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OUT OF THE BALKANS (PART TWO)

by Jason C. Mavrovitis

©2002 Jason C. Mavrovitis

All Rights Reserved

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations.

This is Part Two of two parts available on this site as a PDF file.

A complete PDF file of the book, including Parts One and Two,

Appendices A and B, and the Bibliography may be obtained on a CD

from the author by contacting him at:

http://www.pahh.com/mavrovitis/cd.html

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CONTENTS

PART TWO

Recollections and Celebrations

CHAPTER ONE Lily 104

CHAPTER TWO Nitsa 107

CHAPTER THREE The War 110

CHAPTER FOUR Remembrances 113

CHAPTER FIVE Army Days 192

CHAPTER SIX Macedonian Easter 210

CHAPTER SEVEN Home Again 235

EPILOGUE 237

APPENDIX A The Mystery of Lily’s Father 239

APPENDIX B Third Class Travel (Steerage) 242

BIBLIOGRAPHY 244

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/LO\��Lily was a life force. From her commanding voice to her assertive, high-heeled walk, she dominated her environment until she suffered her first heart attack. Even after that, when she felt well she was Lily. Only when angina pain reminded her of her illness and she sensed her mortality was she vulnerable. At these times, everyone feared for her yet denied the possibility of her death. I remember my mother as a human dynamo. Her energy was boundless, and her ability to organize her activities astounding: shopping, cooking, cleaning, spending time with friends on the phone and in person, writing two hundred or more Christmas cards, preparing holiday banquets for fifteen or twenty, meeting with her bridge club, sewing dresses and blouses for herself and for Nitsa, and being the guiding force that made and kept together family marriages. Mom was a demanding and firm mother. We knew that we were loved, but we also knew that under most circumstances we were “to be seen and not heard,” “speak only when spoken to,” and obey. I do not know where my mother, the little immigrant girl, learned manners, but I was taught everything from elevator behavior to how to use a finger bowl by the time I was six. My lessons included opening doors for ladies, walking on the street side, taking off my hat in the presence of women, reply with “sir” and “madam,” standing when a woman came to or left a table, or entered a room, and so forth. Lily’s nails were long and red – she had them and her hair “done” every Thursday morning at a beauty parlor on Third Avenue. Her hair turned salt and pepper when she was in her early forties, and she put on a few pounds, but remained a handsome woman. Lily laughed. She laughed loudly, deeply – without restraint. She had a wonderful sense of humor and loved good times. Lily was earthy. She delighted in naughty jokes and spicy stories. Lily loved to dance. If she heard Greek music she would be on her feet, and to the embarrassment of my father, she sometimes performed solo dances usually reserved for men [the Zeibekiko (Zembekiko) for example]. She and Dad danced an amazing tango together.

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Lily adored men of every age. Her attraction to men was innocent. She wanted “ to do” for men: to cook for them, serve them, and cherish them. And, men idolized her for it. Lily was generous. She gave at every opportunity, of herself and of her resources. At Christmas, she would send me out anonymously with packages of food and gifts for poor Greek families. When I was seven and eight, she loaded me with two huge shopping bags every two or three weeks and sent me out to walk a mile or more to the Staten Island Ferry, travel across the bay, take a train, and deliver food to an old couple who were half-blind and lived on a small farm in the middle of the island. Lily had an open heart and home. She welcomed all the friends that Nitsa and I brought home. She fed them, entertained them, counseled them, and comforted them. There was never a time that my friends were not welcome – friends from Christ Church, from school, girlfriends who were from outside of New York and in school or in show business, and army buddies and their wives, even if I were not home. She treated them as her own children. As much of a disciplinarian as Mom was when I was a child, she let go of me when I reached twelve, and I began my journey to manhood under the guidance of my father, godfather, and Uncle Louie. The transition was almost magical: one day I was a child, the next a young man. Lily was a leader. At Carelas’ farm, she served the role of nurse, counselor, party organizer, trip director, and child psychologist. Women came to her with their problems, and she felt perfectly at ease cornering their husbands to give them forceful advice about being better spouses. When my cousin Diamond Papadiskos’ wife, Clara, suffered terrible injuries in an automobile accident, Lily watched over her during her recovery. Diamond took Mom’s directions about everything. The day that my cousin Helen Psaltis arrived in the United States with her two young children, Aliki and Deno, Mom went into action. After looking at the children, who had suffered great hardships in Greece, she immediately had them in the car and on the way to Dr. De Tata, who prescribed vitamins and food. Our home was full of male cousins on holidays: Nick and Thanasi Mavrovitis, Gus Mavrovitis, Tom Papanas, Elias Dimitriades, and on. At first, they did not know quite what to make of this outgoing, commanding, and unfettered woman. She was unlike anyone they had known among the women in their Greek experience. But, once past the initial shock of her extrovert personality, they quickly took to her and loved her. She became their second mother.

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Between 1945 and 1950, my mother suffered three heart attacks. She had regular, frightening episodes of angina pectoralis1 that mimicked the onset of an attack. To relieve these attacks she took countless tablets of nitroglycerin, a therapeutic that improved oxygen supply to her coronary artery and relieved the pain. And, she came to rely on Teacher’ s Scotch Whiskey as her emotional crutch. Nitroglycerin tablets and drinks of Scotch became co-therapeutics. Her heart condition was the result of years of extremely high blood pressure, often 240/140. Somehow, her body overcame the initial onslaught of heart attacks. From the early 1950s through the early 1960s, her health seemed improved. She never gave in to her illness and continued to live actively doing virtually everything she had ever done. My fear of inducing a heart attack by causing her emotional or physical stress was constant and influenced how I conducted myself and led my life. I remember that often when I looked at Mom I saw sad eyes, eyes that had a longing in them. Perhaps I saw something that was not there. I do not think so. I wish I knew, and if she did have this sadness, I wish she had shared it with me.

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1 Angina pectoralis, pain in the chest, occurs when a weak heart is stressed under

certain circumstances including emotional situations. The pain is due to an insufficient blood supply to the heart muscle during times of increased activity.

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My sister, Eleni, was born on 13 September 1931. Her namesake grandmother still lived, so little Eleni was called Elenitsa, -nitsa being a diminutive suffix. We called her Nitsa. Her “ American” name was Helene. Nitsa was two-and-one-half years older than I. While I have warm feelings about our early childhood together, I have only vague recollections of our daily relationship. One memory results from the fact that we shared a room until I was five or six. When we were sent to bed, we would climb halfway up the stairs to the second floor, lean over the banister, and say in unison: “ Kali nichta sas, kai avrio mai aegia,” to Mom and Dad and whoever was in the kitchen with them. [Translated: “ Good night and good health tomorrow.” ] A few minutes after we were in bed, Mom would come upstairs to tuck us in. The second Mom was out of hearing, Nitsa would turn on the radio that sat on the table between our beds and tune at very low volume to “ I Love a Mystery” or some other scary show. Sometimes, to my relief, she found a comedy hour. Unfortunately for me, Mom’ s hearing was excellent. When she arrived on the scene to scold us, she ended up scolding me and slapping my behind. I could not pretend sleep and giggled, while Nitsa was the consummate actress, not moving a finger and breathing deeply. I never told on her. After our Papou1 remarried in 1940 and left 260 Ovington Avenue, Nitsa moved into his bedroom and gained her privacy. Nitsa and I spent many hours at the kitchen table with Mom while she taught us to mark a pattern on material and to cut, baste, and sew both by hand and using the professional Singer sewing machine. Making dresses, skirts, and blouses was a game for us, one that filled many rainy Saturday afternoons. Nitsa was gifted. She earned “ A” grades from her first school year through college, except for a “ C” in fencing. She was “ skipped” twice in elementary school, leapfrogging two full years and graduating at twelve. She was barely thirteen when she entered the prestigious Hunter College High School on Park Avenue in Manhattan, and just seventeen when she crossed the street to enter Hunter College for Women [now coed]. When our mother had her first heart attack, Nitsa took over management of the home. In fact, it was her determination to keep the family together that prevented

1 “ Grandfather,” in Greek. [Leonardo (Louie) Perna.]

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Dad from moving us to live with relatives and putting Mom into a convalescent home until she was better. I was a willing subordinate and followed Nitsa’ s orders about my assignments each day. She prepared and I served Mom her breakfast before seven o’ clock in the morning. Then, Nitsa left for her one hour trip to Hunter College High School. I was still at the local K-8, P.S. 102, so I was home until eight o’ clock when our Thea Anastasia arrived to take care of her koumbara, Lily. I was home at lunch and performed whatever chores Thea Anastasia assigned. After school, I shopped for the items Nitsa had on the list for me. By 4:30 or so, Nitsa was home, cooking dinner for us all. As busy as her life was, Nitsa was socially active with her high school classmates and at Christ Church. I never understood how she earned all those “ A” grades. She rarely seemed to crack a book. By the time she graduated high school I was calling my sister “ Helene.” She had grown out of her childhood “ Nitsa.” Helene wanted very much to attend Smith College, a prestigious women’ s liberal arts school in Northampton, Massachusetts, or one like it. Her commitment to helping Mom and Dad kept her at home. I do not think that Dad could have managed the tuition, room, and board at Smith. Helene had been offered a scholarship at Juilliard (she played the piano brilliantly) and probably would have received financial aid at Smith. Helene attended Hunter College where she made many friends among her sorority sisters. Her major was linguistics. She studied several languages including Latin, Spanish, French, and Greek. In her senior year, Helene attended the national convention of her sorority, representing her chapter as its president. The convention was in Banff, Canada. Nitsa (we still called her that from time to time) was the first in the family to travel by air, making the trip in a sequence of hops in DC-3s. I was in awe of her courage. Helene’ s college graduation photograph shows her wearing her Phi Beta Kappa key, which she won in her junior year, a significant accomplishment. After college, she attended a secretarial school, then entered the work force. In today’ s world, she could have become an executive. As a teenager, Helene stayed closer to the Orthodox Church than I, even though she was socially involved at Christ Church. I remember her carrying the Orthodox Service Book to church during Easter week and reading the prayers in Greek.

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Helene, who I often called “ Sis,” was sometimes frustrated with me. I was less serious than she, and according to her, “ girl crazy.” But, we got along well, and I listened to her when she offered unsolicited advice. We attended all the Greek [Macedonian and Kastorian] dances together, even after Mom and Dad stopped attending. It was my duty as brother to escort my sister to all social functions where there were eligible young men. Those who were eligible were great for partying and dancing, which Helene enjoyed, but few were educated or had anything in common with her.

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�The Second World War (WW II) will always be “ The War” for me. I served in the Army during the Korean Conflict (or “ Police Action” … it was rarely called a “ war” ) and for a time, supported the Vietnam War. Fortunately for me, I neither served in Korea nor fought in a war. Except for concerned talk around our kitchen table about Italy, Germany, armies, and war in Greece, I remember nothing of events that led to the Second World War. I learned later of “ OXI” (NO), the response Greek Prime Minister Metaxas gave to Mussolini when on 28 October 1940, the Italian government requested that Greece allow Italian occupation of its country. The Greek army pushed back the Italians who attacked from Albania through the mountains of Epirus. Greece’ s defeat of Italy caused the Germans to divert their attention from Russia to the conquest of Greece. Photo 40 is a grim reminder of German bombers flying over the Acropolis in Athens. The German Army soon followed, occupying the city. Relatives and friends became hostage to the Nazis and suffered years of oppression and hunger.

Photo 40

German Dornier Bombers Over the Acropolis 1940

President Roosevelt’ s broadcasted speech just after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor when he asked for a Declaration of War is still vivid in my memory. I was seven, playing on our kitchen floor in the sunlight that came through the window

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and heard his historic “ Day of Infamy” address to a joint session of the Congress of the United States. I understood only that it was a very grave and serious time. Dad had turned forty-one the previous September so had little worry of military service. Bobby (Robert) Capidaglis, son of Chris “ Capi” Capidaglis and grandson of Constantinos, lived on the third floor of our home with his mother, Marion. He was already in the Army and scheduled for discharge in January of 1942. He served through 1946, the duration of the war, and returned to Brooklyn with his British bride, Edith. Twenty-six sons of relatives and close friends of our family were in the war. Of these, all but two went overseas. Some, like Bill Fotiades, a neighbor on Ovington Avenue, received terrible wounds. A Marine lieutenant, he lost several ribs on one side of his body when machine-gunned on Iwo Jima. Others served in the Philippines, Britain, France, Italy, and Germany. The only young man that did not come home was Guy Capidaglis, grandson of Constantinos by his first wife, and an only child. As luck would have it, he died in an automobile accident hitchhiking back to his base from a Thanksgiving leave at home. Dad’ s immediate contribution to the war effort was the sale of our automobile. He would not use for pleasure gasoline that his nephews and family friends needed to fight the war. For me, the war was sirens and blackouts at night, and bomb drills at school where windows had thin, cloth mesh strips glued on them to prevent glass from shattering in the event of bombings. War Bond drives, patriotic songs, preservation of scarce lemons in sand-filled boxes in the basement, men in uniform coming to our home on Sundays after church, Thea Anastasia in her Red Cross uniform, and Christmas gift packages we made up at school for servicemen were all part of the experience. High wood fences installed along the bay made it difficult to see ships. (One could see what they wanted from the roofs of the apartment houses along Shore Road.) Convoys of men and war materials left at night to make their way to the battlefronts of Europe. Sometimes in the east we saw a bright red glow in the night sky from fire and explosions on a ship torpedoed by waiting German U-boats (submarines). Each month, my consciousness of the war grew. Motion pictures made to spur the will of the American people sensitized me as I watched John Wayne and other movie idols fight the evils of Japan and Germany. Dad took me to the Newsreel Theater in Manhattan with my Nouno and Uncle Louie. This was the CNN of the 1940s that provided extensive war coverage. I listened to the radio to hear about the war and remember being excited about news

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of a massive bombing raid over Germany while I sat safely in my bed, eating grapes on a hot summer night. Nitsa and I helped Mom and Dad pack War Relief packages to send to Mavrovo and Kastoria. Preparing these made me conscious for the first time of relatives who lived far away. Dad started to tell me stories about his childhood and Mavrovo. We filled boxes with rice, pasta, wool socks, sweaters, and other necessities. No one knew how many of the packages arrived to help our relatives in Greece. They suffered greatly during the Nazi occupation and the Greek Civil War. It was a constant worry for Dad. V-E Day (Victory in Europe) in May of 1945 did not leave any impression on me. I do not know why. V-J Day (Victory over Japan) was memorable. Mom, Nitsa, and I were at Carelas’ farm in the Catskill Mountains. A few days before Japan’ s surrender, the headlines and photographs on the front page of The New York Daily News were about the atomic bomb and its enormous power: “ Equal to Twenty Thousand Tons of TNT.” That summer, the government first released photographs of the B-29, a plane whose size was beyond our comprehension. Cheering and loud car horns at Carelas’ greeted news of the war’ s end. That night, Mom took Nitsa and me with a group of her friends and their children to the Blue Mountain Inn, a restaurant and bar that was strictly off-limits for us until that night. I remember the band playing, streamers flying, and people laughing, drinking, and dancing. In 1944, immediately after the Nazi occupation ended, Greece entered into a dark period of civil war. Armed guerrilla groups representing communist, monarchist, and republican factions battled over control of the future of Greece. Our relatives in Macedonia fought the communists in the mountains surrounding Kastoria. Fifty thousand or more Greeks killed each other in the horror that Nicholas Gage documented in his novel Eleni.1 In it he tells the story of fratricide in Greece and of his mother’ s murder. At the end of the Second World War, Russian troops occupied Bulgaria, installed a communist government, and secured the country as part of the Russian bloc. Sozopol was behind the Iron Curtain. Mom had her first heart attack late in the summer of 1945, just a few days after we returned home to Brooklyn from the Catskills. Our lives changed. �

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1 Nicholas Gage, Eleni, 1st ed. (New York: Random House, 1983).

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Papou My memories of my Papou are of warmth, fun, and adventure. Papou, Leonardo Perna, known as “ Louie,” was not my blood grandfather. Anything he was not able to claim by virtue of blood, he won with the love and affection only a grandfather can give. Papou was widower of four or more years by the time I was old enough to remember him in my life. He lived with us in the house that his wife, Eleni, had purchased in 1920. On Saturday and Sunday mornings, my sister and I would steal into Papou’ s small bedroom on the second floor of our-three story brownstone in Brooklyn and crawl into his bed. We giggled under the covers while he pretended sleep. In a few minutes we were a raucous threesome, his fingers tickling our tummies and necks. Leonardo was born on 12 March 1890, in Avellino, Italy. He was perhaps five feet, six inches tall, quiet, soft-spoken, hardworking, and unassuming. Slender in his youth, he developed a thick middle as he aged. His short hair and quick, wide- eyed smile made his appearance boyish. He spoke his native Italian, and broken English and Greek with care and thought. Trained as a tailor in Italy, Leonardo immigrated to the United States when he was sixteen. He arrived at Ellis Island aboard the ship Sicily on 13 June 1906, and for reasons unknown, made his way to Chicago, where he worked in a dry cleaning establishment that allowed him to pursue his trade. It was there that he met my grandmother, Eleni. They were married in Chicago late in 1915 or early in 1916, shortly after she had been widowed for the second time. The backyard and basement of our brownstone on Ovington Avenue in Bay Ridge was Leonardo’ s realm. The small city garden, measuring twenty by fifty feet, had a paved center area covered by a grapevine trellis — like those found in the gardens of Italy. Surrounding the trellised section were a small vegetable plot and ample planting areas for roses, azaleas, gladioli, and spring bulbs. And, there was a fig tree. Photo 41 of Papou, Nitsa, and me was taken in the garden in 1938. Papou was a loving grandfather. He never scolded or punished us. His arms were always a place of refuge and his generosity was unending. When he married Adela, his second wife, we did not understand why he had to leave our home. His frequent visits, our expeditions with him, and our many feasts in his new home made his absence bearable.

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Photo 41

Papou (Louie) w ith N itsa and Jason Note Trellis and Grapes to Left of Papou

Summer 1938

Photo 42 Photo 43

Garden in 1930’s Garden in December 1947 Note the Trellis for Grapes The Blizzard of 1947 – 26” Snowfall

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Mama and Skunks When I was a little boy between the ages of three and six, Mom often took my sister Nitsa and me with her to shop in midtown Manhattan. On wet, cold, wintry days she wore a fur coat. Often, it became a little wet as we rushed from store to store. Coming home on the subway I would nestle close to her and drift in and out of sleep as the train thump-thumped on the tracks and the doors open and closed at the stations along the way. I was like a little animal burrowing into its mother’ s fur for warmth and security. I remember still the faint, comforting smell of Mama at those times — the lightest, almost undetectable scent her coat gave off when it was damp and warmed by the body it enveloped. It was a coat made of skunk fur. Suivez-Moi Dad had his signature scent, that of a cologne named Suivez-Moi [follow-me], the meaning of which I learned in my high school French class. I think that he bought it at Macy’ s. It was one of those nice affectations that he acquired as part of his transformation from barefoot village boy to New York City gentleman. I can still summon the scent that attached to the stock of Dad’ s shotgun and rifle, drifted from his armoire, filled the bathroom after he left it, and left tell-tale identification on his wallet and ties, checkbook, coat collar, muffler, hat, and any other personal item that came in contact with his hands or face. It was a proud day when I first shaved and followed the routine I had learned by watching Dad. I washed my face well, applied the shaving cream, shaved with my new Gillette razor (later, for a time copying my Papou, I tried a shaving mug and straight razor), rinsed my face, applied witch hazel, followed it with a splash of Suivez-Moi, and dusted my face lightly with a fine face talcum. I was a man like my Dad. The Cellar We called the basement of our home, “ the cellar.” It was both: basement or the lowest story of the house, and cellar for it served as a storeroom for provisions, especially, according to The Oxford English Dictionary, for wine. It was much larger and far more comfortable than the first floor storage rooms found in the Balkans and did not shelter family livestock in cold weather. We were therefore happily not subject to the animal odors that in winter rose through the cracks in the rough plank floors of Balkan village homes. Until 1936, a coal-fired furnace that provided hot water heat in the winter glowed red in the far corner. A small room was used to store coal. An oil-burning heating unit, a gas water heater, and a tank replaced the coal furnace in 1936, and the coal bin became a wine cellar. An oil fuel tank was buried under the front courtyard entrance to the house.

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A set of wooden steps led from the entry hall on the first floor down to the cellar. The bottom step faced Ovington Avenue. The electric service panel that held fuses to protect house circuits from an overload was on the wall three or four feet directly ahead. Papou thwarted this safety feature by inserting pennies between the base of a fuse socket and the fuse. We were lucky not to have gone up in flames. To the right of the electric service panel, high up in the ceiling next to the foundation wall that bordered the street side of the house, was a covered access to the courtyard. This had been used to deliver coal to the storage bins in the room directly to the right; it later became a delivery port for grapes and a way to lift heavy items out of the cellar without going up the narrow steps. The entire twenty-foot-wide and fifty-foot-long cellar was visible from the electric panel. Running down its middle were seven black steel posts that supported the floor above. Mom ran clothes lines between these posts to dry clothing in the winter and at other times to hang sausage to cure and herbs to dry. To the left, after the wine storage room, was an open space where luggage, sea trunks, earthenware crocks, and other items were neatly arranged. All three sides of this alcove area had shelves that contained preserved food of all kinds. Next, there was a three by five foot pantry-like shelved room that held old bolts, screws, nuts, wire, nails, tools, other hardware, paint, thinner, shellac, varnish, and assorted plumbing supplies. Finally, on the left was a service room with a second, small kitchen and washtubs. Mom washed clothing there by hand, and used the 1920s vintage range and oven as an extra cooking facility on holidays. She never had a washing machine because Dad did not want her to do heavy laundry. Sheets, shirts, tablecloths, and such went to the Chinese laundry across the street. The room was large enough to serve as my retreat. I experimented there with my Gilbert chemistry set on an old white enamel topped table that had a blue patterned decoration at its rectangular edge. I mixed chemicals haphazardly and boiled noxious blends in test tubes over an alcohol lamp. It was a miracle that I survived the fumes. A shoulder-high window opened into a grated well in the garden and provided lifesaving fresh air. In my teens, the room served as the meeting place for my Boy Scout Patrol. On the right side of the cellar looking down its length from the electrical panel, under the cellar steps and against the wall, there was a long, narrow table on which Mom stored her winter carpets in the summer and her summer carpets in the winter. Assorted lumber was stacked under the carpets. Almost at the end of the cellar, the oil-burning furnace that kept us warm in the winter hummed ominously, its flame visible through a small peephole when it was on. Behind it,

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against the wall, stood a fifty-gallon gas hot water heater and tank. And, behind the tank was a door that opened to the concrete steps that led up through cellar trapdoors to the garden. A lot happened in our cellar. Grapes, Wine, and Grappa In early September, Papou went to the wholesale fruit and vegetable market in Manhattan to arrange for delivery of crates of red and white grapes from California. With neighborhood children watching, men lowered the crates through the courtyard access into the basement and the loving and expectant care of Leonardo. [His Italian name is more appropriate for winemaking than “ Louie.” ] There were two or three fifty-gallon wood barrels standing in what had been the coal storage room. Set on top of one of the barrels was a grape press. It was old and worn, its metal parts rough and dark, its wood stained. At the top of the press was a trough, shaped like a V. It had interlaced, opposing spiked rollers on either side of the V. These, turned by gears that linked to a long-handled manual crank, pulled the grapes down between them, squeezing out the juice, which fell into the barrel with the grapes’ pulp and skins. The press greedily devoured the grapes as we fed them in from the top. When the first barrel was filled, we moved the press to the second and third barrels in turn. Each received the must1 of a particular grape. I helped Papou, putting my hands under his as he turned the crank and dropping grapes into the press at his command. He rarely had any other help in the process. It was his private and happy labor. I often wondered whether he had learned the wine-making process as a child in Calabria or from Italian friends in the United States. I liked to think of him as a boy helping his grandfather as I helped him. The basement was dark, light coming only from dim forty-watt bulbs hanging from the ceiling on extension cords. End of summer dampness condensed and trickled down the cold, black steel posts that supported the floors above. After what seemed like endless hours of pressing, the crates were empty and the barrels full. We breathed the aroma of grape must. In the semi-darkness of the cellar, Papou used his skill to help the grape juice transform into three kinds of wine, each with its own character. He inspected the barrels every night after returning from his job in the City. He would strike a match and lower it slowly into the space just above the bubbling juices. He watched to see if the flame died as he lowered it close to the liquid. If after a few seconds the flame continued to burn, indicating the absence of carbon dioxide and the end of the must’ s fermentation, it was time for him to begin the next step of the process.

1 The juice, pulp, and skins of the crushed grape.

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Leonardo siphoned the fermented juice out of the large barrels into smaller ones that he had prepared earlier. I choked on the fermented juice several times when he taught me how to prime the rubber siphon by sucking on it like a straw. He had treated the barrels with the smoke of burning sulfur in the weeks before delivery of the grapes. During the process, the whole house smelled of burning sulfur. With her furious protestations, Lily made Leonardo believe he was where burning sulfur prevailed — Hell. He never learned to contain the fumes. Leonardo sealed some barrels immediately. To others he added measures of sugar and perhaps of yeast to initiate a second fermentation of the already-once fermented juice. He left several gallons of must and the remains of the wet mash in the bottom of the barrel as raw material for the creation of grappa. He created three wines. One was a robust, deep red, burgundy-colored wine with the intensity of claret and the roughness of Chianti. The second, a soft, gold, white wine was a very dry, white varietal. The third, a golden-colored sparking muscatel, was slightly sweet and very full-flavored with a huge bouquet. These Leonardo placed in casks for aging. He moved them from cask to bottle over time, as the spirit of Bacchus inspired him. Early on the first Saturday after the fermented grape juice had been siphoned from the large barrels, Papou uncovered his shiny copper still. Perhaps three feet in height, it was stored under old sheets and tarps, and hidden behind two gigantic steamer trunks that he and my grandmother, Eleni, had used on their trip to Greece and Italy in 1931. The trunks, often opened for play by my sister and me, were covered with stickers of foreign-sounding steamships and hotels, some Greek, others Italian. After cleaning and setting up the still on a small table, Papou filled it with the remains of mash and liquid from the large barrels and lit its kerosene burner. Next to the still he set a card table, and five or six chairs. The still was directly behind his chair. He brought a green felt table cover, playing cards, and gambling chips to the basement from their place in the heavy, dark wood bureau in the dining room, and suspended one bare electric bulb over the table. By mid-morning, one by one, his friends began to arrive and follow him down the steps to the annual meeting of the informal Grappa Society. The game was poker. Red, white, and blue chips represented pennies, nickels, and dimes. Stakes were low. Passions ran high. All day the game went on, and all evening and late into the night, and into the early, dark morning. The game went on until the still had completed its work. Cigarette smoke rose from the table and swirled around the light bulb, some of it of heavy and sweet smelling Turkish tobacco. Wine glasses and coffee cups filled spaces on either side of the players. Plates with the remains of sandwiches of prosciutto, capocollo, feta, provolone, lakerda, and sardeles were on the floor.

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Behind Papou was the steady drip, drip of clear grappa as made its way down the spiral condensing tube into a heavy, glass container. Periodically, Papou would lift a small tumbler from the table, move it behind him until it was directly under the drip, and hold it there for thirty seconds. Then, without any fanfare, he would lift the tumbler to his lips and test a few drops of the liquor. He gave no sign other than a slight nod of his head. A few days after the still had relinquished the last drop of condensate, Papou would take a twenty-four-inch long black case from its place on a shelf in the storage room. Nestled in it, in a bed of green velvet, was a beautifully handblown glass hydrometer. He lowered the glass work of art into a wide-mouthed jug that held the liquor gained from the still. With the care of a chemist, he added distilled water to the liquor, sharing the liquid with a second jug when the first filled. He continued the process until the hydrometer indicated that the alcohol content in each jug was 90 proof (45% alcohol), down from the 120-140 proof that had been delivered by the still. Some of this liquor he put into a small, one-gallon keg without any additive. Some he put into two or three other kegs with flavorings that created whiskey or brandy in ways known only to him. Bottles of Papou’ s liquors were secreted in the basement ceiling and walls. I learned this when I watched him retrieved a bottle for his fiftieth birthday. The bottles were named and dated: “ Nitsa, September 1931, for wedding” ; “ Jason, March 1934, for wedding” ; “ Jimmy & Lily for 25 Anniversary” ; “ Leonardo 60 Birthday” . Papou’ s wine was our table wine. I did not know until later, after he had moved in the early 1940s with his barrels and still to Bay Fourteenth Street, that he made enough wine to sell. One gallon at a time, he sold his product to Greek and Italian neighbors who favored “ homemade” over the wines in the store. Our family prized Papou’ s brandy. We never knew when he was going to open a bottle. Invariably, it was for a family celebration that he had anticipated by ten, twenty, or more years. The Garden Our garden provided us with the visual images that defined the change of seasons. [See Photos 42 and 43.] By late February the crocus were sticking their heads through the snow. They were followed by daffodils and tulips, carefully planted in the late fall by Papou and my Dad. As spring progressed buds broke into leaves on the grapevines, rosebushes and trees, and finally, in May, the magnolia tree burst into bloom. That event signaled the time for Papou and Dad to start planting tomatoes, peppers, radishes, carrots, lettuce, and dandelions (yes, they planted dandelions in rows), and occasional experiments with watermelon, pumpkin, and one or another variety of melon.

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Until I was twelve, Mom, Nitsa, and I summered at Carelas’ farm just west of Saugerties, New York, so we missed experiencing the garden for most of the summer. We were amazed to find the jungle of growth when we returned to the city just after Labor Day. For a few weeks we enjoyed the vegetables Papou and Dad had husbanded all summer. Many early or late summer evenings before we left for or returned from the farm, I would look down onto the garden from the second-story window of the bedroom that my sister and I shared. A single light bulb, suspended from an extension cord that ran over the grape trellis through the window of the kitchen that faced the garden and to the nearest electrical outlet, illuminated the area under the thick cover of vines that hid Louie, Jimmy and their friends. The women sat to the side in the dark, conversing with unseen animation and rising from time to time to serve the men refreshments. Fireflies were like sparks in the dark border around the space that held a card table and the enthusiastic, happy players. There were a jug of dark red wine, half- filled glasses, servings of karpusi (watermelon), cups of café, (aromatic Greek coffee), betting of pennies and nickels, and expletives that proclaimed the luck of the cards drawn. I fell to sleep listening to the conversation and laughter that rose to our window. Fall was a time for garden cleanup, pruning, and preparation for winter. Dad squeezed in two or three Sundays of effort on the weekends that he, Bill Rusuli, and Louie Dimitroff did not go to Carelas’ farm for fall hunting. The Thanksgiving holiday anticipated winter. The garden looked bleak as the days grew short until, on the morning after the first snowfall, the garden became a beautiful white-blanketed landscape with tree limbs shimmering in coats of ice. There were times that the garden was the Yukon, a polar ice cap, or a valley high in the Rocky Mountains, and my imagination created adventures for me in each setting as I lost myself in fantasies in the snow. Over time, the garden changed. The trellis and its grape vines were removed, a cherry tree replaced the fig tree, and later, young Jason enthusiastically cut down the cherry tree. An azalea was added here and a rosebush there. Periodically, Nitsa and I repainted the garden furniture in garish orange and green. For almost forty years, the garden was the site for family photographs that recorded four generations, many celebrations, and times of change. Carelas’ Farm From the time I was two until my twelfth birthday, Mom, Nitsa, and I spent eight to ten weeks each summer at Carelas’ farm, just a few miles outside of Saugerties, New York. [See Photos 44, 45, and 46.] Situated lower in altitude and certainly less stylish, it was the Greek answer to the Borscht Circuit whose hotels were located on the higher slopes of the Catskills. A working dairy farm, it was also a

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boarding house in the summer. Its rooms and cabins housed thirty to forty mothers and children who escaped the heat of New York City in July and August. The young families were formed mostly by immigrants from Kastoria and Sozopolis. There were a few senior residents. On Friday evenings, husbands came from their work in New York City to spend Saturday and most of Sunday with their families. Everyone referred to the proprietor as Carelas. His first name was Jimmy (formally, James, and in Greek, Dimitrios). In the mid-1920s, Carelas married Margaret, an Irish woman, who gave birth to five children: James (Jimmy), Georgianne, Betty, Basil (Billy), and Joan. Margaret never gave Carelas a moment’ s peace, and I never heard him say anything nice about her. In fact, he made denigrating her an art form and she yelled at him all the time. Yet, they remained married for more than sixty-five years. He died first, shortly after he ran into the Greenville, New York Post Office at age ninety-six and the police confiscated his car. Carelas once operated a small restaurant in Coney Island that failed at the start of the Great Depression. Somehow, my father knew Carelas and of his desperate need to support his family. My Dad, my godfather, Bill Rusuli, and Louis Dimitroff lent Carelas the down payment to purchase the farm in Saugerties. In return, Carelas provided them with a big bedroom at the farm in Saugerties, and then in later years, at the farm in Greenville when Carelas moved his operation there. Mom, Nitsa, and I used the room at the farm in Saugerties all summer. While I was a guest at the summer boarding house, my Dad made it clear to Carelas that he encouraged my participation in farm work. So, I took part in the hay harvest, milking, chicken feeding, chicken coop cleaning, and other activities whenever Angelo, Carelas’ long term sidekick and retainer, wanted help. I also helped slaughter pigs, sheep, cows, bulls, chickens, and geese, becoming accustomed to the blood, guts, and smells. None of my friends in Brooklyn could boast of the same. The task I performed only once and never wanted to get near again was cleaning the barn’ s silo. There is no more horrible smell than that of the sour, rotting debris in a silo’ s well. Three or four times I was enlisted to use my Dad’ s 22 Hornet rifle to down a bull or cow that had gone mad. The rifle’ s scope enabled me to shoot the animal in the head at fifty to one hundred yards. Once down, we would rush to cut its throat and bleed it so the meat would not spoil.

Carelas worked ceaselessly. He was the head cook for the summer boarders, purchased all the groceries and supplies, traveled to livestock auctions and ran his dairy farm. As the years went by, he expanded his operations in Saugerties, opening a tavern and dance hall in conjunction with his dining room for summer boarders. Eventually, he sold his Saugerties property and purchased a larger farm

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Photo 44

Carelas’ Farm

Photo 45

Jason, Nitsa and Lily 1938

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in Greenville, New York. Through the years, he added thousands of acres to his holdings, built a man-made lake, an outdoor theater, a roadhouse restaurant and bar, and traded in livestock. A multimillionaire, he never appeared to be anything more than a poor, rumpled, badly-dressed, unshaven immigrant farmer with an accent. A small river at the Saugerties farm offered swimming and fishing. Greek immigrants knew nothing about golf or tennis. The pleasures of walking and talking were enough. On weekends, except for my father, the men, mostly from the fur market, would often play poker through the night. The only hunter was my Dad. He and I would go off to kill as many crows and woodchucks as we could find. Kastorians were noted gamblers and the games at the farm were for high stakes, but not as high as the games played over the Christmas holidays in hotel rooms in New York City or on the ocean liners that took the gamblers and their families on holidays to Greece. Life savings, homes, and businesses were lost on those trips. My cousin, Elias Demitriades, won his fortune on an ocean trip to Greece and never returned to the United States or the fur market. Kyria Ekaterina One summer at Carelas’ farm, I fell in love with Kyria Ekaterina (Lady Katherine), my Lady. I was eight years old. My Lady had a sympathetic smile, a well-tanned, light olive complexion, dazzling white teeth, light-brown hair, blue eyes and, I learned, a lovely figure, as best an eight-year-old could judge. She must have been in her mid- to late thirties, was married, and was kind and gentle to me. I had begun to stammer that year, and she made me feel comfortable around her. Kyria Ekaterina was a little aloof from the rest of the women at Carelas’ . She read a lot and spent hours knitting quietly while sitting alone in the shade of an expansive tree. Sometimes, when I looked for her to deliver my gift, she was nowhere to be found. My Lady loved fresh, warm chicken eggs, and they were my gift to her. I would creep around the chicken coop and scoop up an egg just as it was laid, when its shell was still soft. I rushed it to her. She greeted me happily when I brought her the prize. I watched her use a safety pin to punch holes into the egg and then suck out its still warm, raw contents with one or two efforts. This would ordinarily have revolted me, but when my Lady performed the act, it was great art — beautiful. Often, I would go on one of my solitary missions into the woods, creeping behind trees and walls, pretending I was a soldier fighting the Germans or a pioneer escaping from a band of Indians. The trees of the forest provided shadows that

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moved with the wind and created as many enemies and pursuers as my imagination could conjure. On one morning, I ventured far into the wood that led to Mr. Schoonmaker’ s pastures and farmhouse. Stealing along a fieldstone wall, I spied over it hoping to see a woodchuck or a deer, or a German machine-gun nest or an Indian inching up to attack me. What I saw was my Lady far from any road or home, stretched out on a blanket in the tall grass, reading a book. She was naked — totally, completely, naked. I stared at this vision for no more than three seconds, but it seemed like hours. I was sure that she had seen or heard me, and that my mother was watching me from a few feet away. I slumped to the ground behind the rock wall for a few moments, recovered my composure, or at least some of it, suppressed my guilt, and slowly peeked over the wall again to be sure that I had seen what I thought I had seen. Yes, I had! For several breathless minutes I studied every mysterious detail of this goddess’ body, then slowly crawled away along the wall and turned into the wood until I had gone far enough to be sure that I would not be seen. I never again returned to that spot in the forest. Hayrides Carelas treated his boarders to a hayride two or three times each summer. Dinner on those nights consisted of barbecued hot dogs cooked by the river at the great fireplace that we used to roast lambs in the spring. We children devoured a dessert of roasted marshmallows, cookies, and ice cream. At twilight, two or three horse drawn wagons filled with loose hay would arrive on the scene. We climbed aboard them for a long ride — men, women, and children. Carelas seemed to plan the dates of the rides on the availability of a full moon and a clear sky. There was always someone along with a mandolin or guitar; sometimes, there were two or three amateur instrumentalists. As the horses pulled us slowly along country roads, men and women would sing Greek songs, tell stories, and laugh in the light of the moon under the dome of a star-studded sky. The song I remember most was about Barba Ianni [old John] and his papoutsia lastika [rubber shoes]. My sister and I would eventually snuggle close to Mom and fall asleep. There was a very warm feeling about these rides. We traveled in a circle, a journey that brought us home and to bed Theo Costa Theo Costa and Thea Anastasia were part of my growing up. As a child I did not understand why I called them Theo and Thea, Uncle and Aunt, as they were not related to us. However, we were Koumbari, a designation that closely associates families. It describes ties created through marriage, as between in-laws, or by acting as the best man or maid of honor at a wedding, or by becoming a godparent. These family ties are strong and lasting.

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Later in life, a godparent might also be matron of honor or best man at the godchild’ s wedding. My mother and grandfather were godparents to Costa and Anastasia’ s children, Jimmy and Anesti. My mother relished her role as Matron of Honor at Jimmy’ s wedding. (Years later, my Nouno was my best man.) Costa and Anastasia were not my uncle and aunt. However, it is common for close friends of a Greek family to become proxy uncles and aunts to children. At whatever age I was, I remember Theo Costa Zelios at always the same age, somewhere between fifty-five and sixty. He just did not change. Theo Costa’ s round, dark, olive-skinned face, was characteristic of the Turkic-Bulgar tribes that had invaded the Balkans. His hair was short, thin, and gray. The yellow-brown stains on the left side of his salt and pepper moustache, and on the thumb, index, and middle fingers of his left hand evidenced his chain smoking of unfiltered Camel cigarettes. Not a big man, perhaps five feet seven inches in height, he moved quietly with slow, purposeful strength, and spoke little whether in his native Greek or in halting English. He had a knowing tight-lipped smile. Greek was Theo Costa’ s native language, learned as a child in Sozopolis on the coast of the Black Sea. Theo Costa married his wife, Anastasia, after the Balkan Wars and the First World War, but before 1922, when the immigration gates closed in the United States. Somehow they made their way from Bulgaria to Greece, and then to Ellis Island. Settling in Brooklyn, they spent most of their years in a bright second- story apartment on Seventy-second Street between Third Avenue and Ridge Boulevard. Theo Costa was a night-shift building engineer at the CBS Building in New York City for thirty or more years. He had the mechanical aptitude, health, and work ethic that made him a prized employee. During the day, he worked as a house painter to earn extra money for his family. One of the unusual things Theo Costa did was to make soap. Greek families in Bay Ridge saved animal fat for him, spooning it from roasting pans and stockpots into jars. About twice each year, he would collect it, and in his apartment kitchen mix the fat with other ingredients, cook the mixture in a huge kettle, and produce soft bars of tan, lightly-scented soap. He took great pride in delivering bars of soap to family and friends. Anastasia was a big, big-hearted, open-armed, smiling, laughing, gentle, pious, mountain of a woman. Her energy was unbounded. She loved her sons without limit. I remember her in her Second World War Red Cross uniform when she visited our home after rolling bandages all day. She sat with my mother having her sweet and Elliniko, not Turkico, café while knitting socks for her sons who

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were in the Army — Jimmy with the artillery in Italy and Anesti with the infantry in the Philippines. The prayers she offered every minute of every day and those that rose on Sundays with the smoke of the candles at her church, Kimisis Tis Theotoko (The Dormition of the Mother of God) on Eighteenth Street in Brooklyn, were answered in full. Both came home safely. Anastasia was the unchallenged local expert in making likismata (sweets) until the arrival in the United States of my Thea Filareti, my father’ s brother’ s wife, and another story. These are the wonderful, candied fruits served to guests by Greek hostesses. A cold glass of water and a cup of thick Greek coffee accompany them. It was impossible to choose among the thick slices of orange and grapefruit rinds, dark black cherries, rose petals trapped in their viscous liquor, and quince, either shredded or in bite-sized pieces cooked until their color was a deep, almost amber, orange. She baked the customary Vasilopita [St. Basil’ s Bread] made for New Year’ s, and Lambropsomo [Easter Bread]. She brought loaves to us every year as gifts to her children’ s godparents. Vasilopita was a treat on New Year’ s morning when my father performed the traditional blessing of the loaf, then cut slices for the world, our home, and each family member in order of age. The loaf was huge, perhaps sixteen inches in diameter, golden from an egg glaze, and showered with sesame seeds. When toasted, the aroma of the Mahlepi1 that was used to flavor the bread filled the room. Lambropsomo was like Vasilopita but for the presence of dyed, deep red eggs set in the crown of the loaf and the absence of Mahlepi and the coin. Theo Costa was the celebrant of two periodic events in our home. Every six or seven years he painted the rooms of our three-story brownstone on Ovington Avenue. Sometimes I helped, or at least I thought I did. The job seemed to take forever. He was slow, methodical, and meticulous. I remember the smell of the lead-based paints thinned with oil that took days to dry. He worked always with a cigarette, a Camel, between his lips. The ritual lighting of the cigarette included his tapping down the tobacco to one end, twisting the paper of the less full end before lighting it, and moistening the paper on the end that was held delicately between his lips. As the smoke rose, his hand moved the brush gracefully, in the way of a conductor leading an orchestra in an adagio. I liked helping him clean the brushes, which were his treasured tools. They were of all sizes, some very fine and soft.

1 See page 66, note 1.

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I liked best helping Theo Costa make lakerda [salted tunny]. From the beginning of recorded history, excess Greek populations of Ionia, Attica, Boetia, and the Greek city-states colonized coastal villages in Thrace on the Black Sea. They grew grapes and made wine, mined minerals, grew corn, captured and sold Skythian slaves, and caught and preserved fish for themselves and for export to cities dependent on imported food. Tsiri [dried, salted mackerel], rengha [dried, smoked herring], sardeles [salted large sardines or anchovies in olive oil], tarama [carp or red mullet roe which when whipped with olive oil, bread crumbs, and lemon juice form a delicious, creamy dip], and lakerda were among the staple fish. As a child, Theo Costa watched the men of Sozopolis as they preserved their catch from the Black Sea. He learned how to clean, salt, and smoke fish and brought those skills to America and to Brooklyn. Every fall, Mom put up preserves, made loukanika [dried sausage]; jarred tomatoes, and packed brine-filled crocks with green tomatoes, carrots, celery, and heads of cabbage [toursi]. Then, after Leonardo stored newly-fermented grape juice into barrels for a second fermentation or aging, as the purpose required, and put the residual grape mash into the shiny copper still and made raki or, since he was from Monteleone, Italy, grappa — the time came to make lakerda. Theo Costa would arrive early one October morning in time for a cup of coffee with my mother before beginning the work. He lugged huge bags over his shoulders, having gone at dawn directly from CBS in mid-town to the Fulton Fish Market on the lower east side of Manhattan to select as many two-foot-long, deep-blue, torpedo-like tuna fish as he could carry. These he deposited in the entry vestibule while he sat and rested, and had his coffee and a Camel cigarette. I waited anxiously for my instructions — which every year were the same. Mom would give me one or two dollars and tell me to go to Mr. Kramer’ s Hardware Store on Third Avenue to buy ten, five-pound bags of Kosher salt (rock salt). Mr. Kramer kept these in stock for his customers to rid their outdoor steps and sidewalks of ice and snow, and for the Jew or Greek or Scandinavian who needed it to prepare an ethnic specialty. By the time I made the three or four trips necessary for me to carry that much salt, Theo Costa was ready to start work. We carried the tunny and salt down the wooden steps to the basement. The smells were those of the West Side delicatessens on Eighth and Tenth Avenues in mid-town Manhattan. Theo Costa retrieved two, twenty-four-inch deep ceramic crocks, a flat cutting stone, and butcher knives from under the storage tables. Slowly, too agonizingly slowly for the patience of a boy, he carried the crocks to the other end of the basement where there was a water spigot and drain. While he spread newspapers on the floor, set the cutting stone across two stools, and sharpened the knives, I washed out the crocks and dried them.

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Cigarette between his lips and a razor-sharp knife in his hand, Theo Costa removed the heads, fins, and tails from the tunny. We washed each body carefully, removing any loose tissue. Finally, to the cutting stone, and with long, strong motions, he sliced the tunny into one-inch steaks. We set one layer of these in the crocks on top of a two-inch bed of salt. Then, we added another layer of salt and another layer of tunny until finally the crocks were filled, the top layer being salt. After wooden lids were placed on top of the crocks, he moved them to a dark corner under the storage tables. I washed the heavy cutting stone thoroughly, brushing it under hot water brought from the sink in the small basement kitchen, dried it, and carried it with difficulty to Theo Costa for him to store away. Now we waited. Greeks fix the time of many of life’ s events to a mystical period: forty days. It must derive from biblical stories and religious observance: Noah’ s forty days of rain and forty days of waiting to exit the Ark after it went aground; Moses’ forty days on Mount Sinai; Jesus’ forty days praying and fasting in the wilderness; etc. In keeping with biblical tradition, the Great Lent and minor Lents last forty days, a couple waits forty days from the time they are married until they go to church, a baby is churched1 forty days after birth, and the first memorial service is forty days after the death of a loved one. Therefore, it takes forty days to make brandied cherries and forty days to dry sausage. And, it takes forty days before rock salt and tunny combine miraculously to create lakerda. On that great day, Theo Costa arrived with a gallon of olive oil and a lemon. I followed him to the basement in anticipation of a filet of lakerda swimming in olive oil and lemon juice at the dinner table. He rolled the crocks out from their cool, dark hiding place, lit the indispensable Camel cigarette, took off the lid of one crock, scraped salt away from the top, and removed one steak from the first layer of tunny to a waiting platter. This he washed under cold water and dried with the softest of cotton towels. He placed the tunny steak on a plate, sprinkled it liberally with olive oil and a dash of lemon, and cut it into bite-size pieces. Theo Costa put the first piece in his mouth, chewed gently, closed his eyes, savored the flavor, and made his judgment. “ Kallo!” [“ Good!” ] Then, I put a tender piece in my mouth and the waiting was rewarded. We emptied the crocks under the constant supervision of Theo Costa’ s genie, washing, drying, and layering the tunny, now transformed into slices of lakerda, into glass jars that had been carefully stored since their last use. Enough room was

1 A baby is brought to church to be blessed and consecrated to God. A female child is

brought only to the Royal Door of the iconostasion while a male child is carried into the sanctuary and around the altar.

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left in each jar for a quantity of the golden-green olive oil that preserved and sweetened the salted fish. Theo Costa had again worked his magic. For Theo Costa our basement, redolent with Black Sea smells of cabbage in brine, wine barrels, drying sausage, dried mackerel and herring, and bouquets of herbs hanging from the ceiling, and now containing newly filled jars of lakerda, made him again a young boy far away in a small city by the sea. The Fig Tree Papou’ s fig tree represented his repudiation of the climate of New York and his nostalgia for the Calabrian warmth of Monteleone. But, the fig’ s genetics were consistent with its Mediterranean home, not with Brooklyn’ s winters. So in the fall when its leaves fell to the ground, Papou carefully pruned the fig’ s limbs and enveloped its trunk with two or three wrappings of old carpet, forming a tall column. Into its center, Leonardo stuffed insulating leaves. Thus protected, the tree stood to survive the winter. When covered with snow and ice, it looked like an ancient temple column in a desolate landscape. In mid-April with the chance of frost past, Papou would remove the carpet from the fig and sweep away the rotted leaves. Every morning, he would go to the tree before leaving for work to see if there was a sign of life. The first leaf bud was a signal for the celebration of spring’ s renewal. For Papou, this fig tree’ s first bud was as symbolic of the Resurrection as Easter eggs and lilies. By sometime in July, one, two, or three figs would have formed. Papou suspended silver icicles used to decorate Christmas trees on the fig’ s branches to frighten the birds and set netting to protect the precious fruits. The triumphal reward came in late August when the one or two surviving figs were shared — one small, sweet piece of the fruit for each of us. Japanese Beetles One summer before the Second World, War Papou single-handedly took on the Japanese beetles that attacked his vines. They were huge, ugly, shiny-black, hard-shelled insects. Ingenious at devising tools to accomplish work in the garden, he made a Japanese beetle trap by attaching a coffee can to a broom handle and filling it with an inch of kerosene. Using a small brush on a second broom handle, he hunted, found and then swept the beetles to a fatal swim in kerosene. I enjoyed watching their death throes as, on their backs, they struggled for survival with their legs kicking frantically. So much for the compassion of a five-year-old! Papou lost his grape harvest that year, and with the arrival of more beetles, the following year he gave up his summer trellis, the vines, and their shade.

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The Watermelon During the summer of 1940, on one of his visits to Carelas’ farm to see us Papou told Nitsa and me about a watermelon growing in our garden in Brooklyn. He said it was huge and promised to keep it untouched until we returned home on the first weekend after Labor Day. The trip back to Brooklyn was filled with the expectation of seeing our neighborhood friends, the new school year, and the great watermelon. Nitsa and I were wedged between pieces of luggage, fruit baskets, pillows, toys, and an ironing board that would not fit in the trunk. The nomadic gypsies of the Balkans were surely our cousins. At her feet in her front, right navigator’ s seat from which she gave commands like, “ Pass him, Jimmy!” Mom had a basket of huge aromatic peaches that Dad had purchased at a roadside stand. We must have eaten half of them on the trip. The long, hot, and humid drive south from the Catskill Mountains to Brooklyn took four or five hours on the two lane roads of 1940. After reaching Kingston on the Hudson, we traveled south on Route 9W until we came to the George Washington Bridge. Crossing it to Manhattan, Dad drove south along Riverside Drive and on to the cobblestone paved, slick, West Side elevated highway that at that time stood below Fifty-seventh Street. [The badly rusted elevated highway collapsed in December of 1973. The immediate cause was the weight of a concrete truck that was making a delivery for road repairs.] The car’ s windows were all open, allowing the noises and smells of the traffic to reach us. There was no air conditioning. The Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel was still a dream, so Dad followed the slow traffic over the Brooklyn Bridge and made his way along Fourth Avenue, delivering us finally to Bay Ridge. [See Photo 47.] We arrived at home to the damp and particular smell of Brooklyn at the end of summer. It was early evening when Papou greeted us at the door. Nitsa and I ran through the house to the garden, Papou on our heels. As we opened the door our eyes searched for the giant watermelon, and there it was. Nitsa saw it first. We caressed it and marveled at the size of this single great watermelon amidst the tangled vines. Then, Nitsa found the string that tied the watermelon to the plant. The Mulberry Tree A lone, slender mulberry tree softened the hard-surfaced courtyard to our home. The tree had few branches and was only six or seven feet tall. It seemed tenuously to cling to life. When the snows were gone and spring temperatures revived it, it budded and broke into leaf having survived to live another summer. The courtyard faced north, so the tree that would have been at home in the Peloponnesos received little of the warm sunshine it needed to thrive. Nonetheless, each year the little tree provided a handful of berries that Papou and Dad happily harvested and shared with the family.

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Fish, Fish — Fresh Fish !!! The late 1930s and early ‘40s witnessed the decline of horse-drawn carts in New York City. From them, mobile vendors delivered ice and milk, and sold vegetables, fruit, fish, and sometimes pots, pans, and clothing. Italians, Greeks, Irishmen, Jews, and other ethnic groups were in the diverse body of men who hawked their portable goods. The wood carts were simple, with wheel rims covered sometimes with rubber, but more often, bare metal. Most carts had a stepladder hanging in back and a tent-like awning to protect cargoes from rain and sun. Some had rails surrounding the space that held the vendor’ s goods. Wood boards covered with fabric or old carpet gave the men a place to sit as they drove their wagons. Tired horses pulled the carts and their contents through the streets. Typically, a horse’ s traces were worn and heavy blinders covered its eyes. Occasionally, a shabby but ornately-beaded head ornament with feather plumes crowned its head. On hot summer days, flies attacked the animals unmercifully. Moving slowly with their heads bowed, sounding clip-clop through the streets, they were a sorry sight. Before the blight of Dutch elm disease, our street enjoyed the dense shade of huge, mature trees. The horses seemed comforted in the shade and did not react to the taunts of the children that surrounded them. The poor animals were like Zen Buddhist monks sinking into themselves to find peace. The fish cart was the most interesting of all the carts that passed our house. “ Fish, fresh fish!” we would hear from half a block away as the cart turned the corner and came down Ovington Avenue. In the back of the wagon on a huge bed of ice lay all manner of seafood. Above the fish, a spring scale hung from the frame that supported the wagon’ s cover. I was smug about my knowledge of the squid, octopus, mackerel, bass, cod, crab, and lobster. I had seen the same fish in the window of Cosentino’ s Fish Market on Third Avenue. Somehow they seemed more immediate and exotic in the middle of the street on top of a mountain of ice that was dripping its melt to the street. One day, a huge lobster lay on top of the mound of ice on the cart, a mythic monster trapped on an iceberg. Each of its claws was bigger than both my fists together. A white, serrated, almost tooth-like structure flowed into a red, orange color in the claw that melted into the bluish, green-brown shell of the lobster. This all turned bright red in a pot of boiling water. Papou told me that it was a Papou lobster, an old, old man of the sea. I felt sorry for him on his mound of ice, moving down the street toward his end as a magnificent meal. At the same time, I wished he were going to be on our table.

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Other carts came down Ovington Avenue. Among them were those pushed by ragged men who from time to time collected newspapers. They sold these to a scrap buyer around the block on Sixty-ninth Street, next to the garage-and-filling station, walked half a block to the liquor store soon to emerge with brown paper bags. They hurried off down Third Avenue out of our sight and thought. Later, when I was ten, eleven, and twelve years old, I went into competitive business with these poor men. There was no pity from boys wanting to raise money for comic books and the movies. The Shooting Gallery The boy from Mavrovo lived ever inside the man who was my father. His love of guns and shooting was never satisfied, and he remembered wistfully the muzzle-loading pistol of his youth. He carried it illegally in his waistband, just as the klefts did in the mountains surrounding Kastoria. Among these bandit klefts were some of the most romantic figures of the Macedonian people, at best equivalent to Robin Hood and at worst, Billy the Kid. While they usually concentrated their brigandage on Turkish towns and caravans, they were often indiscriminate about whom they robbed. Dad read about a design for a home target range in a hunting magazine. Following its directions, he purchased an eighteen-inch square piece of quarter-inch steel plate. This he placed at a downward sloping angle behind three or four inches of wood in a sandbox. He set his construction at end of the basement closest to the cellar door that led to the garden and pinned concentric circled targets on it. We shot at the targets with my Remington .22 caliber rifle from just under the electric panel, a distance of about fifty feet. In the confined space, the little .22 sounded like an elephant gun. While acrid smoke filled the cellar, we kept shooting until my mother’ s voice called down the steps, “ Jimmy, arketa [enough]! Open the cellar door and air the place out!” Shooting holes through the middle of pennies and dimes was the greatest challenge Dad set for me. We wasted many small coins in practice. Dad’ s pride and joy was a homemade, muzzle-loaded gun. It was designed like the .22 caliber zip guns used by street gangs in New York during the late 1940s and 1950s. They typically consisted of a two- to three-inch length of small-sized pipe set in a wooden handle with a spring or rubber band loaded firing pin. Dad made his from the casing of a .50 caliber WW II machine-gun bullet, which he strapped into a carved-out notch in a wood block that looked like a miniature cannon carriage. He punched a tiny opening into the back end of the shell casing to use as a firing hole. Dad filled the “ barrel” with black gunpowder using rifle bore cleaning pads to ram down the charge. Then, he loaded BB pellets into the casing as shot. Once ready, he sprinkled a little powder on the firing hole, pointed the baby cannon at

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the target, and lit the powder with a match. First, there was a flash, then, a “ woompff” as the little cannon jumped and belched a cloud of black smoke before it. The BBs made a smacking sound as they hit the paper target. Dad’ s face was one big smile. It amazes me that my sober, serious, responsible, and conservative father could behave so much like a boy around guns, gunpowder, and fireworks. Coney Island — Sheepshead Bay Once or twice each year, in the spring or fall, memories of the Black and Tyrrhenian Seas brought visions of glistening black mussels to Mom and Papou, respectively. The recollection of the briny smell of the sea quickly gave way to an image of a heaping dish of the black-shelled delicacies stuffed and steaming in a serving bowl. It was then that Papou would announce to Nitsa and me, “ We go Ships-a-hedda-bay!” The first time he took us with him was in 1939 or 1940, when he still lived with us. After he moved to Bay Fourteenth Street, Papou came early in the morning, and had breakfast with us before we left the house, Nitsa and I on either side of him, each holding his hand as went out the door to begin our adventure. We walked to the corner, turned left on Third Avenue, continued one block further, and boarded the Sixty-ninth Street trolley. Trolleys were long, red cars, some with well-varnished wooden seats running along their length, others with wicker seats facing frontward and backward. [See Photo 48.] A pole connected the trolley to the electric power line that hung over the street. Shiny rails that marked the route guided the trolley’ s steel wheels through Brooklyn’ s ethnic neighborhoods. The conductor’ s function was to start and stop the trolley, collect fares, and ring the warning bell. Poles and hanging straps afforded security for standing passengers; early on Saturday morning there were none. We had the trolley almost to ourselves. It was a long trip taking an hour or more to reach Coney Island’ s beach and boardwalk with its rides, sideshows, and hot dog stands. To keep us entertained along the way, Papou told us stories, pointed out people, stores, and new cars, and asked us what we wanted to do when we reached the wonderland. The trolley’ s wheels generated a rhythmic thump, thump, thump as they crossed over the expansion joints between rail sections. The occasional “ cling-clang” of the trolley’ s warning bells turned our heads to see what danger was being avoided. Push carts, pedestrians, and automobiles cleared the way before us. When we reached Coney Island, its sights and smells bombarded our senses. Nitsa wanted to ride the Ferris wheel and the roller coaster. Papou would leave me with the ride’ s gatekeeper and I watched as he and Nitsa climb into the cars and hurtled into space. The sight and screams of those rides scared me so much that I never

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Photo 46

Jimmy, Louie, Nitsa, Jason & Lily Carelas’ Farm 1937

Photo 47

The Brooklyn Bridge

Photo 48

Typical New York City Trolley Car

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climbed into a seat. Nitsa would return with delight, and Papou would be smiling and laughing with her. My less daring choices were bumper cars and boats, the merry-go-round, and an obstacle course of a ride that had us careening down a slide that had many turns and corners, and then crawling through a cylinder that revolved on its side. The bumper boats and cars gave me a great sense of control and authority. I loved to smash into Papou and Nitsa. Hot dogs and soda pops at Nathan’ s followed. I smothered my hot dog with sauerkraut, relish, and mustard. Sometimes I had cotton candy. Nitsa always opted for ice cream. Papou enjoyed a tall stein of beer with his hot dog. Hunger satisfied, we got back on the trolley for the ride past Brighton Beach and Manhattan Beach to Sheepshead Bay. It was a two- or three-block walk from the final trolley stop to the bay, its boats, and the fish markets that Papou favored. While the fish Mom and Papou bought at Cosentino’ s Fish Market on Third Avenue, just off Ovington, were always fresh, nothing satisfied Papou more than the fish at these Sheepshead Bay markets. Perhaps it reminded him of the life he knew as a child in Italy. He bought as much fish as we three could carry, making his selections after a long conversation with the old Italian owner about what was available, close examination of each fish, including its eyes, and some poking and pressing as he tested the firmness of the flesh of the fish he chose. My bag was always the one filled with the prized, shiny-black, seaweed-covered, sea- and salty-smelling mussels. The fishmonger packed them in a net bag that contained wet seaweed, then in two or three additional paper bags. Large cod and bass heads filled one of the other bags. These were used to make a wonderful fish soup that, with meat from the cheeks of the fish heads, onions, potatoes, celery, tomatoes, carrots, and herbs, was almost a stew. Warm, crusty bread soaked in the broth was delicious. The other bag held sea bass, blue fish, flounder, cod, or mackerel. Sometimes Papou would buy two or three varieties of fish. Always, on top, there was a bag filled with fresh fish roe and liver. Burdened with our sea treasures we walked to the trolley stop, boarded our transport, and started the long trip home. With the bags wedged between our legs and the lower part of our seats, Nitsa and I, on either side of Papou, drifted into a sleep induced by the trolley’ s constant thump, thump, thump. He cradled us in his arms until we returned to Sixty-ninth Street and Third Avenue. We arrived home exhausted but eager to tell Mom of our adventures and to show her the contents of the bags we carried.

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Mom immediately washed the fish heads and put them into a pot on the stove with water, wine, and herbs. They simmered slowly to become a wonderful stock and soup. The fish, washed, went into the refrigerator for the night. Mom emptied the mussels into a large steel bowl filled with cold water and a handful of rock salt. She stirred the mussels round and round in the bowl and left them for half an hour. She said this bath revived them. Gently Mom washed the fish roe and liver, patted them dry and placed them in a bowl and into the refrigerator. She then turned her attention to the mussels. I often helped in scrubbing them and in removing their “ whiskers” , the vegetation that a mussel uses to adhere itself to the rocks on which it lives. She showed me that I could not open a live mussel by twisting its shell. We discarded any mussel not tightly closed. A huge kettle held the mussels with onions and white rice previously sautéed in olive oil, crushed fresh tomatoes, toasted pignoli nuts, and currant raisins. White wine, water, a little chopped fresh dill, salt, and pepper were the final ingredients. After she set the mussels and rice to a simmer, Mom prepared a salad and took the roe and liver from the refrigerator. These she sautéed in butter, olive oil, and oregano, with a little black pepper, and finished in a generous bath of lemon juice. Dinner was ready. By now, Dad had returned from his Saturday work in the fur market. He, Papou, Nitsa, Mom, and I, with the guest or guests of the day (there were frequently unannounced friends for dinner) would sit down to the feast. Salad, sautéed roes and livers, mussels that had stuffed themselves with the rice mixture as they opened and cooked, crusty warm bread, olives, cheese, and Papou's dry wine or Retsina imported from Greece were a festive climax to a wonderful day. We were at the shores of the Black and the Tyrrhenian Seas. Sledding in Owl’ s Head Park A "Red Flyer" sled with ribbons and bows and a card with my name on it sat under the Christmas tree the morning of 25 December 1940. I was approaching my seventh birthday and more than ready for the excitement the sled promised. But, there was no snow! Days passed before a heavy gray sky emptied several inches of white powder on the streets, cars, and houses of Bay Ridge. Best of all, it happened on a weekend, so Papou was ready and available to take us to the park. Nitsa and I ate a steaming breakfast and were then dressed in pants and sweaters, stuffed into snowsuits, and outfitted with hats, gloves, mufflers, and boots. Barely able to walk in our layers of clothing, we went out the door, Papou carrying the sled. Owl’ s Head Park is close to Lower New York Bay at the foot of Sixty-eighth Street. Before the Second World War, there were still hulks of old wooden ships visible at the shoreline. These provided the stage for our pirate fantasies in 1940 and 1941, before the military built screening walls all around the shoreline to

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prevent peering eyes from seeing the ships massing for their run out the Narrows of New York’ s lower bay and into the Atlantic. Signs proclaiming “ Loose Lips Sink Ships” covered the fences. In late December of 1940, Owl’ s Head Park represented something entirely different for me. It was a place high in a remote mountain valley in Alaska. In my imagination, Papou turned into a team of huskies as he pulled Nitsa and me through the snow on our new sled, bumping over curbs and crashing through man-made drifts on our long trek. At last, we came to the park and its first gentle slope. Nitsa and I took turns on the sled learning how to maneuver it with our feet when sitting up and with our hands when lying on our stomachs, heads tilted up to see ahead. Sometimes, we rode together with either Nitsa or me lying on top of the other, or sitting one behind the other with Papou running alongside to encourage us. After pleading with Papou several times, he took us to the steeper hill, the big hill, the one that really counted. There were eight- and ten-year-olds on this hill. Nitsa went first. She ably guided the sled down the slope with cheers from Papou and me. She almost ran back up the hill pulling the sled and screaming her delight. I could not wait for my turn. I decided to sit on the sled. Steering with my feet was easier than with my hands and sitting gave me more visibility and confidence. Papou started me off with a gentle push. As it moved down the hill, the sled gained speed at a rate that first surprised, then petrified me. Frozen motionless on the sled I watched the trees at the bottom of the hill rush up at me. The biggest tree was in the middle, and I hit it head-on, or more specifically, nose-on. It broke — my nose, not the tree — and blood gushed out all over me and the snow. The next thing I knew I was in Papou’ s arms. Then, almost miraculously, I was in our kitchen at home lying on the table with an ice pack on my face. Poor Papou sat there accepting the blame and taking the verbal punishment from Mom. Still, he was the best Papou in the world. Broken nose or not, I went down the big hill! Sunday Dinner, Bocce, Pizza, and Spies One or two years before the start of the Second World War, Papou married Adela. She was a big woman from Naples, Italy. Not fat — big. She was tall, broad- shouldered, huge faced, and with ear lobes that under the weight of massive earrings fell almost to her shoulders. The holes pierced in her ears when she was child had become long slits, the effect being reminiscent of the ears, necks, noses and other body parts that are disfigured by some cultures to attain a valued aesthetic. Adela’ s voice matched her physique, big and authoritative. Words sometimes exploded out of her.

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Once married to Adela, Papou left our home on Ovington Avenue and moved to Bay Fourteenth Street in the Bath Beach District of Brooklyn. The treasured wine press and barrels, still, hydrometer, and bottles went with him. Their home had a red-brick facing and was on the east side of the street, just a city block or two from the shore of Lower New York Bay. The main floor consisted of an entry, living room, dining room, and kitchen. A stair immediately to the right of the entry door led to two bedrooms and a bath on the second floor. The basement, converted into a small restaurant-sized dining room, held one large table capable of seating twenty. A second kitchen and a storage facility completed the basement. Papou grew tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and other table greens in a small garden. Adela furnished her home in the style of late nineteenth century Naples with exotic influences of the mysterious Middle East, Sicily, and Calabria. The furniture was massive, of dark wood, and where upholstered, covered with richly-colored, heavily-textured brocades. The lamps were colorful, several having beaded skirts decorating their shades. Nondescript framed prints of Italy and its classical history covered the walls. There were deep red and green glass ashtrays and candy dishes. Ceramic pastoral figurines of peasant girls and boys seemed playful on the end tables and the coffee table in the living room. Adela was a sewing machine operator in the garment industry. She would not work for anyone as a salaried employee, preferring to capitalize on her skill and speed at piecework. Unions had no friend in her. She could out earn most anyone at a sewing machine and loved the challenge of doing so. “ Ma, sur-a,” she would say, “ I make-a lot-a mon, an-a I buy-a da-best-a.” If there were anything she bought that was the best, it was the food for her table. Adela did not serve a dinner, a meal, a lunch, a snack, or anything other than a banquet. As a child, I loved to have dinner at Papou and Adela’ s home. And, as a teen-ager, I met her every challenge and ate enthusiastically. In my teen years and as a young adult, I remember being at her table with Jimmy and Anesti Zelios, my mother’ s and Papou’ s godchildren. My friend Don Kaye, my brother-in-law, Stan Avitabile, and many others enjoyed Adela’ s hospitality with me. At such times, she was in her glory, for she loved young men, loved to cook for young men, and knew how to cook only in great quantity. The only person I knew that did not love to eat at Adela’ s table was my father, whose tender stomach could not tolerate heavy tomato sauces or garlic. Her dinners would start with a tasty appetizer. The one I loved most was a deep-fried rice ball stuffed with cheese and served swimming in a marinara sauce. She served soup next, not a clear broth, but hearty minestrone or a soup of beef and pasta. Then came pasta — ravioli, spaghetti or lasagna — in a meat sauce or

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accompanied by wonderfully stuffed bracciole or sausage. Papou ate an amazing bowl, not dish, but bowl of pasta. He was a small man with an enormous capacity. Most appetites were, by now, fully satisfied, and if it was their first dinner at Papou and Adela’ s, guests thought the dinner over. Not so! The next course was a refreshing salad, perhaps with anchovies or sardines, and a liberal amount of minced garlic. And, then she served the main course: roast lamb, beef or chicken, with potatoes and vegetables. The dinner dishes cleared, Adela presented a bowl of fresh apples and pears, another filled with nuts, and a tray of two or three cheeses. We pared and cut the fruit into pieces to marinate in our wine glasses. When it had taken on enough flavor, the fruit joined cracked nuts and cheese on our plates. These we ate slowly with bread and conversation. Sated, we sat in the living room to rest, went for a walk along the waterfront or found a corner to take a nap. When an hour or two had passed and Adela had the kitchen in order, it was time for dessert and coffee. Papou usually bought wonderful Italian pastries from a local store: cannoli [a shell stuffed with sweet ricotta and chocolate custard], pasticciotti [lemon custard filled tart] and Papou’ s favorite, Rum Baba [sponge cake saturated with rum and topped with vanilla custard], and more. The coffee was espresso. With it, Papou served his sweet muscatel and home made brandy. Shortly after Papou moved, he took Nitsa and me to the Italian Club that was housed in a huge old Victorian mansion just a block or two away from his new home. There he introduced us to bocce and pizza. For an hour or so, the serious competitors permitted our Papou to monopolize one of the bocce pits while he showed us how to play the game. We were novices not only at pitching the heavy ball with purpose (ours was simply to smash other balls), but at the eccentric poses and dramatic exclamations that seemed to be a necessary part of the game. The men playing in the neighboring pits were passionate about bocce. When Papou thought we had played enough, he took us to a table on the expansive porch that surrounded most of the aged mansion. Paint peeled from its window frames and exterior walls like bark shedding from a tree. A waiter took Papou’ s order and in a few minutes we each had an aromatic slice of something called “ pizza” and a glass of Coca-Cola in front of us. Papou had beer. The cheesy, tomato-covered slice, fragrant with oregano, was one of the great early experiences of my life. One Sunday in 1943, Papou and Adela had Papou’ s nephew with his wife and young son visiting from Glens Falls. The boy was about my age, eight or nine. After dinner, he and I went on a walk along the shore. It was cold and blustery

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with good-sized waves smashing against the rocks below the paved path that ran along the water. This section of Lower New York Bay coast faced almost directly to sea, so unlike the coast of the inner bay, there was no security fence to prevent looking out to the horizon. The security fences installed during the war along the shore of the upper Bay, past the Narrows between Bay Ridge and Staten Island, prevented anyone from easily counting ships as they assembled to form the convoys headed for Europe or from seeing them as they left. We climbed over the guardrail fence and down onto the rocks, challenging the waves and tempting fate while we searched the debris that washed up onto the rocks for treasure. What we found was a poplin life jacket, one we were sure a German spy had worn as he swam from a submarine to the shore. Our imaginations ran wild. We had to find the police, get to the FBI, and warn the country. We took turns dragging the water-soaked life preserver through the streets while asking passers-by where the police station was. Wandering at least one mile to the Eighty-sixth Street Precinct Police Station, we pulled the life preserver up the steps into the station and across the tiled lobby floor to the sergeant’ s desk. Breathless, we told him about the German spy and showed him our evidence. “ Get that damn thing out of here!” was the only response we heard. Frightened and confused, we dragged our evidence out of the station and down its steps, leaving it at the curb. We ran most of the way back to Papou’ s. “ Where-a-you-a-been?” Papou asked, “ You-a-late!” We did not answer him, my Mom, or Dad. Shrugging our shoulders we made for the dining room table and the mountain of cannoli, cookies and cakes that awaited us. Scrambled Eggs Between the ages of seven and nine, I was a sickly boy, suffering from intestinal problems of vague and uncertain origin. Dr. DeTata ordered that I be kept home from school for one year. My appetite had vanished and even the best of my mother’ s extraordinary cooking did not tempt me. Even worse, I was denied my staple food, Ebinger’ s hard icing, chocolate cream-filled layer cake. Poor Mom, frustrated by her inability to create meals that would generate an enthusiastic response from me, lamented the dark circles under my eyes and my skinny body. One rainy Saturday morning in March, Papou came to watch over me while Mom had her hair done and she and Nitsa went to downtown Brooklyn to shop at Namm’ s Department Store. It was early March, and I was looking forward to my ninth birthday. Just after Mom and Nitsa left the house, Papou asked me what I had eaten for breakfast. Not happy with the response, he said, “ I fix-a you some-a egg.” I was not enthusiastic but enjoyed sitting at the table in our large, warm, and well-lit

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kitchen while rain made chattering noise against the windows. Papou assembled the frying pan, mixing bowl, butter, eggs, bread, quince preserves, and a chunk of white feta cheese. After cracking two eggs and plopping them into a bowl, he came to the table to show me how much fresh black pepper and crumbled feta cheese to add to the mixture. Then, he demonstrated how to use the hand whisk to beat the egg and cheese mixture until it was frothy and filled with air, while saying, “ do-a like-a dis.” The frying pan already on the range had a generous dollop of butter slowly melting on its bottom. “ Not-a too-a hot,” he cautioned. “ Slow-a cook, mix all-a time.” His phrasing and articulation were not slow. In fact, he spoke quickly, quietly, and calmly. He never intimidated me. The eggs cooked slowly, very slowly, endlessly. As he stirred them continually with a wooden cooking fork, his hands deftly put bread in the toaster. He let me turn the toast because it was like playing with a toy. Our modern 1940 toaster glowed red-hot. Toasting required two steps. After the first side of the bread toasted, it was time to flip the bread to toast the other side. One did this by pulling the top of the hatch door-like side outward. It rotated down to table level, allowing the toast to slip down onto the toaster door, cooked side out. When the door closed, the untoasted side faced the hot elements. It worked every time. Meanwhile, the eggs in the frying pan set into soft curds, Papou’ s hand never ceasing its gentle stirring. Finally, he announced: “ Dey-a-don.” He buttered the slices of toast, spread a generous layer of quince preserves on them, and served the eggs and toast to me on a warm plate. We sat down, and he encouraged me to take a bite. Miracle cure! They were wonderful, delicious, and I ate everything on my plate, the eggs and the toast. Papou glowed. When Mom returned I greeted with her with the news. “ I ate all the eggs!” She asked Papou what the excitement was all about, and he told her how I loved his scrambled eggs. She frowned. She was, for an instant hurt that I had eaten Papou’ s cooking and not hers. But, that passed as she realized that her son had eaten food with enjoyment. Her feelings were totally resolved when as she saw me eating more and more of her wonderfully prepared meals. I never forgot how to make Papou’ s scrambled eggs.

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Mozzarella for Lily Though a stepfather, Papou adored Lily and did for her everything a caring father would do for his child. One of the more simple and thoughtful expressions of his feelings was the occasional delivery of fresh mozzarella procured from an Italian cheese factory somewhere on Sixteenth Avenue between Fifty-ninth and Sixty-ninth Streets. This Italian neighborhood was where our family doctor, Ettore De Tata, lived and practiced. The neighborhood provided most everything available from Italy or prepared for Italian kitchens whether fresh, dried, canned, or preserved. The cheese factory was one of the few local sources of fresh mozzarella, a delicately flavored, soft cheese that had not attained the rubbery texture of its mature state. Lily lavished this on warm Italian bread or fried under eggs swimming in butter. It lasted only for as long as it was fresh, perhaps two days. Papou went to Sixteenth Avenue on the Saturdays he was not at work. He filled bags with fresh Italian bread, capocollo, salami, provolone, olives, hot pickled cherry tomatoes stuffed with anchovy paste, bread, sardines, and whatever else he relished. These would compete with the Greek delicacies brought by my father from Eighth Avenue in Manhattan: feta, kasseri, kefaloteri, sardeles, elies [olives], tsiri, tarama, lakerda, and the myriad other foods that made our home like one of a Mediterranean village but set in Brooklyn. Sometime before noon on Saturday, Papou would return from his shopping spree and place the two large bags he carried on our kitchen table. With a smile that creased the corners of his eyes, he would fish out the package of cheese and hand it to my mother. I do not remember her ever hugging or kissing Papou, but her acceptance of the cheese was an embrace between them. Dresses from Papou After working closely with Eleni in the 1920s Louie found employment during the Depression first with Brooks Brothers as a tailor, and later with Junior Miss as a dressmaker. By the time my sister was ten or twelve, Leonardo was well established at Junior Miss, working closely with my mother’ s cousin Christos Capidaglis. He was a prominent designer known in the business as “ Capi.” At seasonal changes, at birthdays, and prior to special social events, Papou would appear at our front door late on a Saturday afternoon burdened with an armful of dresses, skirts, and blouses for my sister and mother. Nitsa and Mom would try on one garment after another while my mother and Papou marked them with tailor’ s chalk and pinned hems, waistlines, and bust lines for later correction. Nitsa and I had both learned to mark, to pin, to cut with scissors and pinking shears, to hem, to sew, and to press. Everyone in our home knew and practiced these skills. So, for several days we all worked on the garments until mother and Nitsa had their new fashions ready to wear.

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This went on even after Nitsa was married to Stanton H. Avitabile. While he was a medical student, they lived in a small apartment in the East Seventies near New York Medical Center’ s Cornell Medical School. Because their small apartment had little closet space, I would transport and exchange a carload of her wardrobe when the seasons changed. There were often new dresses from Papou in the delivery. In Louie’ s case, the old adage about the shoemaker’ s children did not apply. His children and grandchildren, though not of his blood, had the best that he could provide. It’ s-A-Horse-A-Toot! In the summers of the late 1940s Mom and Dad rented a cabin at Dover, New Jersey, in a lakeside, vacation community. Mom and Nitsa spent July and August there while I was at Boy Scout Troop 123s Camp Waramaug at Ten Mile River, New York. Dad would arrive at the cabin late on Friday evenings after leaving the steaming-hot streets of the Seventh Avenue fur market in Manhattan. On many Saturday mornings, Mom, Dad, and my sister would drive along the Delaware River through Port Jervis, New York, to Narrowsburg, Ten Mile River, and the camp. Dad was both an interested parent and a member of the Board that was responsible for the camp and its boys. When they arrived, the trunk of the green 1946 Hudson usually was filled with watermelon, corn, and other treats for all. [See Photo 49.] On the final Sunday morning of August in 1950, the last year that I was at the camp as its cook, Dad came to take my friends and me to Dover. That night, they would go on with him to Brooklyn. I was to spend the week with Mom and Nitsa at the cabin before I started my senior year in high school. We arrived at noon just in time for lunch. Mom and Nitsa were waiting, as were family friends and Dover neighbors George and Pearl Gigiakos, their daughter, Catherine, and Papou and Adela. Mom came to the door of her cabin immediately on hearing the boisterous sounds of hungry teenagers. There was no sound sweeter to her ears. There were kisses, hugs, and hurried instructions to start the barbecue, set the tables, toss the salad, and do all the other things necessary for a picnic. While these preparations were being made, my friends Dick Stillwell, Ron Moss, Don Kaye, Frank Johnston, Warner Shattuck, and I walked to the lake with Nitsa, Catherine, and two other of Nitsa’ s girl friends. We rode the carousel, jumping from animal to animal and reaching far out to reach for the brass rings. When one of us was successful, the hero was lauded with shouts and whistles.

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Photo 49

Lily, Jason, Jimmy Camp Waramaug 1947

Photo 50 Photo 51

Jason and Helene Helene’s College Graduation Jason’s 8th Grade Graduation (Wearing Phi Beta Kappa Key)

1948 1950

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After ten weeks at rustic Camp Waramaug [no electricity, no telephone] we thought ourselves as members of lost battalion returned from the rigors of the “ front” and were eager to make an impression on the young women. I doubt that we did, except as rowdy teenagers. When we returned to the cabin, hamburgers and hot dogs were sizzling on the barbecue. The picnic tables — there were two set under the trees — were loaded with platters of hot dogs, hamburgers, and cold fried chicken, bowls of macaroni salad, potato chips, roast peppers, mixed green salad, and coleslaw, cheese and olives, hot dog and hamburger buns, soft drinks, beer, and wine, jars of condiments — pickles, mustard, mayonnaise, relish, and catsup, a mountain of steaming golden corn dripping with hot butter, and desserts — Ebinger's apple pie and chocolate cake. We made my mother smile. Starved savages, we each devoured two or more hamburgers and two or more hot dogs, a breast or leg of chicken, and one or more generous portions of everything else on the table. Temporarily satisfied, we lay down under the trees while waiting for our stomachs to make room for dessert. Frank Johnson, a wiry, short, and olive skinned Norwegian-American (about half of us were still hyphenated) with very white teeth stretched, got up, and walked around the cabins kicking at small stones and clumps of grass that were in his path. In a few minutes he came back to show us an enormous molar that he had taken from a horse or cow jaw he had found behind one of the cabins. Popping it in his mouth he stumbled to the table where my grandfather and Adela were seated, groaned, and spat the tooth out onto the table moaning, "My tooth, my tooth!" Adela, startled, looked at the tooth and picked it up in her fingers. She scowled and declared authoritatively: "Dat’ s-a-not-a-you-a-toot. It’ s-a-horse-a-toot!" We all burst out laughing. We never forgot the picnic, and "It's a-horse-a-toot!" Piano Lessons Miss Morrow taught an elementary music class at our school and recruited private piano students from her first and second grade students. Nitsa and I studied with her for several years. She was a middle-aged spinster who lived with her brother and a German shepherd in a first floor apartment dominated by the 5' 6" grand piano that filled her living room. It was in this room and on that piano that her students performed in the annual recital. Parents jammed the living room and its adjoining dining room in tightly placed, folding chairs. It was usually hot with the proud recital-goers discomfort minimally relieved by the cross ventilation of an open front door and raised windows. Miss Morrow must have made some appeasing gestures to neighbors for her annual intrusion on their otherwise peaceful existences. In the hallway that

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led to the apartment’ s bedrooms, we students waited nervously standing or squatting in the order that we were to perform. Nitsa and I usually took our lessons on the same afternoon, Friday, between 3:30 and 4:30. Nitsa had her lesson first while I took the German shepherd for a walk. I hated that dog! Winter and summer, sunshine and rain, often in the snow, I walked that dog to the empty lot around the corner hoping that it would take care of its needs. Miss Morrow invariably asked, “ Did he do his business?” just as I sat at the piano for my lesson. During my lesson, I would sometimes hear footsteps in the hallway, murmuring directed at the dog, and perhaps a noise in the kitchen. I knew it was Miss Morrow’ s brother but felt threatened nonetheless. He was a mystery. Neither my sister nor I ever saw him. We knew he was back there only because we heard him. I was not a good student. I could learn enough by practicing — just enough — to keep Miss Morrow from complaining to my mother. Perhaps my time with the dog won me mercy. At recitals, I would make a run for the door just as my name was called, then dash down the street and wait for my mother, father, and sister to come out from the recital when it was over. Mom and Dad never chastised me for my stage fright, perhaps because of their satisfaction with Nitsa, who was Miss Morrow’ s best student and an excellent pianist. I continued to take lessons until the age of twelve when I became active in the Boy Scouts and the teenage organizations at Bay Ridge’ s Christ Church. After that, I had no time for lessons but I played popular music from Broadway shows for my own enjoyment. It never occurred to me to play for others. Basketball and other sports seemed to be the way to recognition and success, especially with teenage girls. Then, one Sunday afternoon, I happened to sit at a piano in a dark corner of a local church. I played some tunes softly while waiting for friends to finish their participation in a meeting. As I played, a girl peeked through the door and walked quietly to the piano. Within minutes there were four or five girls standing around me asking for a song from this or that show. Suddenly I, a total failure on the basketball court, was a complete success with these lovely girls. Music became a passion and I started to take lessons again. Books I discovered books on one warm spring Friday afternoon. I was walking home along Ridge Boulevard following my piano lesson at Miss Morrow’ s apartment on Seventy-fifth Street.

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As I crossed Seventy-third Street, I noticed a slight, gray-haired woman standing at the entrance to a building I had passed too many times to count. She smiled and beckoned to me to come closer. “ Hello,” she said. “ Would you like to see the library?” Intensive training governed my behavior. Extending courtesy to women, especially to older women, was high on the list of the expectations my mother made clear to me at a very early age. So, I walked to the bottom of the steps leading to the door of the building, and at her silent urging climbed the steps and entered. As I passed through the door I saw a large counter immediately in front of me. The floors were of two-inch-wide wood strips, grayed by age and wear. To my left and right there were rooms filled with row after row of bookshelves. To the right of the counter, stairs lead to a second floor. The woman guided me up the stairs to a large room. It included a small section with low shelves filled with books, and furnished with low tables and short chairs. A larger section of the second floor contained normally sized tables and chairs, tall bookshelves, a counter, and a desk. Books on music and art were in this larger section. “ Do you like adventure stories?” she asked. “ Look at these books,” she said pointing to a bookcase with three or four low shelves. “ Pick a book and bring it to the desk.” She sat behind the desk and busied herself with books and papers. I watched other children taking books from shelves, browsing through the pages, and returning them to their place. I did the same and came upon a book with a blue jacket. On its cover was a drawing of a huge, four-engine bomber pursued by fighter planes. The title was, Stratosphere Jim and his Flying Fortress. I opened the book and read the first page; it was a story.1 Timidly, I took the book to the woman at the desk. She smiled, asked my name, and whether I knew my address. I did. She wrote my name, address, and other words on two cards. One she kept and the other she handed to me while she quietly said: “ This is your library card. Bring it whenever you come to the library and borrow books you would like to read. You must return them in two weeks. Do you understand?” I thought I did, mostly. She stamped the due date on a card in the back of my book, explaining that it was the date the book was to be returned. I was a little confused, did not thank her as I left, and was not completely sure about the arrangement.

1 In March 2000, I purchased a good copy of Stratosphere Jim and his Flying Fortress

copyrighted in 1941, from a used bookstore in Tyler, Texas. The authors’ names are Oscar Lebeck and Gaylord Dubois. The book has a proud place in my library.

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With the book under my arm, I continued on to meet Mom at Thea Anastasia’ s apartment where she was visiting for afternoon coffee. On arrival, I kissed and was kissed by the ladies present, given cookies on a plate, and a glass of cold water flavored with a tablespoon full of dark, sweet cherry preserves, and allowed to sit in Jimmy and Anesti’ s room at the back of the apartment. Once comfortable, I opened Stratosphere Jim and entered the world of reading. What an adventure. The story was about a secret cave in the Rockies that hid development of a super bomber that Jim used to conquer evil. It was action-packed and exciting. I read for an hour until Mom collected me to walk home. I read before dinner and after dinner and finished the book before I went to sleep. The next morning, Saturday, I asked my mother if I could go to the library. I told her about my experience at the library the previous afternoon. She gave her approval and off I went. By noon, I returned home with three books, the maximum permitted, and began my exploration of the worlds opened to me the previous day. By the time I was twelve, I had read everything that interested me on the second floor, the children’ s floor, and under the supervision of the librarians, began to take books they approved for me out of the adult section on the first floor. At thirteen, I was allowed to select any book I wanted from the first floor. The librarian had spoken to my mother on the telephone and received permission for the library to let me make my own selections. Historical novels were my first interest. Then, I found books and plays of social commentary. These provided a mountain of ammunition to attack the status quo, and lots of air to inflate my sense of moral indignation. I must have been insufferable, especially to my conservative father. He listened to my ranting about the ills of the world that he and his generation perpetuated as we drove to and from hunting weekends. The Bay Ridge Public Library is still located at the corner of Seventy-third Street and Ridge Boulevard, opposite the lawn of Christ Church. The old building is gone, replaced by a modern facility. No matter. I can still see the red brick, the steps, and the gray-haired lady beckoning me to come in. Pennies Visiting my godfather’ s shop in the fur market was always a treat. He had entered business for himself after leaving the partnership with my Dad at the start of the Depression. My Nouno was a salesman, not a designer, matcher, cutter, or operator. He performed some simple manufacturing tasks, repairing a skin in a garment or a silk lining. His forte was catering to the vanity of the women who came to his shop to buy furs wholesale. Many, if not most, of his customers came from the contacts that his brother-in-law, Uncle Louis, provided: rich insurance clients, executives of Metropolitan Life, and their friends.

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The shop, located in one of the typically dingy buildings that served fur manufacturers, was relatively small. It had a solid front door with a second, wire- screen door that one could pass through only if “ buzzed in.” His showroom had a set of sofas that curved cocktail lounge-like around a formica-top table. One three- way mirror allowed eager customers to admire themselves in mink, fox, ermine, Persian lamb, or if Nouno was really lucky, Russian sable. No woman’ s fur-draped figure was denied exuberant praise. A walk-in vault contained countless coats, stoles, and jackets of all kinds. I liked to go into the vault and bury myself in the soft warmth. In the small shop there were: a matching and cutting table, perhaps fifteen feet long; three or four sewing machines; two tumblers for cleaning furs; and, a four-by-six-foot wooden frame that held nailing boards. Nouno sometimes had contract workers in the shop. Most often it was empty, except for George Gigiakos, a burly, big-faced Greek from Larissa, who looked always surprised or confused. He subleased space to nail garments to patterns as a non-union subcontractor and performed some work for Nouno, too. Occasionally, my Dad used the shop for his independent projects. In the late 1940s, Dad left Fierstein & Fierstein and struck out on his own, again sharing Nouno’s shop with him. My godmother Rose came to the market two days each week to keep Nouno’s books and to venture out to mid-town to shop and visit. I remember them pouring over the financial pages of The New York Times, checking their fortunes in the stock market. When I visited the shop, I often had lunch with Nouno. Sometimes Dad would join us with two or three other friends. Nouno sent me to a deli on the corner of Twenty-eighth Street and Eighth Avenue where sandwiches stuffed with selected cold cuts and provolone, and topped with sweet red peppers, olive oil and pepperocini were made on whole or half loaves of Italian bread. Each day the deli made literally hundred of sandwiches for delivery to the fur shops in the area. We would sit around the showroom table and enjoy the sandwiches, pickles, olives, beer (for the men), Coca-Cola (for me), and coffee. Nouno always tasked me to clean the shop for him. I swept the floors and the area around the sewing machines, organized the patterns on their wall pegs, and cleaned out the fur tumblers. For my efforts, I received pay: perhaps a quarter, or if I also cleaned the showroom, a half dollar. Once when I was eight or nine years, old I had finished my work and was waiting for my father to arrive. We were going to the Catskills for a weekend of shooting woodchucks and crows, and for the annual lamb roast. Passing the time, I stepped out onto the fire escape landing ten stories above the back alleys below and searched the rooftops and windows for anything of interest. In the summer, I sometimes spotted young women sunbathing on a rooftop!

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My fingers touched the small coins that were in my pocket. I took them out to count. Among the coins that made up my wealth were several pennies. I took one, held it out over the railing, and let it slip through my fingers. It fell so quickly that I lost sight of it before it hit the ground. So, I tried another, and another, and another. Then, I heard my Nouno’ s voice behind me. He said something like, “ You are so rich that you can throw money away?” That is all he said, ever, about what I was doing. I was ashamed. Nouno did not approve, and I felt that I had disappointed him. From that day on, I picked up every penny I ever found in the street and always thought, “ See, Nouno?” Miss Bosman Miss Mildred M. Bosman [“ Ms.” had yet to be invented] was an eighth-grade mathematics teacher at the K-8 public school that served the families in our neighborhood. It was P.S. 102. On Ridge Boulevard, the four-story building filled the half block between Seventy-first and Seventy-second Streets. A very large concrete playground that we called the schoolyard claimed several square inches of flesh from my knees and elbows. It was a place of personal humiliation as I was never able to compete successfully in running, hitting a ball, or getting a basketball through the hoop. Miss Bosman lived in one of the more elegant houses on Ovington Avenue, perhaps two-thirds of the way down the street from number 260 where we lived. [In Bay Ridge “ down the street” meant toward the Bay and a declining street number, and “ up the street” , the opposite.] As I passed her house four times every school day (going to — coming from — going to — coming from), I sensed her critical eyes watching me from behind curtained windows. If I were running as I approached the house, I slowed to a walk; if laughing and roughhousing, I became an acolyte, and even though I was curious, I stared straight ahead. I never knew whether she was there or not. I did not fear her. Miss Bosman was not threatening, physically or psychologically. But, down deep, I knew that she was a force to respect, and a person whose good graces were valued by parents and children alike. Miss Bosman was tall and slender. Her hair, pulled into a bun, was fine and light brown with generous strands of gray. She wore little or no makeup to give color to her very white skin and pale, thin lips. [In every attribute — manner, dress, and tone of voice — she was elegant.] I would cast Katherine Hepburn to play her in a film. Half the students at P.S.102 had Miss Bosman for eighth grade mathematics, elementary algebra. My sister did. The other half, me included, had Mr. Collins,

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whose classroom was at the other end of the hall from Miss Bosman’ s. We were on the fourth floor, which was assigned to seventh and eighth graders. Miss Bosman was dedicated to directing the academic paths — and therefore the futures — of children from immigrant families. She asked her fellow teachers which of their students showed promise in the basic skills — reading, writing and arithmetic — and were well-behaved. Then, having followed their progress long enough to confirm their opinion, she sometimes paid a personal visit to their homes. Both Nitsa and I received her attention. One late afternoon, my mother answered the doorbell to find a tall woman asking to speak to her. A few minutes later at our kitchen table, Miss Bosman, gently and with authority, told Mom that she had to see to it that we continued to do our homework and get good grades (A’ s). She made clear that Helene would attend Hunter College High School in Manhattan and that I would attend one of three high schools — Brooklyn Technical High School, the Bronx High School of Science, or Stuyvesant High School. These schools were academically competitive with the best private preparatory schools. They admitted students whose elementary school grades qualified them to take an entrance examination. Successful academic work at any one of these virtually assured acceptance to most colleges and universities in the United States. God only knows how many parents received guidance for their children during the years of Miss Bosman’ s career as a teacher. Because of her, countless children of immigrants attended the best public high schools of New York City and went on to college and to professional schools and careers. I hope Miss Bosman realized that she was appreciated. The Democratic Club Directly across the street from our brownstone was a huge Victorian home that must have once been the pride of Ovington Avenue. An almost equally impressive home to its left was owned by the grandmother of my next-door neighbor nemesis, Suggie, whose name was William. To the right of the Victorian was an apartment house whose tenants at one time or another included: Sonja Schnoll, the daughter of the owner of the dry goods store on Third Avenue; Diamond and Clara Papadiskos, cousins and newlyweds, whom my mother supervised; Aristede and Filareti Mavrovitis, my father’ s brother and his wife, newly arrived from Kastoria; and Patty, who with flaming red hair was one of the best stickball players and between-the-car football receivers on the block. She also favored several pubescent neighborhood boys by introducing them to sex. The Democratic Club was a mysterious place. Men went in and out of the Club at all hours. It was very quiet. There did not seem to be any meetings. If there were, they were very decorous and considerate of the neighborhood. On occasion, a uniformed police officer would go into the building and exit within a few minutes.

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My friends and I knew the name of only one man who came and went on an almost daily basis, Mr. Flynn. He always wore a conservative coat, tie, and hat. Sandy-haired, not short, nor tall, nor fat, nor skinny, he was sufficiently nondescript not to call attention to himself, except at Thanksgiving. Mr. Flynn played a significant role in our annual Thanksgiving Day celebration. We never dressed in costume at Halloween. For some reason, Thanksgiving was our day for costumes and begging. We would beg “ Anything for Thanksgiving,” expecting candy treats. Mr. Flynn had his own approach. Neighborhood children, mostly bratty boys, gathered just up the street from the Club at the corner of Ovington and Third Avenue at about ten o’ clock in the morning. We looked expectantly down Ovington for Mr. Flynn. When he came out of the Club, we would give him a cheer in greeting. When he reached the corner, he retrieved pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters from his pant pockets. These he hurled into the air. As they fell to the concrete pavement, we scrambled to gather all that we could. Knuckles and fingers bled as they scraped the ground in the frantic grab for riches. With his hat tipped back on his head, coat open, and hands at his waist, Mr. Flynn would rock on his feet and roar with laughter. Soon after becoming fourteen, I was leaving our brownstone and saw Mr. Flynn across the street walking toward the Club. He noticed me and motioned to me to come to him. “ Want to make a buck?” he asked. I had taken a liking to making money at about the age of eight when I ran a comic book brokerage operation on the front steps of our brownstone. Selling and exchanging comic books became a passion. It may have been a genetic expression of my Black Sea heritage, a throwback to the merchant Greek operating between the ports of the Black Sea and Constantinople. In any event, it was exciting and lucrative. It taught me to buy wholesale and sell retail, and to make exchanges with the percentages in my favor. I often shoveled the front steps of my emporium clean of snow and ice. They led to the formal second floor entrance to our home, Aunt Marion’ s entrance (she lived on the third floor for years, her rent paid by Mom’ s cousin “ Capi” , who she had divorced). Once inside, she continued up another flight of stairs to her apartment. We used the street level entrance. Not as elegant, it led to the large kitchen where we spent our family time and where most guests visited with us informally. Our dining room was on the first floor, too. It had a small sitting area. The larger parlor, three bedrooms, and a bath were on the second floor. My moneymaking ventures grew from the comic book operation to fall leaf cleaning and snow and ice removal at the grand Victorian homes in the Seventieth and Eightieth Street blocks of Bay Ridge below Third Avenue. Door-to-door

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collection of scrap paper for sale at the scrap dealer on Sixty-ninth Street was another way to make a few dollars. But, it was worth doing only when the scrap paper prices were high enough to warrant the time and energy needed to collect the paper and to compensate for the abuse that came from the angry derelicts that used this market as an income source for wine and beer. Mr. Flynn seemed to be offering me yet another opportunity to make money. I said, “ Yeah,” and followed him up the steps and through the front door of the Club. I was the only boy I knew who had ever crossed that threshold. I waited in the vestibule while Mr. Flynn disappeared down the hall. It was dark and quiet, but I could hear muffled voices and the ringing of telephones. In a minute or two, Mr. Flynn reappeared. He handed me a ten-dollar bill and told me to go to Lento’ s Bar on Third Avenue, pick up an order of pizzas, sandwiches, and drinks, and return right away. A one-dollar tip was my reward for executing his instructions to the letter. One dollar was a huge tip! Over the next three years, I made a routine of checking in at the Club after school and on Saturday afternoons to determine whether Mr. Flynn or one of his friends wanted me to run an errand. Often they did, and I was enriched by many dollar bills. Rumor had it that there was a bookie operation in the back of the Club. I do not know if the Democratic Club was a gambling front, but I do know that there were not any large meetings or busy activities there during elections. Snow Forts The first snowfall of the season was always a thrill, especially if it came while I was in class at P.S. 102. The child lucky enough first to see the white flakes falling past our windows would say the magic word, “ snow” and the entire class looked to the window and echoed the announcement, “ SNOW!” We longed for a substantial snowfall, at least six inches, because that made it possible to build snowmen and take our sleds for serious downhill racing at Owl’ s Head Park. It also gave us the opportunity to earn some money by shoveling snow for the elderly or the lazy. A twelve or more inch snowfall was even better, for we could do all of the above and build snow forts that made wars possible. These were our version of the scenes we saw acted out on Saturday afternoons in motion pictures playing at the local Loewe’ s Bay Ridge Theater. We were the sackers of cities, the besiegers of the fortified medieval towns of Europe, and protectors of the innocent. We built the forts in any empty space we found between cars, a fort taking away valuable parking space until the snow melted. We built them with walls twelve to

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twenty-four inches thick, as high as our shoulders, and with tunnel entrances. Sometimes there were three or four forts on our block. The snowball battles that ensued were ferocious and never fair. One fort usually had a contingent of bigger, older boys that included our infamous tomboy, Pat. They were all good pitchers. Wars would be fought with one group attacking the other’ s fort. The goal was to destroy its walls and disperse its defenders with as many direct hits as possible. We learned how to pack the walls of our snow forts and to sprinkle them with water when the temperature was low enough to freeze. This made breaking down defensive walls more difficult. Of course, the same technique could be used on snowballs, making the missiles thus manufactured near-deadly. During truces or in the absence of an enemy, passing cars, trucks and girls walking home from shopping on Third Avenue or from the Sixty-ninth Street B.M.T. subway station were opportune targets. One day, the driver of a black sedan happened to open his window just as we launched our missiles. Unluckily for him and for us, two or three of our usually ineffective snowballs went right through the window and into his face. The car skidded to a stop almost hitting a parked car. The driver came hurtling out the car door, yelling at us. We ran as fast as we could to Third Avenue, turned right, and headed toward Seventy-first Street. Halfway there, we dashed unnoticed past a busy Italian proprietor, down the aisle through his vegetable store and into his backyard, then being used as storage for Christmas trees. We must have hidden in that forest of evergreens for half an hour before having the courage to sneak back to Ovington to see if the coast was clear. It was. The man and his car were gone, and it was certain that he was not from the neighborhood; my mother never mentioned anything about what had happened. In our neighborhood, the news about misbehavior usually got home before you did. Greek Lessons Most children of Greek immigrants attended Greek language classes at their church. Nitsa and I had Kyria Ioanna [Madame Johanna]. I remember almost nothing about the woman that came to our home every week to give us an hour or two of private Greek lessons. Kyria Ioanna, who may have been a teacher in Greece, was quiet and gentle as she taught us. She had a son about whom she talked with Mom, who always had coffee, pastry, and a visit with her after our session. Poor Kyria Ioanna was frustrated with me. Several times she grabbed me by the shirt or arm as I tried to escape through the front door to avoid the hour. Nitsa, on the other hand, was a great student. Her lesson book was filled with As. Not mine.

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Oi-Y’ Oi One evening each month my father cleared the kitchen table to start his “ Oi- Y’ Oi” hour. The Yiddish idiom came right from the fur market where, when trouble loomed or something bad had happened, the immediate response often heard from the mouth of a Jewish furrier was “ Oi-Y’ Oi.” We interpreted it as “ Oh, Woe” or “ Oh, God help,” an expression of pain and suffering. Dad arrived home at about six in the evening, and after kissing my mother went into the small dressing room in the middle of the first floor of our home. He changed into his sweater and house slippers, came into the kitchen, and sat at the head of the table. Nitsa and I went to him to get our hug and kiss before Mom served him dinner. He ate while listening to Mom’ s news, and to H. V. Kaltenborne’ s commentary on the radio. Fulton Lewis Jr. and Lowell Thomas were other popular radio commentators of the time. On most evenings, Dad would go to the dining room after dinner and relax in the alcove sitting area by the front bay window. There, with a cup of Greek coffee, he read a newspaper, either the Tribune or the Journal American (he had read the Times on the way to work in the morning), or enjoyed the latest issue of The National Geographic. These were the days before we got our first television set. Often, a friend or relative would have joined him for dinner or one of our Greek neighbors would drop by unexpectedly for coffee and conversation. On “ Oi-Y’ Oi” night, Dad did not leave the kitchen. After the dinner dishes were cleared, he turned the table cover over to its green, felt side, the one that was used for card games. He retrieved a packet of envelopes and his checkbook from the drawer in the small table in the kitchen that held the radio and, one by one, opened the envelopes and arranged the bills they contained in front of him. Then, he methodically considered each bill and wrote a check to include in the payment envelope. Most he processed without any outward signs, but at least once or twice on every check-writing night we would all hear him utter softly, “ Oi-Y’ Oi” . I watched him pay the bills every month with no complaint or comment other than the occasional “ Oi-Y’ Oi” that might come from his lips, perhaps as he shook his head from side to side. It was a great lesson for me. This is what a father did. He earned for his family. He paid their bills. This was a man’ s role. This was expected. This was defining. Loewe’ s “ Bay Ridge Theater” & Chinese When Nitsa and I were students at P.S.102, we met Mom most every Wednesday after school at Loewe’ s Bay Ridge Theater to see the midweek double feature. On Saturdays, after the shopping was done and household chores were finished, we would go to the theater again to see the next double bill. Featured films usually changed twice each week.

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Sometimes on Saturdays, I would be sent on ahead to a small cigarette and newspaper stand on Seventy-first Street, just down from Third Avenue, to purchase a package of Spud Tips cigarettes for Mom. She smoked eight to ten cigarettes each day until she had her first heart attack in 1945. I met Nitsa and Mom at Dorfman’ s Fountain and Ice Cream Parlor. It was next to the theater. Nitsa and Mom would have roast beef sandwiches on whole-wheat toast with mayonnaise and a milkshake. I would order a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on white bread with the crusts removed and a chocolate-malt. [I was fussy.] We always sat in the loge, where Mom could smoke. I was intrigued by what people were doing in the balcony behind us. Teenagers seemed not to be interested in the movies and almost squeezed themselves into one seat. Mom told me not to look behind me. But, I did. While scary movies were Nitsa’ s delight, I hid under the seat during anything remotely spooky or terrifying. I loved musicals and swashbuckling films with swordplay. When I got home after one of my favorites, I imagined myself either as a piano-playing composer who could dance his way around the world with grace and ease, or an expert swordsman. Every boy in the neighborhood became an expert swordsman after an Errol Flynn swashbuckler like “ Captain Blood” or “ The Sea Hawk” , and we hurried home to play swords, which we pronounced sounding the “ w” and exactly as spelled. Mr. Kramer, who owned the local hardware store on Third Avenue, looked forward to films that featured swordsmanship. He stocked inexpensive funnels and one-quarter- inch dowel sticks for such occasions. We would buy these and fit the funnel over the stick as a hand guard. Voilá, a sword! Up and down the street and on the steps of the brownstone houses that became our ships-of-the-line we fought each other valiantly, having a great time until some older boys came along with three-eighth or half-inch dowel sticks and broke our swords into pieces. The best thing that could happen when we were in the movies was for the weather to turn cold and for it to snow. There was nothing like coming out of the Bay Ridge Theater into an already dark winter evening with snow falling and piling up on the ground. It was even better when Dad was away hunting with Bill Rusuli and Louie Dimitroff and Mom planned for us to eat Chinese. If that were the case, Mom would give me money and I would go on to the Chinese restaurant between Sixty-ninth Street and Ovington on Third Avenue while she and Nitsa headed home to set the table and boil water for tea. The Chinese restaurant had a picture of General Chang Kai-shek in its red lit window. Inside it was dimly lit, had colorful scenery painted on its walls, smelled wonderfully to a hungry young boy, and was mysterious. The only other Asian

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people I knew operated the laundry on Ovington, just up and across the street from us. They were exotic people who spoke very little English. A Chinese man took my order: four egg rolls, one quart of chicken chow mein, crispy noodles, steamed rice, and almond cookies. We were not very adventuresome in our choice of Chinese cuisine. He hurried my order back to the kitchen that was visible from where I sat and waited by the front window. There were men in back in light shirts wearing bandanas around their heads and talking strangely as they mixed ingredients in a curious, large black frying pan with high sides that I later learned was a wok. When it was ready, the manager brought the order to the cash register in a large brown shopping bag. Heavy paper containers held the food. I paid and left with the warm bag pressed to by chest, so good to carry in the cold night with snow falling on my face. The smell of the food intensified my hunger. The kitchen was bright and warm when I arrived home, and in a very few minutes Mom, Nitsa and I were enjoying chow mein and tea in the comfort of our kitchen. Carmen I was ten years old when my mother, or my godmother, or both, decided that it was time for Nitsa and me to be exposed to opera. One Saturday morning, I was ordered to bathe and dress up: white shirt, blue suit, and tie. We were going to New York. We always said that we going to New York when we were on the way to Manhattan, as if Brooklyn were unworthy to be considered part of the metropolis. We met my Nouna outside of the Fifty-sixth Street subway station behind Carnegie Hall and walked to Fifty-fifth Street, where between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, there was a theater entrance with exotic colored, oriental columns. It was the New York City Center, a building that during the Second World War had been converted from a Shriners’ Temple to a theater by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. I had no idea of what I was to see. I remember that we were seated on the right side of the orchestra, close to the stage. The houselights dimmed and a man’ s head appeared in a spotlight just below the stage in front of us. He raised his arms, brought them down and the house filled with the opening bars of the overture to the opera, Carmen. The next three hours were a miracle. Music, singing, color, dance, action, and passion bombarded me. I had only a fuzzy understanding of the story, but an immediate connection was made. I loved opera. I loved musical theater.

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Just weeks later, I wrote a paper for my fifth grade class about opera, specifically about Carmen. I think that my teacher’ s positive response to my paper reinforced my interest. It surprises me that my first exposure to opera did not come accompanied by my father, who was passionate about the form. He did see to it that we listened more and more to his collection of old 78s [78 rpm recordings that were displaced by 45 rpm and 33 rpm media in the 1950s] of Enrico Caruso and Beniamino Gigli, and to the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts on Saturday afternoons. Eventually, we went with him to see and hear performances at the “ old” Met, at Broadway and Thirty-ninth Street. On Friday evening, November 17, 1950, we were driving past the Met after having dinner in the city following Christmas shopping. Mom turned and said, “ Jimmy, let’ s go to the opera!” He double-parked the car, jumped out, and returned in a few minutes with four tickets to Mozart’ s Don Giovanni. It was the night of Roberta Peters’ debut at the Met as a last minute replacement in the role of Zerlina. She was a smash! Spring Cleaning — Fall Cleaning After my mother suffered her first heart attack in September of 1945, my sister and I assumed household responsibilities. Treatment for a heart attack in 1945 consisted of morphine for pain at the time of the attack and months of recuperative bed rest. Mom spent almost six months in bed, a lifetime for an active, energetic woman. I remember a conversation at the kitchen table with our Dad when Nitsa and I told him we that were going to take over the household and for him not to think about arrangements for our care that we had heard him discuss with relatives. Nitsa, at fourteen, was the leader. She made out shopping lists for me, saw to the laundry, and did most of the cooking. I was eleven and did the grocery shopping, heavy house cleaning, some cooking, and lots of dishwashing. By the time we left for school in the morning, we had served Mom breakfast and prepared her for the day. We learned to help her bathe in bed and to carry bedpans. Thea Anastasia would arrive as we went out the door to stay with Mom all day until we arrived home from school to take over. She did this every school day until my mother was well. Dad gave her a beautiful Persian lamb coat in gratitude; she would not take money. The radio kept me company on Saturdays as I cleaned house. My assignments included washing and waxing the linoleum floors that covered the kitchen and hallway of the first floor. Since it was fall, I performed this duty while listening to the Army (West Point) football games and the heroics of Glenn Davis and Doc Blanchard.

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My chores continued after Mom was back on her feet. She developed angina and used nitroglycerin tablets and Teachers Scotch as heart medication and to control her anxiety, respectively. Somehow, she managed the stairs. I believe that going up and down them improved circulation to her heart muscle. Dad had Mom arrange for a housekeeper to come every week to clean the bathrooms, dust, vacuum, and help wherever needed. The woman was a poor Greek immigrant widow with a son and daughter. If she had to clean houses to make ends meet, she could have found no better house than ours. Mom was a sympathetic, compassionate, and generous woman who provided much more than the few dollars the housecleaner asked for her services. I still had my chores to do, and my responsibilities expanded to include semiannual house cleanings at the vernal and autumn equinoxes. I would roll up the summer (or winter, if that were the season) carpets. The summer carpets were of thick cotton, and the oriental winter carpets of wool. There was one carpet in the first floor dining room, one in each of the three rooms on the second floor, two that ran the length of the hallways on the first and second floors, and a one that covered the staircase between the first and second floors. First, I scattered mothballs over a carpet, then rolled it and tied it securely. Finally, I wrapped it in a tarpaper that provided even more protection against moths. I carried all the carpets to the basement and lay them temporarily on the floor. The next part of the job was to wash and wax the hardwood floors that covered the entire second floor and half the first floor of the house. When that was done, I carried the replacement carpets appropriate to the season up from the basement, unwrapped and unrolled them, vacuumed them, and placed the furniture where it belonged. Then, I changed drapes, bundling those taken down for delivery to the cleaners. Finally, I took the carpets I had put on the floor in the basement and stored them on the shelf used for the purpose. By the end of the day, I was very tired. I showered, enjoyed a huge dinner, and felt good about my efforts. Christmas Until I was five or six, Santa Claus was real and he brought Christmas to our home on Christmas Eve while Nitsa and I slept. Of course, she knew the truth before I did but kept the secret. Mom and Dad would wait until I had fallen to sleep and then bring in the tree, set it in our second floor parlor, decorate it, and pile presents beneath it. When I awoke Christmas morning, everything was in place.

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There were rules to follow. Before any presents could be opened Nitsa and I had to wash our faces and comb our hair, and drink a glass of orange juice. Our first present was a sock that contained an orange and five or six wrapped pieces of coal. The latter represented the naughty things we had done during the past year. When I was able, the job of setting up the Christmas tree became mine. Nitsa would help, but I did the heavy work. Then, she and I would decorate the tree often inviting friends to help us. It became an annual event, a tree decorating party. The magic was still there for me. I remember waking before dawn, and in the darkness, staring at the tree from my bed in the next room. I was able to make out the ornaments by the glow of the streetlights and passed the endless time until dawn by counting them. There were favorite ornaments that I could identify if I tried hard enough. There was only one Christmas Day in my first nineteen years that we did not spend at home. It was during the Second World War, in 1944. My godparents and Uncle Louie invited us to their apartment on the upper West Side for Christmas dinner. A beautifully decorated tree graced the living room. It stood before the fireplace, next to a grand piano. The dinner table was elegant, decorated with sprays of pine, red candles and ribbons, and little red sleigh placeholders with Santa Clauses. These we took home with us. I remember one topic of conversation. The adults complained about a young singer who had performed at the Paramount Theater during the past year. A threat to decent society, he made fools out of teenage girls. His name? Frank Sinatra. Christmas at home was celebrated with twenty or more friends and relatives at our dinner table. Cocktails and hors d’ oeuvres [mezedes] preceded dinner that always started with a traditional soup, patsa. It was made with pork head, feet, and hocks; it was boiled for hours with a whole head of garlic, and strained. Then, the meat was removed from the bones and placed back into the broth, which was colored with paprika fried in pork fat, and flavored with wine vinegar. The soup made one’ s lips sticky because of its high gelatin content. Mom cooked enough of it for us to eat cold and hot during the whole week of Christmas. Stuffed pickled cabbage leaves (sauerkraut), a traditional Macedonian and Thracian dish called sarmades followed. The cabbage came from the pickling crocks in our basement. If none were available, Mom used fresh cabbage and cooked the sarmades in a bed of store-bought sauerkraut. Turkey with a bay leaf, cumin, cinnamon, and allspice— seasoned stuffing of ground meat, bread, onions, pignoli nuts, chestnuts, parsley, and currant raisins was one of the main courses, as was a Virginia ham or roast suckling pig. Serving dishes of sweet potato, rice (pilaf), Brussels sprouts, and cranberry sauce covered the table. Nuts, cheese and fruit followed the meal. Later, Mom would serve coffee (Greek and regular) and dessert. Dad usually had made kadaifi, a version of baklava

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made with shredded wheat-like dough, and a candy, soutzouki, made from Muscat grape juice. If he had not already done so at Thanksgiving, Dad might open a crock of brandied fruit that he had carefully prepared beginning in August. He layered one fruit on top of another as each came in season, preserving all in a bath of Metaxa, a Greek brandy. Making of soutzouki was complicated. Dad boiled Muscat grape juice with very clean oak ash until the juice thickened. The ash, whose thickening properties are a mystery, came from Carelas’ farm. On a hunting weekend, Dad burned oak in a clean fireplace, allowed the embers to die out overnight, and bagged the ash to take home. The thickened juice was filtered through several layers of cheesecloth until it ran clear, then returned to the fire to boil again. When he thought the mixture was ready Dad had us dip necklaces of half walnuts that had been strung on long pieces of cotton thread into the viscous liquid, time and again, until layers of the thickened grape juice gradually adhered to the nuts and formed a sausage-like roll covering them. When they were about one inch in diameter, he dusted the rolls with powdered sugar and cut them into half-inch pieces. Delicious! In 1943, at the height of the War, several of our family’ s young men were home on leave from the Army. Tom Papanas, Diamond Papadiskos, Elias Demitriades, Anesti and Jim Zelios, and others were with us on Christmas Day. The house was packed and Mom, wanting the young men to enjoy themselves, made telephone calls to every Greek home with a daughter in Bay Ridge. By seven in the evening, our parlor on the second floor was converted into a dance floor with a Christmas tree at its head, and filled with young men and women. The party went on for hours. I remember how happy my mother was to provide a good time for these young men, all of whom returned at the end of the War. There were many Sundays during the War that Mom collected soldiers and sailors at the back of the church and brought them home for a family dinner. New Year’ s Eve and Day When Nitsa and I were very young, we would have a babysitter on New Year’ s Eve. Mom and Dad would meet my godparents, Bill and Rose Rusuli, and Rose’ s brother, Louie Dimitroff, who was accompanied by one of his girlfriends, at the Astor Hotel for the celebration. Dinner and dancing at the rooftop, horseshoe ballroom of the Astor would be followed by a three-in-the-morning breakfast at Toffenetti’ s across from the Astor on Times Square, or perhaps at an open Child’ s or Schraft’ s. Schraft’ s, incidentally, had a chain of small restaurants that offered wonderful ice cream sundaes. We were trained to be very quiet when we woke on New Year’ s morning. Under our beds we would find New Year’ s hats, noisemakers, confetti, and streamers brought from the hotel ballroom. I waited as long as my patience held out before

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making tentative use of the rattles and whistles. Nitsa would scowl at me. She was far too sophisticated for the toys that amused me. The first time we were allowed to stay at home alone on New Year’ s Eve, Nitsa was probably twelve and I, nine. We decided to make chocolate chip cookies. I do not remember helping very much, but I do remember eating tablespoons full of the uncooked dough and the upset stomach that followed. Nitsa reported my condition to our parents when they called just before midnight. Unalarmed, Mom told Nitsa to put me to bed. The following year, Mom and Dad took Nitsa and me with them on New Year’ s Eve. My godparents, Nouno Bill and Nouna Rose were there. For some reason, Uncle Louie was not with us. I remember only the incredible size of the room, the bright lights, the band, and a beautiful blond vocalist. Nouno saw that I was taken by her. At some point after dinner he left the table returning a little while later with the young lady in tow. She asked me to dance with her. I was completely flustered, not a clear thought in my head. But, I danced; I danced with Bette Hutton who would a year or two later begin a Hollywood career capped by her performance as Annie, in Irving Berlin’ s Annie Get Your Gun. New Year’ s Day was very special. It started mid-morning with Happy New Year hugs and kisses at the kitchen table in the middle of which was a beautiful golden-brown, round loaf of Vasilopita [St. Basil’ s Bread]. An annual gift from Thea Anastasia, it was fragrant with the smell of mahlepi, the ground kernel of the wild cherry tree. Hidden in it was a silver coin, which was believed to bring St. Basil’ s blessing to the lucky person who found it in their slice of the loaf.1

Dad made the sign of the cross three times over the bread before he cut it into wedges: the first piece, for our home, the second for himself, the third for Mom, the fourth for Nitsa, the fifth for me, and what remained, for all the people in the world. The coin was placed in a small glass with wine, and set by the icon and its lamp in our home. When the little glass contained three or four years worth of coins, Mom would wash them and take them to church, where she deposited them in the tray for the poor. Mom usually made scrambled eggs with feta cheese on New Year’ s morning, and served a platter of homemade loukanika, a sausage that she had made in the early fall and hung to dry and cure in our basement. Buttered, toasted slices of the Vasilopita, with orange-amber quince preserves spooned on them, accompanied the eggs and sausage.

1 St. Basil was born in Cappadocia (west-central Asia Minor) about the time that

Constantine the Great founded Constantinople (326 A.D.). A brilliant scholar and philosopher, he was ordained and eventually became a bishop. He is revered as one of the most distinguished leaders of the early church, and for his love and work for the poor and sick.

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After our late brunch, we bathed, and dressed in our best. In the early afternoon, Dad went to the Greek florist on Sixty-ninth Street, just up from Third Avenue, and then walked back across Third Avenue to get our car from the garage. Boxed and under his arm would be two dozen, long-stemmed red roses that he had ordered days before. When we were all in the car, we began the drive to our destination: 157th Street and Riverside Drive in Manhattan. During the Second World War, when Dad refused to own an automobile and use precious gasoline needed by the military, we made the long trip by subway. Dad drove from Bay Ridge to downtown Brooklyn and, pre-war, over the Brooklyn Bridge. After the war, he used the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel to reach the elevated West Side Highway, the elevated highway from the Battery to Fifty-seventh Street, which is now long gone. New Year’ s Day 1946 was particularly grim. Dark, heavy clouds threatened to add more inches of snow on top of that already on the ground. We had a 1930s vintage LaSalle that Dad bought just after the war ended, before he bought a new 1946 Hudson from Papou Perna’ s relatives in Little Falls. The heating system in the La Salle was nearly non-existent. Nitsa and I were bundled in blankets in the back seat. Dad drove the plowed city streets that day. Broadway, which north of Columbus Circle was lined with small shops, had very few pedestrians. Automobiles on the side streets and even on Broadway were buried under snow banks made by the city’ s plows. Decorations and blinking lights in store windows seemed gaudy and shabby in the grey light of a post-Christmas, snowy winter afternoon. When we arrived at the building where my godparents and Uncle Louie lived, a doorman in formal dress opened the front door for my mother. She, Nitsa, and I went into the building’ s lobby while Dad drove the car to a nearby garage where Uncle Louie kept his Buick. Arrangements had been made for Dad to leave his car there for the afternoon. The lobby had a tiled floor, with wide red carpet that was easily one hundred feet long and led from the front door to the three elevators that served the building. French doors to one side of the lobby opened onto a small garden that was deep in snow, and on the other side to a walkway that led towards Riverside Drive. We waited for Dad in a lounge close to the elevators where a Christmas tree twinkled and a crackling fireplace warmed our hands, faces, and spirits. The elevator operators greeted my mother as we waited, and made comments about how Nitsa and I had grown. When Dad arrived, roses in hand, the doorman announced our arrival to my godparents by phone, and we entered an elevator for the ride to the twelfth floor.

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As Nouno answered the doorbell, Nitsa and I broke into our song: Aios Vasilis Airhaitai, [“ Saint Basil is Coming” ], the hymn for St. Basil. It was Nouno’ s name day, which he celebrated every year with a New Year’ s Day open house. Nouna came to the door, greeted and kissed us all, accepted the roses from Dad, and handed them to a maid, who, within minutes, put them in a beautiful vase and placed it on the grand piano. The apartment was already bustling with guests, most of whom my parents knew. The twelfth floor apartment was elegant and larger than many homes. It looked north over the Hudson River with a view of the George Washington Bridge and the New Jersey Palisades. The front door entry opened onto a foyer dominated by an oil portrait of Uncle Louie resplendent, white-haired, and sporting a boutonnière, his constant accessory. Directly ahead of the foyer was a large living room with French doors opening onto a small terrace. The dining room was to the left of the living room. The rest of the apartment consisted of three large bedrooms, two baths, a kitchen, and maid’ s room with bath. There was a service entrance to the kitchen. As on other New Year’ s Days, there was a magnificent Christmas tree in the living room, to one side of the fireplace. Its limbs were meticulously draped with silver tinsel, each piece perfectly placed an eighth of an inch from its neighbor. Ornate lights shaped like little trees, houses, sleighs, and Santa Clauses twinkled, some miraculously blinking on and off. Under the tree, Nouna, Nouno, and Uncle Louie displayed the Christmas gifts they had received. It was ostentatious. Guests were wide-eyed at cashmere scarves, handmade silk lingerie (half hidden under tissue), suede jackets, and other equally luxurious items. The fireplace had imitation logs, with a multicolored lamp hidden in them. The heat of the lamp turned a small, slotted umbrella-like device set on it, and it created a firelight effect. To the right of the fireplace was a grand piano. On top of its embroidered, long-fringed cover, photographs surrounded the vase that held the roses that Mom and Dad had given to Nouna Rose. The dining room table was festively decorated and covered with a sumptuous buffet: Virginia ham, smoked whole turkey, smoked salmon, roast beef, small bowls containing salmon roe, salads of several kinds, breads, and condiments. A waiter and two maids served drinks and canapés, cleared plates, and otherwise allowed Nouno, Nouna, and Uncle Louie attend to their guests. Occasionally, Nouno or Uncle Louie would show special favor by personally preparing and serving a drink to someone.

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In retrospect, I note that Greek delicacies were noticeably absent from the buffet. This was one of many indications that Rose, Bill, and Louie consciously had separated themselves from the world of immigrants and become assimilated as New Yorkers. The scene could well have been in a 1930s motion picture. Nouno and Uncle Louie wore deep maroon, velvet house-jackets with silk lapels. One or the other might be wearing very elegant, leather house shoes, not slippers, but shoes without soles, made specifically to be worn indoors. Silver martini shakers, CO2-charged crystal containers that dispensed carbonized water into high ball glasses, bottles of superior Scotches, whiskies, and gins on a serving cart, maids with white hats and aprons, cigars, cigarettes, furs, and other props in vogue in the 1930s were everywhere. Few of the guests measured up to the sophistication the picture demanded. Nitsa and I sat wide-eyed in a corner, alert to any social demand that might be made of us. Our goal was to be unobserved. But, inevitably the moment came and Nouna asked us to play a few Christmas carols on the piano. It had not been tuned for years and was, to the best of my recollection, opened only on New Year’ s Day. It was just another piece of elegant furniture, and a place to display photographs. Nitsa was the star, the soloist. She played effortlessly. She had devised a strategy to keep me from flubbing under stress: I joined her in two or three duets. So, I satisfied Nouna’ s command for a performance by playing as quietly as I could on the lower registers of the piano, while Nitsa provided musical acrobatics in the upper registers. She made me look good. There must have been a dozen or more godchildren competing for the attention of Nouno, Nouna, and Uncle Louie. They were the most successful and cosmopolitan of the immigrant friends and relatives in their circle, and were therefore the most sought-after as sponsors for the children of the set. Parents competed with each other through the accomplishments of their children, inflated beyond recognition as described to the three godparents. People came and left as the afternoon wore on. Mom and Dad were always quietly asked to stay until there were but two or three families left — those closest to the hosts and hostess. Coffee and dessert were served, and after an hour of relaxed conversation we left, walking two blocks in the cold and through snow before the long ride home to Brooklyn. Pascha [Easter] Pascha culminated the forty days of spiritual and physical preparation undertaken during the Great Lent. The forty days were meatless in our household. We did not suffer much as there were abundant cheese, egg, fish, and bean and pasta dishes to

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enjoy. However, abstention from meat made us continually aware that we were in a period of religious observance. Palm Sunday initiated Megali Evthomadtha, the Great Week of Lent commonly known as Holy Week. We participated in the traditional religious services, activities, and celebrations that made the most important religious holiday in the year so special. One of the difficulties we faced was the fact that the Greek Orthodox dates for Easter and those of the western Christian churches coincided only three times in a ten-year cycle. In seven of the years, the Greek Orthodox Easter might be celebrated as many as five weeks after the western Easter. The reason for this divergence is the historical existence of three calendars: the Julian, the “ Revised” Julian and the Gregorian. Jews in different regions of Europe who were part of the Diaspora that resulted when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and its Temple in 70 A.D., became governed by several dissimilar pagan calendar systems. Different calendar systems caused the date set by the Jews for Passover to vary depending on their location. Confusion in Europe over the proper date for Passover caused western Christians to stop using the date as one of the data points for establishing the date for Easter. Rivalry between the western and eastern churches and the conservative rigidity of the “ Old Calendarists” of the Russian Orthodox Church did not help matters. In any event, we frequently found ourselves carrying palms on the day that the rest of the country was celebrating Easter, or celebrating Easter weeks after the Easter Parade on Fifth Avenue was history. If our Palm Sunday was not Easter for the rest of the country, we returned home from church or went to a seafood restaurant for a traditional fish dinner. This was the last day in Lent that we were allowed to eat seafood (meat was already disallowed). If our Palm Sunday were Easter for the rest of the country, we would proceed from church to Fifth Avenue in Manhattan to walk in the Easter Parade. We often met my godparents and Uncle Louie at Rockefeller Center. We enjoyed the display of lilies, and Mom, Nouna, and Nitsa took in the latest fashions. Often, there were outlandishly dressed women, some with deer, small lions, or other exotic animals in tow. Leashed and out of their element, I suspect the poor creatures were in shock as they were dragged through the crowds. One “ American” Easter Uncle Louie suggested that we go from Fifth Avenue over to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel on Park Avenue for brunch. The lobby of the hotel had been turned into a great dining room filled with lilies. At one side of the

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vast space, an elevated stage held a chorus and orchestra that performed seasonal music. When we arrived, the Maitre d’ told Uncle Louie that all the tables were reserved. I saw a green twenty dollar bill pass gracefully from Uncle Louie’ s hand into that of the Maitre d’ , and out of nowhere there appeared men who carried a table and chairs to the front and center of the space below the stage. The Maitre d’ uttered profuse apologies for having “ misplaced” Mr. Dimitroff’ s reservation. Orthodox services presented the liturgical drama of Jesus’ last days every evening of Holy Week: His betrayal, trial, execution, burial, and resurrection. We attended Saints Constantine and Helen parish on Brooklyn’ s Schermerhorn Street, where Dad had served on the Parish Board at the time the congregation first formed. It was small and dark, had low ceilings, and lacked adequate ventilation. So, for a child whose face came only to the waist level of most worshippers, the services were uncomfortably hot, and the air stifling, thick with the smoke of candles and the scent of incense. There was a crush of worshippers at the Holy Week services. I was mesmerized by the candles, glimmering icons, shining red oil lamps, incense, and chants of the priest and his psaltis. On Holy Thursday morning, we went to church together as a family to receive holy unction and communion. Having fasted in preparation for communion, Dad took us to a cafe for breakfast after the service, before he went to work and we returned to Bay Ridge and our school day. I always enjoyed these special family breakfasts. After school, we helped Mom dye Easter eggs, a task traditionally performed on Holy Thursday. Thea Anastasia made the sweet, chalah-like bread, Lambropsomo, for us with red eggs embedded in its sesame seed-covered crust. Lambropsomo is translated literally as ‘bread of light.” The service on Good Friday evening is a service of lamentation, first for the death of Jesus and second for our personal failings. Its centerpiece is a flower-covered representation of Jesus’ tomb, the epitaphion. I remember craning my neck to be sure that fragrant rose scented water sprinkled on me as the priest processed through the church flicking the silver vessel, the randistirion, to bless the worshippers with holy water. Even as a child, I was moved by the emotion conveyed in the service and its music. We were given flowers from the epitaphion to take home to place at our candle-lit icons. Finally it was Saturday, Easter eve. While we had fasted throughout Lent, a stricter fast began on Holy Thursday. We ate only plain vegetables and grains (without any oil or animal fats), and slices of halvah, a sweet, solid cake of ground sesame seeds. By now, our refrigerator contained a spring lamb, lamb heads, organ meats, and all the makings of a feast.

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On Saturday, Mom began preparation of the traditional soup, mageritsa, by boiling lamb heads, neck, liver, and lungs in a great pot (unlike most Greek cooks, she did not use lamb tripe). Later, she would strain the broth, cut the meat into small pieces, and add rice. Just before serving the soup, she made the avgolemeno [egg-lemon mixture] and added it to the soup with fresh minced dill and parsley. She also minced lamb organ meats, including kidneys, browned them in butter and fat taken from the lining of the lamb’ s stomach, and mixed the meat with onion, parsley, cumin, allspice, bay leaves, and cinnamon. Once well browned, she put the mixture into a pan that was lined with net-like fatty tissue from the lamb’ s stomach. Covered like a pie with the same tissue, it was baked until brown and crispy. This was a version of kokoretsi, a delicacy of spiced organ meats that villagers formed into an intestine-wrapped roll and barbecued over hot coals as an appetizer. I could not wait for Easter Day. On Easter eve, we ate a simple, early dinner. By 6:30 we were put to bed to nap until 9:00, when Mom got us up. Nitsa and I washed our faces and hands, brushed our hair, and dressed into our best clothing. Just before 10:00 we left Brooklyn in our car with the radio set to the Chicago Theater of the Air, a program that featured great lyric operettas like “ The Vagabond King,” “ No, No, Nanette,” and “ The Merry Widow” . It was one of my father’ s favorite radio shows. It was sponsored by The Chicago Tribune whose editor, Col. Robert R. McCormick, provided long, unmemorable commentaries between the acts. We would listen as Dad drove us to East Seventy-fourth Street in Manhattan and sought out a parking place close to Holy Trinity Cathedral. We arrived early and close to the front of the church to hear all of the Odes of Lamentation. By midnight the cathedral was filled. Prominent Greek diplomats and socialites sat in a special section in front of the iconostasion, on either side of the Royal Gate that opened to the altar. Latecomers stood, packed in the aisles. I remember especially a Greek Air Force officer who attended services for several years. Probably attached to the United Nations or the Greek Consulate, he wore a beautiful blue-gray uniform with many decorations. He was somehow handsome and the epitome of dignity and grace in spite of a terribly disfigured face. It was covered with scar tissue, perhaps the result of severe burns. For reasons that I did not consciously understand, I felt a bond with this man and wished to know him. At midnight, the cathedral’ s lights were extinguished and we sat in complete darkness. In a minute or two there was a flicker of light from behind the iconostasion, then another. The Archbishop came forth from the Great Gate and sang (in Greek): “ Come ye and receive the light from the unwaning life. Glorify Christ, who arose from the dead.” Soon after, he announced: “ Christos Anesti!” and the congregation fervently responded “ Alithos Anesti!” [Christ is risen! —

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Truly He is risen!] The faithful followed the Archbishop and the priests into the street where the service continued and an enthusiastic congregation sang the triumphant, stirring, resurrection hymn “ Christos Anesti” [Christ is Risen] countless times. Many onlookers watched the service from open windows of the apartment houses that lined East Seventy-fourth Street. While outside, we met my godparents and Uncle Louie to declare, “ Christos Anesti!” and to perform the Easter egg ritual. One participant holds a hard-boiled, red-dyed Easter egg in hand, while the other strikes it with his or her own egg (point to point, rounded end to rounded end). The person with the strongest egg, the one that does not crack, wins “ good fortune.” Because of my mother’ s heart condition and her need to be up early the next morning to prepare the Easter feast for the family and its guests, we did not go back into the cathedral for the liturgy which lasted until after 2:30 in the morning. Had circumstances been otherwise, Dad would very much have liked to stay, as we had before Mom’ s illness. We carried our lit candles home in the car to the amazement of passengers in other cars and pedestrians who saw us. When we arrived at our front door, we made the sign of the cross at its top and went in to the kitchen to break our fast with a bowl of hot Mageritsa. Exhausted, we went to bed. On Pascha, cousins, aunts, uncles, and friends arrived early in the afternoon. Mom was in her glory, serving a magnificent dinner. Once I asked why we could not have Patsa (the Christmas soup) and Mageritsa year round. Mom said simply: “ You would not enjoy them nearly so much if you had them every day. They are special, for special times.” She was right. The Cemetery We visited the grave of my brother, grandmother and great-grandmother at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Long Island on the Sunday after Easter, then again on Mother’ s Day or Memorial Day, and on a Sunday between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I can still see the entrance to the cemetery with its wrought iron gate, over the top of which the cemetery’ s name was set in gold letters. I always looked up at the name as we passed under it in our car. The gate would have been a perfect prop for a Halloween movie. Wrought iron, black, and high, with gold letters forming the cemetery’ s name, it seemed foreboding. We turned right immediately after entering the cemetery and proceeded along a downward sloping drive passing row after row of graves with varying sizes and shapes of headstones. Just one or two hundred yards from the gate, my father stopped the car. We got out and went to the grave. Dad and Mom cleaned the headstone and set fresh flowers. At Easter, we brought lilies and red-dyed eggs to

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leave at the grave, and at Christmas, an evergreen spray with a red bow. I was very careful to walk between the graves, fearful of the consequences of stepping on one. There was an Orthodox priest at the cemetery on Sundays. He would offer prayers at gravesites and receive gratuities for his services. The priests were often those without parishes of their own. Fireworks When Dad arrived at Carelas’ for the Fourth of July weekend, he had a trunk full of fireworks with him. His chief motivation was not to entertain children or wives, nor to celebrate Independence Day. It was really a matter of Dad being a boy. He loved guns, muzzle-loaders, and fireworks. On the day of the Fourth, we boys would throw cherry bombs into the river to see if we could kill some fish. Throwing a string of small firecrackers amidst two or three cats was lots of fun, as was placing large bombs under cans to propel them into the air. Cherry bombs and their fat, cylindrical cousins were powerful explosive devices. We were lucky not to have lost a finger or two, or worse, an eye. Dad waited for evening to set his rockets along a rock wall that bordered a cow pasture. When it was dark enough and he had gathered his audience, he sent rocket after rocket into the sky primarily for his — and secondarily for everyone else’ s — enjoyment. Occasionally, a rocket became a projectile hurtling parallel to the ground, spewing flames behind. Sometimes, we had to run to put out grass fires with buckets of water. Hunting Dad loved to hunt. Hunting brought together in one activity the things that he loved most, aside from family: guns, the forest, companionship with men he respected, game for the table, escape from city life and the pressures of the Market, and a connection with his youth in the fields of his village, Mavrovo, and the slopes of the hills and mountains that surrounded Lake Kastoria in Macedonia. My first exposure to hunting was watching my father set about constructing a homemade bird trap just as he had as a child. He remembered checking his traps once or twice each day on the shores of Lake Orestiada and the satisfaction of bringing a half dozen or so starlings and blackbirds home to add to the family table. The trap was a simple contraption. A stick held a cardboard box up, open side facing down, tilted at a forty-five degree angle. Tied to the stick at ninety degrees was another that formed a perch inside the box. At the end of the perch, Dad would place a chunk of suet. When a bird perched on the stick and pecked at the

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suet, the weight of its body and force of its feeding would move the support and cause the box to drop, trapping it inside. Dad set his simple trap on the second from the top step that led out of basement to our garden. He positioned it so that it could not be seen by neighbors. Most often he set his trap in the winter, after a snow when the birds would be hungry and more likely to risk foraging for food in an atypical place. The little boy from Mavrovo that was in my Dad was thrilled when he caught a bird in his trap. He let all fly free. Dad brought home rabbits, pheasants, partridge, woodcock, ducks, and venison on the Sunday evenings when he returned from a fall or winter hunting weekend at Carelas’ farm. After hugs and kisses for Mom, Nitsa, and me and changing his clothing, he would set immediately to skinning rabbits and plucking birds. I learned how to dress game at the kitchen table. The next night, Mom would serve stefado, a rabbit stewed with onions, wine, tomato and cinnamon, or woodcock or partridge cooked with rice, or roast duck, or braised venison. Within the week, we had eaten all the game. Dad often gave rabbits and birds to my grandfather and Thea Anastasia. When I was five or six years old, Dad started to take me on woodchuck hunting safaris during the summer weekends that he visited us at Carelas’ . On these adventures, I hiked with Dad to the dirt road that led to Mr. Schoonmaker’ s dairy farm. Rock walls, common to all the northeastern states, bordered pastures and separated them from woodland. We would stalk quietly along the road shielded by the rock walls and spy over them into the fields looking for an unsuspecting woodchuck. Often, we would walk through the forest along the walls, further and further from the road, until I felt I was alone with my father in a primeval wood.1 My short legs tired quickly, and Dad would sit with me behind a wall under tall trees to let me rest. At these times, he told me stories about his village, his hunting excursions into the hills behind Mavrovo where he looked for rabbit to shoot with his musket-like gun, and his sense of communion with nature and God when he was outdoors. Sometimes, Dad would call crows using a device he bought at the annual Sportsman’ s Show that came to Madison Square Garden. When successful, crows

1 In 1986, I visited my father for a long weekend, arranging beforehand for him to

prepare a picnic basket just like the ones we enjoyed when we hunted together in the late 1940s. We drove to all the old hunting haunts in the Catskills, Dad reminiscing about happy times with friends. I stopped the car on a macadam road that led to Mr. Schoonmaker’ s farm. It had once been dirt. Where once there had been pastures that hid abundant woodchucks now were modern homes and a regrown forest.

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would fly round and round us just over the treetops screaming their “ caw, caws” while looking for an enemy or a wounded brother. With practice and experience, I was able to call the crows using my voice without using any store bought device. Of course, the object of calling the crows was to shoot as many as possible. It seemed right at the time. It was a good way to practice for the real hunting season. Now I wonder at the sad and senseless carnage. One of the rationalizations for shooting woodchucks was that they dug burrows in pastures, causing cows to break their legs in the entrances to the chucks’ homes. I never heard of a cow breaking a leg in a woodchuck hole and cannot imagine that we could possibly have shot enough woodchucks to make a difference. Any hapless woodchuck spotted grazing in the rich grass and clover was a target for Dad’ s .22 caliber, Winchester Hornet. Sometimes a soft whistle would make the woodchuck stand to look around, providing a better target. I was barely able to carry one back to the farm for everyone to see. At least woodchucks were not wasted. Many farmers enjoyed eating them, cooked just as one would prepare a rabbit. My grandfather’ s wife, Adela, would take as many as my Dad would bring to her. My early hunting was limited to accompanying my father on summer weekends and learning to shoot a .22 caliber Springfield rifle. By the time I was six or seven, I could hit a target at fifty to seventy-five feet, and at twelve could do it as it floated past me down the river or put a bullet through the center of a dime or penny at fifty feet. Dad introduced me to shooting animals by taking me to the chicken coops. We did not shoot chickens. Because there was an abundance of chicken feed spilled on the ground around the coop, starlings, blackbirds, and sparrows used it as their local restaurant. Dad would take me inside the coop, and sitting on a wooden crate, I would point my Springfield out of a top-hinged shutter that opened into the chicken yard. Using scatter shot (small pellets loaded into the .22 caliber shell) I would, to the accolades heaped on me by my father, systematically kill every starling or blackbird that sat on the nearby fence, before or after feeding. With these and more birds that Dad shot out of a huge tree with his shotgun at twilight, Mom would make a wonderful rice dish filled with the breasts of the tiny birds. Each provided hardly a mouthful. My fourteenth birthday was one of the most exciting of my life. I received a Browning 16-gauge automatic shotgun from Dad, and he took me to register for my junior hunting license. It permitted me to hunt when accompanied by an adult. I could hardly wait until early May when, on the first weekend after Easter, I would join the men for their annual lamb barbecue and the first weekend of woodchuck hunting. The core group included Dad, my godfather, Bill Rusuli, and his brother-in-law, Uncle Louie. Others joined the group for the barbeque

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weekend. Occasionally, and to my delight, Lou Siskin, an insurance agent who worked for Uncle Louie, came along for the weekend. Over the years, he proved to be a good mentor and friend. My initial hunting experiences were not all that positive. I was slow to get into position, aim and shoot, often missing my target under the pressure of Uncle Louie’ s critical appraisal. There were times I wished I would disappear when I missed a shot that Uncle Louie wanted to take. My godfather and Dad were always supportive and encouraging. I did not know it then, but I was going through a rite of passage, moving from boyhood to manhood through a series of experiences and tests with the men. On Friday afternoons during the fall hunting season, I would leave my high school, Brooklyn Technical, and take the subway to the Twenty-eighth Street and Sixth Avenue station, walking from there to 330 Seventh Avenue where Dad was the manufacturing foreman for Fierstein & Fierstein, a partnership owned by brothers Joe and Abe Fierstein. I remember ringing the security bell at the heavy front door to the showroom and being let in by one of the female bookkeepers or secretaries. They offered perfunctory hellos, rarely more. Abe and Joe Fierstein, if they saw me at all, might nod their heads. I hurried through the showroom where frequently there would be one or two women trying on fox or mink stoles, jackets, or coats to the admiring and encouraging attention of a salesman. The showroom was in an art deco style, the furniture worn, cigarette burned and covered with a fine layer of mink and fox hair. I usually found Louie Wilhem in the showroom or just beyond where the finished goods were stored in a vault. Louie was a big, gregarious salesman who made an effort to make me feel comfortable. He usually talked about college football and asked which team I favored, offering to bet a candy bar on the outcome of a game. Unwilling to admit that I knew little about football, I would choose a team whose name I recognized: Army, Notre Dame, and Navy were among the few names I knew, probably because of movies I had seen about them. Louie ushered me into the factory where Dad was at his cutting table dressed in a white coat and wearing a tie. He acknowledged me and moved quickly to finish the week’ s work, sometimes going to sewing machine operators or to the stretching tables or finishers to give last minute instructions. The finishers, busy sewing silk linings into garments, were all women. They made me feel uneasy. My discomfort was, in part, my teenage aversion to feminine fussing, and in some measure my awareness that the attention I was being paid may have been prompted by the fact that my father was their foreman. I was happy to leave. Dad and I walked to a Greek deli on Eighth Avenue to pick up one or two shopping bags filled with aromatic cheeses, cured meats, and bread, and carry them to the lot where our car was parked. My Nouno and Uncle Louie would meet us there, or we would pick them up outside of the building on Twenty-eighth

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Street where Nouno had his business. We entered the West Side Highway at Fifty-ninth Street and headed north passing the George Washington Bridge, following the Taconic State Parkway north, until we reached Poughkeepsie, where we crossed the river and continued north to Kingston. Sometimes, we picnicked at a rest stop along the way eating improvised salami and cheese sandwiches and fruit. More often, we stopped at a restaurant in Kingston or further along at Cairo. One night we left New York City late and famished, so stopped at an Italian trattoria in Cairo. It was a cold night, and the restaurant’ s warmth was welcome. I imitated Uncle Louie by ordering salad and Spaghetti Bolognese, amazed that the urbane Uncle Louie would eat such food. He showered his spaghetti with red flakes from a container on the table. I did the same in spite of warnings from the men about how hot these little flakes were. They were hot. They were excruciatingly hot. But, I ate every bit, hiding the pain in my flaming mouth as best I could. On a later trip, I relearned the same lesson with stuffed hot cherry peppers. On Saturday mornings, Carelas hardboiled two dozen eggs for us and filled thermos bottles with coffee. We packed these with the boxes in the trunk of our car that held the magnificent picnic lunches we enjoyed. Mouthfuls of ham, capocollo, prosciutto, salami, feta, olives, eggs, provolone, kasseri, bread and fruit satisfied our hunger after four or five hours of trekking through the woods. Beer, soft drinks and coffee quenched our thirst. They were marvelous picnics, meals more satisfying than many restaurant dinners. The first hunting weekend in October 1948 brought an early snow. On Saturday morning, I got up when it was still dark, dressed, and entered the woods behind the barn at dawn a little after the legal hunting hour (though I was still underage to hunt alone). The snow was fresh on the ground, four inches of beautiful white dressing over the landscape. The trees’ leaves were just past their prime show of fall color but colorful enough to make a spectacular display against a deep blue, clear sky at sunrise. Cold air filled my lungs. I realize now what a great sense of life and promise filled me. I wandered through the woods being as quiet as I could be. I called the crows and in minutes, surrounded by a circling, diving flock, I happily killed three or four of the ill-fated birds. An hour passed and the morning exercise had wakened my appetite. I started back toward the farm with hopes for scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, and hot coffee. Just as I was nearing the end of the wood, I jumped a rabbit. The startled creature ran before me through the snow, and without a thought, I lifted my shotgun, aimed and fired. The rabbit tumbled forward a few feet and lay still on the white snow, red splotches covering the path of its final few steps. I was elated.

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Just as I picked up the rabbit, I heard Dad calling me. I came out of the wood and saw him walking up the slope from the barn. His face broke into a great smile as he saw me walking down the hill toward him, my first rabbit held high for him to see. In the three years that followed, I became the best hunter of the group, having finally found a sport in which I could excel. It eased the pain of welts and bruises that my ego received on baseball diamonds, running tracks, and basketball courts. One day I bagged two partridges as they thundered into the air, one on either side of a pine tree — a double. Another time, I downed two woodchucks with one bullet, having aligned the creatures, one about ten feet behind the other by crawling through the grass to the shooting point. The high velocity bullet passed through the first woodchuck and killed the second as well. Uncle Louis could no longer compete with me in quickness or shooting ability. I had passed the tests. I joined the men in the fellowship of after-hunting drinks and dinner, and left boyhood behind. Looking back, I recognize my father as the steady guide, taking me to and standing by me through my initiation. My godfather, Bill, was my encourager and supporter. Lou Siskin, more interested in comradeship and walking in the forest than in killing animals, was a leveling spirit, making my passage less troubling and keeping everything in perspective. And finally, Uncle Louie, served as the taskmaster and judge. They all were examples of good, honorable men with integrity and purpose. They were wonderful role models for an awkward, stammering, unsure boy. Shad Roe In late spring, shad mindlessly start their spawning run up the Hudson River. Dad and Louie Dimitroff had a simultaneous visceral calling, they longed for the roe of the shad. As she swims upstream, each female shad has two kidney-shaped sacks of precious eggs in her body. The sacks are brownish-red, eight to nine inches long, three inches wide at their widest point, one inch thick, and each contains tens of thousands of tiny, pinhead-size eggs. As the season for the run approached, Dad, Nouno, and Uncle Louie would check the New York Times daily for a report of shad in the river. The first weekend that a shad run and woodchuck hunting coincided, they made for the riverbank at Saugerties. There they found half a dozen or more local teenagers catching shad with flies, lures and live bait. The youngsters skillfully filleted each bony fish and deftly removed its roe.

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Dad and Uncle Louie bought as many roe as were available; literally, as many as were available. They wrapped them in wax paper and put them in an ice-filled container prepared earlier. From the river, we drove directly back to Carelas’ to store the delicacies in the hotel-size refrigerator. That evening back at Carelas’ after a day’ s hunting, Dad prepared a charcoal fire outside the kitchen door. Waiting for the coals to burn down to white ash, the hunting comrades nursed iced drinks of Teachers Scotch. Dad set the olive oil- bathed roe on the grill, the coals hot enough to cook but not hot enough to burst the tender sacks. When cooked through, he put the sizzling roe on a platter, showered them with lemon juice, and delivered them to the table. Dad, Uncle Louie, Nouno, and I sat down to a feast of roe, French fries, a huge salad, olives, cheese, and Italian bread. It was spring, and the beverage of choice was Ballantine’ s Bock Beer, the seasonal alternative to the Ballantine’ s Ale (“ Three Ring” ) whose deep green bottles were usually on the table. Ballantine’ s Bock came in distinctive brown bottles, two or three cases of which were stored in our cellar every March. On Sunday afternoon, Dad removed the remaining roe from Carelas’ refrigerator and packed them in ice for the long trip home to my mother’ s tender care. She wrapped each set of roe in wax paper and placed them all in our freezer. Every two or three weeks, until the supply was exhausted, Dad would barbecue shad roe either as an appetizer to serve to special friends or as dinner for the two of us. (Mom and Nitsa either did not particularly like the taste of roe, or they decided to let us enjoy all of it.) Transition from Boyhood Early in 1946, a friend at school asked me to come to a Boy Scout meeting. Two or three of my classmates were members of Christ Episcopal Church’ s scout troop that met just three blocks from my home at Seventy-third Street and Ridge Boulevard. The troop was recruiting new scouts. I was not sure what scouting was all about. Mom encouraged me to go to my first meeting on the next Friday evening in February. I had not yet reached the required age of twelve but was close enough to attend as a prospective scout. On that Friday, night I started a new phase of my life. The paramilitary aspect of scouting appealed to me, probably because of the association with all the patriotic war movies of the 1940s. I did not like the roughhouse games and soon found a way to avoid them by volunteering for organizational and administrative duties. By late April, I learned about the troop’ s summer camp on a lake at the Ten Mile River Boy Scout Reservation near Narrowsburg, New York. For one week I hounded my mother to allow me to go to summer Boy Scout camp. Her answer

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was unequivocally, “ No!” I do not remember having wanted to do anything so much or ever otherwise having risked her health (I did not want to cause a heart attack) or wrath by asking time after time. On a Friday evening in early May, I went into my parent’ s bedroom after a scout meeting to say good night and gathered my courage to ask my mother one final time. Dad lowered the newspaper he was reading and asked about my request. It was the first time he had ever involved himself in questions that I addressed to my mother. I told him that I wanted to go to summer Boy Scout camp for eight weeks, and that it would cost ten dollars a week. He said, “ Yes, go!” And that, as they say, was that. Mom never said another word. She was not offended, not hurt, and not angry. In the days, weeks, and months that followed, I came to the realization that Dad had taken over my rearing. He made the decisions, and I was not required to ask my mother for permission to do anything. I had achieved some level of junior manhood. He gave me maximum independence. Out of love, respect, and courtesy, I still told my mother where I was going and what time I would return. I met my responsibilities in the household and had a well-developed internal sense of what I had to do to be a good son. I wanted to be that. The Boy Scouts and Camp Waramaug Joining the Boy Scouts was my first step into teenage life. And, Christ Episcopal Church, Bay Ridge, was the center of my social and religious world for six formative years. My new friends in Boy Scout Troop 123 who were members of the Christ Church quickly introduced me to Vance Hays, a man in his mid-forties who was director of the youth programs of the parish. Vance told me about a young women’ s scouting program called the Mariners that was one of many programs the parish sponsored. Within days, I introduced Nitsa to Vance, and she soon was a Mariner. She met two or three lifelong friends in the program. One of them, Greta Hirsimaki, was the sister of John Hirsimaki, who joined the Boy Scout Troop at the urging of Greta’ s boyfriend and became one of my best friends. Rey & Pierre’ s Dad frequently took Mom, Nitsa, and me out to dinner after church on Sunday. Among of our family favorites was Rey & Pierre’ s French Restaurant on Fifty-second Street close to Fifth Avenue, just across from the “ 21 Club.” It looked exactly as a teenaged New York boy would imagine a French country restaurant. It was comfortable and casual with bright red-and-white-checkered tablecloths and walls covered with murals of pastoral scenes; it was welcoming to a hungry family. The owners offered their French and other guests delicious, modestly priced food in the Provencal style: hearty entrées laced with butter, wine, and garlic. It was there that I learned to enjoy escargot and frogs legs Provencal.

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We dined at Rey & Pierre’ s frequently enough for the proprietors to recognize me, so it was with great élan that I took my first dinner date there on a hot, humid Tuesday evening in August 1951. I was seventeen, and on my day off from my job at the Breezy Point Surf Club. My date was Ann Emelda Gillen, an eighth grade crush who I ran into and asked out when I met her while walking home on Ridge Boulevard one evening. We went to an afternoon showing of a foreign movie on East Fifty-seventh Street, close to Third Avenue, and then walked to dinner, ducking into store doorways to avoid rain showers. She thought I was extravagant. Another time, I hosted a Christmas dinner at Rey & Pierre’ s for my friends Don Kaye and John Hirsimaki. We enjoyed dishes liberally flavored with garlic and drank Bordeaux. Two hours later, we were asked to leave our seats at the Metropolitan Opera. Apparently, our garlic and wine aura was nauseating the opera-goers around us. Arrogant, we did not leave; the others did! West of Rey & Pierre’ s on Fifty-second Street were “ Jimmy Ryan’ s,” and the other nightclubs for which the street was noted. (In earlier times, the street was also known for its brothels.) But, except for the “ 21 Club,” they are all gone now, replaced by high-rise office buildings. Dad made sure that my mother got out of the kitchen two or more Saturday or Sunday evenings each month. There were other restaurants that we went to regularly: The Seafare of the Aegean, first on Third Avenue, then, when it moved, to West Fifty-sixth Street (the location was The Beacon restaurant in 2001); an Italian restaurant just a block or two away, whose name I have forgotten; the Fort Hamilton, located across the street from Fort Hamilton in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn; Lundy’ s in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, where we ate steamed clams, crab, and lobster with butter running down our arms; Rumpelmayer’ s, at the St. Moritz Hotel on Central Park South for traditional fare and wonderful desserts; the Blue Ribbon, a dark German restaurant on West Forty-forth Street, its walls lined with photographs of Wagnerian opera greats from the nearby Met; and, not to be forgotten, the Hunting Room at the Astor Hotel on Times Square for very special occasions. Dad once advised me that it would be important that I take my wife and family out to dinner at nice restaurants when I married. The Bells of St. Mary’ s Most anyone who has seen the film, The Godfather, remembers Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) walking past the Radio City Music Hall during the 1945 Christmas holiday with his girlfriend, Kay (Diane Keaton). The theater’ s marquee announces The Bells of St. Mary’ s, starring Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman, as the feature attraction. At this moment in The Godfather, Kay sees a New York News headline reporting that Michael’ s father, Don Corleone (Marlon Brando) had been shot.

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Nothing quite that dramatic happened to us. Mom, Dad, Nitsa, and I were in line outside the theater in a light snowfall one day of the 1945 Christmas holiday waiting for the early showing of The Bells of St. Mary’ s to end. Dad had reserved seats in the loge for the second showing of the day. It included an hour stage review of Christmas music and dancing featuring the Rockettes, the famous chorus line of energetic, high-kicking young women. We entered the theater in the low light of a clouded winter afternoon and came out aglow with the good feeling engendered by the film to find Sixth Avenue covered with a blanket of snow. We walked a few blocks to our favorite Italian restaurant for warmth and dinner, and talk about the movie, then drove home to Brooklyn. Friends I had three friends in my teenage years. John John Hirsimaki shared my interest in books, the Museum of Modern Art, walks from the Cloisters, north of the George Washington Bridge, to Bay Ridge (more then twenty-five miles), and exploration of the city. He, his sister Greta, Nitsa, and I often spent time together. On occasion, we four drove along the Hudson on New Jersey’ s Route 9-W to have a smörgasbord dinner at “ A Little Bit of Sweden,” overlooking the river. On one memorable evening we found “ A Little Bit of Sweden” closed, and after a search came upon a restaurant marked by a roadside sign that directed us down a dark, long, narrow road toward the Hudson River. We found a charming Victorian House converted into an inviting restaurant named “ The Boulderberger Inn,” and enjoyed a quiet room, the warmth of a fireplace, a thick cut of barbecued steak, Chianti, and happy conversation. Most Christmas holidays from the time I was fourteen until I left for California, Nitsa and I would visit the Hirsimaki’ s home on an evening two or three days before Christmas. We were treated to Swedish and Finnish specialties that included delicious sandwiches and desserts, and soul-warming cups of glögg. [This warm drink of port, claret, and brandy is spiced with clove, cinnamon, cardamom, and dried orange peel, and served in a glass with raisins and almonds. Just before serving, sugar saturated with cognac is burned over the mixture and pounded gently into it through a wire sieve.] Mrs. Hirsimaki was a gracious hostess, elegant and refined. Occasionally when at John’ s home, perhaps with another friend, John Ryan, Mr. Hirsimaki would pop in to say hello to the “ serious thinkers.” I do not know whether he was kidding us or not, but I took the comment as a compliment.

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One of our favorite haunts was a place on West Fifty-second Street called Jimmy Ryan’ s (no relation to John Ryan). [See Figure 9.] From the late 1940s through the 1950s Ryan’ s was the home of “ Wilbur de Paris and the Rampart Street Ramblers,” the “ New New Orleans Jazz Band” — Dixieland Jazz. Fifty-second Street was lined with nightclubs — burlesque on the south side of the street, Ryans’ s and the “ 21 Club,” on the north side. Dixieland devotees, we were regulars even before being of age, known to the manager and barmen, and often let in ahead of the queue at the front door. The special treatment made me feel important. John and I shared not having clarity about what we wanted to do with our lives. John went to sea after high school, then to college for one year before entering the army on the same day that I did. The year he was at sea, I finished high school. Then, when I was in my first year at the Manhattan School of Music, he was at Wittenberg College in Ohio. Still unsure about our futures, we came to the same decision in the late winter of 1953 — we would go into the army that summer. Ronnie Ronald E. Moss and I went to Boy Scout summer camp together and shared interests in musical theater, show business, and girls. We were initiated into a Boy Scout fraternal service organization, the Order of the Arrow, in the summer of 1948, and became Brotherhood (second degree) initiates together two years later. And, we were awarded the “ Camp Waramaug Emblem,” at the same ceremony. It was a big thing for us. Ronnie and I worked together for two summers at Breezy Point, sharing commutes by train and ferry, finding ways to maximize our income, and enjoying our days off in the city. His father, doing us a favor and wanting to spend some time with his son, would occasionally drive us to Breezy Point on a weekend morning. It would have been wonderful but for the fact that I was relegated to the back seat with Mr. Moss’ s huge, ugly, drooling, and flatulent bulldog as my travel companion. Drool-stained slacks and shoes and nausea were the cost of the car ride. Ronnie was athletic, very popular with the girls, and had a good voice (tenor). He tried show business working summer stock and touring nationally with a group named The Rover Boys. While I was at Columbia, Ronnie introduced me to young Broadway singers and dancers. We double-dated a lot, even taking young women to his alma mater, Trinity, for football games and parties. Some came home with me for holiday dinners. Eventually embracing the responsibilities of marriage and family, he settled into a very successful advertising career with The New York Times.

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Figure 9 52nd Street in Manhattan

Looking East from Sixth Avenue toward Fifth Avenue Cover of Park East Magazine

January 1952

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G. Donald Kaye I met Don Kaye at Christ Church. He was (and is) a serious musician, was active in the Boy Scouts, and became a close friend. Don guided me as I prepared to be inducted into the Brotherhood level of the Order of the Arrow, and my companion on a trip to attend the national convention of the Order held at the University of Indiana campus in Bloomington, Indiana, in the late summer of 1950. The trip to Bloomington included a stop in Chicago on the return leg. We visited my cousin Helen, who was the daughter of my great-aunt Sultana, my grandmother Eleni’ s sister. Don and I stayed with Helen and her husband for three or four days. In addition to Aunt Helen’ s very generous hospitality, two experiences are firm in my memory: a visit to the Bahai Temple and an introduction to the religion [I was very impressed by it], and a picnic to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. The picnic introduced Don and me to the beauty of Wisconsin, especially Lake Geneva whose shore was lined with large, beautiful homes. Our picnic was incredible. My cousin, who I called Aunt Helen in the Greek tradition, had slow- baked a covered leg of lamb at 250º F. all the previous night. It contained slivers of garlic, was bathed in olive oil and lemon juice, and sprinkled with oregano, salt, and pepper. The result was sweet lamb falling off the bone in most tender pieces. We devoured a picnic lunch that included roast potatoes, salad, bread, wine, cheese, and, never to be forgotten, raw garlic. Yes — heads of raw garlic, My aunt’ s husband, whose name I do not remember, peeled a clove of raw garlic at the beginning of lunch and popped it into his mouth, chewing it with relish. The first clove was followed by a second. As we watched incredulously, he offered Don and me our very own cloves. Were we men, or were we men? Not to be outdone, we each took a clove, then a second. We three must have eaten two heads of garlic, and woe the person that came near to us. I think we had garlic seeping from our pores for two days. My friendship with Don brought me into contact with Vladimir Havsky, a Russian pianist who became the organist and choir director at Christ Church. Don and Vladimir greatly influenced my interest in serious music. We attended broadcast performances of the NBC Symphony conducted by Arturo Toscanini at Carnegie Hall on many Saturday afternoons, buying tickets from a Russian scalper on the corner of Fifty-sixth Street and Seventh Avenue just around the block from the Carnegie’ s entrance. Most memorable of these was a performance of the Mussorgsky-Ravel Pictures at an Exhibition on 24 January 1953.

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After a concert, we often took the subway to Little Italy in lower Manhattan, somewhere close to Mulberry Street, and ate dinner at a small, unlicensed restaurant. It was secreted behind the boarded-up windows of a defunct grocery store and was owned and operated by Don Ciccio and his wife. I have no idea how he came to receive the Italian honorific “ Don.” The restaurant had one room with perhaps six or seven tables located right next to an open kitchen. There was no menu; one simply looked in the refrigerator and in the pots and pans on the range and in the oven to make a selection of a soup or stew, fish or meat, pasta, and salad. Wine drawn into a carafe from the proprietor’ s barrel in the cellar was brought up the stairs and set on the table with an ample plate of antipasti and a loaf of fresh, crusty bread. Having dinner there was a treat, and we were regularly in the company of NBC Symphony members. After dinner, we would have coffee at the Italian pastry shop next door, then set out to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and on to Bay Ridge, arriving home in the early, but still dark morning. Conversation made time pass quickly. Don was often at our home. My mother and father had a great affection for him and encouraged his participation in our family life. Friends at Home Our home was open to all of our friends. Helene and I were free to invite them to dinner at almost any time, and for after dinner visits and holiday festivities. John, his sister, Greta, Ronnie, and Don were practically family. Others came to our home as well. Nitsa’ s college classmates, my army buddies, and many of the young people I met through Ronnie that were on Broadway and far from home, found my father’ s welcome and my mother’ s open arms and good food. I remember game dinners, barbecues, picnics, and movie nights, when we would rent a sixteen-millimeter projector and view old films, even “ silents.” There was no television. Guilty — With a Reason I know of only one time that Dad received a citation for illegal driving or parking. I am certain that he never was pursued about an unpaid bill or caused to appear in court for any other reason. It happened when he was driving back to Brooklyn from Mom and Nitsa’ s summer cottage at Dover Lake, New Jersey. Earlier in the day he had visited Camp Waramaug. Since he was going to return to New York after stopping at Dover Lake, he offered a ride to a fellow Scout Board member and his wife. Somewhere between Dover Lake and the Lincoln Tunnel, Dad passed a car on the right side at an intersection on a two-lane road. The New Jersey Highway Patrol was on the alert. Dad was stopped and ticketed.

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Dad would not ordinarily drive aggressively. In this instance, his female passenger was six months pregnant and nauseated by the exhaust fumes billowing from the car in front of them. Dad just performed the gentlemanly act one might have expected of him. He passed the car at the first opportunity. Unfortunately, it was the wrong place, time, and lane. Dad could have mailed a check to cover his bail and forgotten the matter. However, he wanted to make his case before a judge and prove that his transgression was for a good reason and therefore justified. So, one afternoon he took me with him on the drive to a small town in New Jersey and to the informal courtroom where he was to appear. Dad went forward to stand in front of the judge when his name was called. The room looked exactly as you might imagine in a small southern town, with a judge prepared to exact tribute from northern tourists. It was the first and only time I ever saw perspiration on Dad’ s forehead. One would have thought he was about to plead in a murder case. “ Guilty, with a reason,” was his plea. The judge gave him sixty seconds to recite, in a trembling voice, the reason for his passing on the right and to describe the distress of his passenger. The judge said: “ Guilty, pay the clerk fifty dollars!” Dad wrote the check, and we left. Somehow he felt vindicated. While he had been found guilty, he had been able to publicly state the reason for his having broken the letter of the law. What counted to him was that he had done what he felt was right and proper under the circumstances to protect the health of a pregnant young woman. Christ Church After my first summer at Camp Waramaug, I returned to Bay Ridge bonded in friendship with boys of my age who were members of Christ Church. It was just a matter of weeks before I was singing alto in its all-male choir and attending Sunday school. My sister and I became members of the Young Peoples Fellowship (YPF), the youth group for teenagers of the parish. I was initiated into the young men’ s fraternal organization of the Church, Phi Sigma Beta, participated in theater productions and countless benefit programs, was a member of a veteran’ s hospital visitation group, and following in my sister’ s footsteps, became secretary, vice president and president of several of the organizations. I tried hard to contribute to success of the basketball team but spent most of my time on the bench. My parents supported my sister and me spending more and more of our time at Christ Church. It was a good environment, and since there was no comparable program offered at a nearby Greek church (there was no nearby Greek church), I

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am sure that they were happy to have us actively involved in it. Dad even pledged an annual contribution to the church, and for a year or two canvassed members of the parish for pledges. He did not want his children taking advantage of programs paid for by others. Father Fitzgerald, the minister at Christ Church, frequently reminded me that I was Greek Orthodox, and that while I was welcome in his congregation and to its communion, I should never forget my heritage. The church was austere, built of stone in a crucifer plan common to Anglican churches. It would have fit comfortably into Britain’ s landscape. Of my many memories of Christ Church and the teenagers I grew up with, none stand out more than the Christmas Eve celebrations, especially Sunday, 24 December 1950. That Christmas Eve morning as I sang in the choir at the eleven o’ clock service, the church showed no hint of Christmas. Immediately after the eleven o’ clock service, I hurried home for a quick lunch and to change into work clothes. Back at the corner of Seventy-third Street within forty-five minutes, I saw Mr. Moss, Ronnie Moss’ father, perched high on top of a ladder against the exterior rear wall of the church. A cigarette between his lips, he was wiring the huge six-pointed star that would shine brightly that night as it had for years of Christmas Eves. Inside the church there was a storm of activity. Under the supervision of adults, teenagers helped position and decorate with green boughs and red ribbons the long candleholders (twelve-foot-long, dark wood planks) that hung above both sides of the central aisle of the nave. We stacked fresh evergreen trees in the corners of the transepts to the left and right of the chancel, and draped the lectern, pulpit, and altar with Christmas garlands. In a matter of two or three hours, the church was transformed into a colorful expression of Christmas. Late in the afternoon, I rushed home to shower, change, and wolf down my dinner. By seven o’ clock, I was in my choir robes and holding a candle as part of the procession entering the church singing, “ Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” The church was lit only with candles. This, the first service of the evening, was over by eight o’ clock. Teenagers assembled outside of the church with lanterns and candles, and proceeded to walk through Bay Ridge to the homes of the elderly and infirmed to sing a carol or two at each stop before moving on. From time to time, we were greeted with hot chocolate and Christmas cookies. At eleven o’ clock, I was back into my choir robes and again part of the procession entering the church for the second and more formal Candlelight Service. At midnight, the service was over, and I rushed home and to bed in anticipation of Christmas Day.

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It was a special Christmas Eve. I remember it for the sense of community, fellowship, and joy that we had in creating the Christmas spirit, transforming the church in an afternoon, and sharing in the excitement of the season. Brooklyn Tech & Music My high school deserves a comment. I was accepted to Brooklyn Technical and Stuyvesant High Schools after passing competitive examinations for each. My high school years at Brooklyn Tech were not remarkable. I was a good student in a college pre-engineering curriculum, achieving a B+ overall average without too much effort. I did not want to invest the time to achieve higher grades and was not pressed by my parents to do so; my teenage activities were too important to me. The academic program was rigorous. I had only two decisions to make: French or German for three years (I chose French), and a choice of shops for the final one-half year (I chose print shop). Brooklyn Tech was a twenty-minute subway ride from Bay Ridge, and a ten- minute walk from the downtown Brooklyn station to Ft. Greene Place where Tech was located. As a commuter, I did not form the kind of bonds with other students that are typical in a community high school. Friends who attended our local Fort Hamilton High School had a much different experience than I. I was a confused teenager without a specific career goal. The results of scholastic aptitude and interest tests that I took in my junior year indicated that I could pursue virtually any career, except for sports and physical education; no surprise there. Still, I had no notion of what I wanted to do and received little guidance from my parents or relatives. Becoming a doctor was the profession most parents preferred for their Greek-American sons. But, I disliked chemistry, had no interest in medical school, and admit to having been squeamish about blood and suffering. Romantic notions of a career in music fostered by my friendships with musicians led me to the Manhattan School of Music and my first year of college. Breezy Point As the summer of 1951 approached, I decided that it was time to make some money for college. The minister at Christ Church, Rev. John Fitzgerald, D.D., recommended Ronnie Moss and me as possible summer employees to the manager of The Breezy Point Surf Club at Rockaway Point. The manager had evidently sent letters to all the ministers and priests in Bay Ridge asking for referrals. Breezy Point Surf Club was (and still is) a country club at the beach. There were several membership classifications. The most desirable included use of permanently assigned cabanas located in U-shaped courts of thirty each. There were eight courts. The cabanas enclosed a 100 ft. x 150 ft. rectangular space on three sides; the open end led to the beach and the sea.

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Each cabana measured nine feet across and fifteen feet deep, and had a boardwalk at its front where there was an outdoor, shaded seating area. A front room with an icebox, sink, and counters, two dressing rooms and a shower completed the unit. The rear walls of the cabanas on either end of the club did not abut a unit, so had a back deck leading to open space. Premium cabanas with enclosed ocean view porches facing the sea were at the end of the courts. Ronnie and I were interviewed and hired by Mr. Bernard, a well-groomed caricature of a gentleman’ s gentleman. We started work on the first weekend in May. Our weekend work through Memorial Day was to shovel sand off the boardwalks, clean cabanas, move furniture, paint railings and steps, and perform other clean-up activities in preparation for the Club’ s annual opening on the Saturday of the Memorial Day weekend. Mom prepared three Kaiser Roll sandwiches for me every workday. I ate one mid-morning, two at lunch, and hungry again at my three-in-the-afternoon break, I rushed to the hamburger stand for more nourishment. It took us an hour and one-half to get to work from Bay Ridge. We started the trip on a subway to Sheepshead Bay, then boarded a ferry to Breezy Point, and finally walked about one mile to the club. The club paid us $1.16 per hour for our labor. The Christmas before my first summer at Breezy Point Nitsa had given me a copy of Fitzgerald’ s translation of The Rubáiyat of Omar Kayyám. It was exotic and romantic, and I was seventeen. I carried it every day on our commute to work, and by the end of the summer, had the entire volume committed to memory. I gushed quatrains at every opportunity. Ronnie and I were assigned adjoining cabana stations; he on one court, and I on the next. Each “ Cabana Boy” serviced half a court, or fifteen cabanas. Our training took all of an hour. Basic duties included: opening the cabanas every morning; taking out the furniture; sweeping and washing the floors; and, providing service to members as required — porter their personal bags and groceries in from their cars, bring ice to their iceboxes, raise and lower the awnings, and run whatever errands they requested. For these services, we received weekly gratuities. We were pleased to have $60 or more in our pockets after the first week. However, we were ambitious teenagers and willing to work hard. Within three weeks, we were pulling in over $100 each, and by August, $150 was not unusual. Ronnie and I kept the cleanest cabanas at Breezy Point. In no time, women were leaving dirty dishes, messy counters, full ashtrays, and dressing rooms strewn with bathing suits and covered with wet sand for us to clean. Not only did we clean, we catered. By August, we catered clambakes and steak barbecues after our normal working hours.

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On Monday mornings, we collected all the empty bottles we could find and packed them into an empty storage room we had requisitioned. Every two weeks, on the night before our day off, Nitsa would drive out and we would pack Dad’ s car with bottles that we turned in to markets for cash. For my favorite members, Mr. and Mrs. Goodhand, nothing was good enough. His whiskey sour was chilled and waiting for him when he arrived Saturday and Sunday mornings. And, her cabinets, counters and floors were spotless. I washed the glass panes of the enclosed sitting area inside and out, making them sparkle, and cleaned her icebox every Friday. Actually, the Goodhands were such nice people that I would have done anything for them regardless of the amount they tipped me each week. As one might expect, they were the biggest tippers: $20! They had a beautiful, seventeen-year-old niece, Marjorie, whom Ronnie and I first saw as she entered the club in high heels, wearing a white, short-sleeve, high- necked, bouffant dress, held out by a crinoline underskirt. Her head was crowned with a wide-brimmed straw hat circled by a white, long band with blue polka dots. Now, fifty-one years later, the impression is still vivid. Ronnie dated Marjorie that fall and had her as a guest at Trinity College. I became her friend. At the end of the summer, Mr. Bernard sent a very nice letter to Dr. Fitzgerald expressing, “ …the gratitude of the management of the club for sending us such splendid boys.” Mr. Bernard wanted us back for the following summer, and we agreed to return on the condition that we would each be assigned a full court (30 cabanas). The summer of 1952, we worked even longer hours and were energized by the money that was rolling in — over $250 per week! Ronnie and I had solved our immediate college tuition and expense problem. Joining us at our work in the second year was a fraternity brother of Ronnie’ s from Trinity College, Stanton “ Stan” H. Avitabile. Stan was more intellectual and less money hungry than we. He was six feet four inches in height, had straight As in college, and while devoted to history, planned to go to medical school. I invited Stan to dinner with Ronnie on a Sunday evening when my parents would be away on vacation. I wanted Stan to meet Helene, who was also a straight A student, stood five feet nine inches in her stocking feet, and was a terrific cook. I had plans. Unfortunately, on that Sunday morning, Mr. Bernard unexpectedly asked Ronnie, Stan, and me to work overtime at a dance. I said no, and my friends joined me. Mr. Bernard, in a pique, threatened to fire us. We, in a huff and with our testosterone levels raging, said we had an engagement we could not break and left

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at five to have dinner with my sister. The dinner was a smash, impressing Stan. Good for sister! Good for brother! The next morning, when we went to work we were confronted by a very angry Mr. Bernard. It only took one day for us to notify our members that we were being fired and for Mr. Bernard to back off. It must have been difficult for him, but it would have been even more difficult for him to explain to his membership why he fired his best and their favorite cabana boys. Things quieted down. In my first year, shortly after I started working at the club, I learned that my Uncle Louie had a cabana and was a long-time member. My godmother and godfather were frequent visitors, as were Uncle Louie’ s two special women friends: one from uptown and the other from midtown Manhattan. They never attended family social functions, but one or the other would go to dances, the theater, and dinner with Uncle Louie and my godparents, sometimes when my mother and father were present. I learned that he lived a less virtuous life than I thought. Once or twice I had to avoid him at the club when he got very drunk, drinking beer alone on summer weekday afternoons. I had never seen him intoxicated before. It was a revelation that he and my godparents belonged to this elite club of white, mostly catholic, Brooklyn and Manhattan families. I am not sure that my parents knew it until the summer I worked at the club, saw Uncle Louie, and was seen by my Nouna Rose. Uncle Louie’ s Death One September evening in 1952, Dad came home a little late from work and looking somber. When we finished dinner, he told us that Uncle Louie was in the hospital and that his condition was serious. Over the next few days, I learned that he had been prescribed a new antibiotic to treat a bladder infection. It was called chloromycetin. Early tests of the drug had not revealed a dangerous side effect: aplastic anemia. Uncle Louie experienced the worst possible consequence, and his bone marrow ceased to function. We visited him regularly in the hospital. In fact, he held court for his friends every afternoon with an open bar and hors d’ouevres. His business associates and hunting pals came to have a few drinks and reminisce with Louie while he declined and drew close to death. He knew that he was dying, but somehow did not impose his burden on his friends. I offered to provide a bone marrow transplant, but Nouna chose to find a non-family donor. It was a new procedure that unfortunately did not help him. On another evening in early October, Dad came home and told us that Uncle Louie had died that afternoon.

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The funeral was at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral on the east side of Manhattan. The burial was at Mount Olive Cemetery. Louie joined his mother, just one hundred yards from my great-grandmother, grandmother, and brother’ s grave. At the cemetery, we learned that we were all to go to the penthouse of the Saint Moritz Hotel on Central Park South at Sixth Avenue. Cocktails, dinner, and dancing awaited us. Uncle Louie had provided in his last will and testament that everyone who came to his funeral should celebrate his life just as he had . . . with a party. Conservatory Days That fall of 1952, I started my college career at the Manhattan School of Music which was located in a run-down neighborhood at East 105th Street in Manhattan. It was a difficult, confusing, and unhappy year. I did not fit in at the conservatory, was unsure of what I wanted to do with my life, had only enough money for the first year of school, and was possessed by a persistent impulse to break out, to escape, and to run. The freshman fats caught up with me, and my weight surged from 185 to 242 pounds. In late October or early November of 1952, I drove to Trinity College to visit Ronnie for a football weekend. Stan Avitabile was in the same fraternity house as Ronnie, and I stopped in to see him in his room. He was not going to attend the game; he planned to use the time in a laboratory to dissect a shark. That afternoon he told me that he was going to marry my sister. I asked him if he had told her, knowing that he had not even dated her. Stan smiled, and future events proved him right. Sometime in January or February of 1953, I started to think about joining the Army to fulfill my military obligation. I had an academic deferment, gained by examination, but felt that I was not living up to my responsibilities. My older cousins and family friends had all served in the Second World War; it seemed only right that I should serve in the Korean War. And, military service was an excuse to leave school and home, and buy time to consider my future. Moreover, there was the promise of the G.I. Bill to help pay for my education. After much correspondence with John Hirsimaki, who was at Wittenberg College in Ohio, I decided to volunteer for the draft, as did he. When I informed my parents of my plan, they accepted my decision without discussion. I learned that I was on my own and had the freedom to make my life as I wanted. I planned to leave the Manhattan School of Music at the end of the academic year. Late in May, I went to the draft board on Eighty-sixth Street and asked if it were possible to be called for duty, to be drafted. It seemed a better alternative to be drafted for two years than to enlist for a minimum term of three years. No problem. They took my index card from the file, I signed a waiver, and my name was placed first in queue to report for induction on Monday, 20 July 1953.

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I made a round of visits to friends and relatives to play the role of the young man off to arms. Bob Capidaglis, Anesti and Jim Zelios, Dr. DeTata, Tom Papanas, and the other World War II veterans gave me terrific advice. I was later most grateful for the tips they gave me about how to survive on a troop ship: Rush to the hold to which I was assigned and find a top bunk next to an air inlet; protect this piece of turf with my life; and, volunteer for kitchen duty as a cook’ s helper. The morning I left home, I wore clothing I planned to throw away and carried a small, ragged satchel with a razor, shaving cream, toothbrush, toothpaste, and two changes of socks and underwear. My parents each had a final admonition for me. Mom: “ If you get a girl in trouble, I’ ll kill you!” Dad: “ Do not dishonor your family name!” As I walked up Ovington, over to Sixty-ninth Street and toward Fourth Avenue, I had no idea of what lay before me.

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$UP\�'D\V� 20 July 1953 It was a hot, humid morning. John Hirsimaki, John Ryan, and I met at the Sixty-ninth Street subway station for our trip to downtown Brooklyn and the Army Induction Center. Once there, we were processed through a cursory medical examination. I weighed 242 pounds, the result of my eating my way through my year at the Manhattan School of Music, and was afraid that I would be turned down for high blood pressure just as the Naval Reserve had refused me months earlier. But, the only inductee told to go home and see his doctor had visible blood in his urine. Everyone else was “ warm” enough to be inducted. After the examination, we were inoculated several times, told that we would be sore, sick, and feverish for a couple of days, and warned not to complain. Herded into a room, we stood at attention and took the oath that bound us as members of the United States Army, stepped forward to signify our commitment, then picked up our small personal bags, and boarded waiting buses for the ride to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey. Camp Kilmer functioned as a processing center for inductees, reassignments, and separations from service. I would visit it twice more in the next two years. Camp Kilmer, New Jersey I am separated from John Hirsimaki and John Ryan. A sergeant tells us to use no more than one square of toilet paper. A lieutenant reads the Articles of War to us at midnight. Broom handles encourage our swift exit from our barracks when ordered. Whistles start to govern my behavior. I receive my Army duffel and clothes, learn how to make a bed, and how to scrub the “ john” [bathroom]. We eat in a mess hall designed to feed five thousand. I “ pull” (am assigned to) KP (kitchen police, or mess hall duty), scrubbing floors with lemon juice and brown soap that have just been scrubbed with lemon juice and brown soap by another team, and will be scrubbed with lemon juice and brown soap by a team following immediately behind us. I pull KP and clean pots large enough to step into.

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I want to go home. I pull garbage duty and service the WAC barracks. I am miserable. I learn to spit-polish boots. While many recruits sitting at desks use the opportunity to catch up on sleep, I take aptitude tests, two sets of them. I receive orders to ship out to Camp Gordon, in Augusta, Georgia. Buses take us to an airport in Philadelphia where a tired old DC3 waits for us on the runway. I ask a sergeant if I can take the train. He calls a captain who orders me on board under pain of court martial and prison. I obey. The plane has Spanish language instructions. It is a frayed plane from a charter airline that makes runs to Cuba, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico. We fly south. It is my first flight, and I am white-knuckle terrified. Camp Gordon, Georgia Our plane lands on the afternoon of a late July, bright, hot, and humid day. I stumble down the steps onto a black tarmac that is spongy underfoot and radiating heat. I find my duffel as it is thrown from the plane’ s baggage compartment and with it on my shoulder, double-time toward a waiting bus in a column of twos under the watchful eyes and screaming orders of drill sergeants. My uniform is soaked in sweat. I pass out and crumble to the tarmac. I am kicked to my feet and onto the bus. We pass an obstacle course where soldiers in fatigue uniforms, wearing steel helmets and carrying M-1 rifles, climb walls, walk logs high over muddy ground,

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and perform other acts of physical prowess that make me certain that I am going to die here in Georgia. Our bus, one of several, stops in front of a small building opposite a row of barracks. We are ordered out and into formation. Within a few minutes a captain and a first sergeant came out of the building to the command, “ Attention!” We are introduced to our company commander, who I scarcely remember seeing two or three times in the next eight weeks. The first sergeant looks like a John Wayne clone. He has a chest full of citations and a combat infantry badge. Time- in-service slash marks run up one of his sleeves and several gold, time-in-combat slash marks run down the other. The first sergeant has words for us: “ Your platoon sergeant drill instructor is f-----g GOD. Obey his orders!

Tomorrow you will ache. Every f-----g bone and muscle in your body will ache.

Don’ t f-----g complain! Don’ t go on f--king sick report because you hurt.

There is no f-----g way out of the next eight weeks.

Fall out!”

I’ m issued my steel helmet with liner. I’ m issued an M-1 rifle, a bayonet, a cartridge belt, a canteen, and other field equipment.

“ This is my rifle This is my gun

This is for killing This is for fun!”

One day merges into the next. Hot, humid, torrential afternoon rains, double-time. I pass out. Push-ups, pants loose, hungry, mail, pullups, sleepy, double-time. I pass out. Pants looser, red clay dust, tired, thirsty, rifles, grenades, exhausted. Overnight pass in Augusta at Augusta Hotel with Leon McKusick, my buddy. Photo 52, in uniform, taken for Mom.

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We buy a small bottle of gin, quinine water, ice. Take turns soaking in the bathtub, drink, nap, soak, dinner downstairs, soak, sleep — twelve hours. Shave, shower, breakfast, bus, barracks. Push-ups, pullups, double-time easier. I am not passing out. Pants looser. Pride. Night on the range crawling under machine-gun fire, grenade throwing, bayonet drills. Survive the obstacle course. Parade, pants looser, pride. Final inspection. Major: “ Whose clothes are those, soldier?” Me: “ Mine, sir.” Sergeant: “ They’ re his, sir.” Major: “ Get him new ones!” I lost forty-seven pounds in ten weeks, down from a size 46 to 38. Lieutenant: “ You are going to fire control school.” Me: “ I don’ t want to be a fireman.” Lieutenant: “ It’ s radar school at Ft. Monmouth, New Jersey.” Me: “ Yes, sir!” There was a golden evening sky over a DC-6 at the Augusta airport on a Saturday in the first week in October. I got on board at twilight, no questions, and flew north. Fort Monmouth, New Jersey We arrive at Ft. Monmouth late on Saturday night. They do not know what to do with us, so hand out twenty-four hour passes. I head for Brooklyn and ring our doorbell at 260 Ovington at 5:30 A.M. on Sunday. Mom answers the door, looks at me, hugs and kisses me, and heads for the kitchen. Scrambled eggs, toast, sausage, coffee; I eat two helpings of everything. Dad asks questions. Mom looks at me like I am about to die from starvation and sews cuffs on the new size 34 Class “ A” trousers issued to me just before I left Georgia.

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We visit Nouno in the hospital. Home, sleepy, photographs in the garden, early dinner, Mom and Dad drive me back to Ft. Monmouth.

******* I was assigned to Training Company “ U” with a group that consisted generally of young men with one or more years of college, or with strong previous technical experience. Our barracks were reopened World War II vintage. The wood slates on the siding of the barracks had shrunk, so snow blew in to make straight-line patterns on our bunks and floors. Old boilers heated us. We had “ boiler watch” at night for safety. One exploded and took half of one barrack with it while we were in class. My thirty-six weeks at Ft. Monmouth were spent in class eight hours each night, from 4:00 P.M. until midnight. Our instructors were electrical engineering and physics professors from local colleges who had second jobs teaching us electronics. It was good duty. I had a pass most weekends, so I went home frequently, arriving at 3:00 A.M. on Saturday and returning to the barracks by noon on Monday. We ate great meatball and marinara sauce, and fried pepper and egg sandwiches from an Italian restaurant just off the base on Monday nights when the cooks threw all the “ C” rations into one pot (sausage patties, corned beef, lima beans, frankfurters, beans, and God knows what else). We built a company day room (recreation room) using pinewood from boxes for wall covering. I rebuilt an old player piano, and we scrounged a pool table with a slightly torn green cover from somewhere. When I pulled mess duty (KP), the sergeants applauded me as pot washer extraordinaire. I did nothing but wash pots and pans with great energy and to perfection. They loved the high polish. The weeks pass. I graduated as a Radar and Electronic Countermeasure Technician (Military Occupational Specialty, MOS-1984).

*******

That summer of 1954, my parents shared a cabana at Breezy Point with my godmother and godfather. Uncle Louie had died two years before. I was a guest a few times while on weekend passes from Ft. Monmouth before I shipped out

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Photo 52

Jason C. Mavis, Private E-1 Camp Gord on, GA - August 1953

Photo 53

Breezy Point Surf Club, June 1954 On a weekend pass, waiting for orders to ship overseas.

Left to right: Mom, Dad , Jason, Nouno Bill and Nouna Rose

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to Germany. It was nice to enjoy the club as the son of members and to visit with the members I had served for two years. [See Photo 53.] A few weeks earlier, on Easter weekend, I had taken a photograph of my parents, Nitsa and cousins. [See Photo 54.] They were all still bachelors, though Diamond Papadiskos and Thanasi Mavrovitis were soon to become engaged.

Photo 54 Easter Sunday, 1954

Standing, Left to Right are Jimmy’s Nephews: Diamond Papadiskos, Athanasios

Mavrovitis, Elias Demitriades, Thoma Samaras, Nicolaos Mavrovitis and Thomas Papanas.

Seated: Jimmy and Lily.

Kneeling in front: Helene (Nitsa).

Jimmy greatly valued the family ties and enjoyed having his nephews near to him. Lily adored all the young men and welcomed them, open armed, to her

home and table.

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Atlantic Crossing I originally had orders to fly to Vienna for assignment to the American Embassy. A lieutenant had priority orders and took my seat on the airplane. Within twenty-four hours, my assignment was changed, and a few days later, I was on the deck of a military transport ship docked in New Jersey. It was loading troops and cargo bound for Bremerhaven, Germany. I remembered the advice I had received from World War II veterans and tumbled down a gangway to find the hold I was assigned to and a top bunk at an air vent. I climbed up, and in, and claimed my territory. Volunteering for kitchen duty was easy enough. Within minutes, I was in the ship’ s kitchen wearing a gigantic white apron. I was a butcher’ s helper, cutting meat, scrubbing chopping blocks, and doing whatever the cook wanted me to do. The chief cook was Greek, so I ate well when on duty, eight hours every other day. I have three lasting memories of the voyage:

1) As we sailed out of New York Bay and into the Atlantic, I was in the kitchen somewhere deep in the bowels of the vessel. I felt the motion of the ship as it rolled through the sea and was immediately seasick. I went into the “ head” to throw-up and saw a green face staring back at me from the mirror. Really green! In a few hours it passed, and I was well from then on.

2) We sailed though the English Channel during the day, so we saw the White Cliffs of Dover. They brought back memories of wartime songs and the Normandy landings, and filled me with pride for what American troops had sacrificed and accomplished.

3) The first thing I saw on German soil as I climbed out of the hold onto the deck of the ship was a gigantic sign high in the air: “ TRINK COCA-COLA.”

It did not occur to me in 1954, for I did not then have the historical perspective, but on reflection I now wonder at the constant change in the political and economic relationships between countries, ethnicities, and religions. When I walked down the gangplank, I was an American soldier of Greek, Thracian, and Macedonian extraction (with all the mixing of blood that implies) landing in Germany to serve as part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) which was prepared to fight the Russians and East Europeans in defense of Western Europe. Moreover, the Turks and the Greeks were allied members of NATO, aligned against Russia, which, in its Tsarist and Orthodox manifestation, fought the Ottomans and helped the Hellenes to throw off the “ Turkish Yoke.” Augsburg and Ansbach, Germany A train was waiting for us within walking distance from the ship. We got on board and started our trip south toward a relocation center close to the German-French

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border. The center, at Zweibruecken, was on a hill overlooking a beautiful, forested landscape. In seventy-two hours our clothing had been laundered and dry-cleaned, our hair cut, and our transit orders issued. We were taken to the rail station and sent off to our units. The train ride gave me a sense of what Germany was like. The rail right-of-way bordered many well-kept homes whose flowered gardens were a surprise to see out of the train window; it was nothing like train travel in the U.S. After several hours, we stopped at a station, and my group was ordered off the train at Augsburg by the sergeant who accompanied us. It was a beautiful summer afternoon. The little square directly outside the station had a statue, a fountain, and flowers. We climbed aboard the trucks that were waiting. I was dropped off at the company commander’ s office of the Fifth Signal Company, Fifth Infantry Division just as the sirens sounded an “ Alert” .1 The sergeant told me to follow the office staff and I was soon hiking into the countryside behind combat dressed GIs, my Class “ A” uniform soaked with sweat. We returned to the kaserne2

just in time for evening mess. I met my fellow technicians and fell into the daily work routine with relative ease. The truth be known, I liked the Army and my duties. [See Photos 55 and 56.] Within two or three weeks, I was ordered to report to my company commander. He told me that I was being sent to a radar specialist school in Ansbach and to prepare to leave the next day. The small city is located southwest of Nürnberg [Nuremberg] in the region of Bavaria known as “ Franconia,” the land of the Franks. Its countryside of rolling hills and walled medieval cities includes Würzburg, Bayreuth (where Wagner built his opera house), and Nürnberg. It is close to the fabled romantic road that passes through charming towns like Dinkelsbühl and Rothenburg-ob-der-Tauber. Ansbach proved to be a dream assignment. We had classes for six hours each day, weekends free, and lots of spare time. Fortunately for me, I met Adolph Lang, who was the organist at the Post Chapel. Adolph was a student at Erlangen University and had achieved the position of doctorante, one who has been accepted for studies leading to a doctoral degree. The title was highly respected by the townspeople. Adolph eventually received his Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Montpellier in France, and

1 An “ Alert” was a surprise military exercise designed to train European NATO

organizations to respond to an attack by the Russians and East Europeans. All units came to full combat readiness and took pre-assigned defensive positions to await further orders. It was the time of “ The Cold War.”

2 German for “ military barracks” .

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Photo 55

Jason at work in a repair van.

Photo 56 First Lieu tenant Goubiash watching Jason repair an AN/ MPQ-10 counter artillery radar, in support of the 19th Field Artillery Battalion. Photo taken by Lt. Praeger.

Photo 57 Mrs. Lang and her son, Adolph, who befriended me. He was a doctoral cand idate at Erlangen University. After completing his doctoral stud ies at Montpellier in France, he became the Curator of Art and History for the Ansbach and Bayreuth District.

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became the curator of art and history for the Ansbach-Bayreuth District in Germany. Adolph’ s friendship opened doors for me in the German community and offered many wonderful experiences with German families and students. I met Adolph’ s mother, was a guest in their home, and was invited to several family socials during my stay. [See Photo 57.] With Adolph’ s sponsorship, I traveled on weekends with him and his student friends to out-of-the-way towns and restaurants, and became, for a short time, the first American member of the Ansbach Madrigal Chorus. Its young boy soprano members arrived at rehearsals with mud-and-cow-dung covered boots, incredible voices, and advanced musical training. Adolph introduced me to his friends as a “ Greek” -American. The Germans, especially the educated class, had a high regard for anything Greek and romantically credited to me the best attributes of an ancient Macedonian or Athenian. My mother was so appreciative of my having been taken in by Mrs. Lang that she sent a box of lingerie and cosmetics to her as a Christmas gift. Germany was still recovering from the war, and luxury items were in short supply, very desired, and expensive. On a golden October morning, Adolph, several student friends, and I took a drive to Rothenburg-ob-der-Taum, a picture book, medieval-walled town that sits on a high hill overlooking the river Taum. We had lunch under grape arbors at an outdoor restaurant that was tucked next to the town wall on the side of the hill that led down to the river. Following lunch, we visited a museum that exhibited artifacts of medieval Rothenburg: suits of armor, mail, weapons, and — in glass cases — various pieces of jewelry and implements. I stopped at one case puzzling over a tool or implement that looked like a trap. Finally, Adolph came to me with two young women from the group. “ What is this, Adolph?” I asked. He broke into a grin, and the girls started to giggle. “ A chastity belt,” he whispered. I thought that their existence was myth. After several letters back and forth to work out the details, John Hirsimaki and John Ryan arranged to spend a Saturday with me in Ansbach. They were with the 16th Infantry Regiment of the First Division (the Bloody Red One) in Schweinfurt, a train ride of about two hours from Ansbach, with a transfer in Nürnberg. They introduced me to Weiner Schnitzel a la Holstein1 at a little second floor restaurant named Bratwurstglöckle, that overlooked an ancient cobblestone street. The

1 Breaded and fried veal cutlet with a fried egg on top, and caviar or anchovy with

capers as accompanying condiments.

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restaurant represented itself as Althistoriche Gastatte seit 1540, having been in existence as a restaurant since 1540 A.D. We made plans over a wonderful meal to meet in Heidelberg at Christmas. [See Photos 58, 59, and 60.] In late October, I returned to the Fifth Signal Company to resume my duties as a technician at Fifth Division Headquarters and in the field with the Fifth Division’ s artillery battalion. I serviced radar and electronic equipment at Headquarters and at the field training facilities of Grafenwoehr, Vilkseck, and Hohenfels, where artillery and tank exercises were conducted in conjunction with infantry units. The first three weeks of December 1954, I was in Munich as part of a team of technicians. We were on special assignment to a tank division to install new communications equipment. Living conditions were interesting. My three companions and I from the Fifth Signal Company were billeted in a room behind the post laundry. We had two double bunks, a table, and our own bathroom. I planted myself in an upper bunk that had next to it a shutter-type window that opened on to the back of the laundry’ s service counter. Low and behold, if there were not several charming German girls working there from seven in the morning until six in the evening every day. They flirted with us every morning, took in our laundry gratis, and at our request, almost daily brought fresh pastries from town for our breakfast. We, of course, paid for the pastries, and to thank the young women, bought them little gifts at the PX [Post Exchange]. I might have tried to date one of the laundry girls if I had not met Dolores, a young “ older” woman in her mid-twenties who worked at the USO canteen on base. She arranged weekend tour trips and entertainments for G.I.s. We hit it off, and before I knew it, I was spending time at the Munich home that housed several female American employees of the USO. The women dated officers almost exclusively; at least, I was the only enlisted man that attended parties. They protected me from overbearing officers by threatening to throw them out if they harassed me. It was clear that the officers considered the home their territory. Theater, opera, concerts, and parties were the order of the day, every evening. Returning to Augsburg just in time to take my Christmas leave, I packed my bags and was off to Ansbach to visit Adolph and his mother for two days. They lived in an apartment on the third floor of a building across from St. Johannis church (constructed 1436-41 A.D.), the burial church of the Margraves of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Margraves were German nobility and landholders. Because they were not yet home, I sat on a snowbank just under a huge stained glass window of St. Johannis to wait for them. The church was lit, so the colors of the stained glass were vivid against a black, star-filled sky. I listened to the wonderful choir rehearse music for Christmas services.

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Photo 58

Ansbach, Germany Markgraffenbrunnen und Stad thaus

Photo 59 A view of a street in Ansbach. On it was the restaurant where John Hirsimaki, John Ryan and I had our reunion in Germany party.

Photo 60 John Hirsimaki and Jason in Ansbach, October 1954. The photo was taken by John Ryan.

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While I was in Ansbach, Adolph insisted that we visit Dinkelsbühl. Accompanied by several of Adolph’ s friends, we drove through the snow-covered hills and valleys to the small town and climbed its church tower to a walkway high above its square. The walkway led round the tower clock. The scene of the town in its still valley at dusk was magical as lights shown from home and shop windows and cast bright paths onto the snow. Suddenly, in what seemed to come from a heavenly source, we heard a brass band playing, “ Joy to the World.” The musicians, bundled in warm wools, were standing on the tower walkway just around the corner from us. We listened as they played a different carol from each compass point. On the morning of Christmas Eve, I left Ansbach for Heidelberg where I met the two Johns, and for the first time their friend, Mike Tugendreich. Heidelberg at Christmas — Salzburg Stop — and Vienna on New Year’ s Eve My train arrived at the Bahnhoff in Heidelberg in mid-afternoon on Christmas Eve, two hours or so before my friends were due in. I lugged a two-suit travel bag and a twelve-inch cube box with me as I walked the streets almost aimlessly but for the fact that I kept my location with respect to the Bahnhoff fixed. The box contained treats that my mother had sent to me for the holidays. Heidelberg was very quiet, and I found myself in an uninteresting residential district with little to see. John Hirsimaki and John Ryan arrived in the late afternoon with Mike Tugendreich, who would become a friend, and Bob West, a buddy of theirs from the 16th Infantry Regiment. At sunset, we found a hotel that would have us. The proprietor made an exception as his hotel had been emptied for the holiday, as had most other hotels. He expected relatives to arrive from the countryside that evening to spend Christmas with his family. Our rooms were next to, or just across a small hall, from each other. Since there was no one else on our floor, we kept our doors open, and as we settled in, I opened my mother’ s care package. In it was a quart bottle of Johnny Walker Red Label accompanied by cans of dolmades, anchovies, olives, cheese, a lemon or two, and crackers. We immediately set about having a cocktail party. The proprietor wandered by, probably a little worried about what we were doing, and was happy to join us in a Christmas Eve drink – Fröliche Weinachten! Christmas morning was cold, wet, and snowy. What I saw from the window of my room, captured in Photo 61, did not make me want to wander about sightseeing. We started the day off with a hearty breakfast of an orange, four tiny, pullet eggs fried on top of ham in a small crockery utensil, sweet rolls, and coffee. Fortified, we ventured out to see Heidelberg. Our civilian clothes barely kept us warm. Bob

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West did not have a coat and froze most of the day. Suffering the cold and wet weather, we toured the Schloss, which had been reconstructed several times after its destruction in wars between 1398 and the nineteenth century. [See Photos 62 and 63.] We boarded the funicular, riding it up to the castle, then further to the top of the mountain, the Königstuhl. The weather prohibited us from seeing anything of the view and encouraged us to enter an inn and enjoy a steaming bowl of oxtail soup with brandy. The next morning, we boarded a train for a short ride to Mannheim, where Mike Tugendreich hoped to find some evidence of his family at a local cemetery. Unfortunately, we were unsuccessful. I left the two Johns, Mike, and Bob in Manheim, taking the train south to Augsburg, where I stopped at the Flak Kaserne to pick up my mail and clean clothing. The following morning I took the train from Augsburg to Munich and there got on board the Orient Express for a week-long trip to Salzburg and Vienna. On the train, I met two young air force lieutenants. They were both European- born, one from Hungary and the other from Czechoslovakia, and both in intelligence operations. They took me on as a companion largely because I was Greek-American. By now, I had learned what an advantage the “ Greek” part of my hyphenated nationality was in Europe. My companions knew Salzburg and were acquainted with a woman they called “ Baroness.” She had two daughters in their late teens. We spent a day visiting the Schloss, Mozart’ s Geburtshaus [birthplace] and the cathedral. and an evening with the “ Baroness” and her daughters at a restaurant that featured music and dancing. I talked to the piano player and learned that he was a Hungarian medical doctor making his way in Austria as a musician. There were many dislocated people in Western Europe struggling to start life anew. Vienna provided another adventure for me. I left my air force friends with the Baroness in Salzburg, and arrived in Vienna the evening before New Year’ s Eve. I asked the driver of the pre-World War Two diesel-powered taxi to take me to the Hotel Mozart. At the front desk, I was told there were no rooms available. The manager suggested that I got to the Hotel Westminster (an interesting name for a hotel in a country that had recently fought Great Britain). I felt a tap on my shoulder, turned, and met two young American women who offered me a ride to the hotel in their automobile. My new friends were from the Midwest and students in Paris. They decided to spend their daddies’ money on a New Year holiday in Vienna. Within hours, I was appointed their escort, and the next morning was outfitted with a rented

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Photo 61

Heidelberg Rooftops, Christmas Morning 1954. From our hotel wind ow.

Photo 62 The Schloss at Heidelberg

Photo 63 Freezing at the Schloss, left to right, are: Mike Tugendreich,

Bob West, Jason, John Hirsimaki and John Ryan.

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tuxedo so that I could properly perform my duties on New Year’ s Eve. They even provided a pocketful of money. In the early morning of 1 January 1955, while driving their car, I was stopped by a Russian MP on a bridge over the Danube. Fortunately, it was New Years and many less-than-sober drivers had gone the wrong way. The girls had American passports, and I, my military ID. The Russian turned me over to the American MPs. It turned out that I was not supposed to have been given a “ Grey Card,” a visa-like authorization that permitted U.S. military personnel to travel through the Russian Zone to central Vienna. My security clearances prohibited travel to Vienna and Berlin, both cities lying within Russian zones of occupation. So, at about eight o’ clock in the morning, there was a knock on my hotel door. Two MP sergeants rousted me out of bed and told me that I was to pack immediately and go with them to the rail station to be transported through the Russian Zone to U.S.-controlled Austria. Leaving my tux at the front desk, I checked out of the hotel, never again to see my New Year’ s dates. Return to Duty January found me back in Munich and dating Dolores. My stay was highlighted by a performance of Mozart’ s Opera, Cosi fan Tutti, at the Mozart Theater, and celebration of Fasching, the pre-Lent carnival madness in Bavaria. In February, I was sent to service electronic equipment located close to the Czechoslovakian border, [See Photos 54, 65, and 66.] and then to Grafenwoehr-Vielseck and Baumholder, where I serviced electronic equipment during artillery and tank maneuvers. Returning to Augsburg in early March, I had just enough time to make final arrangements for my trip to Italy and Greece.

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Photo 64

A Crucifixion Tableau on a remote German road

Photo 65

Ox Drawn Carts Were Common on Secondary Roads

Photo 66

Looking east from Germany to East Germany

These photographs were taken from a jeep while on maneuvers on the border

of East Germany in January 1955. The day

was spectacularly clear, very bright and very cold .

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0DFHGRQLDQ�(DVWHU� The house was quiet when I woke, warm under a mountainous down comforter. It was a chilly Monday morning in Kastoria, Macedonia, Greece, 18 April 1955, the day after Easter. From my bed, I was able to see past French doors that opened to a small, second-story balcony and through blossoming plum trees to the lake. [See Photo 67.] The water was shining, here gold and there steel gray, gold where the sun’ s spring rays pierced between the shifting vertical columns of mist, and gray beneath the mist as it rose from the lake’ s surface. The room was sparse and clean. For the ten days I was in Kastoria, I slept in the large bed that belonged to my Uncle Constantine, who I called Theo Costa, and his wife, Thea Ekaterini. The space was furnished with a bed, two straight-back chairs, a bureau with a mirror, a wash stand, and in the corner opposite the bed on a small shelf, an icon of Saints Constantine and Helen with a votive candle in red glass glowing before it. The floor was a barely finished dark plank. Across the room, my freshly laundered clothing was carefully draped on a chair: At its feet were my polished shoes. The kindness and care I received in this humble and beautiful home embarrassed me and made me self-conscious. But, there was no way to prevent my aunt and my cousin Kalliopi from lavishing every attention on me. And, I admit to enjoying every minute, so different from my barracks in Augsburg. I wore civilian clothing in Greece but was easily distinguishable as an American soldier by my short, crew cut hair and the dog tags that hung round my neck. I had arrived late in the evening of the previous Thursday, 14 April, after a harrowing bus ride through the mountains of Macedonia. Ten days before, on 4 April, my friend Frank Brummet and I left the Flak Kaserne in Augsburg earlier than planned. Just before breakfast, we learned from the company first sergeant that there was about to be an Alert. We dressed, grabbed the bags we had packed the night before, and ran. At the Kaserne’ s main gate, we lunged into one of the taxis that were always waiting, disregarding, as the taxi speeded away, both the siren that sounded the Alert and the shriek of the whistles the MPs used to force our attention to their order for us to return to the base. If we had hesitated, we would have missed our train; so much for obedience to Army discipline in the face of losing one day of leave. Staying for the Alert would have required us to take our defensive position with the rest of the Division on the outskirts of Augsburg for the better part of the day.

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Photo 67

From the balcony of the bedroom where I slep t in my Uncle and Aunt’s home in Kastoria, Greece. Snow caps Mt. Vitsi in the d istance. Plum trees in bloom. April 1955

Photo 68

Descending from the Alps into Italy.

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Frank was a native of southern Indiana, a good young man, even more innocent than I. Why he decided to travel with me to Italy is a forgotten memory. I started to plan a trip to Greece from the time I knew that I was being shipped to Germany. My letters home included questions and proposed dates. Dad sent me detailed instructions, especially about being in Kastoria for Easter and places to visit while I was there. His letters were full of his memories. In late February of 1955, the Fifth Division’ s artillery battalion went on maneuvers in northern Germany. I accompanied them with two other members of my team, a corporal and a sergeant, who manned a radio and radar repair van with me. One night after a hot shower I returned to the van through two feet of snow to discover that I had lost my wallet and military identification card. Knowing that my leave was approved for early April, I talked to the sergeant about how best to obtain a new ID He told me to keep my mouth shut as it would take several weeks to get a new one, and without an ID, my leave would likely be cancelled. I took his advice and followed his instructions on how to travel without proper identification. Frank and I ducked the military police at the train station on the morning of the fourth of April, and boarded our train in Augsburg. We traveled south through Munich, into Switzerland, and across Brenner Pass. At the Swiss and Italian borders, I pretended to sleep as border officials passed through the train to check papers and stamp passports. I put two packages of Lucky Strike cigarettes on my chest on top of my leave orders. They took the cigarettes, then read, stamped, and put my leave papers back in my lap, while I prayed silently that they would not ask me for my military ID card. Frank was more afraid than I. He probably had more sense.

We traveled through Switzerland at night and slept sitting up in our second-class compartment. When dawn came, we were descending from the Italian Alps into northern Italy. There were monasteries and castles on the tops of hills, vineyards and cultivated fields on the slopes, and cattle in the verdant valleys. [See Photo 68.] The train stopped in Verona, where we had a layover of several hours while waiting for the train to Florence. We walked a bit, amazed by the bright sunlight of Italy and street scenes and sounds that contrasted so dramatically to those we experienced in Germany. It was as though we had stepped out of a silent, gray fog into a song-filled, brilliant landscape. We left Verona in late afternoon. The train passed rolling, barren hills different from any landscape I had seen before. In the light of a full moon, it looked like what I imagined moonscape to be. We arrived at Firenze (Florence) late in the evening. Tired and a bit confused, we asked a taxicab driver to take us to a modest

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hotel. In a few minutes, he stopped on a dark street and helped us into a small lobby, waking the attendant who was snoring in a chair behind the counter. In just a few more minutes, after paying the cab driver and taking a slow lift to the third floor, we collapsed into our beds. We woke to early morning street noise, quickly washed, shaved, dressed, and made for the lobby where we learned that our hotel, the Massimo, was on Via Calzaiuoli, about one block from Piazza Del Duomo. The Duomo [cathedral] was Santa Maria del Fiore.

Dressing in the 1950s meant jacket and tie. The hotel staff suggested that we to go to a restaurant at the Piazza de la Signoria for breakfast. It was a short walk. The bright April morning was already warming, and Florence was beautiful. We ate our outdoor breakfast of rolls and coffee in the presence of a lovely young woman who sat at a table a few feet from us, and close to the waist-high railing that separated the restaurant from the piazza. There were potted red geraniums on the top of the railing to the left of her profiled blond head. To her right, the Piazza presented buildings and statuary created during the Renaissance. The scene was overwhelming. It was great to be alive and to be young. For the next three and one-half days, we soaked in the light, the museums, the art and the energy of the city. Among my memories are the magnificent statue of David, the Palazzo Pitti and its endless collection of art, the Duomo, the Ponte Vecchio, our long walk up a small mountain to Fiesole, lunch at the outdoor restaurant on the way, and a glass of wine in its square while listening to a boys’ choir rehearse in the cathedral. [See Photos 69 to 76.] Every afternoon, I relaxed with glass of Cinzano Rosso at a café on the Piazza de la Repubblica, a colorful “ Cinzano” umbrella shading the table while I wrote postcards, read the Paris edition of the New York Tribune and watched beautiful women pass my table. On the Saturday morning of our departure for Rome, the space before the Duomo was filled with people dressed in Renaissance costumes. They participated in the Scopio del Carro [explosion of the wagon], an annual celebration. We were able to see it all from our hotel room, and watched fireworks flaring from an ornate and flower-bedecked, almost thirty-foot high tower that was pulled through the street by four white, garlanded oxen. It was a dramatic climax to our short stay in Florence. We boarded the train for Rome late in the afternoon. On arrival, we once again asked a cab driver to take us to an inexpensive hotel. It was a short ride. We registered at a pensione located just five or six blocks from the railway station, likely on Via Sforza and a block or two from Santa Maria Maggiore.

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Photo 69

Florence from Forte Belvedere

Photo 70 Photo 71

Santa Maria del Fiore Frank Brummet with the Southern Shore Of the Arno River Behind Him

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Photo 72

Ponte Vecchio

Photo 73 Vermouth at the Piazza de la Republica

Photo 74 Lunch at Table 10 – On the Way to Fiesole

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Photo 75 Photo 76

These two photos were taken from my hotel room on Holy Saturday morning in

Florence. In Photo 75, the flames in the d istance are fireworks explod ing on an ornate cart. Photo 76 shows the cart d rawn by white oxen in the photo on the right. It is the

annual celebration of Scoppio del Carro, which commemorates Pazzino dei Pazzi’s scaling of the walls of Jerusalem in 1099. He returned to Florence with stones from the Holy Sepulchre. These are used to kind le the flame that explodes the cart, to the joy of the

festive crowds.

Photo 77

Jason in Rome Behind me, the Monument to King Victor Emannuel

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We were lucky to have found any accommodation on the night before Easter. Rome was overflowing with the faithful from all parts of the world. On Easter morning, 10 April, we learned that we were in a pensione whose guests were, for the most part middle-aged British couples on long-term visits. After a hurried breakfast, we were on our way into the streets of Rome. A short walk from our hotel had us at the Foro Romano, the Roman Forum, where we explored and saw the Coliseum and the Arch of Constantine.1 [See Photos 77 to 80.] By mid-morning, we had visited the national monument to King Victor Emmanuel II, who, in 1861, became the first king of a united Italy. Our goal was to be at the Vatican for the Pope’ s Easter appearance and blessing. The walk along the Tiber was very beautiful. Trees were in early leaf, and we could see the dome of St. Peter’ s across the river ahead of us and to our left. We came to the Castel Sant’Angelo from which Tosca jumps to her death in the last scene of Puccini’ s opera of the same name, crossed the Ponte Sant’ Angelo, and walked on along the Via Della Conciliazione following the crowds to the Vatican. There, we witnessed Pope Pius XII offer his Easter blessing to an enormous and enthusiastic multiracial, multilingual throng of worshippers. We left the Vatican and walked along the west bank of the Tiber, crossing back to the eastern side at a point that took us to the Spanish Steps, and continued on through the streets of Rome passing palazzos and fountains whose names I never learned. We made it back to our pensione in time for dinner and a fascinating Roman history lesson from a retired British professor and his wife. On Monday, the morning after Easter (the western Easter), Frank boarded a train for Germany and I an airplane, British European Airlines, to Athens. Traveling without an ID card had its moments. At the airport, I waited in the men’ s room until the final boarding call for my flight, then rushed to the counter with my leave orders in hand to be stamped. I was on board the aircraft before anyone had a chance to ask for my ID. I was excited as the plane moved over the Adriatic as I knew that I would soon be in Greece. [See Photo 81.]

1 This is the Constantine who founded Constantinople. This arch was erected in his honor after he defeated Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge in 315 A.D. It was at this battle that tradition holds him to have seen a cross in the sky, and heard a voice telling him that he would conquer under this sign. Inscription: "Constantine overcame his enemies by divine inspiration"

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Photo 78 Along the Tiber, North Towards the Vatican

Photo 79 Castel Sant’Angelo – Where Tosca met her fate.

Photo 80 The Vatican, Easter 1955 Pope Pius is the Little White Dot

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The airplane landed in Athens late in the afternoon. When a customs inspector asked me where I was going, I answered in broken Greek that I was on my way to visit my grandmother in Kastoria for Easter. He smiled and told me to sit nearby and wait for him. In half an hour or so he collected me and my bag, never having asked for my ID, and took me to the city and the Hotel Washington in his automobile. He left me in my room with his blessing and best wishes for my visit to my grandmother. First thing the next morning, I took a cab to the American Embassy where I reported that my raincoat with my ID card had been stolen. The clerk wrote down my name, serial number, military address, unit identification, and my travel plans in Greece. He told me to have the Embassy called if I ran into any trouble, otherwise to proceed with my trip carrying my travel orders. I spent the day in Athens walking though Syntagma, then via the Plaka, Monastiraki, and Aprides districts to the Acropolis, which can be seen from a distance from all over Athens. I made stops along the way to buy bread, cheese, olives, and a small bottle of wine for lunch. As I approached the Acropolis from the Aprides district, I looked up to see the four columns of the north porch of the Erechtheion.1 The northwest corner of the Propylaia2 is visible on the far right rim of the Acropolis. From the Aprides, I walked past The Tower of the Winds and through the Agora, the marketplace of ancient Athens, and on toward the Pnyx. This is the hill on which Themistocles, Pericles, and Demosthenes, each in his own time, spoke to the citizens of Athens in the first democracy in history. They gathered there for over two centuries to make decisions about how, among other things, to: counter invasions by the Persians; conduct the Peloponnesian War against Sparta; pursue the invasion of Sicily; and, establish a relationship between Athens and Macedon, first with its King Philip, then after his assassination, with his son, Alexander the Great. [See Photos 82-86.]

I climbed the steps leading to the top of the Acropolis and entered the site through the Propylaia, unprepared for the impact the Parthenon would have on me. It was overwhelming.

1 The Erechtheion (Erechtheum) housed several cults but was primarily dedicated to

Athena Polias (Athena’ s attribution as the protector of cities) and to Poseidon. See: Hornblower and Spawforth, The Oxford Classical Dictionary. 554

2 The Propylaia is, in this case, the Periclean gateway to the Acropolis. See: Ibid.,

1259

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1 Photo 81 Flying East Approaching the Adriatic

Photo 82 The Acropolis North Porch of the Erechtheion

Photo 83 The Acropolis From the Pynx

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Photo 84

The Parthenon

Photo 85

Erechtheion from the Southeast — Lykavittos Hill in the Distance

Photo 86

The Erechtheion West Wall — Athena’s Olive Tree

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I was one of very few visitors for the two or three hours I spent on the site of the sacred temples of Athena and Poseidon. No barriers existed in 1955. Visitors were free to walk into the Parthenon and climb about the temple of Nike Athena,1 the Propylaia, and the Erechtheion, whose design was particularly appealing to me. The photograph of the Erechtheion from its southwest corner has six Karyatids2 (four in the first line and one each behind those in the front corners). Lord Elgin carried one of the Karyatids off to Great Britain along with many other treasures of the Acropolis. All the Karyatids are now copies. The originals were removed to be safeguarded in the Acropolis museum. I picnicked on the steps of the Parthenon and took time to read from a small volume of Plato’ s works that I had brought with me from Germany. I had come face to face with my Greek heritage and identified myself, really for the first time, with the race of Greek-speaking people that inhabited the Balkans: Hellenes, Macedonians, Thracians, and those “ barbarians” who had invaded, settled, and been absorbed into the Hellenic world. Wednesday morning I boarded a flight from Athens to Thessaloniki. On arrival, a cab driver showed me where the bus station was and took me to a nearby hotel. It was mid-afternoon, so I had time to see something of the city. After settling into my small hotel near the waterfront, I wandered from street to street through the afternoon and evening looking into shops and restaurants. The city was romantic and mysterious. My senses were bombarded by colorful beaded curtains, the strong smell of Turkish and Greek tobaccos, buyers and sellers haggling over prices in hushed tones and with loud, angry exclamations, and music that was rhythmic and erotic tumbling from open doorways. Toward evening, my mouth watered at the aroma of roasted meat and fish. The bay was beautiful, a late afternoon sun gilding its wavelets. The next morning, I made my way along the bay to the bus station and set my bag down to purchase my ticket to Kastoria. When I turned my bag was gone. Within a moment, a young man stepped up to me and asked in Greek whether I had “ lost” my bag. He assured me that for twenty dollars he would be able to find it. Clearly, extortion, but just as clearly, I needed my bag. Within just two or three minutes after I handed over a twenty-dollar bill, my bag was dropped out of a passing car. I was an Amerikanaki in Thessaloniki. Native-born Greeks use this derogatory name to describe first generation Americans who returned to Greece on a visit. We were not Greeks, just pretenders, and we offended the native-born. There was and is an understandable resentment toward Greek-Americans, too many of whom

1 Athena Victorious. See: Hornblower and Spawforth, The Oxford Classical

Dictionary., 201. 2 Karyatids is also spelled Caryatids. They are column shafts carved in the form of

young women or maidens

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visited postwar Greece with their bright new Buicks and Oldsmobiles extravagantly shipped from New York on passenger ships. They brought these to show off their economic success to relatives who had suffered poverty and worse during the Italian and German occupation, and later during the civil war. When the crowded bus left Thessaloniki, I sat in the midst of travelers going home to their towns and villages for Easter. There were live lambs, goats, and chickens inside mesh cages tied down to the roof of the bus. Inside, the occupants, seated on hard wood benches, carried worn suitcases, bundles of clothing, and bags full of food. I could smell the feta, kasseri, olives, sausage, and salt fish being carried to become part of an Easter feast. From time to time, a traveler would take out a chunk of bread, use a pocket knife to cut a piece of cheese, select a few olives, and eat, washing the food down with a generous draught of FIX beer or Retsina. By early evening, the bus was climbing up mountain roads with only four remaining riders: the driver, two Greek soldiers on their way to their villages for Easter, and me. The other passengers with all their clothing, livestock, and food had left the bus one or two at a time in the center of a small town or at a crossroad that led to some village, a walking distance from the main road. Because my Greek was limited, I was able to strike up only an awkward conversation with the two Greek soldiers. But, once it was clear that I was also a soldier, we were comrades. One of them produced a small mandolin from his pack, and they, along with the bus driver, sang songs as we careened up the road. It was starting to rain, and as the bus climbed higher into the mountains, snow mixed with the rain. I was hungry. The bus driver stopped at an inn in a village that seemed glued to the hillside next to the road. In spite of it being the week before Easter, a week in which Greek Orthodox Christians adhere to a strict fast, there was a leg of lamb in the oven. I bought it, cheese, bread, olives, and two liters of Retsina and returned to my companions on the bus. We had a picnic. We drank the Retsina, and we sang songs (encouraged by my companions, I joined in as best I could), and the bus driver, strengthened by the food and emboldened by the wine, drove wildly on into the dark of the night, through the snow, on a winding road with steep cliffs beside it. There was neither guardrail nor wall between us in the bus and a pitch- black chasm. Somewhere, a few kilometers from Kastoria, my friends left the bus to walk to their villages. We parted with embraces and wishes for a Kallo Pascha, Happy Easter. Shortly after nine o’ clock, we reached a dark square in Kastoria. It was raining and snowing. The bus driver took me to a small café where men were sitting, playing cards, drinking coffee, and smoking. He helped me ask where I might find my Uncle, Constantinos Mavrovitis.

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A man with two or three days of gray stubble on his face rose from his table while grinding out his cigarette in an overflowing ashtray. He pushed back his chair and said, “ Ella mazi mou” , [“ Come with me” ], as he passed me and walked into the darkness of the square. Thanking the bus driver, I picked up my bag and hurried to follow my guide over wet cobblestone streets slippery from rain and ice, through narrow alleys and down steps toward the lake that I saw for the first time. It looked cold, steely gray and black, reflecting just a few lights from homes close to the water. We turned a corner and reached a wooden staircase that led to the second story of a building. The man motioned for me to follow him up. At the landing, he knocked on the door and then pushed it open. Sitting in a chair in the middle of the room with one uncovered electric light bulb hanging above her head was a small, wrinkled, old woman in a black dress that draped to the floor and hid her feet. A shawl covered her head. Her eyes narrowed, and as she squinted trying better to see us she asked, “ Pios enai?” [“ Who is it?” ] “ Efara to engoni sou” [“ I brought your grandson” ], he replied. I stepped toward her slowly while, in a weak-voiced, agitated response she told the man that I could not be her grandson because he was in the army, and this boy did not wear a uniform. She also remarked that I was too big to be her grandson. I knelt before her and told her in my broken Greek that I was Jason, Dimitraki’ s son, and that I was a soldier. She held my face, and tried to pull me up into her lap. She kissed my face one hundred times. Within minutes, my Uncle Constantinos and Cousin Kalliopi came through the door, greeting me excitedly with embraces. A moment later, my Aunt Ekaterini followed, her wet face smiling broadly. They had been out looking for me in the town. My uncle was a tall, thin man whose long and angular face showed sensitivity and a touch of shyness. In his sixties, with thinning hair and a day or more of beard on his cheeks, he looked like a man who carried more than sixty years of life’ s strain. My aunt, a handsome woman in her late fifties, was already covered in the black costume that middle-age Greek women were destined to wear as family members died and mourning became a constant occupation. Kalliopi was a fresh, pretty, open-eyed, enthusiastic young woman whose energy brightened the room. I spent all of my time in Kastoria with my uncle, aunt, and cousin Kalliopi under the doting eye of my grandmother, Kalliopi Mavrovitis, or Yia-Yia, the endearing Greek term for grandmother. At eighty-eight, she was mentally alert though physically limited. Nonetheless, she stood and danced at our Easter celebration, and the day before, on Holy Saturday morning, I took her to church in the Moxi (the town cab). It was her first ride in an automobile, and she was delighted by it. I carried her to the altar of the church and at her insistence, passed the waiting

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queue to stand before a young priest. She had known him from the day he was born, so was unashamed when she directed him to offer communion first to me, “ my grandson from America,” and then to her. My uncle, aunt, Kalliopi, and I had attended the Metropolitan Cathedral of Kastoria1 the night before, Good Friday evening, to participate in The Lamentation, a service that mourns the death and entombment of Jesus and reminds us of the Old Testament prophecies concerning the Resurrection. It took place with a focus on the flower-bedecked representation of Christ’ s tomb which was placed before the Royal Gate of the iconostasion, a carved wood Byzantine artwork illuminated by glowing red oil lamps that hung above icons of the Virgin, Jesus, and the Saints. Chants by the priest and his psalti, the darkness, incense, and ancient hymns lent great dignity and gravity to the drama. On the evening of Holy Saturday, we returned to the cathedral at eleven o’ clock to listen to the lessons and wait for announcement of an expected, yet astounding event. At midnight, in total darkness, the light of one candle glowed from behind the iconostasion and the Royal Gate opened to the proclamation of the bishop “ Christos Anesti” [Christ is Risen]! “ Alithos Anesti” [Truly He Is Risen], the congregation responded as one, as the flame from one candle spread to the candles held by all in the church. The flickering candles made the mosaics, icons, and gold and silver ornamentation in the church shimmer with life. Shortly after, as the congregation sang the resurrection hymn, a military band joined in accompaniment from outside the cathedral, and an artillery unit began to fire a twenty-one-gun salute. At about two-thirty in the morning, after the liturgy was complete, we walked home carrying our Resurrection candles to perform the traditional blessing of the house by making the sign of the cross at the top of the front door with the candles’ flames. A fast-breaking meal of mageritsa, a soup of lamb, rice, and dill with an egg-lemon sauce, hard-boiled Easter eggs, Lambropsomo (Easter bread), olives, cheese, and wine awaited us. Each of us struck another’ s egg with our own to see which would remain unbroken, bringing good luck to the holder. Easter morning, Kalliopi and I took the family’ s lamb dinner to the bakery where many families brought their roasting pans to fill the cavernous space of the great oven after the morning’ s fresh, crisp bread had been baked. Few homes in Kastoria had indoor ovens; some had outdoor bread ovens, but these were more commonly found in neighboring villages.

1 This is the very same cathedral that metropolitan Germanos Karavangelis served

during the Macedonian Agony (1900-1910).

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In the afternoon, we attended the Agapi1 service at the cathedral. The final prayer of the service before the Dismissal is:

“ It is the day of the Resurrection, let us be glorious in splendor for the festival, and let us embrace one another. Let us speak also, O brethren, to those that hate us, and in the Resurrection, let us forgive all things, and so let us cry: Christ has risen from the dead, by death trampling upon Death, and has bestowed life eternal to those in the tombs.”

Before we left my Thea and Theo’ s home for the Agapi service we took photographs in the garden. [See Photos 87 to 89.] Later in the day, Kalliope and I retrieved the pan of roast lamb and potatoes from the baker’ s oven and carried it home for our Easter feast. The day after Easter was chosen as the day for me to visit Mavrovo, the ancestral home of the Mavrovitis family. I was excited at the prospect and had no idea what to expect. The next morning I got out of bed, washed using the fresh, warm water that had been quietly placed in the washstand for me as I woke, dressed, and went into the main room. There my grandmother sat on a low, Ottoman-styled divan. In front of her was a charcoal brazier with glowing coals in the middle of a bed of sand. She stirred my morning coffee in a long-handled, shiny brass pot unique to the preparation of Elliniko Café. Kalliopi and her mother each gave me a morning hug and kiss. A dish with warm bread, cheese, and olives was set out for my wonderful breakfast. Soon after Theo Costa returned from a morning walk, he, Kalliopi, and I were on our way to the ferry that carried passengers to and from the villages on the lake. Perhaps the term “ ferry” conjures too grand an image; it was an open, diesel-driven boat that might have seated, at most, ten to twelve passengers. This early morning, with Kastoria’ s Easter revelers still in bed, we were its only occupants. A wind had come up out of the north, and as the mist blew away I was able to see the snow-capped peak of Vitsi, the mountain that had absorbed much of the bloodshed during the Greek civil war that followed the Second World War. Gray-white clouds streaked across a blue sky, while we below bumped along in the boat as it broke against the waves raised by the wind. The water was a very deep blue and cold. It was exhilarating.

1 Agape is the name of the Easter Vespers Service held in the early afternoon on

Easter. The faithful express their brotherly love and exchange the kiss of love honoring the resurrected Christ. There are local traditions for arguments to be resolved, mortgages satisfied and burned, and enmities publicly ended.

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Photo 87

Yia-Yia Kalliope Mavrovitis and Grandson Jason in the garden. Easter Sunday, 17 April 1955.

Photo 88

Thea Ekaterini and Theo Constantinos w ith Jason

Photo 89

Cousin Kalliope Mavrovitis in the Garden The trees had recently broken into leaf: some still appeared skeletal, others displayed flowers, and a few were fully greened. The shore of the lake looked

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empty and ominous. I saw occasional evidence of villages on the shore. From the middle of the lake, my Uncle pointed to two parallel rows of tall poplar trees on the shore in the distance. From behind, they framed a dock that jutted out into the lake. Through the mist, I could see a tall figure moving slowly toward the end of the dock. As we drew closer, I thought I was having an Old Testament vision. There on the wharf was a tall man — hatless, with white hair flowing over his shoulders and a thin beard reaching to the middle of his chest. A lambskin cape covered his shoulders. He wore a coarse black woolen shirt, and a black skirt that fell to his ankles. In his hand he carried a shepherd’ s staff, a wooden crook worthy of a bishop. My Theo Constantinos gave me instructions as we tied to the pier. This was my great-uncle, Theo Michaeli, my grandfather’ s brother and patriarch of the family. His eyes burned holes through mine as I approached him. I took and kissed his hands as my Uncle had instructed, and embraced him to receive his blessing and a kiss. Theo Michaeli was about eighty-six. He had not left his home for more than one year before this day but walked unescorted to the dock to greet his great-nephew from America. Joined by cousin Peter Vouitsis, the village schoolmaster who in future years would become the superintendent of schools for the district, his sisters, and others, Theo Michaeli led me through the apple orchards whose trees were covered with blossoms. He asked, “ In America, is the sky this blue?” Answer: “ Oxi Theo” He asked, “ In America, is the grass this green?” Answer: “ Oxi Theo.” He asked, “ In America, are the blossoms this beautiful?” Answer: “ Oxi Theo.” There was no other possible answer: “ Oxi, Theo.” [“ No, Uncle.” ] We progressed to the home his sons had financed.1 It was on the site of the house that my father had lived in as a child. Sections of the wall that had surrounded the property were still there. And, in the place that my father remembered was the outdoor oven where his mother had baked their bread. [See Photos 90 to 92.]

1 Theo Michaelis’ youngest son, Constantinos, was born by his second wife when

Michaelis was seventy-two years of age. Women frequently died in childbirth. They worked hard in their difficult village lives.

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Photo 90 The women are sitting on either side of the gate that led into the stable yard of my grandfather Athanasio’s home, which was surrounded by a mud-brick wall. In the upper right hand corner of the photograph, rising from the top of the wall, is the chimney of the original outdoor bread oven. The walls kept livestock in and predators (includ ing man) ou t. On the right, is my great-uncle Theo Michaelis wife, Thomai. They are both long deceased . The woman on the left is a neighbor. The chicken joins the lad ies in koutsobolio [gossip].

Photo 91 Jason joins his cousin Peter in the branches of a family apple tree in

their orchards in Mavrovo.

Photo 92 Mavrovo’s School

Young people have gathered here on the day after Easter and are dancing under the

trees.

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Once in the house, we were served a traditional sweet (candied orange or grapefruit rind, quince, or cherries) with ice-cold water, a brandy, and Greek coffee. The conversation was more a monologue by my great-uncle. Cousin Peter taught me that the only acceptable response was, “ Aechis dikeo, Theo.” [“ You are in the right, Uncle.” ]. After leaving, Theo Michaeli, my cousins, and I walked through outlying orchards until we reached the village church that my father had asked me to visit. Peter led us to a small, white structure at the corner of the churchyard cemetery. Entering it through an unlocked door, whose opening provided dim light to the 15 x 15 foot space, I saw wood boxes, one stacked on top of the other on shelves. Some were labeled with names and dates, others not. In the far corner, there was a heap of what I thought at first to be white sticks. Then I saw the gaping, black-holed eye sockets of human skulls. For a moment my knees weakened. This was the village’ s ossuary, the place, I learned, were exhumed skeletons were stored to make room in the limited space of the cemetery for the next generation to be buried and decompose. Peter very matter-of-factly started to apologize for the pile of bones. “ They were all in boxes and labeled,” he said, “ but a mortar shell hit the corner of the building during the civil war and the boxes along one wall were shattered and the bones scattered on the floor.” Kalliope stepped quickly to one corner of the pile, lifted a skull, and handed it to me. She said, “ We think this is our Papou Athanasios.” I had a Hamlet like moment holding in my hands what may have been my grandfather’ s skull. It somehow seemed very natural, though I had never before seen a human skull, or stacks of bones. We left the cemetery and in keeping with Peter’ s plan came upon the village school. The teachers and two or three young students were waiting for me with a bouquet of spring flowers. I was surprised at the welcome and did not understand the reason for the honor given me until I entered the school and was shown the photograph portraits of my great-uncle Theodore who had immigrated to Alexandria, Egypt and become a successful merchant. He paid to build the school in this remote village and the entire Mavrovitis family was honored for his benefaction. I was moved. Months later, I helped to organize the Mavrovitis and other immigrants from Mavrovo who lived in New York to provide funds and equipment for the school. Evening came accompanied by swirling gray clouds and a chilling north wind. Kalliopi, Theo Constantinos, and I made our way back to the dock and left Mavrovo by boat to return to Kastoria. [See Photo93.] The next day, Kalliopi, together with one of my cousins, a child of seven or eight, took me by boat to Mavriotissa, the monastery where, as a boy, my father was apprenticed as a psalti. [See Part One, Chapter Two.] In my pocket, I had an

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envelope addressed by my father to Father Demetrios. It enclosed a letter and a fifty-dollar bill. We boarded the ferry again for the trip to the monastery. From the boat, I saw villages on the far shore of the lake and towering behind them in the distance, Vitsi with its range covered in snow. Forests and defiles on the sides of Mount Vitsi hid the andartes of the early twentieth century and the final battles of the Greek civil war were fought on its slopes. [See Photo 94.] We climbed off the ferry at a small dock and approached the long, low building whose wall was partially covered with plaster. Where archaeologists and art historians recently had removed the plaster, there were Byzantine religious murals with bold imagery and vibrant colors. The Ottoman Turks had systematically scratched out the eyes of, and covered with paint or plaster, all the icons and mosaics they found. Islam does not permit images of man. [See Photos 12 and 13.] As we approached the monastery church, a thin, fragile, bearded, black-robed old monk approached us. He blessed us, and I asked him for Pater Dimitrios. He said, “ Ego Imai.” [“ I am he.” ] I introduced myself as Dimitraki’ s son from America and asked if he remembered teaching young Demetrios Mavrovitis from Mavrovo to become a psalti fifty years before. I doubted that this was the right Pater Dimitrios, or that if he were, the man he would or could remember a village boy he had not seen for a lifetime. His looked at me quizzically, and then his eyes seemed as if they were seeing an apparition. “ Dimitraki?” he asked, “ DIMITRAKI who went to America? Athanasios’ s son?” He hugged me and kissed me on both cheeks. I gave him the envelope from Dimitraki, the contents of which, both letter and money, overwhelmed him. It was difficult to leave this humble man who was so moved by having been remembered by the young boy who had left Mavriotissa so many years before. Theo Constantinos was very proud to show me the statue of United States General James Van Fleet in Kastoria’ s commemorative park. General Van Fleet was head of the Joint U.S. Military Advisory and Planning Group that led Greece’ s forces to victory over the communists in the Greek civil war. Van Fleet served in Greece from 1948 to 1950 and made his northern headquarters at Kastoria, the strategic center against incursions from Albania (the Grammos mountains) and Yugoslavia (the Vitsi mountains). Each evening, in keeping with social custom, families and groups of young people strolled around Kastoria in clockwise and counterclockwise paths, meeting and greeting and exchanging news. “ Yia sou,” 1 was the greeting between peers,

1 The phrase can be interpreted as a wish for good health or well-being.

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Photo 93

Leaving Mavrovo by Boat — April 1955

Photo 94

The Vitsi Mountains from Lake Kastoria – April 1955

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“ Chairetai,” 1 the more formal greeting awarded to seniors. We visited relatives both close and distant, so to satisfy my hosts, I ate two huge meals every day and forced down two or more servings of likismata. My uncle and aunt gave a party for close family the night before I left. Their small house was full, and somehow they managed to serve a wonderful buffet dinner. The phonograph scratched out Greek music while my grandmother, scarcely able to take two steps, stood and bounced in place to the rhythms, holding the handkerchief that joined the lead and second person in the line dance. [See Photo 95.]

Photo 95

On the left lead ing the dance is my grand mother, Kalliope Mavrovitis. It was the night before I left Kastoria to retu rn to my military duties in Germany. Just a few weeks later I

boarded a troop transport that carried me home to the United States. The following morning, my aunt, uncle, and cousins accompanied me to the bus station to see me off with kisses and hugs. I had not expected the kind of reception I received in Kastoria, or the abundant warmth and love of my relatives, or my emotions at parting. Memory of the bus trip to Thessaloniki, the air flight to Athens and on to Rome, and the train ride to Germany, is lost to me. I remember only my brief incarceration at the airport in Rome when, finally, a customs official insisted on seeing my ID card. Carabinieri, elegantly costumed and very courteous, escorted

1 The word is a common form of greeting. It includes in its sense: rejoice, be glad,

be delighted, hail, welcome.

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me to a clean, well-lit cell at the Rome airport. Before being locked in and fed a nice lunch, I was permitted to call the American Embassy. Within an hour or two, a very unhappy Air Force captain named Adrian appeared. He questioned me, telephoned my company in Augsburg to confirm the information I had given, typed, and signed a request for my release [See Figure 10.], and had me escorted to and put on board the first train leaving for Germany. I made it back to the Flak Kaserne just in time to avoid being AWOL.1 Waiting for me were my orders to return to the United States for discharge from active duty.

Figure 10

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I shipped out for the States from Bremerhaven, Germany, where I found John Ryan and Mike Tugendreich in line in the embarkation center’ s gigantic mess hall. We were leaving on the same ship. John Hirsimaki had arranged to be discharged from active duty in Germany in order to see more of Europe before returning to the United States and the fall semester at Columbia University. As we climbed the gangway with our duffels on our shoulders, we saw a group of twenty or more shackled and handcuffed young men. They were convicted felons being led to the ship’ s brig for transit to Leavenworth Federal Prison. We were on our way home. I remembered my father’ s words: “ Do not dishonor your family name.” We found top bunks in the five-or six-tiered hold to which we were assigned. I volunteered to work in the kitchen, just as I had on the trip from the States to Germany. One of John and Mike’ s 16th Infantry Regiment buddies spent the entire voyage running and hiding to avoid work. He was exhausted when we reached port. We experienced a gale-force storm that sent huge waves over the bow and caused the propeller to break water and create violent vibrations through the ship. At first it alarmed me. Somehow we were able to sneak on deck to see the power of the sea. My fear changed to awe and submission to the forces of nature. Our progress across the Atlantic was reported daily in the ship’ s newspaper. One morning, New York Bay appeared before us. Seeing the Statue of Liberty and the Manhattan skyline was exciting. It made me think about the feelings my grandmother, mother, and father must have had when first they saw the Great Lady as they approached Ellis Island. We dressed in our Class “ A” uniforms, manhandled our duffels up out of the hold, and started down the gangway. When I came to the sergeant who was reading off our names as we disembarked, he motioned me over to a crowd of people standing behind barriers. To my surprise, Dad was there. He gave me a big hug and shook my hand. It was the first time Dad had ever appeared at an event in my life. I do not remember him at special grade school assemblies, at my graduations, or other celebratory events. But, here he was on the wharf to welcome me home. After just two or three days at Camp Kilmer in New Jersey, I was released from active duty and arrived home to hugs and kisses from Mom and Nitsa, great food, and the future. [See Photo 96.]

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Photo 96

Home with Lily, My Mom

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(3,/2*8(� Helene Mavis (Nitsa) married Stanton Hugh Avitabile on 1 September 1956, while he was still a medical student. They had five children: Lynn, Scott, Keith, Bruce and Gregg. Helene lived the life of a wife, mother, and community activist in Glastonbury, Connecticut, until April 1978, when she suffered a brain hemorrhage and died at the age of 47. She is interred at the Coburn Cemetery in the small town of Sherman in western Connecticut. Jason married Panayota Gianopoulos, [“ Bette” ], on 3 September 1960, in California. They have two daughters, Demetra and Reveka Evangelia. Lily lived to hold in her arms and bless all seven of her grandchildren. She and Jimmy left the brownstone on Ovington Avenue, Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, in 1959. They moved to a newly-built home in Demarest, New Jersey, only a few miles from Dr. DeTata and his family, who lived in Closter, New Jersey. Lily never fully reconciled herself to her move from Brooklyn. She died on 4 February 1967 at the age of sixty-two, succumbing after a second stroke, the result of the high blood pressure that plagued her throughout her life. Lily’ s internment at the Englewood Cemetery, Englewood, New Jersey, was on 8 February 1967, after one of the most severe blizzards in New York City’ s recorded history. For the two days that her body was at the funeral home, snowdrifts across the avenues in New York City were two and three feet high. Nonetheless, on each of two nights, with temperatures falling to ten below zero, more than one hundred visitors paid their respects, and more than one hundred attended her funeral service. In 1968, seeking to renew himself, Jimmy returned to Greece for the first time, to Athens, to Kastoria, and to his village of Mavrovo. In 1916, it had taken over thirty days including two weeks in a ship’ s steerage for him to reach New York City from his village. Fifty-two years later, the trip from his home in New Jersey to his village lasted only eighteen hours. Almost every summer thereafter, he flew to Athens and then to Kastoria, where he drew strength from his homeland, and from visiting friends and relatives. After each visit to Greece, he said: “ It gives me a lift!” One summer he had the joy of having Helene and his granddaughter, Lynn, accompany him. In 1985, Bette, Reveka, and I joined Dad on a three-week driving tour that included Attica, Thessaly, Macedonia, Epirus, Acarnania, Corfu, and the Peloponnesos. We met, for the first time members of the Mavrovitis family from Egypt including Myrto and Mischou Mavrovitis, Rena Mavrovitis, and their families. We visited Kastoria and our family there, and were introduced to Bette’ s aunt and cousins in the village of Menolon, outside of the city of Tripolis. Her aunt, Thea Christitsa, and cousins Georgia and George Vasilopoulos, hosted a

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wonderful dinner for us in a small summer cottage in the middle of their farmland. Everything we ate was from their land, including the wheat in the bread that had been baked in an outdoor oven that morning. Jimmy flew to California at least once each year to visit Jason, Bette, and his granddaughters, Demetra and Reveka. And, he frequently drove to Connecticut to see his son-in-law, Stan, and his grandchildren. Jimmy died on 8 February 1989, at the age of eighty-eight. He had retired at sixty-five to be with Lily. After her passing, he went back to work half-time, taking pleasure in his contacts in the Market, and from his frequent visits to see his nephews, Thanasi and Nick Mavrovitis, whom he regarded almost as sons. The money he earned made travel possible, and for the first time in his life, he was able to put some savings aside. In the end, Jimmy joined the love of his life, Lily. Their grave is at the Brookside Cemetery, 425 Engle Street, Englewood, New Jersey, on the right-hand side of the east side circle. Papou lived a long life, surviving Adela by almost thirty years. He died in a nursing home in Little Falls, New York in 1990, having lived there for more than ten years, close to his family from Italy. He was one hundred years of age. Jason and his wife, Bette, live in Sonoma, California. In the year 2000, with Bette’ s whole-hearted support, Jason reclaimed his family name, Mavrovitis. Afterthought When I was in Germany, I never considered visiting Sozopol in Bulgaria for I knew little about my mother’ s origins until I reached middle age. In any event, Bulgaria was then behind the Iron Curtain (part of the Soviet Bloc in Eastern Europe), and inaccessible. I still hope to see Sozopolis, Pyrgos, and Anchialos in Bulgaria, and the Hellespont, the Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorous, and Constantinople (it is hard to call it Istanbul). I am thankful to know that Greeks and Bulgarians now have become good neighbors and friends, overcoming memories of the horrors each experienced at the hands of the other. And, I look forward to walk, one day, along the shore of the Black Sea.

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The Mystery of Lily’s Father

Evangelia’ s father has never been positively identified. Consistent in reports about him are four details: he was Bulgarian, a pharmacist (an apothecary), married to Eleni, and died c1906. Lily’ s Version

In her “ Affidavit for License to Marry” of 20 April 1922,1 Lily entered her

father’ s name as Stephan Athanas. She signed her surname with a variant spelling: Athenas. In her Certificate of Marriage to Demetrios A. Mavrovitis,

Evangelia shows her name as Evangeline Athenas.2 She also used the name

Athenas on documents that supported her application for citizenship. 1. Lily never reported her father as being Bulgarian. 2. She talked about her father as an apothecary. 3. She said that he died while performing an appendectomy on himself when caught in a storm at a small coastal village. 4. Her story was that she and her mother were forced into the sea to drown by Bulgarians, and that they were saved by Greek fishermen. Family Accounts Theano Pieredes Eleni’ s niece, Theano Pierides, daughter of Sophia Zissis Capidaglis, wrote the following to her son, Ralis Pierides:

“Ralis, you ask who was aunt Eleni’ s husband and Lilly’ s [sic] father. He was an Orthodox Bulgarian from Bourgas of Bulgaria; had the largest apothecary of those times; and fell in love with aunt Helen (Eleni) and married her, but died prematurely.”

Ralis Pierides Ralis Pierides, grandson of Sofia Capidaglis, remembers stories of Eleni’ s husband dying in a boat accident while delivering pharmaceuticals to a coastal village. Written Notes Evangelia’ s second husband, James Mavis (Demetrios Mavrovitis), left handwritten notes in his personal papers stating that:

1. Her father’ s surname was Athanasios or Athanasiou.

1 Her first marriage to James Tsavalas.

2 Her second marriage to Demetrios Mavrovitis.

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2. Gives his year of death as 1905 at the age of 30 due to: “ Accident during expatriation from Bulgaria.” The year of death is likely incorrect. The pogroms in the Burgas region were in 1906.

Athanasios and Athanasiou are Greek, not Bulgarian names. His name might have been Slavic, i.e., Atanas. Research In the summer of 1995, a Bulgarian graduate student from the Technical University in Vienna, Stavri Nikolov, conducted research on the Capidaglis and Zissis families in Burgas and Sozopol, Bulgaria. The result of several days of document searches and interviews is as follows:

♦ No church archives prior to 1914 exist. There is therefore no marriage record to prove Eleni’ s marriage.

♦ The surnames of apothecary owners in Burgas at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century included Georgiev, Savov, Kalkanjiev, Andreev, Dobrev, and Zurkov.

♦ Kalkanjiev had the first apothecary in Burgas at the end of the nineteenth century.

♦ Zurkov was apprentice to Kalkanjiev. ♦ The biggest apothecary in Burgas at the beginning of the twentieth

century belonged to Zurkov. ♦ Zurkov also had an apothecary in Sozopol.

An apothecary owner with the Greek name Athenas, Athanasiou or Athanasios, or with the Slavic name Atanas, does not appear in records of Sozopol or Burgas. Discussion There are two accounts of Eleni’ s husband having been a Bulgarian apothecary. But, these are not necessarily independent reports, as they may be different versions of the same story. That he “ had the largest apothecary of those times” is probably an exaggeration. He may only have been apprentice to, or worked for, the largest apothecary of that time in Burgas. Evangelia used the name Athenas, certainly Greek and possibly a shortened version of her original name, convenient in the United States. Her husband, Demetrios Mavrovitis (James Mavis), was close to his mother-in-law, Eleni, and loved by her. He must have believed his notations about the family to be accurate oral history, i.e. that Lily’ s father was named Athanasiou or Athanasios, and that he died in an accident associated with the “ expatriation,” a term he may have associated with the expatriation of Greeks from Bulgaria and Turkey after 1922 and used in lieu of the word expulsion.

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The “ lost at sea” and “ self-performed appendectomy” stories are a stretch and conflict with what Jimmy documented as Eleni’ s story. Who other than Eleni would have told him about an accidental death? Was Lily hiding something by telling her version to her children? Or, did Eleni make up a version of how her husband died to make Lily believe her father heroic? A report of a father’ s untimely death, in vague circumstances, often raised the question: Was the mother married at the time of the child’ s birth? These questions will never be answered. Conclusion Lacking better sources or information, I assert the following: Stefan Atanas was a Bulgarian. He worked for the largest apothecary in Burgas owned by the Bulgarian Zurkov, who also had an apothecary in Sozopolis. Eleni met Evangelia’ s father when she worked in Burgas as a seamstress. She lived there with a cousin by marriage, Sofia Georgi Stateva. Eleni was married to Stefan Atanas, and he was Evangelia’ s father. Atanas died during the pogrom of 30 July 1906, at the hands of Greeks or Bulgarians, or in an accident. The Bulgarian surname Atanas, was either misunderstood by, or innocently transliterated to the Greek Athanasiou or Athanasios, by Demetrios Mavrovitis, or intentionally made Greek by Eleni to avoid admitting that Evangelia had Bulgarian blood. [Demetrios was from Macedonia and may have expressed his abhorrence of all things Bulgarian after his childhood experiences of guerrilla warfare between Bulgar and Greek in the early twentieth century.] Eleni escaped from Bulgaria with her daughter in dramatic fashion, i.e. pushed into the sea to drown. She and Evangelia were interned at a refugee camp in Greece, and eventually made contact with Sophia Capidaglis in Athens. However, many Greeks remained in Bulgaria after the pogroms, including Eleni’ s mother, Vasiliki, and others of her family. After her stepfather, Christos Stamatiou, died in Chicago in 1915, Evangelia dropped her stepfather’ s name, Stamatiou, and took a shortened and differently spelled version of her biological father’ s name, Athenas. Evangelia never used the surname of Eleni’ s third husband, Leonardo Perna.

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APPENDIX B

Third Class Travel (Steerage)

Third class ship travel was the mass transportation of its day, designed specifically to bring hundreds of thousands of poor immigrants from Europe to the shores of the United States. The following is a partially fictional but reasonable account of Eleni and Evangelia’ s journey to America.

******* On a hot day in July 1912, at the port of Piraeus, Eleni and Evangelia waited to board their ship to America. In a processing room next to the wharf where the S.S. Macedonia was being loaded, they were given a rudimentary physical examination, for if found unhealthy at Ellis Island, they would be shipped back to Greece at the ship-owner’ s expense. After the medical examination, Eleni and Evangelia were segregated into the third- class women’ s group. Single men and women were separated into their respective gender groups, and married couples with or without children formed the third group. Once on board, Eleni and Evangelia were taken down into the bottom of the ship, below the waterline. There, they found a large hold filled with bunks, three or four high, that had pseudo-mattresses of stretched canvas. A single blanket (no pillow) was on each bunk. Eleni selected two bunks and crammed what few possessions they had into them, leaving enough room for them to stretch out to sleep. The ship left its mooring and entered the Bay of Salamis in what was a gentle sea. Nonetheless, within a very few minutes, the ship’ s motion, stale air, noise, and fear nauseated several passengers. There was one communal toilet with no privacy. Slop buckets were provided for emergency use, elimination, or nausea. There were no bathing facilities, only cold water and a sink. Dank, cold moisture condensed on the bare metal hull of the ship. Meals were self-served from huge tureens, generally stews made with the least expensive meats and vegetables. There were few stewards serving third class. But, the ship-owners had reason to feed the passengers well enough to assure their good health on arrival at Ellis Island.

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Days passed. The ship left the Straits of Gibraltar behind and entered the Atlantic. Seas roughened. The noise of the hull as it plowed through the water, the pounding of the engines, and the groan of the turn screws created such noise that sleep was almost impossible. There was no entertainment. The passengers played cards, sang songs, and if there were a musician on board with a clarinet, a bouzouki, or a mandolin, they might even have danced. The smell of unwashed bodies, slop buckets, and vomit was nearly unbearable. On days that weather permitted, Eleni and Evangelia huddled close together on the third-class deck and breathed fresh, cold sea air for the hour or two they were permitted the luxury. After seventeen nightmarish days and nights, Eleni and Evangelia debarked at Ellis Island. Herded along through one processing station after another, they were confused and fearful. Evangelia did not have enough money to buy rail tickets to St. Paul. Officials helped her send a telegram to Christos, who, in three days’ time, wired funds back to her at Ellis Island. Eleni purchased the railroad tickets and with Evangelia was on her way, sitting up in a coach without any knowledge of the language, how to purchase food, or where she and Evangelia were going. Eleni had never in her life seen so much land. The train rumbled past vast forested mountains in Pennsylvania and miles of farmland in Indiana and Ohio. The rail yard in Chicago frightened them as their car was disconnected from one engine and connected to another for the trip across the plains of Wisconsin to Minnesota. Three hard days passed before the conductor motioned for them to get off the train. They had arrived in St. Paul and found Christos waiting. Ship-owners made fortunes in third-class passenger transportation until the immigration gates closed in the early 1920s. The ships were then either quickly converted to serve a new “ tourist” class with modest but far more comfortable accommodations than third class had been, or scrapped for the value of the metal remains.

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