My grandparents lived on a farm right off the capital of the island and when my grandfather needed to shop in town (from the list given to him by my grandmother and sometimes written in chalk) he would saddle up the donkey, sometimes put me in the saddle (though I was a kid and a nuisance when my grandfather, normally the most patient of men, had important business to conduct) and take me with him. First we would stable the donkey in the municipal parking lot for donkeys and mules and the infrequent horse (the Cadillac of pack animals that few of us could afford)—a huge municipal stable where the animals would be watered and fed hay or oats and occasionally washed and brushed down (the custom special). I loved the smell of the old place and it still gives me a thrill when I pass one of the riding stables near my house and the wind blows the smell of manure in my direction.

After stabling our donkey, Papou and I would start on our rounds. First we would stop at the provision store to pick up some mail, and some gossip, and to have the proprietor dig his big, metal scoop into the giant, dusty sacks of wheat and rice and flour (and raise dust in the air) and fill up an assortment of little sacks with koukia and rice and flour, that would then be tied with a string from a roll and bitten off to size. And maybe Papou would also buy me a scoopful of square little sucking candy, or if he was really in an expansive mood and have more gossip or politics to discuss (though he professed not to like it), he would treat me to Italian gelato ice cream in the café on the square, right outside the public park with the palm trees shading the walks and the statue of local revolutionary hero Konstantinos Kanaris guarding the entrance. I would eat the wonder of ice cream (Papou would say, with a familiar twinkle in his eye, that I should let it “cool” before I ate it) and then stare at all the mihanakia zipping through the square like gnats, hardly any cars except for an ancient Chevy or Buick being used for a taxi, and as a kid marvel most at the assortment of mules and donkeys, some leading the small herd of goats and sheep tied to their saddles, and especially the huge wagons with truck tires and hubcaps pulled by enormous working mules with blinders and jingling harness and giant hooves that shot off sparks as they thundered across the square. That was a sight.

That was my world then, and, of course, that’s a world gone forever. I will be shocked and saddened to see it all vanished when I do return to Greece, but it will remain forever in my memory, and I will be more than recompensed when I see my daughters form their own memories of Greece, which will stay with them forever, as mine do.

Dimitri C. Michalakis