had also planned from the beginning to add a couple separate rental apartments on his small piece of property to help with the much-needed income for the winter, when his painting slowed down during the winter's cold and damp months.
So, to the right of the living room there was the fancy exterior front door with a brass door knob. It was a double door with colorful fancy cut crystal glass and side lights. By opening the right door inward, you were welcomed to a thirty-five-foot-long by six-foot-wide, mosaic, geometric design, floored hallway. Achillea created the mosaic floor with a rental machine. The bathroom and the kitchen had the same mosaic floors, too. This type of floor never needs replacing.
This hallway had two steps at the very end, where it escorted you to the rear gardens.
The children loved that long, dark and cool hallway in the summer. The cold floor was like air conditioning. This was also an excellent play and nap area. Many times, they would throw a thick rug there and take cool restful naps during the afternoon hours.
A few years later Achillea saved enough money from his thriving business to buy the materials so he could finally build the two one-bedroom rental apartments on the property. One was along the right side of the long, cool, mosaic floored hallway. At the very end of this apartment Achillea placed concrete steps that went to the top flat concrete roof of that apartment. That was our summer time terrace on top of that one-bedroom apartment.
He also had trained a green grape vine to travel all the way to that terrace, creating shade on top of the wrought iron summer table.
Towards the front of the terrace he built a five-foot brick stone wall so no small child would fall to the road. There in the early fall they had evening meals and would also eat from the hanging sweet green grapes.
On that terrace in the summer evenings after it got dark, the family was able to watch a nearby summer movie. In Greece during those years, there were outdoor summer movie venues. They could not hear but they could watch the movies. Then, sometimes they would also bring bedding there and sleep the whole night under the stars.
Their father would explain the constellations in the sky and tell the children real life stories about his youth. They seemed like fairy tales to the children, but they were all true, Efrossini found out later.
The other apartment was built across the whole back of their property. He called the latter THE garden apartment. Every window and its outside door opened to the beautiful garden, of fruits, vegetables, herbs and flowers. In the middle of the gardens there was a stone-floored circle covered overhead with a wrought iron structure that supported the hanging green grapes. There, the family ate summer meals, weather permitting.
It was a brand-new neighborhood on an extraordinarily wide street, Makedonias. At the crossroad of Martiou and Makedonias were older, classic, two and three story expensive beautiful villas adorned with unusual evergreen trees, perennial colorful flowers, shrubbery and fantastic fruit trees like bergamot and persimmon.
The properties were surrounded by intricate black wrought iron sturdy fences, many with very heavy ornate gates.
On Martiou Street there was public transportation, the electric trams. Her family considered them dangerous with all that electricity and the terrifying train tracks. In 1957 the public transportation had improved.
Now there were brand new modern buses. Efrossini’s house was only about 1000 feet from the corner of Martiou and Makedonias.
The house was small but housed many people, because they had real love for each other. At the beginning there were eight children and their parents. The two older sisters shared the front bedroom. In the spring when they opened their windows, while the acacia trees were in bloom, their scent would fill their room permeating through the white lace curtains with a beautiful, subtle scent. Their father had planted those acacia trees, to shade the home in the front, in the hot afternoons.
Their windows had no screens, but they had real wooden shutters, painted mint green. Summertime, they would close the shutters with the windows open in the afternoon, to rest in the hottest part of the day when they were home or after their beach trips. That was the original use of the functional wooden shutters. Now, we have them for mostly aesthetic reasons, to complete a certain look for a house.
In the summer the water truck would pass their house with its rear fan-like sprayer wetting the dirt street, settling the dust, and providing some much-needed cooling relief, too.
In the late afternoon, the ice cream man would come by. The vehicle was a large tricycle with a built-on ice cream freezer in the front.
He would sound his bell just like the bell on a bicycle and the children would come out running with small change to buy an ice cream, a real cool treat. Efrossini’s family had the most children and the most customers for the ice cream man, on that street. He never wanted to miss that stop.
The parents had the large rear bedroom, with the two ¾ wide, solid brass beds and a little bed for the little baby sister, Anna. They also had a huge floor to ceiling real walnut wardrobe closet. It was lined in cedar and held all their clothes that needed hanging. Most of their everyday clothes got folded and placed in bureaus but all their Sunday type clothes and coats would hang in that cedar, fragrant wardrobe. The bottom shelf held the family Sunday shoes, cleaned and polished waiting to be used at a moment’s notice. In the hallways and behind almost all the doors, hung hats, scarves, gloves, sweaters and jackets on ornate shelves and hooks Achillea had recycled from wrought iron.
In one corner of the master bedroom was Malama’s personal little sanctuary. There were several colorful religious icons hanging on the wall. These were very old relics that were treasured through the generations. No matter what catastrophe they had for example, (an earthquake,) these icons would be carried to safety after all the people were out and before any other items, like clothing.
Malama also lit an olive oil filled beautiful, red glass votive candle every Saturday night. This was her private place where she prayed to Jesus and where her family bible was stored on a little shelf. She also owned a miniature silver bible like a box with miniature written pages. Again, this was another relic, from yiayia, from Constantinople.
Malama meditated in that corner of her bedroom, every night. Malama taught all her children the very difficult, long Greek religious prayers. It was simply a tradition to teach the next generation what they were taught by their parents.
That huge master bedroom was on top of the basement room. It had a large picture window, and outside of it, a metal awning covering the basement steps and doorway. Efrossini had taken many afternoon naps in that room with her mother and little sister, enjoying the dancing, musical sounds of the rain drops hitting the metal.
Malama used that awning a few times per year, too. She covered it with freshly washed and sun dried white sheets, and there, she dried the trahana. This was fine hand-pressed wheat flour and goat’s milk yogurt creation. The little pieces of different shapes would dry quickly in the hot summer months, and then she would pull the trahana on the white sheets and let them cool for hours on top of the brass beds, all evening.
As we were getting ready for bed she would be storing the trahana in her clean and dry tins. All those tins were stored in the highest of all the shelves in the great wardrobe. Winter time the trahana was a welcomed white, creamy, protein rich soup made with more milk and freshly harvested greens from the winter garden. Along with a fresh loaf of rye or pumpernickel bread from the local bakery, it was a great nourishing, tasty lunch.
In the winter Malama fed the wild birds bread crumbs on that metal awning and the little kids would stand behind the lace curtains and watch the little birds eat.
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