Preservation of American Hellenic History
Preservation of American Hellenic History
by Jason C. Mavrovitis
Greeks fix the time of many of life's events to a mystical period: forty days. It must derive from biblical stories and religious observance: Noah's forty days of rain and forty days of waiting to exit the Ark after it went aground; Moses' forty days on Mount Sinai; Jesus' forty days praying and fasting in the wilderness; etc.
In keeping with biblical tradition, the Great Lent and minor Lents last forty days, a couple waits forty days from the time they are married until they go to church, a baby is churched(3) forty days after birth, and the first memorial service is forty days after the death of a loved one.
Therefore, it takes forty days to make brandied cherries and forty days to dry sausage. And, it takes forty days before rock salt and tunny combine miraculously to create lakerda. On that great day, Theo Costa arrived with a gallon of olive oil and a lemon.
I followed him to the basement in anticipation of a filet of lakerda swimming in olive oil and lemon juice at the dinner table. He rolled the crocks out from their cool, dark hiding place, lit the indispensable Camel cigarette, took off the lid of one crock, scraped salt away from the top, and removed one steak from the first layer of tunny to a waiting platter. This he washed under cold water and dried with the softest of cotton towels. He placed the tunny steak on a plate, sprinkled it liberally with olive oil and a dash of lemon, and cut it into bite-size pieces. Theo Costa put the first piece in his mouth, chewed gently, closed his eyes, savored the flavor, and made his judgment. "Kallo!" ("Good!") Then, I put a tender piece in my mouth and the waiting was rewarded.
We emptied the crocks under the constant supervision of Theo Costa's genie, washing, drying, and layering the tunny, now transformed into slices of lakerda, into glass jars that had been carefully stored since their last use. Enough room was left in each jar for a quantity of the golden-green olive oil that preserved and sweetened the salted fish. Theo Costa had again worked his magic.
For Theo Costa our basement, redolent with Black Sea smells of cabbage in brine, wine barrels, drying sausage, dried mackerel and herring, and bouquets of herbs hanging from the ceiling, and now containing newly filled jars of lakerda, made him again a young boy far away in a small city by the sea.
One summer before the Second World, War Papou single-handedly took on the Japanese beetles that attacked his vines. They were huge, ugly, shiny-black, hard-shelled insects.
Ingenious at devising tools to accomplish work in the garden, he made a Japanese beetle trap by attaching a coffee can to a broom handle and filling it with an inch of kerosene. Using a small brush on a second broom handle, he hunted, found and then swept the beetles to a fatal swim in kerosene. I enjoyed watching their death throes as, on their backs, they struggled for survival with their legs kicking frantically. So much for the compassion of a five-year-old!
Papou lost his grape harvest that year, and with the arrival of more beetles, the following year he gave up his summer trellis, the vines, and their shade.
[Skip the navigation links: Jump to the Citation Guidelines.]
[Skip the citation guidelines: Jump to the Bottom of the Page.]
(This is the bottom of the page.)