Travels with Dad Part III

Neighbors quickly recognized the quirkiness of my father’s behaviors and as village gossip spread like locust in August about the peculiar habits of my father, a clever prank was hatched by our amicable neighbor, Christos. He was a rather provocative catalyst, a speculator in a way, always looking for a semi-shady financial deal to make him rich. His personality was effervescent and disarming, just the right mix that attracted my dad to him. Christos and my father immediately became comrades in arms, and provided additional fodder for the villagers as the two companions seemed to terrorize half of Ikaria with their exuberant wisecracks and antics.

The closed ranks of the brick army were being diminished swiftly by the bricklayers, as the

bedroom progressed.  Eventually a pile numbering about two hundred remained intact for the final push and completion of the bedroom. By now, my father’s sleeping pattern had once again changed. Helping out the workers during the day by hauling bricks, mixing cement and running errands exhausted him physically and by 10:00 p.m. he was in his bed sound asleep.  

Throughout this tumultuous building process our inquisitive neighbor Christos made daily reconnaissance to observe and record the progress of the bricklayers, all the while quaffing a glass or two of ouzo with my dad and joking about his natural affinity with the bricks. The aggregate of these scouting visits was the formation of a deviously ingenious joke, at the expense of my father. It was a short time later during a hot and windy night that Christos stealthily made his way to the last remaining battalion of bricks, still precariously occupying a corner of our yard. Within two hours he had singlehandedly transported my dad’s precious stash to his side yard, a mere twenty meters from our house, and covered it with a large green tarp. Christos’ fiendish klepto plan was basically to enjoy my father’s baffled and confused look in finding his famously proprietary bricks had somehow mysteriously vanished in thin air. He moved his rickety table and chair to the edge of his porch so as to embrace the best view of my father’s emergence from the house and the bewilderment to follow. The morning sun had already cleared the horizon as my father stepped out of the house to inspect the previous day’s work, when he stopped in his tracks. Perplexed by the sight of the missing bricks, he promptly assumed the actions of a possessed man. Words flew out of his mouth like machine gun fire.

 “My bricks, my bricks, someone stole my bricks, they’re gone the bricks, the bricks!” He ran from the yard to the church below desperately seeking some kind of divine intervention on his behalf, while filling the sky with stinging blasphemies.  His agonizing pursuit continued onto the main street, still in a frenzy yelling “my bricks, my bricks, my bricks,” dashing wildly throughout the neighborhood and once again waking up the confused and groggy villagers.

All the while our rascally neighbor was watching him from his porch chuckling at the amusing antics of my father’s painful search for his bricks. Finally, when Christos could no longer contain himself with all this merriment, he called to my father to check out the suspiciously tarp covered pile. My father swiftly raced the twenty meters to Christos’ side yard, pulled back the green tarp to expose his precious collection of sienna colored bricks. A combination of relief, anger and amusement enveloped my father, luckily the amused part won out, as he shook his head slowly and a smile crossed his face, he realized the joke was on him. As morning coffee was shared by the two companiable neighbors the account of the missing bricks escapade was repeated numerous times, and laughter filled the quiet morning air.  

Eventually the additional bedroom was completed, but that did not end the saga of my father and the neighborhood jokester. The summer passed quickly for me and I had to return to the States, but my father remained an additional three weeks to tie up loose ends with the workers and the bureaucratic Greek building codes. It was on the last day of my dad’s extended stay on Ikaria that Christos came by to say good-bye and to wish my hurried father a safe journey back to Chicago. He presented my dad a package the size of a carton of cigarettes, nicely wrapped with a colorful ribbon and bow.

The package was meant for a mutual friend, Anna, who was going to meet my father at O’Hare airport. The contents of the package Christos declared were prescription drugs for this friend, drugs that were much cheaper in Greece, thanks to socialized medicine, than in the States. Not to be derelict towards a friend in need, my father unabashedly agreered to transport this needed medication. Since my father had already packed his antiquated suitcase to the gills, he was forced to re-pack leaving several small gifts behind, to accommodate this hefty medical parcel.

The return trip for my father was a slow and gruesome one, most appropriate for travelers to and from Greece at that time. The ferry from Ikaria to Piraeus was six hours late, his stay in Athens had to be extended by two days, and his Sabena flight back to Chicago arrived hours behind schedule. Throughout all these delays and constrains he carefully and meticulously guarded his luggage with the medicine safely secured, tucked in the inside compartment of his suitcase.

Finally, arriving at O’Hare and uncommonly breezing through customs, he was met by the anxious Anna. Immediately my father opened his venerable suitcase and judiciously pulled out her brightly wrapped gift.

 Perplexed by this magnanimous gesture on the part of my father, she asked “What is it?”

 “It’s the medicine you asked Christos to send you from Greece” he replied. 

“I never asked him to send me any meds’ she countered, somewhat confused ‘but let’s see what it is.” Deftly she removed the bright ribbon and tore into the wrapping paper. Their world, in the middle of O’Hare airport, seemed to stand still as they tried to focus their eyes on the heavy object gently resting in Anna’s trembling hand. What my father had so painstakingly and vigilantly escorted for days, across two continents and over five thousand miles, was one of his brick soldiers, regulation size sienna colored brick, compliments of good neighbor Christos.            

The trip was put in proper perspective a few years later after my father passed away, the excursion we took together was the last one he took to his beloved Ikaria. It was only then that I was able to appreciate those periods of daily mayhem that included arguments and squabbles with the locals, as with the cantankerous old priest, overdue or inebriated workers, and annoying but amusing neighbors. In the end we both survived, returned home with various bumps and bruises and plenty of emotional scars that are the transitional outcomes of such father and son expeditions. Chronicling this story I’m left with the visionary words of the poet Anne Sexton, ‘It doesn’t matter who my father was, it matters who I remember he was.”

Travels with Dad Part II

Most Greeks when faced with a major construction project, will use whatever money they have available, proceed to purchase what materials they can afford, and start the lengthy building process. When the money runs out construction comes to a complete halt. Workers are dismissed and what piles of materials, stone, sand, bricks, etc. remain are just left there waiting for the next injection of money. This prolonged period of time could last weeks, months or even years before construction can once again resume.

This start and stop construction cycle with its’ various mounds of materials scattered all over the Greek countryside was a particular annoyance to my father’s convoluted sense of organization and order. When we finally arrived on Ikaria, after our arduous beginnings, some of the building materials we ordered, primarily the bricks, were already delivered. These pavers were brought by a dilapidated dump truck that casually and not too carefully unloaded them in our front yard establishing an enormous sienna colored pile of bricks, instantly creating condos for countless families of scorpions and lizards. Immediately my father seeing this vast and seemingly endless pile of bricks began a verbal assault on the Greek truck drivers for their inconsiderate and lackadaisical care given to his precious and cherished building materials.

My dad and I tired from our long and exhausting trip, turned in early that first night hoping to get some much needed sleep. Sometime during the night or early morning hours, a strange and mysterious sound coming from the darken yard kept reverberating in my ears. A sound vaguely similar to a young child knocking together his play toys in a consistent and rhymic pattern. Knowing that no child would be up at this ungodly time of night, I crawled out of bed and made my way to the window. There, as dawn was breaking over the eastern tip of Ikaria, was my father in his scruffy work clothes carefully arranging the scattered bricks in neat and orderly rows, like soldiers in formation waiting for their marching orders.

“What are you doing?” I yelled in a dry and parched voice. “You know it’s barely five o clock in the morning, people are trying to sleep!” My bellowing had no noticeable effect on my zombie like dad. He just kept on methodically arranging his brick army in readiness for their battle with the bricklayers later on that day. In desperation I quickly slipped on my sandals ran out of the house towards my father, just in time to see him place the last brick, like a royal coronation, on top of the last row. Grabbing him by the arm as one grabs a mischievous child, I shouted at him. “You can’t be doing this in the middle of the night, everyone and everything neighbors, dogs, mules, goats are trying to sleep and you should too.”  Grumpy and exhausted, but tepid from his nocturnal employment, I led him back to the house,  as he explained to me that bricks have to be properly and systematically arranged in order for the bricklayers to work under optimal conditions. Finally, as the first rooster was heard across the hollow and the eastern sky turned crimson red my father went to sleep.

With typical haphazard of starts and stops the building of the additional bedroom began in earnest. Among the many and inconvenient distractions to the process was surprisingly, the elderly village priest, who presided over not one but three churches in our small village. One of the churches, affectionally known as number two, was situated right below and adjacent to our property. Given the location and the general direction of the summer winds, the church yard, as well as the church itself, was often encrusted in layers of blowing sand, dust, and cement powder from our ever expanding construction site. The rakish priest, a late septuagenarian, was a contemporary of my father, both

having grown up on the island and having a long history of personal skirmishes and disputes. None the less, every day he climbed the fourteen stairs from the church yard up to our house, enjoyed the customary glass of ouzo, and shared with my father the latest village gossip. This daily routine lasted about an hour, an hour that my father felt was useless and wasted on the priest, because it took precious time away from his work and the overseeing of the workers. He made his views known in a hushed voice everyday when the priest was descending the fourteen stairs to the church yard below.

As construction continued and the meltimi winds picked up, the priest in his daily visits would complain to my father of the debris and mess created around the church. In response my father in his most diplomatic voice, would deflect the priest’s complaints, and state that he had no personal command over Mother Nature and  her relentless winds. Ultimately, these too frequent bouts of grievances came to a head one bright gusty morning. 

 The priest was once again sweeping the construction sand and dust out of the church entrance, when in a fit of total exasperation stopped sweeping and called up to my father, “Come see what mayhem your workers and the wind have created inside this house of God.”  On this day my father must have had on his cranky pants and was in no mood to take verbal abuse from this man of God. As the barrage of words escalated between the two septuagenarians, the workers hearing the torrent of threats and retribution sensed that something inconceivable might happen.  

Then, in what appeared to be a split second the wind stopped, the cicadas became silent, the workers dropped their tools, and in unison watched this geriatric smack down unfold. My father in the heat of the moment, promptly picked up a near by shovel, and lacing the morning air with a slew of obscenities raced down the stairs. He ceased only momentarily to graphically describe how he was going to grab and pull the scraggily beard of the priest,  twist  and squeeze  it like a pretzel  around his scrawny neck, so he no longer would have to listen to the daily bitching of the holy man. The priest, alarmed at the sudden appearance of his half-crazed neighbor, stood defiantly in the church entrance, head held high, clutching and holding out the gold Orthodox cross hanging from his neck.  My father, still seeing red, instinctively swung his improvised weapon wildly in a dervisly manner high above his head.                                                                                                

 Suddenly, with a thundering clamor, he brought it belligerently down at the feet of the startled priest, still embracing his protective cross, and scattering the accumulated piles of sand and debris. The two combatants now sweating and exhausted by their morning joust, stood silently, glaring eye to eye and heaving  laboriously, as two depleted heavyweights.   

Swiftly, I flew down the stairs and placed myself between the two warriors trying to interject an air of tranquility, but I was irrelevant for the remainder of the event. As the level of adrenaline slowly decreased in the two bellicose neighbors, a shred of calm appeared in their behaviors. They had taken their positions to the limit, and finally acknowledged the futility of their actions. Only with the last batch of cement mixed and the last brick laid in place, would this daily skirmish cease. This realization was understood by both of them, and with a grandiose gesture my father assured the priest, that when construction was finally completed, he himself would come down and personally clean the church and the church yard. This confrontation was the talk of the village for months, and each time the story was told it embellished and elevated the personas of the two combatants, casting them as the clash of the two septuagenarian titans.

Travels with Dad Part I

It’s not often a son gets a chance to travel exclusively with his father to some far flung exotic destination. Usually family, time and economic restraints limit such rare partnerships. During the summer of 1989, I had the opportunity to take such an excursion with my father to a remote and distant Greek island called Ikaria. The island where my father was born and raised, and where I also spent my first five years of life. The purpose of this father and son journey was the building of a family summer home. Naively, I thought this four week stay on Ikaria would be a combination of work and play. Laboring arduously in the mornings with the builders and then spending the hot afternoons lying on the pebble beaches under the sea pines with the warm Aegean breezes blowing over my body. Such were my idealistic and visionary vacation dreams.

Wanderlust was an inheritant part of my father’s personality. He had traveled extensively during World War II, and continued somewhat after the war. He was always ready and able at the drop of a hat to grab his passport and head to his Aegean island home. He was a man slight in stature, full head of grey hair, bi-spectacled with a thin 1940’s style mustache, and always full of energy and on the move. My father had the distinction, or maybe I should say a “devil’s mark” when it came to traveling. He always seemed to bring about some unpredictable, chaotic and challenging misadventure, which usually required others to come to his rescue and bail him out of his predicament at the last moment. It’s not that he went looking for such misadventures, they just naturally happen to occurred around him. This would include any ordinary, mundane exposure to the outside world, whether a trip to the local grocery store, or a trip half way around the world.

My journey started innocently enough when I kissed and said farewell to my wife, my seven year old son and my six month old daughter. Jokingly I mentioned to my wife, it would be a highly successful trip if both my father and I returned unscathed and alive from Greece. My curt comment referred to the fact, as it was widely known by all, that my father’s magnetism for misadventure grated and infuriated me to no end. I figured occupying my father’s time with full days of work on the house should keep him out of harms way, and away from any embarrassing mischief.

Our trek started peacefully enough on a Sabena flight out of Chicago to Athens, with a stop in Brussels. Events quickly took a dark and ominous turn as we left Brussels, when almost immediately we hit a thunderstorm of massive proportions over Belgium. A storm so immense we couldn’t fly over it or around it. Then when the pilot came on the intercom in a stern Gaelic voice and announced that dinner would not be served because of the turbulence, and for the stewardess to strap in, we knew instinctively we would be in for quite a ride. During the next two and a half hours every disposable sick bag and container on board was put to good use as the plane lurched violently from side to side, sometimes seemly dropping several hundred feet at a time in elevation. The plane fuselage was filled with the sporadic screams of mothers, the moans of grown men and the crying of young babies, along with the varied and countless prayers offered to the Gods by the nervous and apprehensive passengers. Even my father being a relative stoic figure, mumbled and swore under his breath using words that I had never heard before. Finally, as we approached Athens the storm eased, and we all took reconnaissance of our sore and aching bodies, passing the bags and containers down to the stewardess who profusely apologized for the lack of our in flight meal.

Thinking that the worse part of our trip was over, and glad to be on solid ground, we gallantly, still on wobbly legs and queasy stomachs from the jarring plane ride went trooping up to the passport control window only to come face to face with the notoriously ubiquitous Greek bureaucracy. My father in his younger and more idealistic years happened to be a Communist sympathizer and after World War II was briefly detained by the Allies in an army detainee camp in Egypt for expressing his radical views. As we handed our American passports to the passport official he immediately pulled out what seemed to be a rather large size 20 shoe box, full of 5x7 note cards. When he came to the M’s he pulled out a card with my dad’s last name on it, along with a brief dossier. Looking suspiciously at my father then intently studying his card, the official made a comment in regards, that my father, now an American citizen, must have accepted the glories of capitalism and the proper and correct political views, and thus would be allowed to enter Greece. I, on the other hand knew better, and before my father had a chance to open his mouth to express what he really thought were the correct political views, I grabbed him by the arm, thanked the passport official and briskly pushed my dad through the turnstile and proceeded to drag him to the baggage area muttering something about capitalist pigs, or maybe he was channeling Karl Marx.

Having survived the passport ordeal and now firmly planted on Greek soil, like a true Odysseus longing to get home, we moved to the next challenging task of collecting our luggage. Luckily our suitcases were already on the baggage carousel, a feat which I believe was, and possibly still is a world record time for Greek airport baggage handlers. As I lifted my dad’s suitcase off the conveyer I became suspicious of its’ enormous weight.

 I turned and asked him, “Why does your suitcase weigh so much?”

 He swiftly answered, “I just have a few things for the house and my clothes, come on let’s go.”

Our final stop in exiting the airport was customs. Normally, the Greek custom officials don’t want to be bothered with the task of ordering tourists to open their suitcases and having to pilfer through all their soiled clothing and belongings. They usually give you a summary glance and wave you through. As we hastily passed the first group of custom officials one of them, who looked like a heavy from an old black and whiteT.V.western, unexpectedly started to glare at us, as if we were mentally suspect. Stepping around the other officials he approached us and asked if we had anything to declare.

My father in his rush to exit the airport quickly chirped in, “No, no we have nothing to declare, we’re fine, nothing to declare, our suitcases are all right,” words that seemed to resonate off the building walls, and which immediately raised the suspicion of the less than sympathetic custom agent. Commanding his most surly voice and with a cigarette dangling loosely from his lips the official with his head held high ordered us to follow him.

 “There,” he pointed, to a large steel table, “put your luggage there, and open them up. Let’s see what you don’t have to declare” he said in an officious manner.

Now my father, reflecting back on his knowledge of functionaries and people in positions that could possibly be influenced to ignore breaches of rules and guidelines, had packed inside his suitcase, what he considered to be the international symbol of bribery, cigarettes. Not just any cigarettes, but the most revered, coveted and preferred brand in the world, Marlboro Reds. Immediately my father fumbled around, opened his large and heavy suitcase and there on top were two sealed cartons of Marlboro Reds. Glancing at the customs agent, my father cunningly smiled and giving him a wink or two, stood quietly by waiting for the official to confiscate the two prized cartons for his personal enjoyment. Unfortunately, this scene was played out in an open public area with other officials watching this comical scenario closely. The customs official, feeling the glare of a dozen eyes on him promptly ignored the cigarette payola and started his dutiful search of the suitcase. Reaching to the bottom of the suitcase, while giving my father a curious and perplexed look, he pulled out an old beat up framing hammer.  

My father instantly pleaded, “That’s my favorite hammer, and I need it to build my house.”

 In a calm and collected voice the official replied, “We have hammers in Greece, in fact we’ve had hammers for thousands of years.” Dropping the American made hammer back in the suitcase, he once again reached his hand in the pile of my dad’s clothing and this time emerged with a hack saw and a half dozen replacement blades. By now I was totally speechless and just as mystified as the customs agent. I had no idea my father was carrying such unconventional travel items, I imagined the next tool to be unearthed was going to be a Paul Bunyan type ax. Examining the saw and the blades, the official shaking his head in a bewildered manner, threw them casually back in the suitcase toolbox.

 “Open the rest of your bags” he ordered. Nimbly we proceeded to open the remaining three suitcases, wondering how much longer this inquisition was going to continue. Apparently by now the official was also becoming frustrated, seeing that we really didn’t have any meaningful contraband to speak of just a rag tag collection of old tools.

 He gave our bags a quick once over then abruptly said, “Close them, you can go.” In a flash the suitcases were slammed shut, still containing  the two not so enticing  cartons of Marlboro Reds and with passports hot in hand we briskly walked out of the airport and headed to the taxi stand.

Commandeering the first taxi we could find, we slung our suitcases in the trunk, gave the driver the address of our hotel, and settled in the backseat of the taxi for the half hour car ride. It was at this point I realized I could finally relax after the non-stop events of the past few hours, which had seemed to have lingered for days. Jet lag had caught up with me as the taxi maneuvered cautiously in and out of traffic, and just when my eyes shut for a quick cat nap we arrived at our hotel. Sluggishly we crawled out of the taxi, retrieved our suitcases, and paid the cab driver, who courteously wished us a restful and peaceful vacation.

Approaching the hotel entrance with our luggage in hand, my father looked around and in a soft voice said, “I think I left my jacket in the back seat of the cab.”

 “Don’t worry,” I said, “we’ll buy a new one tomorrow.”

 In an even softer voice he whispered “My passport is in my jacket.” 

             “What?!” I exploded, “Your passport?!” Without a moment’s hesitation I dropped my suitcases, looked around and then down the narrow street I spotted our taxi, two blocks away, stuck in mid-afternoon traffic. I took off running at a speed that still amazes me to this day, hoping that the taxi would remain locked in the everlasting traffic jam. About half a block away I saw the stalled taxi starting to move and pick up momentum as it approached a major intersection. Thinking I had no hope of catching up to the cab, I immediately started  to orchestrate in my mind the dreaded and time consuming trip to the U.S. embassy, and the explanation I would have to give the embassy official. Could my father’s personality suffice as an explanation?

 Suddenly with what seemed like divine intervention, as the cab sped up to cross the busy street, the traffic light turned red. With an unusual squeal of the brakes the cab abruptly stopped at the crosswalk just in time for me to catch up to it. Winded and out of breath, I banged on the taxi window shocking the startled driver, who instinctively thought he was going to be robbed by a hot sweaty, mad man. It took me a minute to catch my breath and through heavy breathing I explained that my dad’s jacket was somewhere in the cab. The driver unaware of the mislaid garment and its’ contents, looked around and on the back floor found the jacket scrunched under the seat. Handing me the wayward jacket, passport still snugly secured in the inside pocket, accompanied by my father’s wallet, with all his money I thanked the stunned cabbie.

 Holding my dad’s jacket, as one holds a holy book, I lethargically walked back to the hotel. The hot afternoon sun, jet lag, an empty stomach, combined with the unexpected jolt of physical activity turned my mind into a congealed glob of mush. I was left with one sobering thought, it had only been a few hours since my father and I started this exhausting journey, what else could possibly happen to us in the next few weeks? I reached the entrance of the hotel to find my father sitting on a stool silently waiting for me. I presented him the jacket and without saying a word we both turned and entered the hotel lobby knowing this father and son odyssey was just commencing.

Maybe Zorba the Greek was right, when he said, “Life is trouble, death is not, to be alive is to undo your belt and look for trouble.” My father not only removed his belt, but his jacket, shoes and socks as well. I realized that the next four weeks, would be not only challenging in trying to keep my father safe and out of trouble, but a trial of my capacity for endurance, patience and civility. All these attributes were going to be inevitably and severely tested in the days to come when we reached Ikaria.