written and translated by Stratis A. Solomos
published in The Faris Newsletter, Issue 77, December 2022, page 6
During the 1950s and early 1960s, immigrants to America and Canada wanted to help Greece, which was poor at the time. They sent, especially to their relatives, parcels containing various useful items, generally clothes. It is not certain whether this aid was essential to the then rapidly economically developing petty-bourgeois society, but it was certainly welcomed by the poorest. These parcels mainly contained clothes and objects that had new and rather pleasant smells.
The strongest smell was that of clothes. The explanation for most was that they had been disinfected, which reassured those who feared germs. But the reality was that this smell was due to the synthetic fragrance of modern detergent powders, which had been used to wash them. They were still unknown in Greece. They did not arrive until the end of the 1950s. The first and most widespread was the American Tide. Along with this powdered “soap” also came the American “soap-opera,” a long-running sentimental radio and later TV series. The first such Greek soap opera was “Πικρή μικρή μου αγάπη” (My Bitter Little Love), the endless sentimental story of Alexis and Vana, played by Stefanos Linaios and Elli Fotiou.
The parcels were usually sent by relatives. In addition to clothing, they also contained other items, often unknown in the villages. Chewing gum with new flavors and aromas. Toothpastes which it is said that some people, who did not know their use, tried to eat!
My father and teacher Alexander Solomos, who also did educational research, received beautifully bound American elementary school books. With these books, he taught me my first English lessons. These books also had a particular smell, which has since remained an indelible and pleasant memory. I don’t know what caused that smell, perhaps the binding glue used. I rediscovered this smell in my teenage years when I frequented the American Library of Athens and later read American science books.
Sometimes there were also more valuable items like watches, which after consultation were carefully hidden in certain pockets, but most of the contents were clothes of all kinds. Taffeta ball gowns and hats for women. Suits for men. Colorful Hawaiian shirts and plaid pants. Belts with large cowboy buckles. Jackets that featured monstrous comic book characters on the back. With the exception of a few young people from the big cities, American fashion had not yet reached the conservative Greek society of these times. Few dared to wear them, except perhaps during Carnival. T-shirts with visible inscriptions and brands were only seen in the cinema. So it was very funny to see a Greek peasant picking olives wearing a Harvard University t-shirt.
The skillful seamstresses and several equally competent housewives did wonders to transform the eccentric American gowns into dresses compatible with the European fashions of the time propagated by the women’s magazines Ρομάντζο (Romance), Θησαυρός (Treasure) and Γυναίκα (Woman) . The men’s suits, those whose fabric was not too colorful, were transformed by our local Xirokambi tailor Charalambos Arabatzidis. These clothes weren’t worn very much. They were often new. But they were still deliberately wrinkled and a few buttons were removed to make them look second-hand. It seems that there were special customs exemptions for these aid parcels with used clothes. Later, when American jeans, jackets and cowboy boots became fashionable, some shrewd traders devised the ploy of passing off imported goods as packages of “gifts from America’s uncle “.
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I (Carol Kostakos Petranek) am honored to receive permission from the Katsoulakos family to translate and share articles from The Faris. Translation verification and corrections have been made by GreekAncestry.net. This is the twelfth article of the ongoing series. Previous articles can be viewed here.
Spartan Roots (Σπαρτιατικές Ρίζες) 