Hello Americans, I'm Paul Harvey...

Johan Maurits Sjoman Laaksonen was born in Pori, Finland in 1862. He was from a Finlandsvenskar family, which basically means "Swedish-speaking Finn", indicating that his family had originally come to Finland from Sweden, most likely sometime in the Middle Ages, when Finland was just one state in the Kingdom of Sweden, along with places like Estonia and Karelia (which is now a part of Russia). Socially conscious, upwardly mobile Finns of the time (especially Finlandsvenskarren) often gave their children German-sounding first names because they believed they sounded more educated and sophisticated (take for example: "Heinrich" versus "Jukka").

Johan had a sense of adventure and when he was old enough he left Finland and went to London. He joined the British Navy and spent most of the 1880s and 1890s working on a ship and traveling all over the world, going to places like Hong Kong and Sri Lanka, places most people from Finland had barely even heard of, much less ever travelled to. Johan eventually anglicized his name to John Lakson, and around 1895, during an extended stay in New York City met and fell in love with a tall copper-haired woman named Marie. Marie was also from Finland, though not from the west coast as John was. She was part Lapp (or Saami if you want to be politically correct) and for generations her family had worked as reindeer herders and cod fishermen on the frozen tundra and between the craggy fjords on the northernmost part of the continent of Europe.

John and Marie married and decided to stay in the U.S. John had once traveled to Portland, Oregon when he was in the navy and was fond of the place, because the evergreen forests and abundant lakes and rivers reminded him of where he grew up. The couple eventually settled in the town of Amboy, Washington, just north of Portland. Amboy had, at the time, a thriving Finnish community. Daily conversations and business transactions around town were conducted mostly in Finnish, sometimes in Swedish, and just about never in English.

John and Marie had three chidren. A son, John Jr., was born in 1898. A daughter, Marie, was born in 1902, and a second daughter named Mildred was born in 1906.

Now, at this point you may be wondering what all this has to do with anything, but here's where 'the rest of the story' comes in to play. The youngest daughter Mildred graduated from high school in 1924, married her high school sweetheart and moved to Los Angeles. They had no children together. When World War II broke out, Mildred's husband enlisted, and never returned.

Mildred remarried several years later though and that one marriage, later in life did produce one son named Bobby. Bob (as he is called as an adult), in turn, married a woman named Hope, which led to many jokes over the years. Bob and Hope had a girl, born in 1971, and though they almost named her Deirdre, at the last minute they decided to name her Heather. Four years later Bob and Hope had another baby. This time it was a boy. When trying to decide on what to name him, Bob said "Let's name him after my grandfather-- John".

The lives of all those mentioned above would have been quite different, if nonexistent had John Lakson not decided to move to London as a young man. But most importantly, if he hadn't moved to England, he might not have ever changed his name to John.

Somewhere out there, in an alternate universe, in a nether-region of time and space, there's a guy out there who looks just like me. And the poor bastard's name is Johan.

And now you know the rest of the story.