Greek Honeysuckle and Magnolias

By Themis Tsaoussis

Greek Honeysuckle and Magnolias

The collections of stories in this book are vignettes of my life in the 1930s and 1940s. Greek call them shadow writings and define them as portraits that slowly fade away.
I preserved the portraits, arranged them in chronological order and added missing links which to my surprise remained vivid with the passage of time.
Greek honeysuckle is the messenger of youth, a frequent companion of my innocence in the process of developing, understanding and merging with life.
Magnolias are couriers of everything new.
One is very special.
Image here

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 30, 2013
• ISBN: 9781493148875

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Copyright © 2013 by Themis Tsaoussis.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 12/26/2013

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CONTENTS

A Brief History Of The Greeks

Gateway To The Acropolis

Thalassa—The Brown Sea

Ouranos—The Black Sky

Kiki And Euri

Mom-Zell Polyxeni

Georges And Victoria

The Gay Widow

Herr Brettschneider

Blue Skies

Alle Jahre Wieder?

How Do You Do You Mr. Brown?

S A Marschiert

Harry Solambabits

The Big Kaboom And Aris

Good-Bye, Sunshine

A Liberty Called Michael

Monos Kai Olos Omos

Le Café Epicure

Brides In Deep Water

A Friendly City Bus

The Double Double City

America Wild Side Up

The Strange South

Another Bride Idea

A Bridal Song Of Destiny

Magnolia Happenings

A Greek Love Story

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Dedicated to my family

Who always wanted to know my life’s stories.

I wrote about the early happy moments

and the sad ones of war and hunger.

America gave me hope and courage;

her endless humanity came to my rescue.

Her flower from the south gave me her love.

Special thanks to four grandchildren

who came to my help with their work:

Dino inspired the brilliant cover.

Tim’s idea was the magnolia inside.

Julia’s was the computer image of flowers.

Cindy’s was the superbly delicate logo.

I love them all very much.

As for that special magnolia,

the six-year-old in the garden of flowers

in the last pages,

all the stories lead to her.

We will never be apart.

She is the most precious gift of America

to me, a humble honeysuckle.

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The collection of stories in this book is made up of vignettes of my life in the 1930s and 1940s. Greeks call them shadow writings and define them as portraits that slowly fade away.

I preserved the portraits, arranged them in chronological order, and added missing links that, to my surprise, remained vivid with the passage of time.

Greek honeysuckle is the messenger of youth and freedom, a spirit found in many Greeks, a frequent companion of my innocence in the process of developing, understanding, and merging with life.

Magnolias are couriers of everything beautiful. One is very special.

ΕΙ ΚΑΙ ΑΝΑΛΗΘΕΣ ΚΑΛΩΣ ΕΥΡΕΘΗ.

—quoted by my father

Sketches are my own creation.

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A BRIEF HISTORY

OF THE GREEKS

When I put my life’s stories together in this book, I felt the strong urge to know exactly where Greeks came from and why they behave like they do.

Greeks are a lovable and enduring race of people to which I belong, but they cannot get along in peace and harmony with each other.

My struggle with real and legendary facts that fit together led to some strange conclusions:

1. They jumped right out of Greek earth.

2. They quarrel because of the brilliant sun that bathes in its light each and every centimeter of Greek land and water.

It is awesome being Greek!

I was told that countless years ago, a unique and different strain of people sprang up straight out of the Greek ground. One branch called themselves auto-chthons from their peculiarly twisted word chthon , which is what they called earth. The hyphenated form means earth people or self-earthlings even today. Another branch, however, preferred the word ghea , which also meant earth. The auto-gheans , however, lost the first popular vote ever held in history, by one tile, and thus the auto-chthons triumphed. Since then, Greeks have been quarreling because each faction wanted to be the winner.

Thousands of years went by. The self-proclaimed auto-chthons sprung up from Greek earth to claim every little bit of it for their own.

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It so happens that the idea of humans jumping out of the mud was preposterous to many until the year 1960 when a young shepherdess named Vassilo persuaded the handsome landowner Thanassi to help her locate a stray lamb in a cavern known as the Petralona Cave, forty kilometers or so southeast of the city of Thessaloniki. Searching for the animal and seeking refuge from summer heat in the depths of the earth, the couple practically fell on a typical Neanderthal skull, the first ever to show up in Greek territory. The Stone Age specimen had nothing to say about the great country it was in but surprised everyone. The Greek human race was now anxious to dig up whatever it could about itself.

Eventually, help was to come from a group of self-appointed Greek anthropologists who declared that Greeks came from somewhere else. Later on, they realized, with natural embarrassment, that people who came from some other place must also have come from somewhere else and so on. The dilemma was resolved when the date of Stone Age hunters (i.e., the Neanderthals) was pushed back to 40,000 BC or more. Now nobody had to come from elsewhere; they were there. It is the ultimate triumph of autochthonism, if you think about it.

Over time, an endless chain of rocky Greeks populated the land. A great number of them, forced to move because of the waves of newcomers, jumped into the sea and created every island in the Aegean. They then expanded beyond them to many lands far away. This made room for others who had not one ounce of rocky material in their bodies to slide down into Greek territory. It explains the dark-haired and the blond Greeks, the happily smiling and the grumpy Greeks, the philosophers and the dreamers, and the brilliant and the half-witted Greeks. Just like the