The Legend of Lamppost Louis
There are no nightclubs in heaven. There are only light clubs. And they’re quite popular. A lot of social communion takes place in them on the streets of gold, like they do here on the streets of cold. Some would say more communion takes place in them than takes place in most churches.
I think Jesus and the boys, who I’m sure did more than just drink a thimble full of wine and a melt-in-your-mouth wafer, would agree. These “light clubs” are not just gathering places for heavenly citizens either. They are launch-off pads. They are portals from that dimension to this one. Occasionally, on certain specified dates meaningful to the owners, those portals enable their customers to do something special.
They enable them to make rare (but necessary) personal appearances in our universe. And when they do, something special almost always happens. They are subtle, almost imperceptible appearances when they occur. But there are signs for those with special sensitivities to that kind of thing. For one, time and space wobble---ever so briefly. No, it isn’t your eyes playing tricks on you or the glare of the lamplight in the winter cold making you squint. Time and space do wobble when someone steps from that side to ours. The stuff of this quantum dimension we call dark matter (simply because we cannot see it) does something when it intersects with this one. Our dimension unravels a bit. It gets disturbed and becomes a bit tremulous. Matter as we know it gets into a prism-like state. Buildings tilt. Winds shift. Dogs growl. Cats yowl.
People sensitive to thin spaces “sense” something. They do so especially every January 25 at 9:45 p.m. in Central Park near the financial district when the owner of the light club, or one of his customers, “Lamppost Louis’” show up. Because when one of them does, sensitive creatures know, and know something good is going to happen. They know that Louis Stratakis, an American-Greek immigrant who met an untimely death on January 25 in 1947 either treads through the snow himself or sends someone on that night to help someone in need.
That someone, if you’re in the right place at the right time, maybe you.
Louis with an “ie”
The name “Louis,” by the way is to be pronounced French style, “Louie,” with an “ie.” And the “ie” as the final sound is a long and quickly vocalized “e.” “Louis” (“Louie”) was the best his parents could do with his real name, Leonidas, when they had to Americanize it to record his birth. But it does give him a bit of a flair. And it alliterates well with “legend” and “lamppost.” It trips liltingly off the tongue of an articulate speaker when you put it together with the proper mysterious flair ---“The Legend of Lamppost Louis.” And that is exactly what Louis wants it to do so the story of his legend and the goodwill it can share can be told.
It's the story of the living hope this wonderful city at one time held for people from all the “old countries” of the world. It’s the stuff of dreams and schemes and longings and yearnings that people from that age brought with them to this. It’s the stuff of the hope we can all still have---or try to have---in the face of the death of our dreams, even today. Because when we recount stories like “The Legend of Lamppost Louis,” we tell of the hope that really can be so easily reignited in all of us if the right spirit comes our way.
And Lamppost Louis wants his spirit to be that for you.
Lamppost Louis’ Father--- from Lanterns to Lampposts
Louis’ father, Demetrious Stratakis (my grandfather, or better yet, my Papou), was one of five siblings born in 1886 in the Peloponnesus region of Greece. His people were originally from Crete. Their village was named “Agios Nicolaos”---Saint Nicholas.
It was probably named after the more well-known city on the island of Crete bearing the same name. But it was a little hole in the Peloponnesus wall, comprised, I’m sure, of centuries of the descendants of the “real” Greeks who sought to escape mingling their bloodlines with the Ottoman Turks during their occupation of that nation. At least, that’s what we hole-in-the-wall village descendants arrogantly tell ourselves when we attempt to judge ourselves to be the more superior residents of our native country. Trust me, like garlic, a little arrogant Greek goes a long way. There are Greeks. And then there are the “Greeks” of the Greeks. You get my drift.
Papou was one of four siblings, three of whom would find their way into the new world in New York City in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Pictured clockwise and beginning with the tallest man standing, they were named Christopher, Jimmy, Cornelia, and Olga. Olga never made it to America, never made it very far in life anywhere, actually. She lost her life attempting to cross rapids in a churning river near their village. It was only one of the setbacks that had stricken this family, in an era when survival was more of a daily issue and losses were to be expected (and not allowed to be grieved as prolifically as we allow ourselves to grieve today).
The other tragedy happened a few years before. His kind and gentle father died when Jimmy was only twelve. No one has ever said how. Papou’s mother, by her granddaughter’s account (my mother), was a very stern woman. And she was a hungry one at that. “When we were little, and she would visit, if she cooked dinner, there wouldn’t be very much dinner left when she was done,” Mama said. “She would nibble it all up along the way.”
At any rate, she did more than nibble at him with kindly motherly suggestions when they were placed in desperate need by the death of the head of their family. In a day when you actually had to listen to your parents, she woke him up very early in the morning after the funeral, put a lantern into his hand and told him not to come home until he found work. And he didn’t. In fact, he looked so hard for work that he ended up in the United States of America in 1906. He came on a ship named La Loraine. He went through Ellis Island like the scores of people coming from his country did during that period. He accepted the name “James” for the name “Demetrious,” and he settled in Brooklyn, where he eventually ran some type of “magazi” (Greek for “store”). I’m guessing it was a combination diner, grocery store, and coffee shop.
He wasn’t alone in this journey. Thousands of Greeks immigrated to the United States during that time. What an amazing time that must have been, to be in the land of a thousand lampposts, and not just lanterns. It was a place where you didn’t need to carry any light source to light your way. The way was always lit---even at night---not just physically, but socially, emotionally, spiritually, and psychologically. The more naïve you were and the bigger the dream you had, the better. The city was welcoming to resourceful immigrants from all quarters, and America was indeed the land of opportunity. It was also the land of new cultural experiences and new cultural horizons as well. Papou availed himself of them daringly, for someone from his background.
There is a picture of him holding up toy guns in some kind of vaudeville skit and wearing a cowboy hat to boot. He’s apparently on something called the “Sing Sing Express,” and a policeman is present to, apparently not very happy with him and his not-so-Greek looking friend. With his curly Greek lips, heavy- lidded eyes, and roundish face, he looked more like Charles Boyer in a cowboy hat than the Marlboro man. Or better yet, a Hercule Poirot without a mustache. He wasn’t a very convincing cowboy. But I’m impressed that he tried. He tried to do a lot of other things as well that immigrants from that generation had to do to make ends meet---including running fast from loan collectors sometimes.
Mama told the story of how that one time he was in trouble with one of his creditors. It was such trouble that they actually gave him chase. He had brought his sister Cornelia over to live with him in America just recently. He ran rapidly into the apartment he shared with her and his brother to hide from them. He flew right past her and whispered hurriedly, in Greek, “Don’t tell them anything. Say I’m not here. I’m going to be in the closet.” “Thea” (Aunt) Cornelia didn’t hear the “Don’t tell them anything, say I’m not here” part. And unbeknownst to him, she’d been practicing her English, and she had been eagerly looking for an opportunity to use it. So, when the creditors knocked on the door, she opened it. And with a smile on her face, she proudly announced, in English, “He’s-a not- a here. He’s-a in the closet.”
I can only imagine what happened next.
“I Want That One”
It came time for him to be married, so apparently “they” (whoever “they” were) picked out a bride for him. But the day he was to lay eyes on her for the first time, he also laid eyes on Vasiliki Sabbatako, the girl who eventually would become my grandmother. She was from Athens, and she and her three sisters had all made their way from Athens to the New World. One ended up in Montreal. One ended up in Philadelphia. She ended up in New York City. And Louis’ father was glad that she did. The day came for Papou to meet the girl “they” had picked out for him. “I don’t want this one,” he said about this luckless lady. Pointing to my grandmother, he said, “I want that one.”
He got that one. She married him, and they prospered living in an apartment he took at 518 Flatbush. This is where Louis, his two brothers and one sister were born, living the dream in a street in the dream machine that was known to so many as New York City, America.
From Leonidas to Louis
First came their oldest son, Panagiotis, Americanized to “Pete.” He did return to America from Greece to fight as a soldier on the American side during World War 2 since he was born in this country. All American-born Greeks were obligated to do so. He fulfilled his dream in New York. The Greek village boy became a successful lawyer after the war and lived in Brooklyn for the rest of his life. Then came Leonidas, Americanized as “Louis” in 1920. He too made his way back to America during the war. He was followed by Alexandros, always called “Aleco” by his family but Alex by his non-Greek friends.
Then came Pagona, my mother, born in 1924 according to her father’s naturalization documents. But she claimed to have been born in 1927. I’m not going to touch that one. By the way, you’re not pronouncing “Pagona” correctly, no matter how you’re pronouncing it in your mind as you read this name. The Greek “g” is an unusual, soft sound coupled with an “h” (“gh”). There is no equivalent in English for it, and Americans find it very difficult to master. This soft “g” sound is so soft that when non-Greek ears hear it, the best they can do to emulate it is to make a “w” sound. Couple that with the fact that the “o” at the end is a Greek “o.” This vowel has neither a long nor a short sound. It is “a deep in the base of your throat” “o.” It’s an emotional “o,” a sensual “o.” It often gets the low note in the very musical Greek language, which includes highs and lows in its speaking. It’s sort of like the sound you make when you’re attempting to imitate an Eastern meditation chant. Or the sound you hear in “oh oh oh’s” of Billy Joel’s “For the Longest Time.” But not quite. Attempting to put the Greek “g” and “o” together takes a bit of lingual talent. It’s slaughtered by “always-in-a-hurry” non- Greek-speaking Americans. They were lovely children, part of a lovely family.
They grew up among so many other immigrants on this Brooklyn street, where dreams were made, dreams realized, and dreams were dashed. After all, life has a way of sometimes getting in the way of dreams.
Back to Greece for an Idealized While
I don’t know the cause--maybe more incidents like the “in the closet” scene, financial difficulties, or real health issues---but the official story is that because of his “health” (“the clime,” my mother said, referring to the climate) his doctor recommended that he move back to Greece. So, in the early 1930s, just in time to miss the worst of the Great Depression, they did. What a grand move it was. They moved back, fortune intact, to the village from whence Papou came. They lived in the enviable position of ones who’d made it back from America with money to spare in their pockets. Louis’ life was prosperous here. And he was not going to have to grow up as Lantern Louis, because Jimmy Stratakis came back with some American know-how.
First, he built a beautiful house with balconies and beautiful furniture. They ran a village store from a room on the ground level. Their home had the only indoor bathroom in the village, Mama proudly recounted. Second, he brought electricity to the village too, erecting something called “The Lux.” It looked to me when I saw it in 2003 like a tiny Eiffel Tower strung with electric wires. It helped bring the village a bit of modern technology, and powered the one television set in the village which my grandmother, kerchiefed in the Greek old lady style years later, would go to watch in the local café. She made the trip weekly to enjoy her favorite American show, “The Wild Wild West.” His parents had one more daughter shortly after their move to Greece. They were at the top of their game in the little village world they lived in---a beautiful home, financially prosperous, beautiful children. But apparently, that was just too much for Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini to bear. Their “dreams” turned the dreams of many into nightmares.
It’s what brought Louis back to New York City and lampposts.
World War Two – Lives Disrupted, Lives Displaced
Mussolini tried but failed to conquer Greece. So to bail him out, Hitler sent the Nazi troops in April of 1941. He brutally conquered the nation and changed their lives forever. As mentioned earlier, since Louis and his brother Pete were of military age and technically American citizens since they were born in the United States, they were obligated, like all Greek-American men who were citizens of the United States, to go back to America and serve in the country of their birth. Pete served in the American army and distinguished himself as a soldier of the United States of America. But Louis’s career is to this day a family mystery. For whatever reason, no one knows just exactly what he did in the years from 1941 – 1947. It’s the stuff of conjecture, and remains a mystery to this day.
There were a lot of things he could have gotten into. What if, for example, he was among the Greek Americans who were recruited to support resistance efforts in German- occupied Greece? They were sent to blow up bridges, discover Nazi operations centers, and pass on valuable information to the Allies---anything they could do to make the invaders miserable in the land they had occupied. What if Uncle Louis was a part of all that?
Or maybe he followed the examples of these fellow Greeks, as told on a website called “Americans All:”
Upon arriving in the United States, most Greek immigrants found jobs in various industries. In New England, for example, they worked in textile mills. In Utah and Colorado, Greeks found work in copper and coal mines. In California, they worked in railroad gangs. Many were victimized by padrones, labor brokers who recruited immigrants for jobs in exchange for the immigrants’ wages.
Around the turn of the twentieth century, they began going into business for themselves, opening shoeshine parlors, candy shops, and, most notably, restaurants. Their first restaurants served native cuisine to fellow Greeks. In Chicago, some moved into the lunch business, working from street carts that sold inexpensive fare to factory workers. After the Chicago city council banned the sale of food on city streets, the immigrants turned to opening permanent establishments. Using mainly family members for labor and requiring little startup money, the restaurant business was the first stable economic base for Greeks in America. By 1919, one of every three restaurants in Chicago was operated by a Greek.
Maybe he did something like that. So many of his fellow Greeks, not just in Chicago, but in other cities did exactly that.
But at best, both of those are just “a maybe.” No one still living who remembers him knows for sure.
Back Home
The details of what happened back home, however, were not so much of a mystery.. They were remembered well by his sister Pagona, who stayed in Greece during those horrible, crazy war years. Hear her story, if you can, as being told by her personally, in her rich not-old-country Greek but cultured European accent, if you will. She didn’t like to tell this story a lot. It hurt too much.
“I had to stop school in the 8th grade because of the war. We stayed home. We had to learn to make things for ourselves. That’s when I learned how to knit socks.
“The night the Germans came, Baba (Greek equivalent for “Daddy”) had to take me and my sister to the mountains for safety. Mama couldn’t go with us. She had just given birth to one more baby---my youngest sister. She had to go into the woods and gnaw roots to survive and to have enough strength to make milk for the baby. We didn’t see her or know whether she was alive, for a week.
“We fled and walked in snow that came up to our knees. We lived in the sewers for one week with only one loaf of bread to share among us. One time I tried to rest and sit down. But someone yelled, ‘Watch out!’ I was about to sit on a dead body.
“When we came back, we saw more dead bodies. There were bodies of people hanging on the trees lining the roads to our village. People had even been hung from “The Lux” in front of our house. We couldn’t go into our home. It was the best house in the village. The Germans used it for their headquarters. They destroyed everything---our furniture, our photographs, our pictures, our memories. They left nothing.”
“We had to live in the “summer house.”(This was a small shack of a shelter where they sometimes lived when harvesting olives). A British soldier came to us one time and was looking for help. My mother helped him. She would not turn him away. They could have killed her for doing this if they found out. But she did it anyway.
“The soldiers took the boys in the village, and we thought they were going to kill them. My brother Alex was among them. Somehow, he managed to live. And he let my mother know he was alive by whistling a tune he knew she’d recognize as the soldiers marched them near the village.”
When the tide of the war turned, they were able to reoccupy their own home, ravaged though it was. The little store in their basement found a new use. It became a prison for the defeated and captured Nazi soldiers.
By this time Pagona was a beautiful young woman near twenty. She remembers peering at them in their jail. She remembers them calling out to her, “Fraulein, Fraulein come here.” They wanted to give her their jewelry and possessions. They thought they were going to die. I guess they wanted to interact one more time with a pretty girl. They were cult victims you might say---victims of Hitler’s personality cult, which he tried to impose not just on the Germans but on the whole world.
She would not have anything to do with them.
Eventually, new internal battles rocked the destabilized and barely surviving nation. Her father was what she called a Democrat, meaning to her that he was not a communist. But the villagers that were communist---and my impression from her was that these were the “lowlifes,” the less respected people of the village---were insistent. They were recruiting all Greek women to become andartinas, women guerilla fighters for the Communist party.
They rounded up my grandmother and mother to “recruit” them. Recruitment included beating her and her mother on the back with their rifle butts. She still bore the scars on her back in the later years of her life---and on her soul as well.
She started to smoke to calm her fears. Her father knew it was time to act. After all, she was born in America, and she was an American citizen. He had stores in America he could sell to help rebuild their home in the village. It was time to go to America and sell the stores, and to take Mama to live safely with his sister Cornelia, who by now lived in some place called Alabama.
But as for Louis, his story would abruptly come to an end. While she waited in Athens to make the journey to America, she received tragic news. This photograph was taken around the time she found out, and the look in her eyes and the black mourning clothes she wore tell it all. Even the black ink spot on her lovely cheek happened in some way because of the news she had just learned. The news was horrible.
Her beautiful, wonderful, handsome, mysterious brother Louis, who they all just knew was destined for great things---was dead. He died, of all things, from an abscessed tooth. Apparently, it had gone neglected too long, poisoned his system, and all his beauty and glory and naivete and hopes and dreams of doing good had to come to an end.
The news devastated the family. His mother vowed to never set foot on the shores of America again. And she never did. And we never got to meet our Yiayia, and I only heard her voice once over the telephone shortly before she died.
But Louis was gone.
And all his potential, all his dreams, and all his hopes had come to an end.
Or had they?
The Two-Way Icon
I was painting a portrait, an image, an “icon” if you will, of my Uncle Louis. And as I progressed a thought took hold that took on an artistic life of its own. Icons are supposed to do that. They are supposed to be communication vehicles with the other side. So, I began to take this one at “face” value.
I first started with the face and really worked hard on that---the curly Cupid-bow lips and the hooded blue eyes his people all had. I put the little white dot in the eyes, near the pupil. That’s critical for “smiling icon” painters. Because once you see the little white spark in their eyes and the painting comes to life, you can’t let it go.
And I began to muse about icons as I painted this one. What if they are really two way streets to the parallel universe we call heaven, that won’t let you let it go either? Not at least, till the whole story of what is going on comes out.
Once I finished the face enough to enter into a personal relationship with it, I began to consider what to include in the background. I thought about painting the apartment he was born in, or the ship he came in on with the New York City skyline in the background. But then I stumbled across some interesting buildings from a photograph of New York City in 1947 on the web that took me in a different direction, one I never intended to go. The two buildings in it were photographed from an angle, tilted together, like the ones in the painting. There was a lamppost in the foreground. And it was just the right size for Uncle Louis to be standing on. Uncle Louis . . . “Lamppost Louis.”
The picture showed snow on the ground. That seemed appropriate. After all, he did die on January 25 in the dead of winter.
But what would Uncle Louis be doing in the snow, without a coat on, at night? Then it occurred to me----maybe he didn’t need one. Because maybe this isn’t supposed to be a picture of him before he died in the city of his dreams.
Maybe it’s a picture of what has happened after he died? And then my mind began to spin. What if, what if, what if . . .what if Uncle Louis, since his life got cut short, got to do more than just be a good-looking waiter in New York City? What if he'd seen Casablanca, fallen in love with Ingrid Bergman, admired the out-of-the-box character Rick, and had a new dream? What if he intended to start his own version of “Rick’s Café” from it he would do clandestinely good deeds, one couple, one needy person at a time, to set them free from whatever problem, trial, or tyranny was holding them back.
What if the café was meant to be domed like a mosque, like the building pictured on his tie? What if, it would be a place he could come back from, from heaven, if he wanted to, to live out his dream for eternity since his life had gotten so mysteriously cut short?
Since I’m Greek and we’re all about icons (images) conveying to us what folks in heaven are all about, why can’t my image of Uncle Louis, my “icon” of him, be a two-way street---and influence what he’s doing from up there too? Or at least, reveal it to me, years after the fact.
So let me, with a dose of artistic license you can take with a grain of salt or the whole box (my friend Elizabeth gave me that phrase)---tell you what I think happened when Uncle Louis stepped into the great beyond.
The Annual Descent of Lamppost Louis
First off, he was thrilled to learn soon after his arrival that there are light clubs in heaven. Shining with otherworldly supernova brightness in necessary contrast to the streets of gold, they are bright and beautiful. They can even resemble a building patterned on your tie if you want them to. Or a dream you had, but didn’t get to fulfill.
Louis’ light club does just that.
It’s named, poetically, “Lamppost Louis’.” With special permission, its owner is allowed to fulfill the dream he had on this earth but was kept from fulfilling. And he brings others along with him to fulfill their dreams too. Maybe your dad, your mom, your cousin, your brother, your sister, or your child you lost too soon. They get to finish the good we are all intended to do as smiling icons on this earth. And somehow, in our hearts, we just “know” that they do.
When they step into our world, again, their arrivals are for the most part subtle occasions. But there are signs
Time and space wobble. Buildings tilt, winds blow, dogs howl, cats yowl, and people sensitive to thin spaces “sense” something. Especially the most despised and marginalized, the most “poor in spirit.” After all, someone once said theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Their other-world antennae are more sensitive than those of us whose visions are clouded with lots of “stuff” made of this dimension. And when certain people chose to make rare personal appearances in this City of Nightclubs from the Dimension of Lightclubs---they know it. And often with an earnest cock of the head, they show it.
So here’s what I think happens. Every January 25 at 9:45 (the time on the clock on the building I found) Lamppost Louis shows up. He steps out of his light club into the snow. He materializes just enough to make footsteps that disappear as soon as he makes them.
He has his pocket watch with him because he has to be here just for a limited time. And his looking for someone. Someone who needs a leg up. Someone who needs to be encouraged. Someone who needs to be reminded that this city can still be a city where dreams come true. Dreams die. But dreams take new shapes and resurrect. And often time the new versions of them are better than what the old versions would have been anyway.
So, if you’re down and out this winter, you may just qualify for a special intervention---or so says the legend of Lamppost Louis. And once your acceptance of your new dream comes to life, you may qualify for something better. You may qualify to be an honorary conveyer of his spirit of hope in a world that needs a lot of living smiling icons to give hope. Not just for that night. But for the rest of your life.
Light the candle of someone’s heart with the glow within. Lamppost Louis knows you can, and he’s willing to show you how.
Here’s looking at you, kid.