My Little Skinny Greek Life

My Little Skinny Greek Life: On Liberty Street Michael H. Skopes Preface In December, 2006, at fifty-four years young, I opened my e-mail account to find a letter from one of my grade school and high school friends, Beth (Bednarik) Myers. She sent one of those emotion laden, perfectly suited for Christmas season stories. It addressed lessons learned during childhood and how people in general today could use a strong dose of compassion and man’s humanity to man. Reading it reminded me of something that happened at about my twelfth year that mended my broken heart. I sent that story to Beth. It impressed her enough to write back encouraging me to pen a book about my childhood memories. Little did she know that about a year earlier, at fifty-three years young, I had already begun organizing (on paper) initial thoughts, mainly about my father. I had just finished reading Tim Russert’s book about his father, Big Russ & Me. Many of Russert’s descriptions of his dad sounded a lot like my dad, and I felt inspired to tell a story of my own. That e-mail exchange with Beth started me thinking. For quite a while I had been thinking about comparisons. What is different about my life as an adult from my life as a child? What has changed? What is the same? I had hours and hours of time available to me for deep reflection. My commute to and from my job five days a week gave me all the time I needed to start this process of comparing. Many of my thoughts were about old friends, my parents, two sisters, and how I missed them. I relived times of less complexity and certainly less traffic congestion. I compared the days of my youth to the days of today’s youth while eying every graffiti paint job along my commute. Coupled with some of the current music I heard when channel scanning, I had to shake my head. When I listened to the news and talk, I heard things that made me long for a distant past even more. My world, my country, and my local environment were being tested, and the percentage of people flunking out disturbed me. I kept hearing about the polarization of people and nations, inept leaders and misguided opponents. I heard people speak about the degradation of the Constitution, loss of freedoms and rights, tragic loss of precious lives, and endless he said she said stories dominating the air waves. I came close to screaming. What could I do to gain a little peace of mind? My answer to that question lies within the following pages. I had to create a place where I could go to be free from all the garbage…for a while and re-experience the good things I knew as a boy. Sure, the 1950s and 1960s had corruption, degradation, and injustices. I haven’t forgotten them. Let’s just transition into a neighborhood of solutions based on man’s humanity to man rather than accusations, polarization, and inhumanity. Let’s make use of those past good feelings and have some fun. That is why I wrote this book. To be sure, these are personal accounts of one man’s youth, but they are also part of a universal melody enhanced with layers of harmony. A song we all can sing. The following is a collection of stories; my memory chain of family, friends, and many of the townspeople from a small, picturesque, Midwest town…Morris, Illinois. Although there are some references made to famous people within this book, I have no personal connections with them. I’m not friends with nationally known personalities governmental or otherwise (as is Mr. Russert). There are no interviews with world leaders or self absorbed, troubled, Hollywood celebrities contemplating rehab. This is a collection of my life’s experiences shared with hard working small business people, factory workers, farmers, teachers, city officials, law enforcement officers, and students. I hope you enjoy the hilarious and sometimes heart breaking ride up and down Liberty Street where life was colored by (among a multitude of other things) the symphonic cheerful honking horns of the Chevrolet, Ford, Dodge, Cadillac, Pontiac, Buick, Chrysler, Plymouth, Studebaker, Oldsmobile, Rambler, Lincoln, and Mercury models we all used to drive. Chapter One Establishment Charalambos C. Skopis was born in April, 1903 to a poor family in a tiny mountain village named, Glena, in Epirus, the northwestern section of Greece near the Albanian border. As a strong, solidly built lad in Glena, in the early 1900s, Charalambos spent a good deal of his time working for his father. He led a quiet, uneventful young life of hard work. To say that times were rough in those days is a major understatement. People had very little in the way of amenities, appliances, tools, or even toys for the children. One of the childhood chores given to Charalambos during the early twentieth-century included tending his father’s sheep. One day, this shepherd boy sat alone upon a hillside rock as his sheep grazed nearby. The day was peaceful, hot, and dry; the mountain air—pure and clean. His shepherd’s primary tool was a wooden staff he used to guide the sheep. On that day long ago, the staff proved dynamically useful in another task. A rogue pack of wild dogs rushed out from an adjacent stand of trees and surprised Charalambos. They had upset the peace, and sent the terrified sheep every which way in a cloud of mountain dust. The dogs attacked furiously. With no time to lose, the shepherd boy rose from the rock swinging his staff left and right clubbing as hard as he could to protect the sheep. One after another, he beat the advancing six or seven wild, mangy, mongrels with his staff as they fought back ferociously. One of them struck at the front of the boy’s leg and tore open a huge gash near his shin bone. Determined and courageous, Charalambos fought for his life despite profuse bleeding and extreme pain. After an exhausting battle, he prevailed in turning the savages away. The marauding dogs high tailed it back into the woods without taking a single lamb. Victory! Charalambos was my father.