Читать книгу Greek Girl's Secrets - Efrossini AKA Fran Kisser - Страница 9

As the teenagers were getting older and their housing got smaller and smaller they started to look for work. There was no work to be found anywhere. The oldest daughter Paraskevi (Friday) got married and so did my uncle George. They moved out. But the second male child Manolis (Immanuel), the third female child Efrossini, and the fourth female child Fotini left for America, to seek their fortunes, right before the American great depression in the early 1920’s.

They came to America on a ship and ended up on Ellis Island around 1920. So, my grandmother Zafiro was left with just my mother Malama, and one younger brother Demetrios. The rest of her hidden precious golden jewelry bought the three tickets for her older children’s voyage to the new world. She had no more gold, no more savings for the rest of the family to go to America.

By the time my mother was fifteen my Austrian born father Achillea met this tormented family and he became the man of the house. My parents were married in 1924.

My mother was taught by her mother and her grandmother was taught by her mother the value of gold, not money. They owned handmade golden jewelry, as high gold content as 22 karats. They bought it like it was their savings account.

They gifted the precious golden handmade jewelry on special occasions to newlyweds, at baptisms and at engagements.

Many times, the currency would change because of wars and different occupations by enemy countries. Whatever paper money one had hoarded, it would become worthless. So the people got smart and invested in the only incorruptible money GOLD!

One little gold coin for instance, one English 22 karat gold sovereign which was worth a lot of money was also easily hidden instead of an armful of cash. When I was a little girl I remember one American dollar was worth 300 drachmas. That bought a lot of products. But one golden lira was a small fortune.

Malama, my mother would economize from her household money that my father would give her. Every few months she would buy a golden English lira, as she called them. The proper name of these gold coins I later found out is an English golden SOVEREIGN.

Now how does one economize, when there are so many children to feed and support in all kinds of ways, I do not know. My mother was just amazing.

These gold coins came in handy when she needed new bed comforters for the family or for a daughter’s trousseau (linens, household items that the bride would bring into the marriage.) The gypsies with their dancing bear would come around and ask us for work. They placed a large canvas type cover on the ground under a shady tree and they hand made the comforters with a pink satin fabric on one side and the backing was a white cotton fabric.

After the cloths were sewn by hand in neat symmetrical stitches then they stuffed them with real, natural, white, fluffy cotton.

They stitched these beautiful comforters with such precision, all by hand, while they entertained us with their dancing brown bear. We fed them, my mother paid them with gold coins and we got our beautiful comforters. Then, these artisans /entertainers went about their way to the next customers.

Malama also bought an occasional wool Persian rug for our living room when the wagon would pass with the woolen delights, all hand made by the Persian artisans. Again, she paid by a golden lira. Malama knew quality because her family had the best of furnishings in Constantinople before their disasters.

When there was a rainy day, when my father’s work was slow, or we had bad weather in the winter continuously, she would produce a golden lira and she would go shopping to the agora (variety of specialty stores) downtown for necessities. The first stop was at the carob stand. She would buy one huge bag of chocolaty carobs these wonderful long, dry, brown bean pods.

At that time, I do not believe my mother knew just how nutritiously sound those sweet chocolate tasting, brown bean pods were. They knew about nutrition all right but not like we know today. Recently I made carob bites for a nutritional dog biscuit. Along with my organic free-range chicken bone broth (the homegrown, free range chicken has to be over four years old) I found out the nutritional content of carob is an absolute power house of vitamins, minerals, like calcium and magnesium, protein and so on.

She handed them to the children to eat them and keep them busy. They were a delicious snack that resembled a complete meal in total nutrition.

At least two children would go with her, so we could all carry the double bags loaded full of foods that were not found in our garden. Meats, especially lamb, seafood, pastourma (a special, cured lunchmeat made from camel meat like corned beef,) I remember it was delicious with mustard, fresh fruit in the winter especially citrus, chestnuts and apples we would carry on the bus.

None of the foods we ate were processed in any way and nothing we ate was prepared by anyone else. Our mother was in charge of what went into our mouths. This wonderful mother cooked many thousands of meals without complaining, without a day off for over sixty years.

My mother was the home economist. We always looked forward to our afternoon wholesome real flavors ice creams from the vendor in the summer we went to summer movies, beach trips on buses and by motor boats from downtown.

We had pretty bows for our hair, we were loved, and we were very well fed. Yet, my mother still managed to buy and hide her gold coins. In the tough times, she came through, and brightened our days with much needed foods and other necessities. Like magic we kids watched her bring out a golden lira and all was well. That golden lira bought many weeks’ worth of foods and paid for household bills too.

It was a different world back in the old country. One generation would leave a house or land for the next generation to inherit.

The new married couple had a house to live in without struggling with a never-ending mortgage or rent that took half of their monthly paycheck.

The young people took care of their elders gladly and respected them. There was no such thing as a “home” for the elderly.

Today I see advertisements on television shamelessly promoting a final home like it is normal to put the elderly in some “home”. What about their children’s homes? A parent can support and raise ten children. Ten children cannot nurture and support one old parent now days.

Those people enjoyed life more. They were not strapped with all the monthly bills we have today. Most of the middle class ended up owning the inherited home and they created a second home by the sea for their days off and vacations, (thiakopes.) So now this family would have two homes to deed to their children. They wanted their children to be better off in their lives. They wanted them to have an easier life.

My parents had eleven live births and nine living healthy children. From these nine children only three of us had three children. Everyone else had two or just one child.

Greece had a population of eight million people in 1962 when I left, and today 2019 Greece still has eight million people. The people that have the most children will dominate a country. Greeks only have one child, maybe. The writing is on the wall.

My yiayia left my parents, her home in Serres.

After the move to Thessaloniki and the much more modern home where I was born, life was easier for my parents. After I left for America my father sold the family home and the land, where I was born and the builder gave them two apartments on the third floor along with a commercial store front on the ground level.

If they had no home at the beginning it would have been nearly impossible to have and raise all those children. With that size family I think the biggest expense was probably food.

When I went back to Greece the second time my mother gave me one of those perfect, shiny golden liras and I saved it for many years. I kept it in cotton in a velvet box where I used to keep my diamond ring set that I had lost. I used to take it out and admire it from time to time. Eventually, I gifted it to my youngest son for a birthday gift. I had a jeweler make it into a handsome gold, heavy man’s ring. This is a real, worth a lot, heirloom. It also has a meaning. I have touched it and my mother has touched it also.

I remember one year my mother baked the traditional Christmas sweet bread just like the Greek Easter bread but without the red dyed eggs. She inserted a golden lira in the bread and baked it. As the slices were handed out on Christmas day, my lucky brother Carolos bit into the gold coin. He was very happy, because he was engaged and needed the extra money. My mother was a giving person. She gave unselfishly. Her world was her kitchen, she lived for her family. Her family came first, always. We children had her unconditional love forever. Knowing this as a child, made you feel strong and confident.

My mother did not believe when mankind went to the moon, you may call her backward. She was not book educated like my father. BUT, she was the very word economist, in every sense of the word, and she was taught the value of gold. Only recently people are learning about gold in this country.

My mother had no medical degree, but she knew what remedies to use with great results. She depended on her miraculous herb garden and wild herbs too. This was all handed down in families.

From a tooth ache to the mumps, to a hurt knee, to chicken pox and a sore throat, she had become an expert because she had an abundance of patients, her large family. One time she even used the leeches from a jar on herself. It was awful! I was ten years old and she had placed those leeches on her shins. She did it outside in the back garden and it was summertime.

Most of the early years I do not believe we had expensive health insurance coverage. Thankfully we were a bunch of healthy kids and did not need hospitalization. I attribute that to our genetics and my mother’s nurturing and homemade unprocessed foods with nutritious unspoiled by chemicals and unnatural fertilizers, raw ingredients.

My mother also nursed one of my nieces. My mother gave birth to my younger sister Anna, at 44 years old. My married sister Roula, who was named after our yiayia, Zafiro, Zafiroula, who was about 16 years older than me, also gave birth to a baby girl. This niece was a tiny, black haired, green eyed baby who nearly died. Her mother had no milk, so the baby was frail and starving.

I don’t believe baby formula was invented just yet. This was Greece after all and it was 1952. In my opinion life was about fifty years behind there than the new country called America. Now things are different. My niece would have died, her intestines were closing up, her pediatrician had said. That is when my mother started nursing this frail baby. She nursed my sister Anna and her granddaughter at the same time.

What a mom!!! So that baby received nutritious milk with the much-needed natural immunity that comes with it. My mother saved her granddaughter’s life. Grandmother Malama and granddaughter Thomai always had a special bond.

I don’t remember my mother sitting around much, idly. With so many children and grandchildren she was always making clothes on her SINGER with the foot pedal sewing machine. She also had bought the SINGER with a gold coin. In the evening, sitting around the radio she would be knitting sweaters, hats, scarves, cotton and winter woolen socks. I am describing the 50’s and the 60’s. I came to America in 1962.

She used to say a person needs 40 salt water baths at the sea, for their health. Later, I found out about thalassa therapy. She was right again. I remember going to the thalassa (sea) on foot and by bus, sometimes by motor boat.

These were day trips to different beaches. My mother, half a dozen children, just the younger ones would go for an outing which took place a couple, and sometimes three times a week during the hot summer. We tried to have 40 salt water baths under our belts for our health. Dipping in the salty Aegean Sea was medicinal indeed.

On the way back from the beach my mother would buy fresh fish and mussels from the fishermen, and that night we feasted on delicious, fresh sweet fish. That is what fresh means.

I remember the sun was sweltering hot when we were walking and sun bathing and sometimes we got sunburned. At night our backs were pampered with this plain, cool, wholesome, wonderful goat’s milk yogurt which my mother made almost daily.

We ate the wonderful yogurt and used it for medicinal purposes too. Its nutritional coolness pulled the heat out of our burned backs quickly.

She was a true homemaker. My father gave her a certain amount of money for the house. It was up to her to feed us, keep us in clothes, to doctor us, to entertain us, to raise us. None of her nine children ever messed with the law and they all grew up as upstanding citizens. She did a great job. My father was always in charge of outfitting us for the school year with new shoes, coats, jackets, our books, leather book bags and other supplies.

My mother had an extensive vegetable and herb garden from which she harvested for our meals daily. She also had one goat it was a white Alpine goat, Asproula which means Little White One. In the spring this goat produced as many as four baby goats (kids.) I remember one spring my mother gave birth to my youngest sister Anna and amazingly the same day Asproula had her three kids, that year. It was the 2^ndof March 1952. I was just four years old and I can still see her little kids.

The extent of her farm animals also included a dozen chickens which produced the fresh eggs we were fed on a daily basis. Our large family was like the famous television show, THE WALTONS. We were a real close family without all the drama like the Walton’s. In Greece my family had lived through the terrible World War II, not just the depression. I will explain later.

The animals were not legal because we lived in the suburbs, not on agricultural land, not on a farm. Many years later my mother was told to get rid of them or be fined.

We only had the female goat so every year my mother would take Asproula to a neighborhood far away where one of her friends owned a male goat that you could smell his musky scent from a mile away, it seemed. There, they mated, and then we would walk her back to our home. It was all done on foot.

This trip entailed walking down a dried-up river or some ravine and then walking up again. It was a very memorable and exhausting adventure.

I remember this incident very well. I was about 4 years old. I walked in the goat pen and went to pet our goat. Asproula picked me up with her great horns and tossed me against the wall. They rushed me to the hospital. This was one of three occasions where I was so traumatized as a child. In a few days I was alright. I never touched Asproula again without supervision.

I remember when I got older my mother would take me to the Turkish baths downtown. We made a day of it. It was like going to a spa. Since we had no car we rode the bus. We carried with us our bath robes, bath towels and lunch.

These big dome marble throughout baths were built by the Turks when they occupied Thessaloniki for four hundred years. After we paid for the use of the baths we were handed a key to our room.

That is where we left our belongings. The baths had different degrees of temperature. The rooms were humongous. I could never tolerate the real hot baths, so we stayed in the first room. These baths were just for women. The men had their own baths on the other side, my mother had told me.

There were masseuses and ladies walking around in the nude that offered to scrub your back if you were by yourself and needed their help. The first time my mother took me there I was around six years old and I was real shy. I could not believe everyone was in the nude. After our long bath we would put on our thirsty robes and go to our room.

We ate our delicious lunch my mother had prepared for us, combed our hair and rested in our beds for a couple of hours. In the afternoon we would pick up a few groceries across the street of the famous baths and since we already had a lot to carry we would hire us a taxi. Then, we traveled in style. It was a special day my mother deserved, and we did this ritual a couple of times per month. We were squeaky clean with rosy cheeks. At our house we only had a shower, no bathtub to soak in and relax. Most people had just showers in their homes, so we ended up going to the baths to luxuriate our skin.

On Sundays we went to church on foot and it was all uphill.

By the time the liturgy (Christian service) was over, the children were starving, and my mother would buy each one of us, a koulouri. This was one circle two times larger than a doughnut of the most delicious crunchy bread with toasted sesame seeds which the vendor would sell outside the church, to hungry church goers. We had to take communion, so we had been fasting, we had no breakfast. Also, the foods we ate the day before were meatless and dairy free, so we were very hungry.

When we arrived at the house, we ate something light, to tide us over to the big Sunday meal.

One of the after-church light meals might have been, freshly made halvah. This is not what you buy at a Greek store today. My mother made halvah with something like cream of wheat, sugar and lots of fragrant delicious cinnamon and clove.

She would pick up her creation with a large soup spoon and place all the spoonfuls upside down on a large platter.

There, they cooled, and she would sprinkle additional cinnamon. We ate this halvah with great delight. It was nutritious and tasted like desert, too!

My brother Panayiotis (Panos) and I would take the large copper baking pan to the neighborhood oven, (fourno.) This special Sunday meal might have consisted of a quarter of a spring lamb with five pounds of cut up potatoes or some other meat large enough to feed 8-10 people. Many times, the baking pan was loaded with a few roasting chickens and cut up potatoes or rice and meat stuffed peppers, tomatoes or zucchini. Another dish was mousaka.

This consisted of fried eggplants in her olive oil, a layer of prepared grass fed ground lamb, a layer of her homegrown jar tomato sauce, feta cheese crumbled and again more repeated layers of everything. This dish was topped with her own fresh chopped garden herbs especially curly parsley. She never made it with the dreaded adding calories of that white béchamel sauce.

This mousaka dish was my mother’s creation. That is how I make mine today too. It seems parsley was always in a small vas on the kitchen table. Folks, this is not just for look appeal. The humble biennial parsley is great for our health. Check it out!

In the winter we also SENT to the neighborhood public oven (fourno) a large baking pan full of winter fruits: apples, quince, pears, oranges, figs that were all prepared with raisins, cinnamon and cloves, for a fragrant and delicious, healthy dessert. At home my mother would drizzle sparingly honey made from wild flowers to add more immunity protection for the winter cold.

The bakery had tremendous size modern German ovens, where all the people from the neighborhood took their Sunday meals there, to be baked. No one had an oven in their house. My mother had a two burner Petrogas brand stove. There was a pot of delicious food on the stove constantly, along with a pot of tea. No one went hungry in our house. There was always a pot of Greek mountain wild tea called SIDERITIS to make you strong like iron, my mother used to say.

I remember to this day, that if you taste a jarred sweet and again you re taste it by using the same spoon, without washing and drying it first, you will spoil or crystallize the jarred sweet product.

So, when mother made jam, goodies for the long, cold winter, we the children with the sweet tooth would do just that. Then my mother knew we were in the jars and we were disciplined. I remember to this day not to use the tasting spoon twice even while I am cooking. There are chemicals of digestion in our saliva and it would ruin the goodies or foods in the pots on the stove.

She kept large 1 quart and even larger jars, crocks of salted fish, salted goat’s meat, olives, olive oil in great big square metal cans, sugar, flour, dried fruits and nuts.

She also preserved vegetables and fruits. She was an economical genius of providing great foods for her beloved family.

Feta cheese was kept in salt water in large metal cans, wheels of hard aged cheeses she made from the goat’s milk, tomato products, dried and canned. It was a very extensive pantry.

From the rafters hung various dried teas (which were harvested and dried at perfect timing with their flowers intact) in paper bags to keep them dust free, along with braided and dried garlic, onion and hot peppers. The latter were used to flavor cooked foods but they also had medicinal values.

Her mother learned all about nutrition from her mother which had been passed along for generations. In addition to the family values, stories, prayers, names and nutritional recipes were all handed down as the greatest inheritance they could have given to each other. This was what nurtured families had to carry through their lives.

One of the big containers was cornstarch. I remember I liked the feel of it and the noise it made between my fingers. It was squeaky like new leather shoes.

She used this staple to make us a type of gelatin like Jell-O, but this was all natural, no synthetic colors and flavors, sweetened with honey and flavored with the citrus fruits, my dad raised in great big earthen pots.

In the winter when the teen age boys would carry these humongous pots into our living room, we would decorate the citrus trees for Christmas.

My father was an expert of raising fruits like figs, peaches, kaisi (an apricot with an almond like edible sweet seed). He also trained grapevines to the roof top taratsa (patio.)

He also raised fruit trees to produce a few kinds of fruit, all on the same tree by grafting. He was ahead of his time. Now, you see trees like that in catalogs, 60 years later.

I was born after the dreaded World War II, in 1948, in Thessaloniki. I am what you call, a baby boomer.

In 1940 my family had six children but the oldest one moved to Athens, to find work, so he was on his own, but he also sent money to my mother weekly.

My family then still lived at Serres.

The Germans were approaching Greece leaving death and destruction in their path. Even though my family had six children, my poor father was STILL drafted and he ended up as a Jeep driver in the war effort. Greece needed every available man to fight this war. That is why families were left without incomes without male protection.

My father kissed and hugged each child instructing them to listen to their mother carefully so they can survive this terrible war.

They would all be in his thoughts and prayers always and he would try to come back to them as soon as he could. Malama kissed Achillea and gave him a little bible for protection.

So now my mother was left all alone to fend for her family, and again like her mother before her, she was not a farmer, but she had a family vegetable and herb garden.

She also had a goat and a dozen chickens. This house that had been enlarged by my seventeen year old father Achillea had humongous stone foundations.

These foundations had newly created compartments and there my father had enclosed large containers of provisions. He had firsthand experience with hunger. It was the benefit of living thru three endless wars as an orphan little child by himself therefore he knew what hunger was.

He was building the compartments in the foundation remembering those hard times.

Salted meats and fish (they had no refrigeration), flour, sugar, cornstarch, cornmeal, olives, olive oil, wine, honey, even dry spaghetti noodles and trahana which my mother made by hand, were some of those provisions. He was being drafted and he did not wish his beloved family to know hunger.

After my father was drafted my mother witnessed war atrocities in front of their home and saw a couple, husband and wife, Jewish people, the parents to two little girls, were tortured and then killed by the Germans.

Malama with six children already also hid those two little girls first within her large brood and later in the foundation stones like the provisions and raised them during the war. Yes, this was much worse than the depression the Walton’s endured, in America.

The German soldiers were outside her door and were able to smell the wonderful home cooked meals my mother prepared for her family daily. They would barge in her home unannounced and search for groceries, provisions and almost always they would find nothing but the huge pot on her stove.

Oh! Poor Malama hoped and prayed they would not steal her dozen chickens and her milk goat. These animals provided a very high quality fresh protein for her growing family.

She desperately needed them daily along with her hidden dry goods to provide proper nourishing meals to her family. She also needed to keep her large family healthy. She always knew prevention was better than medication. Her mother taught her again.

So now my mother had eight children to keep clean and there was no money or super markets to buy soaps and detergents.

Not being a farmer she was told by a neighbor to buy herself a piglet for a little money, which will live on family scraps and wild vegetation and when it is of age she can use the meat, the hide to make shoes for her kids at a shoemaker, and the head and the pig’s fat to make a primitive, coarse, green soap.

She did exactly that. By necessity this woman learned to make a fragrant basil green soap, as she described it to me. The problem of cleanliness was solved.

Her daily challenges were immense but somehow, she managed her family well and they all survived till the war was over.

Once she mentioned her old fashioned doctor told her to smoke just three cigarettes per day, one after every meal to relax her. That is exactly what she did. For as long as I could remember she only had three cigarettes per day. Whenever I would travel to Greece I would bring her three cartons of cigarettes and she would have them for over six months. What a disciplined lady!

My mother was simply an awesome lady, she overcame so many challenges, and for a few years she was mother and father to her large family, during the war.

After the war my father came back, and my family moved to Thessaloniki where I was born.

My father claimed I was my mother’s daughter in looks and spirit. I know this lady called Malama is resting in Heaven now. If it was up to me, she would be a saint now.

Yiayia Zafiro (Malama’s mother) on the ship to America, 1930