt that I was too young for a little bit of everything."
(My Life with Freda, 1990, p. 35)

"The girls' prom was held in the same building, but in different classes. During recess, we were at the same time and in the same yard, and every boy had to start looking for a girl to start liking. It was difficult because the girls always stood on the other side of the yard. They leaned against the sun wall of the school, and we boys walked along the yard and looked at the girls with aloof eyes in such a way that they didn't notice who we were looking at. Then we talked to our best friend, who we were going to start liking."
(My life with Freda, 1990, p. 35 – 36)

"Auli lived almost next to the school, on top of a big hill. They had to climb the long stone steps up the hill. In the middle of the stairs, Auli said let's sit down and rest a bit. We sat on the cold stairs with each other's sides and looked at the lights of the center of the town. Suddenly Auli turned towards me and looked into my eyes. Somehow I knew that this is now the place to be. I've never kissed a girl, and I didn't know exactly how to do it."
(My Life with Freda, 1990, p. 47)

The events of my life with Freda (1990) take place in Riihimäki in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In the book, the boys of the glass factory shoot with a slingshot, play winter war and assball, where you can manage to see the guys' pants. Freda is the daughter of the head of the glass factory - the prettiest and at the same time the most unattainable girl in the neighborhood, whom the boy loves from elementary school to high school. Early childhood ends when you have to go from Glasitehta's school to boarding school - usually only one person went from Glasitehta's public school to boarding school - of course a girl. During the lessons, the teachers used the students' last names and even teased them. In the school world of the 1950s, teachers were greeted respectfully by bowing and raising their caps.

The book is a story of a boy's growth and at the same time a nostalgic description of the time when boys wore Suave in their hair and girls wore hooped petticoats. The book also conveys the industrial history of Riihimäki township with its glass and brick factories. Life in the houses inhabited by the workers of the glass factory was colorful and on Saturdays, in addition to the yard games, you could watch the Akas squealing to their men returning from the hut.

Anja Leila Hemminki Vammelvuo (7.10.1921 October 30.6.1988 – XNUMX June XNUMX) was born in Riihimäki as the daughter of the Russian merchant Aleksei Jegorovits Weselow (Aake Vammelvuo). The family roots of the mother, Hulda Selini, lead to Urjala. The clothing store of the Vammelvuo family was located at the corner of Hämeenkatu and Kauppkuja. Anja Vammelvuo's family lived in several places in Riihimäki in addition to the shop house, e.g. Along Keskuskatu and Maantie and Suvannontie near Pohjoinen koulu. The summers spent in Paalijärvi as a child are reflected in the poem on the shore of Paalijärvi.

"Naked children on gray blankets on the shore of Lake Paali..." (Selected Runes, 1968, p. 288)

Anja Vammelvuo went to public school at the Pohjoise school and wrote as a high school student from the Riihimäki joint high school in the spring of 1941. She published her first short story when she was only 16 years old through Nuoren Voiman Liito. After matriculation, Anja Vammelvuo was able to work as a summer journalist in Uuti Suomen and later in the service of Kustannusosakeyhtiö Otava. In the spring of 1943, the first collection of poems, Daughter of the Sun, was published. In 1945, the novel Muut ojt nooriai was published, the autobiographical subject of which takes place in Riihimäki's youth. Anja Vammelvuo married writer, critic and journalist Jarno Pennanen in 1946. They lived in Moscow at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s after Jarno Pennanen worked as a correspondent for Kansan Uutisten. The years spent in the Soviet Union are also reflected in Anja Vammelvuo's production.

Anja Vammelvuo received the State Literature Prize for the novel Viimeinen Kleopatra (1950) and the poetry collections Kukkia sylsäni (1954) and Lintu pieni (1970). Anja Vammelvuo published a total of 17 works: poems, novels, short stories and plays. He has been characterized as an interpreter and critic of left-wing ideology at the same time. In his lyrics, you can also see plenty of autobiographical elements, such as poems related to family and personal experience of love, e.g. in the collections Muottii tuntmattomaan (1946), Flowers in my lap, Torpankirjat (1957) and Lintu pieni. His last work, the play Tulee aika toininkin (1983) premiered at the Turku City Theater under the direction of his son Jotaarkka Pennanen. The play is about Jarno Pennanen's father, actor and left-wing radical Aarne Orjatsalo, who also acted in the Riihimäki Workers' Theater for a while before the civil war.

In Weselow's shop

"When Sinikan goes to the town's public school in the fall for the third grade, Ale's public school for another, dad already has a shop again. But it's not in the city, my father has rented a commercial apartment in a densely populated community approx. 60 km from the city. Dad is again full of enthusiasm and activity. He travels home twice a week and returns with a full bag of groceries. Even yeast bread and little buns, the children get excited. Now life will surely begin to dawn."
(Others are young, 1945, p. 77)

"On Christmas morning, Sinikka wakes up to an air raid alarm. From the bomb shelter, he then rushes straight to work. With clumsy hands, he is gluing lighters to fuel bottles, when suddenly the wooden house explodes with a horn-like explosion.
- The machines are on. Everyone out, shouts the young engineer."
(Others are young, 1945, p. 208)

"Bombs are raining all Christmas day. Familiar houses are destroyed, familiar people are mutilated in ruins. Ilari Helin, a member of the protection municipality, gets a shrapnel in his stomach and dies immediately."
(Others are young, 1945, p. 208 – 209)

Christmas morning bombing 1939

"Ale wipes almost every bombardment on his bike or runs to the home side of the city to see if Sinikka and father are still alive. And they are just as worried about Ale, because the other end of the Sk building is already empty."
(Others are young, 1945, p. 210)

The events of the novel "Others are young" in Riihimäki are Hämeenkatu kaupalliike and Riihimäki co-educational school. During the Winter War, the town of Riihimäki was heavily bombed. The bombing on Christmas Day 1939 was more destructive than usual and several buildings in the center of the town were badly damaged, e.g. Suojeluskuntatalo mentioned in the novel Other are young.

"I'm happy with this house, a motley block with rickety walls, bordered by the smelly backyards of the surrounding pretty villas. A short and insignificant path winds from Töno to the goods office where I work. I am content to be protected from the pity of intelligent vital people: what a life, pale dry hairy scum! So they would say and they would be right. And then one more thing to my satisfaction: If they were really intelligent, they would be horrified: what a parasite of life, a show-off, a snitch on others. Because really smart people wouldn't be so cruel as to make my disability a barrier to living. But this jerk hides me in his boring embrace: stay in your business, half-footed boy, wretched high school student. Why did you go to war or were you taken by force! Sign up at your office and pay the rent!"
(Bird of Paradise and other short stories, 1946, Hanski Hortensia, p. 115).

The Hanski Hortensia short story takes place in the wooden house inhabited by Anja Vammelvuo's family on Suvannontie. The narrator of the novel is a young man injured in the war who works in a goods office. Through him, the post-war colorful life in the wooden block of the town, tinged with deprivation and cramped living conditions, is described.

Kauko Valta Ylänne (9.4.1927 – 4.12.1990) graduated from Riihimäki Lyceum in 1947 and graduated as a teacher from the Helsinki Teachers College in 1950. He did his life's work as a teacher at Ruskeasuo school in 1952 – 1984.

Kauko Valta Ylänne is primarily known as the author of youth novels and school plays. Many adventure books depict the closed, distinctive world of a prison. In the books for young people in the shadow of the Prison and Ympyrä closes with his adventures in Riihimäki prison and its surroundings. Ylänte's father worked as a warden in Riihimäki Central Prison, so Kauko Valta Ylänte was familiar with the prison milieu since childhood.

"The night hours were excruciatingly long. Kalle strode back and forth along the long, wide corridors, jumped up and down the stairs, reluctantly looked around and listened to the night sounds of the prison, but he didn't notice anything disturbing. From a few cells I could hear sleepy mutterings, from the other side of the prison sometimes the steps of another night guard could be heard, a thin zinc wire was beating outside in the wind against the flag box.
Kallea started to fall asleep, it would be so sweet to sit on the step, lean her head against the banister and fall asleep a little, just a little. But he couldn't do that. And to cheer himself up, he began to climb the stairs again and count their number. Then he tested how many leaps he could take to get down from the top floor. He had soft felt slippers on his feet, so his movements did not in any way disturb the peace of the sleeping prison inmates."
(In the shadow of the prison: an adventure story for boys, 1950, p. 28)

Kauko Valta Ylänte's small adventure book for boys, In the shadow of the prison, describes the prison accountant's son Kalle's summer as a prison guard in Riihimäki prison. During his last shift, Kalle has to chase after two escaping prisoners.

"From a distance, the prison looked downright fascinating. It was located on the rising slope of the track along, dozens of trains rumbled past it every day and countless passengers craned their necks to catch even a glimpse of that mysterious and rather modern penal institution. A group of buildings with a light plastered green roof bathed in sunlight, the high chimney of the thermal center loomed against the sky like a gently warning finger, and vigorous wild wine climbed along the impassable, eight-meter perimeter wall. Four inhabited and one official building under construction peeked out from the center of the six that rises outside the walls. A truly gallant view - roughly from the outside and as an outsider looking in. But the train continued its noisy journey towards the north, the prison was left behind - and none of the passengers had even thought about its everyday life."
(The circle closes, 1964, p. 12)

"Digging a cesspool in the swamp may seem easy on the surface, after all, there are no rocks to run into with a shovel. But the wet mud is heavy, and in front of this, there are broken tree trunks and rhizomes, which require guts from the man, strength from the shoulders, and a blade from the axe. I'd rather be on the lookout than be on guard. Hardly anything is more tiring for a time worker than standing for days on end watching others work. The guard is not allowed to do anything, he is not allowed to sit down and probably not to smoke at times other than when the prisoners are also allowed to do so."
(The circle closes, 1964, p. 27)

In The Circle Closes, the school-age children of prison officials find themselves in a whirlwind of exciting events, when one of them happens to be an eyewitness to an assault case and starts chasing after two armed prison escapees. The prison milieu of Riihimäki, with its walls, wild wines and residential buildings, is accurately described in a few sentences. In the book Sammalsuota (The swamp of moss) is cleared into a field with prisoner labor.