Jingo Viitala Misery Bay 2007
5th Finglish trip July 2007 #11
Jenny Jingo Viitala Vachon (1918-2009) was born and raised in the big timber area of Toivola, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. She devoted much of her adult life to telling the tall tales, legends, anecdotes, and jokes she heard growing up in this densely populated Finnish-American region referred to as the "sauna belt."
In her younger years, Jingo was an avid hunter, fisher, and trapper and knows her natural environment well.
Jingo was also a talented musician. She played the guitar and sung a very large repertoire of Finnish-American songs in Finnish. She was one of the few remaining second-generation Finnish Americans who knew many songs of the immigrant generation, which she wrote down long ago in a notebook. Her favorite song was "Kulkurin Valssi".
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