Running With Samson

I am 65 shortly. I am in Mexico with my number #1 wife Laurita. I am retired, I think. I have not swung a tool in six months. I want to celebrate today with Samson. He showed me when to run.

                                   Greece And Running With Samson: 1965 to 1968

	Samson was Ethiopian.  We played soccer together.  He lived a six minute walk from our house but I don’t think I ever walked there, I always ran.  Samson and I loved to run and we ran everywhere.  After school, on any given day, we’d decide to run to Paul Tart’s house, which was 1.2 miles away, right next to the big movie circle in the next town just north of us called Filothei.
        When we ran, we did not jog.  We didn’t know about jogging then.  We would think about Paul’s house and that he always had candy there, in bowls as you walked in the front door and in shallow dishes on the coffee table.  There were cookies in a ceramic teddy bear with a yellow hat that you could lift off with "Smokey" on the brim.

 
 While we ran to Paul's house, we chatted excitedly about the chocolate chip cookies that might be there.  If he was home we dashed in.  He told us what was in the jar and we ate like locusts. Below is the screenshot of the run between our houses. We lived on Platia Kamara 40, Psychiko, center bottom, Paul's house was in Filothei, at the top.

	Samson didn’t speak much English and Paul went to the DOD school which was for military kids.  Samson didn’t go to my school but we all played soccer together and we liked to run around our neighborhood.  I think in my last year in Greece I got a bicycle and that put the chill on running everywhere, but before that glorious day when my older brother handed down his bike to me, running meant freedom.  Paul ran from a hard military father, I ran from my older brother and Samson kept away from everybody in his house for as long as he could.  I remember asking Samson how he runs so fast and he answered in a very matter-of-fact, non complaining tone, “If my father catch me, he will beat me,” at which point he might giggle.  His father was the Ethiopian ambassador to Greece.  He had many wives and so Samson had several mothers, I never knew how many, but every one of them would beat him if they could catch him.  Emperor Haile Selassie was his great grandfather and being the son of an ambassador, his behavior was in constant need of improvement and a switch.   There were several kept indoors and outdoors, leaning menacingly in corners.  
       After the sugar load, the three of us took off for the circle in Filothei, a half block from Paul’s house.  We raced each other around it.  Sometimes we split up at the bus stop bench and poured it on to see who would be first back at the bench.  I never won.  Paul was never even close but as I got faster and my endurance improved I came closer and closer to actually seeing Samson quickly take a seat on the bench, cross his incredibly skinny legs and fold his arms, acting as if he had been there forever. He even had enough wind to whistle through his teeth but he would always break out into his terrific giggle and fall on the ground laughing.  Paul cheated once by cutting through the circle.  We held him down, took all his candy and gave him a pink belly.

Below is a screenshot of the Platia next to Paul’s house. You can see the theatre at about two o’clock. The circle was about 400 yards around.

        For shorter distances, under 350 yards, I could always out sprint Samson.  Inevitably, I would hear him come up on me and say, in Greek, “You are slowing down now and very soon I will pass you.  When I do, you will know how the snail feels.”   As he passed me his head would waggle on his shoulders and he would giggle like a crazy person.  I would try to trip him, to grab him, any part of him I could to slow him down, to take me along with those tireless legs.  We snuck into the Athens College athletic fields once after practice and tried our best to jump the hurdles set up at intervals along the track.  They were too high for us, but we kept trying, jumping and knocking down hurdles all around the track.  A groundskeeper began yelling and running our way so we just flew right off the track, across the field and onto the road, laughing and kicking our heels like colts.  He would never have caught us. 
        We had fig trees in our back yard along with a grape arbor, a peach tree and a cherry tree.  Samson often inquired, with a very serious tone, as to whether they were ripe yet or not.  We had a pistachio tree on one side and an almond tree on the other. Samson was a wonderful climber.  He would flick them down and I would catch them in my t-shirt.  Then we'd sit on our stone wall and spend the afternoon cracking them open.
        There were also pomegranate trees in the back of an empty lot nearby.  Our neighborhood was filled with empty lots, every third or fourth house had one next to it  and every third or fourth house was under construction.  From my house we began our sprint to the pomegranate trees.  It was well under 400 yards so we didn’t race, we just sprinted together and in that 90 seconds we would speculate on how ripe they were, how many there were and how many we could eat. Even though we were two very thin little boys, we could eat 2-3 baseball sized pomegranates each.  The juices ran across our wrists, down our forearms and dripped off our elbows.   It was a joy to see them all around us when we could eat no more.   By the end of this sticky mess, we might decide to run to Paul’s circle where the fountain always flowed and rinse off.
        Sometimes Samson would sneak out at night, only on a Saturday night, and pebble my window.  I would shimmy down the cypress tree which grew along the second floor balcony that some thoughtful gardener planted just for boys like me and my brothers.   We would run, again to the Filothei movie circle, to watch a movie projected onto an outdoor whitewashed wall.  As I remember, it was at least 30’ tall and 50’ wide and slightly curved.  Spread out around the screen were maybe 70-80 folding chairs with wooden seats.  We had no money so we crawled through the big drainage pipe which brought us up within the fenced in area.  
        Sometimes Paul joined us with his pockets loaded with candy.  So there we were, three eight year old boys, ogling the pretty girls who were sitting in the chairs and life was very fine.   When the film started we laid down in the grass around the perimeter.  The films were all in Greek or dubbed in Greek and involved a lot of operatically scornful or smoldering looks, smacking one’s forehead, tossing of big hair, pouting, people walking away in a tempest but being pulled back into a passionate embrace, maybe followed by a terrific slap.  Claudia Cardinale was up there, Sophia Loren or my favorite, Raquel Welch.  These women had a power that I could see, even as a boy.  They were gloriously beautiful and had a lasting, seminal effect on me.  This was melodrama at its best. 
        Sometimes, usually just before the passionate embrace, the leading lady was often pounding on the leading man’s chest with her furious fists, which we thought was spectacularly funny stuff.  Throughout all this drama we practiced our pouts, the smoldering, and hair tossing.  We did the chest pounding with some hysterics thrown in.  I was particularly skilled at smacking my forehead and I offered to show both Paul and Samson my technique.  We practiced slapping each other and although we tried, nobody could deliver a slap with exquisite fury like Sophia Loren.  There was intermission, sometimes a cartoon, when some of the audience would head off to the bathroom or get something from the kiosk.  This was our moment to grab half drunk sodas and whatever edible thing was lying around.  
        It is impossible to convey the kind of freedom we had.  I was the fifth son.  My older brothers were up to much greater shenanigans than I was and I am sure my parents knew that.  People of my parents' generation were not much interested in the daily events of their children's lives.  They were concerned that we were alive, not bleeding a lot and not failing school.  We were fed, clothed, hugged occasionally and kissed on the cheek at night and that was all the attention we needed.  My general behavior and academic production were enough to allow me to fly under their radar.   I just wanted to run, to eat and run some more.
        The simplicity and freedom of Greece those 55 years ago shine in my memory like the Parthenon shone at night on its hill.  It would be a hill under 400 hundred yards away with ripe fruit.  Samson, where are you?  If we could find each other again, we would laugh and cry all day long.  Are you still running?  I am.