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.
Ah, the fruits and nuts we had then. We just arrived in Mexico 4 hours ago, yet another magical place with incredible fruits and vegetables. We’re here for almost ten weeks. Left behind the 6 month winter.
How wonderful this is, Wes. Not just because I can see you and Samson running like Peter Pans as if I’m seated at the Platea which I know, watching you, smiling. I can feel the sheer freedom and happiness of the beautiful boys you were laughing and racing each other. (The image of you conflated with my grandson’s - a wild little runner too). I just love this so much.
Though I was a sophisticated high schooler, living in central Athens by then, I was in Filothei often, at my great-uncles house, or my cousins house just two doors away. We went to that outdoor cinema you snuck into, because we were a group of teenagers in Chalandri at the American school) and often roamed together in the neighborhoods nearby well into the evenings. And am thinking we could have seen you guys flying around and thought you were a piece of that life we were both living at the time, when everything was touched with a dreamlike state of being. You guys feasted on the fruit of the same kind of fruit trees we ate from on the island in the summer - or in my uncles or cousin’s gardens.
I like thinking we will meet our friends again (being older than you sooner for me and Tom). That for whatever reason we were blessed to have been in what was (despite the military coup in ‘67) a state of grace, a foundation for the lives we are living now. Incredibly lucky to know what the light is like on the sea in the Aegean.
Thank you, thank you for this piece. I love Samson and your candy and cookie loving playmate (I’d go back to the story right now to recall his name but I don’t want to lose what I’m writing here to you).
I’m keeping this story, along with your poetry and accounts of building and being. You are an amazing man and writer.
I may be being presumptive but claiming my right as an older sister and ending this with love to you and your wonderful Laurita,
How well we both know what those years meant. My brother Geoff graduated in 1970, went to Chalandri in 9th-11th grade. He was editor of the school paper and a drummer.
He played through college, using his band gigs for money for school. He had to leave the USA as a conscientious objector, his objection was overruled and he was ordered to show up at the Army base. Dad drove him up to Canada where, as a back up, he had applied and got accepted to McGill University. We didn't see him until Ford pardoned all the "draft dodgers". Dad, using his agency skill set, smuggled him back for my Mom's birthday I think.
Yes. We had days of grace when we were young there. Given the political turmoil that swirled around us somehow that happened.
Your brother Geoff likely had some of the same teachers as I had - certainly whoever oversaw the school paper. I was a co-editor of it - and the editor of a ridiculous ‘literary’ magazine we named The Dodo.
When he was in 9th grade I was a senior there if I calculate correctly.
I asked Tom if his cross-country team ran through Philothei (though it would have been when I was a freshman and didn’t know him.) He told me that they only ran through chalandri.
I think either Nick or Chris Hodge and one of the Sands boys ran track at Chalandri and there was a Jewish kid, first name Steve who we watched win at a meet at the Athens College Athletic field near us, the one in the essay.
About the coup from the colonels. We were all out the day, playing around our neighborhood. My folks were in Delphi for the afternoon and evening. We knew nothing about the coup but we did notice the evzoni's around the queen's mother's place were weird. My Dad phone a neighbor, Bay Stockton to come down from where they lived near Agia Sophia. He got all of us just as it was getting dark. The soldiers were out and and a curfew, they had orders to shoot anyone out after dark. Our folks showed up, crazy with fear, Dad drove threw a bunch of roadblocks, literally smashing through them, thank god for CD plates. I remember them both hugging Bay at the same time, all of them crying.
Years later, when talking to Dad about it, he felt a real personal sense of fault, that he should have known the coup was going to happen since that was his jobs and he and his team was responsible for getting the king out safely. BTY, he and Constantine were sailing buddies on Ivanhoe, the king's huge sailing yacht. He loved Dad because of his significant strength/power, his jokes, singing and "nobody can hold his drink like Kyria Parker." Dad had a photo of the two of them doing something nautical on the Ivanhoe. My Dad was as much like Zorba as anyone could have been, probably more.
My brother was a conscientious objector. Tom was asked to submit a statement supporting him as he was named as his closest friend and was in the Army at the time. The decision was either turned down or pending, I don’t remember. George went on to join the Peace Corp soon after.
Good choice. I knew so many deeply fucked us guys after their tour there. Brother Chris also got his number for the last two years of the draft but both time they were high in the 300's and he never got called up. Mom was ready to drive him out to our family ranch in Arkansas to work. She did not want her sons "involved in that asinine war."
Hers was the only sane way of looking at that catastrophe. So many dead or maimed for nothing.
The guys who came back who we got close to sustained some horrific harm. Any given night you’d hear screams as one or another dreamt he was still there. Tom’s records were pulled twice to go but they were withdrawn at the last minute by circumstances we had no control over but were intensely grateful for. The term they all used to refer to a friend, buddy, relative who died there was ‘wasted.’ So many were.
What a memory for a child as young as you were. Can only imagine your parents fear for you and your brothers - unknowingly in the path of the colonels troops. This reads like a screenplay it’s that powerful. (What a treasure good friends are when crisis strikes. Thank god for your dad’s friend - and wow his diplomatic plates were armor but even so the risks, holy hell). We lived just off Agia Sophia. I think I described what transpired before.
Btw smiling thinking of Constantine. Apparently in early 60’s (I started school at the American academy in 63) he hung around the school in - one upper classman (a friend of my sisters who was a junior) told me he dressed like one of the Beachboys and liked to pick up girls when the highschool ended for the day. - Of course this could be major sour grapes.
What a hoot about Constantine hankering after the chicks. By the way Bay Stockton wrote about that time in "Phoenix On A Bayonet" and he and Dad both were bemoaning that they missed the timing by so much.
I just ordered the one copy left on Amazon. Really curious to read. The impression was that the U.S. took a lead from the colonels who were the face of the coup. That was the understanding at school anyway.
What an awesome reflection Weston!!! You had a cherished childhood, at least that phase sure seemed to be!
Thank you Rich. That phase was a very magical four years.
These trees in which you describe... delicious.
Ah, the fruits and nuts we had then. We just arrived in Mexico 4 hours ago, yet another magical place with incredible fruits and vegetables. We’re here for almost ten weeks. Left behind the 6 month winter.
How wonderful this is, Wes. Not just because I can see you and Samson running like Peter Pans as if I’m seated at the Platea which I know, watching you, smiling. I can feel the sheer freedom and happiness of the beautiful boys you were laughing and racing each other. (The image of you conflated with my grandson’s - a wild little runner too). I just love this so much.
Though I was a sophisticated high schooler, living in central Athens by then, I was in Filothei often, at my great-uncles house, or my cousins house just two doors away. We went to that outdoor cinema you snuck into, because we were a group of teenagers in Chalandri at the American school) and often roamed together in the neighborhoods nearby well into the evenings. And am thinking we could have seen you guys flying around and thought you were a piece of that life we were both living at the time, when everything was touched with a dreamlike state of being. You guys feasted on the fruit of the same kind of fruit trees we ate from on the island in the summer - or in my uncles or cousin’s gardens.
I like thinking we will meet our friends again (being older than you sooner for me and Tom). That for whatever reason we were blessed to have been in what was (despite the military coup in ‘67) a state of grace, a foundation for the lives we are living now. Incredibly lucky to know what the light is like on the sea in the Aegean.
Thank you, thank you for this piece. I love Samson and your candy and cookie loving playmate (I’d go back to the story right now to recall his name but I don’t want to lose what I’m writing here to you).
I’m keeping this story, along with your poetry and accounts of building and being. You are an amazing man and writer.
I may be being presumptive but claiming my right as an older sister and ending this with love to you and your wonderful Laurita,
Patris
How well we both know what those years meant. My brother Geoff graduated in 1970, went to Chalandri in 9th-11th grade. He was editor of the school paper and a drummer.
Did he continue playing after high school?
He played through college, using his band gigs for money for school. He had to leave the USA as a conscientious objector, his objection was overruled and he was ordered to show up at the Army base. Dad drove him up to Canada where, as a back up, he had applied and got accepted to McGill University. We didn't see him until Ford pardoned all the "draft dodgers". Dad, using his agency skill set, smuggled him back for my Mom's birthday I think.
Yes. We had days of grace when we were young there. Given the political turmoil that swirled around us somehow that happened.
Your brother Geoff likely had some of the same teachers as I had - certainly whoever oversaw the school paper. I was a co-editor of it - and the editor of a ridiculous ‘literary’ magazine we named The Dodo.
When he was in 9th grade I was a senior there if I calculate correctly.
I asked Tom if his cross-country team ran through Philothei (though it would have been when I was a freshman and didn’t know him.) He told me that they only ran through chalandri.
I think either Nick or Chris Hodge and one of the Sands boys ran track at Chalandri and there was a Jewish kid, first name Steve who we watched win at a meet at the Athens College Athletic field near us, the one in the essay.
About the coup from the colonels. We were all out the day, playing around our neighborhood. My folks were in Delphi for the afternoon and evening. We knew nothing about the coup but we did notice the evzoni's around the queen's mother's place were weird. My Dad phone a neighbor, Bay Stockton to come down from where they lived near Agia Sophia. He got all of us just as it was getting dark. The soldiers were out and and a curfew, they had orders to shoot anyone out after dark. Our folks showed up, crazy with fear, Dad drove threw a bunch of roadblocks, literally smashing through them, thank god for CD plates. I remember them both hugging Bay at the same time, all of them crying.
Years later, when talking to Dad about it, he felt a real personal sense of fault, that he should have known the coup was going to happen since that was his jobs and he and his team was responsible for getting the king out safely. BTY, he and Constantine were sailing buddies on Ivanhoe, the king's huge sailing yacht. He loved Dad because of his significant strength/power, his jokes, singing and "nobody can hold his drink like Kyria Parker." Dad had a photo of the two of them doing something nautical on the Ivanhoe. My Dad was as much like Zorba as anyone could have been, probably more.
My brother was a conscientious objector. Tom was asked to submit a statement supporting him as he was named as his closest friend and was in the Army at the time. The decision was either turned down or pending, I don’t remember. George went on to join the Peace Corp soon after.
Good choice. I knew so many deeply fucked us guys after their tour there. Brother Chris also got his number for the last two years of the draft but both time they were high in the 300's and he never got called up. Mom was ready to drive him out to our family ranch in Arkansas to work. She did not want her sons "involved in that asinine war."
Hers was the only sane way of looking at that catastrophe. So many dead or maimed for nothing.
The guys who came back who we got close to sustained some horrific harm. Any given night you’d hear screams as one or another dreamt he was still there. Tom’s records were pulled twice to go but they were withdrawn at the last minute by circumstances we had no control over but were intensely grateful for. The term they all used to refer to a friend, buddy, relative who died there was ‘wasted.’ So many were.
What a memory for a child as young as you were. Can only imagine your parents fear for you and your brothers - unknowingly in the path of the colonels troops. This reads like a screenplay it’s that powerful. (What a treasure good friends are when crisis strikes. Thank god for your dad’s friend - and wow his diplomatic plates were armor but even so the risks, holy hell). We lived just off Agia Sophia. I think I described what transpired before.
Btw smiling thinking of Constantine. Apparently in early 60’s (I started school at the American academy in 63) he hung around the school in - one upper classman (a friend of my sisters who was a junior) told me he dressed like one of the Beachboys and liked to pick up girls when the highschool ended for the day. - Of course this could be major sour grapes.
What a hoot about Constantine hankering after the chicks. By the way Bay Stockton wrote about that time in "Phoenix On A Bayonet" and he and Dad both were bemoaning that they missed the timing by so much.
I just ordered the one copy left on Amazon. Really curious to read. The impression was that the U.S. took a lead from the colonels who were the face of the coup. That was the understanding at school anyway.