HERITAGE AND PIONEERS

By David Dillon © 2015

It’s St. Patrick’s Day 2015, and millions of Americans are claiming or feigning Irish heritage.

With a name like Dillon, you’d think this day would be made for me. However, my last name may be classically Irish, but I have no Irish blood in me.

So if you see me carousing in some pub shouting “Faith and Begonias” or “Erin go Blah,” or whatever, you can rightly declare me a poser. I’m faking it.

My father’s parents – Costas and Amerisuda – came from Greece to the United States in the early 20^th Century.

They lived on an olive tree-studded Greek island nestled up close to Turkey – Greece’s traditional enemy.

In 1912, Grandpa Costas and his brother John were drafted into the Army. Unfortunately, it was the Turkish Army, and the brothers didn’t want to fight their fellow Greeks. So they dodged the draft. They stole a boat and made their way to Athens. From there, they caught a bigger ship – the “Columbia” -- to Ellis Island in New York.

I’ve seen my grandfather’s landing papers –his immigration documents. They say he came from Turkey. That word was scratched out and replaced with the word Greece.

It was at Ellis Island that Costas and John got a new last name. Nobody knows why. Did they choose it, or did the inspector assign it? Anyway, that’s how the brothers Deligianni become the brothers Dillon.

The new Dillons settled with other Greeks in Norwich, Connecticut.

Grandpa Dillon was a real pioneer. At age 24, he pulled up stakes – or put in oars -- and went looking for a better life – even life itself – in a promised land overseas. Costas became a carpenter.

Grandma Amerisuda stayed behind on the island. She and their first two kids – Maria and Penelope -- finally made it to Ellis Island in 1916. I’ve seen their landing papers. They arrived on the “King Constantine.” At least their papers said they came from Greece.

My father George was the first of the nine Dillon kids born in the New World. That’s why I know my name isn’t Irish – or at least doesn’t come from Emerald Isle blood.

What about my mother’s side of the family?

My grandmother Beatrice Hafer was born in Canada -- somewhere between Lake Huron and Toronto. She emigrated to the U.S. early in the 20^th century – again a pioneer.

She arrived a few years before the Dillons, and moved to Chicago where she became a teacher. There she met Lawrence Hafer – a railroad engineer. They married and had three kids – Ruth, Donald, and my mother Margaret.

Grandma Beatrice’s maiden name was McGrath. That sounds like a name that could be either a Scottish or Irish clan. Which was it? Maybe I don’t have to pose on St. Patrick’s Day.

My father liked to tell the story of when he asked grandma about it. Knowing that the Scots and Irish had mixed at many times over their history, Dad asked, “So, are you Scots-Irish?”

He said she gave him the evil eye and waved a finger in his face. “No Irish,” she hissed. “No Irish!”

Well, that settled that.

What about Lawrence Hafer? He was my only native-born grandparent. His family had been in the country since the time of the American Revolution.

Unfortunately Lawrence Hafer’s great great great, or something, grandfather fought for the bad guys. He was a Hessian soldier – a German -- hired to fight for the British. They lost, but he decided to stay.

So my heritage is a mixture of German, Scots and Greek. I come from pioneer stock  -- pioneers, 75% of whom arrived over a span of 140 years.

So, based on stereotypes, I can attribute my stubbornness to being part German. I can also attribute my occasional broodiness to being part Scottish.

But what about the Greek part of me?

Well, you know that island Costas and Amerisuda came from? It was named Lesvos.

So maybe that explains why I’ve always liked hanging out with women.

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Memories

MEMORIES ^©

By David Dillon (2009)

One day I was driving along Laneda Avenue in Manzanita when I suddenly became aware of memories swirling up and around me.

Passing this or that building or lot, I recalled things that used to be here, friends who used to work there, and places that used to be vacant. Some of these changes were big and others small -- events or people, tragedies or triumphs.

Coast Cabins was a house. I watched it being burned down. The Hoffman Center Annex was a crowded gift store. Diane Gibson’s new building was Ted Erickson’s old office.

The Syzygy building was another house – maybe two. Salt and Paper used to be a Chinese restaurant. Before that it was an English teahouse. Before that a pizza parlor – the first place I ate dinner in this town.

I comforted Marion Rivers after she fell off the curb in front of the post office. Bobbie Herder cut my hair for many years, across the street where Moxie now stands.

Next to the Deli, there’s a vacant lot. There was a restaurant and bar there. Over the years, it had several different names and reputations.

On and on and on.

I used to laugh when my father said of some place, “I remember when there was nothing there.” I do that now. I also say, “I remember when there WAS something there.”  But I digress.

It’s an extraordinary feeling being caught in a swirl of memories. It’s like driving down a street covered with Autumn’s fallen leaves. They rise up and follow you for a while – then drop back down to await another’s passage.

Memories can balance our lives. They describe who we are and from whence we came.

Author Thomas Fleming spoke of memory in his novel Time and Tide. “Perhaps the best thing about memory was its independence of time,” he wrote. “The days were there, in sunshine and starlight, a shrine to visit whenever the spirit faltered.”

Memories can occasionally be illusionary. I used to have a brother-in-law who had flashbacks to Vietnam. But he was never in Vietnam. Again, I digress.

   

My suggestion is to take a little quiet time now and then to search out some memories. Pull one out of your personal ether. Let it swirl around in your head for a while. Put it away and grab another one. Come back to them a later day.

Those memories will always be there -- until you are not. When we go, so do all our memories. So savor them -- especially the good and sweet ones.

Don’t let your spirit falter. Visit your internal shrines often. They are who you are.

I SEE LONDON

By David Dillon (2009)

The other day I happened to see a friend of mine naked.

The viewing was purely by accident. She was posing for a life drawing workshop; I opened the door from the outside to let in an artist who was late.

Now, I’m a mature adult. I should be able to deal with this. Were I still 12 years old, I might be awash in giggles. Were I still 22, I might be consumed with lust. But, being 62, I think I’ve been appropriately mature about the whole thing.

But the incident prompted me to think about our local life drawing artists. It occurred to me that, as they render art from the human form, they are privy to what many of our friends and neighbors look like sans clothing.

It’s a heady responsibility dealing with these situations – to have naked people stand in front of you, yet you remain dispassionate. No lurid comments, no lust-driven suggestions. Just respect your model and draw.

I chose to write about this experience only because a great lead sentence begs for a follow-on write-up.

Starting with a line like, “The other day I happened to see a friend of mine naked,” you could go almost anywhere. I couldn’t pass it up. I had to write something – inadequate or insipid, as it may seem.

I was reminded of a grade school playground ditty heard many, many years ago. It went, “I see London. I see France. I see someone’s underpants.” Except, in this case, there were no underpants!

You know? Maybe I am still only 12 years old.

Loss

By David Dillon 2011

I’ve suffered losses in my life. They ranged from insignificant to tragic.

When my cocker spaniel Julie died 21 years ago, I was devastated. We lived in a rural area north of San Diego.

I came home late one night and let her out to do her business. She charged through the doorway, ran around the corner of the house snarling, and was gone.

For an hour, I walked around in the dark calling her name. All I heard was insects and other nightlife.

Three days later I found Julie’s body. She’d lost a fight with a coyote. I cried that day, the next day, and every day thereafter.

During my lunch hours in downtown San Diego, I always ate outside my office building. I stood by myself, facing a wall and wept.

Then exactly 12 months later – the first anniversary of Julie’s death -- I had a dream. In it, I was working my way through a heavy fog near our house. I called her name.

Suddenly, there she was -- to my left. She came out of the mist, looked right at me, turned around and walked back into the fog.

I woke up, sat up and realized it was a dream. But it was cathartic. I was over the loss. I never again wept for Julie.

I’ve read it can take a year to recover from the loss of a spouse. In my case it was a dog.

My mother died nine years ago in a group home. Alzheimer’s took five and a half years to erase her.

She gradually forgot who I was, who my brother was, and my dad – her husband. The gradual deterioration depressed us and accelerated our separation from her.

When I learned a heart attack had killed her, I called my father and then my brother. We all cried a little and hung up the phone. It was over.

My cat Cracker disappeared recently. She was an eight-year-old bundle of shedding white feline. Cracker weighed all of three-and-a-half pounds fully-grown. She was my favorite. She liked to sleep on me at night, adjusting her position as I tossed and turned.

As a kitten, I carried Cracker outside every morning when I got the newspaper. It was our routine.

In later years, the routine changed. She hung out in the kitchen and whined until I opened a can of food. It didn’t matter if I had opened one the night before; she wanted a fresh one right then.

It was a covenant between man and cat.

Two Saturdays ago I noticed Cracker hadn’t slept on me. The next day, we left town on a short trip. The cat sitter said she saw the other cats, but never Cracker.

After about five days, I began to accept that Cracker would not be coming home. The next evening, I went to bed sobbing. I gave up hope.

I’m sure a coyote got her; just as another coyote got Julie two decades ago.

So here I was again, weeping over the loss of someone or something I loved very much.

I’m not sure what it means, but I wept more, harder and longer for my dog and my cat than I did for my mother.

Some might think that strange, and it may be. However, I take solace in the knowledge that my mother wasn’t eaten by a coyote.