The Road to Madaro

Sisters Julie, Cheryl and Jacque with their families in July, 2007.

When we returned from a summer cruise to the Greek Isles almost four years ago, I wrote an article about Julie and her sisters visiting Chania, Crete, to see the area where their Grandpa Nick had grown up.

A few weeks later, I received this e-mail:

Dear Wes:

It is with great interest and curiosity that I read about your trip to Madaro, a small Cretan village south of Chania (Hania) on the island of Crete. You see, during my lunch break yesterday, I decided to “google” the village that my grandfather hailed from “Madaro”. Consequently, I came upon your blog. My name is Harold Migias. My grandfather was Haralambos Migiakis aka Charalambos Miyiakis aka “Harry Migias” upon his arrival at Ellis Island in 1912 with his cousin Joseph “Iosif” Birakis. I visited Madaro in 1996.

Road to Madaro in July, 2007.

How does your family fit into the Migiakis-Birakis family tree? As I recall from my visit, those are the only two families up there.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Harold Migias (son of John Migias)


Sorting through family trees, Harold determined his grandfather was the first cousin of Julie's grandfather, but their last names had been altered differently at Ellis Island.

Julie's father, John Megas, had visited Chania and Madaro about ten years before Harold had, and it was his stories of the warm hospitality of his distant cousins including Eftalia Birakis that planted in Julie the idea of hooking up with relatives on Crete.

Amy in taxi to Chania in July, 2007.

For the previous trip, Julie's sister had tried to contact Eftalia before we arrived on Crete but unfortunately could not. After making phone contact through a taxi driver while in Chania, however, we did start sending letters translated by internet programs to Eftalia in case we tried again. It was never quite clear how we would actually communicate once we were there, but when we found a cruise spending a full day in Chania, Harold brought us the solution.

He had met Nikolaos Mygiakis, a younger member of the family in Chania, on his trip to Crete, and Nikos knows how to speak English. We suddenly had someone of our generation as a connection in Crete. As luck would have it, Nikos would be forced to work on the day we arrived, but he introduced us by e-mail to his brother, Vasilis.

Road to Madaro in May, 2011.

Vasilis proved to be a Godsend. He set up a meeting place near Souda Harbor. We worried if he knew the exact pier for our ship and if we would find our meeting spot. We worried he may not show up at all for "cousins" whom, after all, he had never heard of until a few weeks earlier. We arrived a few minutes early and scouted out the area to be sure we were in the right place.

Aunt Ermioni and Cousin Vasilis upon arrival in Madaro, 2011.

Right on schedule, Vasilis arrived in his car, and he had a Mercedes taxi following him to drive the other three of us up to Madaro. He spoke English fluently, and the taxi driver could understand most of what we said. A palpable spark of excitement said, "This is actually going to work!"

A Book About the Greek Isles From Rome, Featuring Madaro

“I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.”

--- Mark Twain, from Tom Sawyer Abroad

Traveling together often makes a relationship stronger.

Julie and I have been sharing vacations for 35 years. While we may have spats in the air port over trivial non-sense or waste precious moments in paradise on a snit over some subjectively perceived slight, we have come away with a much richer relationship. That includes plenty of shared insights and inside jokes to accompany our shared experiences in unique places.

However, as my friend Sam, on the throes of a mid-life crisis, humorously said at his daughter's wedding toast, "Some relationships last, some don't. Believe me. I know."

When our family returned to the Greek Isles in search of Julie's paternal roots, a trip on which Gina, Laszlo and their 1-year-old daughter Emma did not join us for long forgotten reasons, we successfully connected with wonderful Greek cousins who made the experience magical.

None of us will forget those special memories.  Jay's ex-girlfriend Katie, who traveled extensively before and after this cruise, recalled it years later as "the best vacation ever."

Amy's ex-boyfriend Jordan, who studied Latin, probably found the vestiges of the Roman Empire most fascinating.

As happens with many a family's old photos, I worry if sharing my old blog posts may offend someone, but below are links to the way it was back in May of 2011.

A Great Year to Cruise the Mediterranean

Getting What You Want

Hotel Corot Near Termini Station In Rome

A Day in Roma

What Will You Do There?

History of the Roman Forum: Emperor Nero

Lovely Taoromina

The Acropolis

Afternoon In Athens

Return to Ephesus

Kusadasi, Turkey: Miletus and Didyma

Turkish Bazaar In Kusadasi

The Road to Madaro

3 Ladies of Madaro

Chania Harbor, Crete

The Tim Gunn Approach to Travel

One Short Day In New York

Getting What You Want

"You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want."
— Zig Ziglar

My parents lived by the same principals espoused by Zig Ziglar, and they raised me to do the same. I wish I had been more attuned to their lessons when I was a teenager. I wouldn't have been the equivalent of an "American Idol," but I would have accomplished far more than I have career-wise.


Madaro, Crete

However, I have enjoyed an amazing life, primarily due to helping others get what they want. As a travel agent, a field with admittedly limited financial potential for a one-person operation, I do my best to help my clients get the most from their vacation time. As a father, I have successfully worked to help my children find their own paths. As a husband, I have supported my wife's career, holding down the home front so she could focus on her career goals.

My wife is arguably my best "customer." Whether getting her Baby Ruth bars and Johnny's pizza when aerobics burned off the calories in the 1980s, Reduced Fat Doritos and Wow potato chips during her low fat days of the 1990s, or sunflower seeds and Atkins bars for the low carb decade, I have tried to provide her what she wants.

Julie is an avid traveler with a bucket list full of check marks, and as ironic as this seems for a Cruise Planner, I really have little say in where we go on vacation. I just help Julie get there, and in doing so, I end up seeing some amazing places myself.

Most recently, the goal was a return to Crete so that we could visit the village of Madaro where Julie's grandfather Nick was raised before immigrating to America as a teenager about 100 years ago.



Nick wasn't deterred by 35 miles of winding roads between Madaro and the coastal town of Chania, most likely riding there in a bumpy horse-drawn cart, or by thousands of miles working and living in the belly of a ship without stabilizers to cross the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas and then the vast Atlantic Ocean. He reached his goal, America, and then migrated across the country until finding work in a coal mine in Rock Springs, Wyoming. As a result of the courage of his convictions and the sweat of his brow, his son was able to attend college and become an engineer, and that man was Julie's father John.

What's stopping you from getting what you want? I would love to help you get there. "Better service leads to better trips."

3 Ladies of Madaro

Upon arriving in Madaro and exiting our cars, the only sounds to be heard were birds chirping, a gentle breeze rustling leaves and goats bleating. Almost immediately we were met by a lady that Vasilis seemed to know well.

I assumed this to be Eftalia, the woman whose name we had found on an envelope addressed to Julie's father, but she turned out to be Ermioni Migiakis.

Based on the last name, she is probably a more direct relative to Julie than Eftalia, but to some extent this is just playing connect the dots on my part.

Another woman dressed in black arrived. She took control with the air of being the proud civic leader of her community. I assumed this must be Eftalia, but she turned out to be Ermioni's sister, Heraklia.

We were directed into her house, where we looked through photos and chatted about family history. Vasilis always interpretted everything to make the conversation possible, filtering out extraneous phrasing from what I could tell, while adding his own insights. Before long the sisters were serving us Greek coffee, goat cheese and bread, rich with flavors of the area. The sisters were wonderful hostesses.

A few moments before the distinctive thick, sweet Greek coffee arrived, the third lady of Madaro arrived. This indeed was Eftalia. When the coffee and snacks arrived, she became quite animated. Vasilis translated that she was upset because we were her guests, and it was she who was to feed us. Heraklia countered that she always hosted any Migiakis who visited from anywhere in the world.

With a smile on her face, she pretended to hit Vasilis with her cane, and she cuffed me on the back of the neck before hugging me. The best I can make out, she had been waiting for us for a few days, possibly believing we were supposed to have arrived on the day our cruise embarked from Rome. In any case, when we headed to her house, she had a giant bowl of refrigerated cooked goat and chicken for us to eat. It was tasty, but we were already full from the cheese and bread.

She proudly showed us the room where Julie's dad had stayed, and the bed where he slept. Like the sisters, she seemed immediately connected to my son Jay. He probably reminded them of young men who had left the village to move out into the world, and of course his naturally sweet disposition is always appealing, especially to seniors. Who can help but be humbled by such generous women so ready to share their food and homes with strangers, especially in light of the fact that our little band of visitors probably doubled the population of their village?

Christmas Time in NYC

Many people wax poetic about the joys of Christmas Time in New York City.

As fluffy snow wafted down on Bryant Park's huge Christmas tree, smiling skaters glided around the outdoor rink.  Huts selling hot drinks, snacks and gift items put smiles on more faces.  It was a perfect movie setting, although a lot colder than sitting in a comfy theater seat.

To get from Dallas BBQ in Time Square to fulfill Gina's promise to little Emma to visit this site, we had braved a brisk wind that blew icy snow in our faces, upsetting Emma and not well-accepted by her Nanna either.

Walking through the bright city lights in the snow also epitomizes the Hollywood-ification of the Manhattan Christmas experience, but it's hard to look around when you're trying to avoid getting pelted in the face in a blustery wind.  Nonetheless, I managed to look around as we walked without running into too many bustling New Yorkers and tourists out on the busy city sidewalks for the same experience.

Bryant Park proved to be worth the trek.  Surprisingly surpassing Rockefeller Center, which we visited last December, Bryant Park really is that picture perfect city holiday setting, especially with the light snow God sprinkled on us for our stay. When Emma's a bit older, we'll definitely want to take her ice skating there.

I have fond memories of taking Emma's mother to ice skating lessons in Costa Mesa every Wednesday afternoon when she was in grammar school.  Gina loved the lessons and the outfits with little skirts that she could twirl, but I think mostly she liked playing "Down by the Banks" with her friend Kelly in the rink before class.  Years later, when I took Gina's little sister to tennis lessons, Amy would become so distracted with her conversations with her friend Alexis that she could barely be interrupted to actually hit the tennis ball, but sports isn't anything if it doesn't include camaraderie.

Competition, of course, is fun too, but for my girls, it was not found so much in sports as in other games, like Bridge.  On a different evening of our trip, Gina took me to her Bridge lesson on the 14th floor of a Manhattan skyscraper.  It included a buffet dinner before class.

We learned how to score duplicate Bridge, and then we played a few games.  Because there were only 10 students, 8 of whom had set up at other tables, Gina and I found ourselves playing the teacher, who bid both hands as our competition.  If he won the bid, he would play it as the bidder, and if Gina won the bid (I never won a bid, generally having, as my mother used to say, "itty bitty cards," or at least the second best hand between us), I would play as the teacher's partner, doing my best to help him set Gina.  In a couple of games when Gina and I were playing defense, we baffled the instructor as to why we played exactly as we had, which had caused him to lose extra tricks.  I think it upset him a bit, and we ended up scoring more net points by the end of the session.  As I used to tell Jay's tee ball team, "It's not whether you win or lose, but winning is easy.  All you have to do is score more than the other team."  And even if no one else kept score, I always have.

Most of our family visit was just talking, enjoying meals together and entertaining Emma.

We built a gingerbread village from a kit, each of us trying our hand at constructing a building or two, with Emma doing most of the decorating.

We also went to a small park near Gina's apartment where we built a snow man, or really more of a snow bust of Napoleon, from big clumps of snow that had been cleared off the sidewalks by some city worker.

We were actually supposed to have played in the snow the day before at world-famous Central Park, but it was just too cold, so we had instead headed into the Natural History Museum.  It is a gigantic place with lots of great exhibits, so the two hours we devoted to visiting wasn't nearly enough, but we couldn't dally.

We had a very special dinner date a couple of subway train rides away at Dallas BBQ in Times Square.  We were meeting long lost family members we'd become acquainted with as a result of this blog.

In 2007, I had posted articles about trying to search Julie's grandfather's roots on Crete, and a previously unknown cousin named Harold found my blog while doing a web search for Madaro, the home town of Julie's Grandpa Nick.  Nick had come to America with two cousins, one of whom was Harold's grandfather.  Both of those grandfathers went to work in coal mines in different states.  The third young man decided he'd rather return to sun-drenched Crete. 

Decades later, Harold's family line had remained in touch with the family in Crete, including Nikos, a grandson of the third young man who had returned home.  Julie and I had planned to return to Madaro, because she had not been successful in hooking up with family on the prior visit, and Harold introduced her to Nikos online.  Nikos works in the tourist industry in Crete, so he speaks fluent English, but unfortunately he was not available to show us around when we visited due to health.  He put us in contact with his brother Vasilis, who incredibly met us in his own car with an extra cab and driver to show us around Madaro and Chania in 2011, making the trip a fanastic experience.

 

Vasilis told us during our visit to Crete that he had spent much of his career in the Greek Navy stationed in Athens, and he no longer had any use for big cities.  In fact, he said he would never again leave his homeland of Crete, but this year his brother Nikos came to the U.S. to spend a month visiting Harold's family and Harold's brother George's family on the east coast.

We made it a point to get together with all of them, meeting them for dinner at Dallas BBQ. 

Harold and George brought their wives and children, so with Gina, Emma and Amy joining us, we had 16 people for the gathering.  They were all very nice, although because their kids were at the far end of the table, I really only got to know the adults to any extent.  They were all warm, nice people, and it felt like we'd known them for years.

I found it amusing that Niko didn't like the blandness of his hamburger, which was not up to Crete's standards apparently.  Harold and George had taken Niko to Outback Steakhouse on a different evening, and he couldn't understand why Outback couldn't cook his steak in oregano (Niko's interesting Greek pronunciation of oregano left me at first wondering what he was talking about, but eventually it registered because Julie's Greek Uncle George had given us fresh oregano when we'd last seen him in Northern California) instead of the bland Outback standard rub.  That is exactly the opposite of his cousin, my wife Julie, who feels Greek food is too spicy and garlicky.  I would surmise it points to a family trait of liking to stay with what tastes familiar.

We enjoyed a wonderful visit with all our family, from those members we've known from birth to those with whom we've recently become acquainted.  I originally called this a reunion, but Julie reminded me it really isn't a reunion if you've never met in person previously.  Whatever you call it, it was a festive occasion and part of a great Christmas Time experience in New York.

Chania, Crete: July, 2007

Normally, I stay with my personal viewpoint in this blog. Billions of other events happen elsewhere while I am experiencing my own life, and I can easily become too bogged down with extraneous details of my own adventures to seriously consider relating other views of reality.

Because I brought it up earlier, however, I should at least tell you that the contingent that went to Chania in search of relatives found a house that belonged to John Megas' cousin, Eftalia Barakis, but she had gone to a home in the hillside village of Madaro to escape the city heat.

While Eftalia didn't have her own phone, her neighbor knew the number for the village phone in Madaro.

Their taxi driver placed the call for them, and after several minutes in which a village messenger found her and brought her to the phone, reportedly spoke with Ms. Barakis, who told him finding the village would be easy if they drove up the hillside.

The two taxis began winding up the narrow country road, but before long, our intrepid voyagers realized they were running out of time. Some short but costly time delays getting off the ship, pumping gas, and stopping at a bakery, which actually proved to be the highlight of their journey for most, delayed their arrival enough to make them abort the culmination of their trek.




Still, they saw much of the coast of Crete and got a feel of where Grandpa Nick lived until he was 18 years old and bravely set out for new worlds.

At the bakery, they enjoyed eating chunks torn from a giant loaf of freshly baked bread, the aroma and texture of which competed with the taste in a sensory celebration. The black ash on the bottom highlighted the unique flavor and appearance of this bread. For them, it was the taste of Crete.

A Book About Our Family's Greek Isles Cruise from Venice

John Megas, Sr.

It has been almost ten years since we embarked on our odyssey to find the family roots for Julie and her sisters Jacque and Cheryl, along with the next generation in that family tree.

Their brother John's family couldn't join us on that trip, but otherwise it was a wonderful chance to reunite with the John Megas Senior family on a beautiful, historic and fun cruise vacation.

Before he passed away, John Megas Senior spoke glowing of his trip to visit distant relatives in the village of Madaro, Crete, which laid the groundwork for the next generation to make their trek.

Much has changed since that trip for all of the family members, including the addition of another generation.

That trip commemorated a unique moment in time for all of us, though we didn't think of it in those terms as we experienced it.

It's fascinating to think how our lives branched out following that trip, as well as who we all were at that time.

Here are links to memories from that trip:

Arriving in Venice

Cruising From Venice

Dubrovnik, Croatia

Time at Sea

A Family Odyssey

Chania, Crete

Heraklion, Crete

More Photos of Heraklion

Capping Off Crete

Ephesus

Miletus and Philosophy

Didyma and Oracles

Santorini

Corfu

Another Day at Sea

Venice

Venice to Burano

San Marco

Flying Home

Proud To Be a Coal Miner's Daughter



Coal Miner's Granddaughter

A running joke in Julie's family is that her grandfather Nick must have been misguided when he left the Greek Isles to work in the coal mines of Rock Springs, Wyoming.

Miner's Memorial

Proof of his wisdom, of course, lies in his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren who have found prosperous lives beyond his wildest dreams in America.

Aside from the whole Back to the Future space-time rift that would stop him from meeting their Scottish grandmother Ellenor in America, which led to their exact DNA combinations, it certainly is possible that they could have been happy on sunny Crete.  We've had the privilege to meet distant cousins who prove that to be so, but America was and remains a land of opportunity for immigrants as well as those fortunate to have been born on its soil.




Megas Family Home

The Megas family home in Rock Springs still seems to be in great condition, and assuming it's the original structure, I'd guess it was a far more comfortable place to raise his three children than the primitive dwelling in remote Madaro, Crete, where he was one of eleven children (click one of the hotlinks above for photos) raised in a two room rock house with neither plumbing nor electricity.

The Railroad Put Rock Springs on the Map

Julie in front of Kenpo Karate



Remember Montgomery Ward?




As Julie's aunt, author Myrtle Cordon, could tell you, Rock Springs has an interesting and frequently off-color history, and when I first heard about the mining town when I was stationed at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyoming, it still had a tarnished image, but our recent visit revealed a charming downtown area with old buildings fronted by famous names from the past among its working class community that also includes suburban sprawl and seedy areas.

The Broadway

I won't say it seems to be a boomtown destined to lure Millennial hipsters searching for flashback perfection, but it's not nearly as bad as its reputation.

The Wrong Side of the Tracks?

Julie's Aunt Myrtle, who retired as Director of 15 public libraries in San Luis Obispo, gave us a "guided tour" by email (see below), and last summer we spent an afternoon looking at photos and listening to stories by Myrt and her brother, Uncle George, about growing up in Rock Springs, so we had a pretty good idea of what we were seeing.

The Park Hotel

Julie's Grandpa Nick worked in the blackness of the coal mines and had cried when he saw his son John, in the summer after his senior year in high school, come home with his face black with coal dust from a day in those very same mines.  Julie's dad John was the son whose academic efforts made him the natural choice to send to college with the family's limited savings, and the thought that he  might begin a life in the mines was unquestionably heartbreaking.



JJ Newberry 5 and Dime

Fortunately, that was just a summer job for John, and he started college as planned, though college was interrupted by his World War II tour as a paramedic, including the liberation of a terrible holocaust death camp, from which the painful memory of the dead and emaciated victims along with the stench in the air could never be completely be erased.  Hearing neo-fascists deny the reality of the extermination of Jews by Nazis disgusts me, so I can't imagine how tormenting that would have been for John, if he was still alive.

World War II Memorial


Uncle George was more of an entrepreneur.  He talked himself into a job, convincing a tire shop owner to let him retread tires during graveyard hours when his boss's shop had formerly been closed.  The machines ran while George slept in the shop.

George parlayed that self-created job into a recycled yard sale, trading those recapped tires that would have never been produced without his initiative to townspeople who would have never had the money to buy the tires if he hadn't accepted barter as an alternative to cash.

 Often, the goods he received were broken and in need of cleaning.  George repaired and polished the broken household goods and sold in front of the tire store in a sort of small parking lot swap meet.  At 18 years old, George made more money with this scheme than his dad earned that same year as a seasoned union coal miner with decades of experience. 



Inscribed With Names of WWII Heroes

That enterprise, however, got George in a bit of heat with his boss, who initially missed how this win-win situation had boosted tire sales by making Depression-era townspeople without cash into barter buyers whose repaired castoffs sold for enough cash to pay for the tires plus an extra profit for George.  His boss fired young George in haste, but when the store's business dropped precipitously, he re-hired the clever "rainmaker."

George also went to war, and both brothers are heroes recognized on the Rock Springs WWII Memorial. 

After returning from World War II with the GI Bill of Rights, which presumably saved his father from footing the rest of the bill for his college, John finished up his engineering degree.  One of his first post-college jobs was the Hungry Horse Dam project in Montana, another site we visited recently.

Later in the 1950s, John and George (not Lennon and Harrison) both moved to Los Angeles.  George started dating a statuesque blonde named Edna, who eventually decided she liked his brother better.  Edna ended up being Grandma Edde to our children.

Traveling with Julie as she tenaciously follows her father's roots over the years is not that different from following a novel wherever it leads.  Recently, I read the first two installments of Ken Follett's excellent Century Trilogy, the third volume of which should be coming out within days.  One of the viewpoint families for Follett's take on the twentieth century happens to be the ancestors of a coal miner from Wales, whose ancestors rise above the far more rigid class system of Europe to become war heroes and members of Parliament.  It's the same theme I find in my family history, with my wonderful parents rising from poverty to make a better life for their children, whose own parents made sacrifices for them.  Isn't it exciting to know this is possible for every free person who takes the initiative to follow dreams of a better life? 

God bless America, and the concept of American freedom that has bled into the rest of the world, which throughout most of history has been stratified to the point of stagnation, as Follett's Century Trilogy reveals in its complex storyline fabric.

Below is a quick take by Aunt Myrtle on Rock Springs, and keep in mind this is not intended as a professional writing sample but simply exuberantly sharing with her niece a bit of information about the mining town where she grew up.

Ho-- I'd love to be a tour guide for you --though I'm not sure what still be there. Dave and I were there in 1989 and George and I were there in 1996-- a long time ago! I printed out a few pictures of Front Street for you below-- the biggest memory was of the Grand Theater (movies 11 cents a pop -- Saturday matinees with Hopalong Cassidy and Dick Tracy serials -- there was always a serial to lure you back next Saturday..) And in that same block was Tom Thumb's and the Pitsitos Barber shop and the Mike Kostakis' Shoe Shine Parlor --- when we were last there it was some kind of computer store. So if you go along Front Street at the end you will see the Park Hotel (George once worked there) and you turn onto Elk St. On Elk is the WW II memorial and the names of both John Megas and George Megas are on there as Rock Springs soldiers. I took pictures of it long ago, but I can't find them now.

And 413 Soulsby -- yep and next to that is Aunt Ellen Webster's house-- We were the poor relatives so we did not interact with Aunt Ellen very often.

Bitter Creek Micro-Brewery

So if you stand in front of the Soulsby house and look to your right you should see a small footbridge crossing over Bitter Creek --which was most often called --get ready -- Shit Crick-- since raw sewage went into it. We never waded in it (!) but in winter John, and George and I went ice skating on it. The Number 3 Mine was there so the area beyond the bridge was called #3. (If you really want some vital and ugly history of R.S. google the Chinese massacre in R.S. The Knights of Labor used that bridge to murder and beat the Chinese who had built the railroad and then Union Pacific hired them for the mines--cheap labor...) And if you go back to the end of Soulsby and turn left, you will go past Pilot Butte Camp on your right -- On your left is the Slovenski Dome --We didn't go near there at night cause those people were big drinkers and very rowdy-- Further along on the left was the Catholic Church and a grave stone maker-- on the turn to your left was a fire station (still there??? Who knows?) and your Grandfather's favorite meat market on the right a ways past M Street -- (That's not likely to still be there.) On the corner of N St. is The Greek Church where I was baptized. (John and George were dunked in a galvanized tub out in Reliance. ) Across from the Greek Church was the Union Mercantile store and just before the drive-across bridge to #3 was the Miner's Union Hall where the miner's gathered and us little kids were treated to Xmas and Easter and such parties.

If you have time to go to the other side of the tracks (over the over pass by the WWII monument) the depot has a wondrous statue honoring the old time miners-- AND up the hill at the top is the now defunct Miners Hospital (if it is still there?) where I once looked for my daddy among the black-faced, coal-covered miners lying in cots along the halls when the accident I think you know about had so many injured.. Behind the hospital is the cemetery. I think they have someone to tell you where graves are located-- the Margaret Paterson Hodge stone is there --in a far corner-- with the Webster's and the Kellogs and the Hills (John once had the family tree the Kellogs worked up -- did it disappear with Julia??) There was a small wooden marker (maybe for sure gone now) that we thought might be Ellenor's and Nick's first born, Little Nick. (Did you know that Mom sold the R.S. grave plots after they moved to Turlock and sent it to Crete so Sofia and the Birakis family could buy the acres of grapes they wanted?)

Enough - though one day you must visit Reliance and Winton and go way up to Superior and Premier Camp --- I'll think of you tomorrow while yu are trekking about.... later much love xoxox Aunt Myrt

Wyoming and the Megas Diamonds

Dad's One Year A.A. Anniversary

Lest there be any misunderstanding about our Colorado Road Trip, I don't advocate drinking and driving.

In fact, those silly Coors photos were taken on our way into the brewery.

We tasted beer, but none of us became drunk in Colorado.  Coffee remains our beverage addiction of choice, but we all must be careful.

My dad was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous for the final 43 years of his life, and he became much happier as well as more successful after he quit drinking, parlaying the tips he formerly spent in bars into his own beauty salon and then a comfortable suburban home.

To commemorate his good fortune of ten sober years and then twenty years of marriage, he bought us all diamond rings, including a diamond horseshoe ring and a wedding ring with a big square diamond for himself.  However, this is not the story of Harry's Diamonds.  Shortly after I graduated from high school, he made the biggest mistake of his life, divorcing Mom, proving nobody's perfect, even cold sober.

Once again I seem to have digressed pretty far from the subject, which is Wyoming and the Megas Diamonds, but there is a link of sorts.   Alcoholism, which Dad overcame, can be the ruin of many lives, and it touched Julie's family in Rock Springs, Wyoming, where we spent the night at less-than-palatial but certainly palatable America's Best Value Inn (nee The Inn at Rock Springs before the new banner was raised with the old signage still in place).

Over our complimentary breakfast, which included great biscuits and gravy, Jay and Amy finally read my blog from a couple of years ago about Julie's father John's childhood home in Rock Springs, prompting Amy to ask if I'd written about the Megas Diamonds.

I had previously left that in the domain of Julie's Aunt Myrtle, a retired head librarian who is an excellent story-teller and the unofficial keeper of Megas family lore, but here goes....

According to Find a Grave, Margaret Paterson was born in Durham County, England, in 1855, and moved to Pennsylvania with her parents in 1864.

Seven years later, at age 16, Margaret married Stephen Stewart, with whom she went on to have four children before he died in 1880.

Being a 25 year-old single mother couldn't have been easy, and one year later, in 1881, she married bartender Frank Hodge in Iowa.  The next year, Margaret gave birth to John Hodge, the rascal in this story.

Julie, Johnny, John, Jacque and Cheryl Megas

Margaret and Frank also had a daughter, but whether due to death, divorce or some other reason, Frank dropped out of the picture altogether at this point.

From one or both of her husbands, Margaret came into bereavement funds.  I would guess the inheritance came from Stephen Stewart's estate (possibly some kind of government job?), since bartenders don't tend to have lucrative benefits packages, although for all we know either might have had some sort of military pension or something.

John, Julie, Johnny (foreground) and stepmother Julia

In any case, as Aunt Myrtle tells the story, Margaret "used her widow money to buy a large livery stable in Rock Springs. She made it very profitable, supplying the town with buggies for all occasions -- courtings, weddings, funerals and drayage."

I looked up the definition of drayage, by the way, and it means shipment of goods over short distances, a field in which my brother-in-law John Megas works on the periphery doing maintenance on commercial warehouse doors, and he has also managed to make very profitable.

However, John Megas's namesake, Margaret's "son John Hodge, was considered a big drunk and a gambler.  He put away a lot of liquor and played a lot of poker."

As frequently is the case with that type of personality, however, John Hodge had beguiling allure to the fairer sex, and he managed to marry Myrtle Demerest, namesake of Aunt Myrtle Megas Cordon, who wrote:

Myrtle finally divorced him, married a railroad man from Livingston, Montana, and moved to Montana.

Margaret wanted her grandchild Ellenor to be near her, and believing neither John nor Myrtle were fit parents, she spirited Ellenor away to a convent in Nebraska until the dust settled.

Ellenor returned to Wyoming to be raised by her grandmother, Margaret.

One night in a wild poker game, John Hodge won two diamond earrings -- not quite a matched set, one being slightly large than the other.

Bachelor John Megas (far right) with Surveyor Crew 1950

Margaret managed to snatch the earrings from her drunken son and hide them in a small bag which she often wore around her neck.

Just to fill a couple of gaps in Aunt Myrtle's narrative that she wrote to help our son Jay with a school project about family lore, I'll add that the way I've heard the story told verbally over the years is that the unmatched diamonds were loose when John Hodge won them, and Margaret had them made into earrings so that she could wear them as she slept, effectively stopping John Hodge from losing them in another drunken late night poker game.

Soldier John Megas On Leave in WWII

Eventually, Margaret's granddaughter Ellenor married coal miner Nick Megas, whose boyhood home in Madaro near Chania Harbor on the Greek Isle of Crete has been written about several times in this blog.  

After Margaret died (in 1926), the diamonds were given to her granddaughter, Ellenor, who also kept them in the same small bag and would also often wear them around her neck.

During the depression years, if money were needed for rent or food or doctor bills, Ellenor would leave the small bag with the diamonds in the hands of a banker relative as collateral for cash. She always managed to retrieve them.

John and George Megas in 1928

In later years and better times, when Ellenor's two sons, John Megas (Julie's father), and his brother, George Megas, were grown men,  each was given one of the "Hodge" diamonds to become a gift to their brides in the form of a ring.

Which goes to show you, playing poker can turn out be a very romantic adventure.

Back to the recent past, we'd walked around Rock Springs the previous evening, so after breakfast we hit the road for much greener Western Wyoming.


In Jackson, we picked up some pricey but delicious sandwiches, which we enjoyed at a scenic stop on a hike in Grand Teton National Park.

By the way, if you've reached 62 years of age, you can purchase a lifetime National Parks pass for only $10 like I did.


That senior pass gives me and up to three guests unlimited free admissions to all of our wonderful National Parks for the rest of my life.

We took a $9 boat ride across Grand Teton's Jenny Lake to Hidden Falls, which proved to be quite hidden indeed, but it was a beautiful hike all the way up and then for three miles back to the parking lot.

On the road again, we continued motoring north toward Big Sky, Montana, in our snug Ford Escape.