Because Dad Did it All First

A revelation? It wasn’t until recently that I realized my father figures prominently into the chutzpah I possessed to pursue both writing and voice acting.

To me, Chris Mentis seemed fearless. He was plucky and took risks, deploying his parachute on the way down, forgetting jumping out of the plane was even part of the equation. In so many ways, I am my father’s daughter. Indeed, I loved him. I looked up to him. The thing is, my father was a complex man shaped by his ancestry, his immigrant family’s experiences and even his place in the sibling pecking order.

The youngest of six children and the son of Greek immigrants, Chris was born a year before the Roaring Twenties began. He was not slated to make it past the age of five, however. After contracting diphtheria — pretty much a death sentence in the early 1920s, Chris’ mother laid out his best suit for what she was sure would be her little boy’s funeral. The death of a child was common back then (one of his sisters had died in childhood). Not giving up hope, however, as a last resort his parents called a local doctor many in town considered a quack. The man  gave them a liquid to pour down their son’s throat  — a concoction that found the 5-year old purging a black substance all night long. He miraculously survived.

Chris was a little guy with a little guy complex, taking on his older brothers whenever circumstances warranted. All the boys helped with their family business in Muncie, Indiana — a town their parents had emigrated to from Greece because a relative there sponsored them. They shined shoes working for a pittance, as was what was expected of children participating in the family business in those days. So when my grandfather hired a cadre of Black men and paid them more to do the same job, Chris and his brothers rebelled … unsuccessfuly. My grandfather told them his employees had families to support and that is where the discussion ended.

With Muncie situated in the heartland of the KKK, Chris told us that some of the townspeople resented my grandfather for hiring Black men as well, but for an entirely different reason. Dressed in their robes and hoods, these cowards stood outside my Popou’s house one evening and threatened him. He looked down at their shoes, recognizing each pair, and in his broken English and gravel voice, called them out one by one, ridiculing them for having the audacity not only to get their shoes shined at his corner store each week, but also pointing out that their children played with his. They shrunk back and never bothered him again, even though anti-immigrant and anti-semitic sentiment, along with the occasional lynching of Blacks, continued to happen there.

Chris began to notice the disparities between the rich and the poor as he grew up in this small town. While their mother would scour the river banks for plants that could be boiled and eaten Greek style, the kids would poke their noses through fancy wrought iron fencing to see the town’s biggest benefactor throw elaborate parties at their estates, with food flown in from Chicago. Everything Muncie had the Ball family name attached to it, from fruit-packing jars to a classy department store to the local hospital to a teacher’s college which in time went on to become a stunning university.

I honestly think it was this contradiction in lifestyles that made my dad want for more than what his parents’ adopted town could offer. In his teens, he broke away from working for his dad and found a job making deliveries for a local florist. There were moments he remembered those years both longingly and with humor — like the time he went to the dark back door of a local funeral home to deliver flowers and tripped over a body placed low to the floor. Because funeral directors often wore tuxes, he refused to wear one at his own wedding, opting instead to wear his officer’s uniform. Many years later he hesitated to wear one at mine. But he gained a respect for the beauty and artistry of flower arrangements and learned how business was run.

In high school, Chris was the class comedian. Because of having grown up speaking a second language fluently, he could imitate almost anyone in vaudeville. I wonder. Is imitating accents a genetic thing in my family? As emcee of his graduating class’ talent show, Chris told jokes on stage with a Yiddish accent and wowed the crowd of farmers’ sons and daughters. Throughout the rest of his life, his ability to remember jokes would be epic, and because his anticipation of the punchline visibly showed on his face, he often laughed as hard as his audience. It was infectious.

By age 19, Chris had saved enough money to buy a ticket on an ocean liner to Europe. He wanted to meet the family his parents and two of his oldest brothers had left behind — uncles, aunts and cousins he had heard so much about and seen photos of all his life. His plan was to be in Greece for a year, traveling from New York Harbor on the massive Conte di Savoia,  stopping in Rome and going on to Piraeus, the port of Athens.

By now, most of my father’s family lived in Athens, having left their ancestral mountain village in the southern Peloponnese but using their house there as a summer home to beat the Athens heat. Pop’s grandparents still lived in the little village of Isari, however, and a good, long stay could help him get to know them at last.  The tiny town had a main square the size of a back yard. It also boasted a post office, a market, and a small tavern, where old, crusty men would play their ancient instruments and drink ouzo. A winding stone path led up the side of the mountain, where Chris found his uncle's house built over a stable. While his family no longer owned livestock, it was here that his grandmother stashed her moonshine liquor. My dad, equipped with what must have been one of the first portable movie cameras ever made, captured footage of our great grandfather walking through his vineyards, dressed in his leggings and “foustanella”  -- perhaps the equivalent of a Scottish kilt. Priceless footage to this day.

He also had a great time with his cousins there. One told Chris that when he returned someday, he would have to kiss his hand, because his cousin’s plan was to become a priest. The ancient film footage shows the two young cousins chasing a donkey around its circular mill, smiling broadly into the camera.

After spending nearly 9 months in Greece, Chris’ friends and family warned of Hitler’s annexation of Austria, so he took the train to Vienna, boarded the Orient Express to the port of Le Havre, France and climbed aboard the good ship Normandie to head for home. Although in second or third class, Chris decided to compete in a ship-wide ping-pong tournament. He ended up playing the crown prince of Spain and evidently won the prize. Juan Carlos, who was fleeing Spain at the time, was impressed enough with his ping-pong challenger to take my dad to his father’s suite on board the ship, where Pop met King Alfonso. Alfonso was to eventually see tyrant and dictator Generalissimo Franco take over Spain. But in time, Juan Carlos would take his place on his father’s throne.

Arriving back in 1939 Muncie, the local press was interested to hear my dad’s take on what was happening in Europe. They published an article for the local paper, quoting Chris about the impending political situation and the public’s trepidation over what was to come. I had not seen this article until my cousin generously offered it up to me in a plastic sleeve just a few years ago.

Now Chris was to look to his future. He asked his father to help him open a small flower shop just down the street from where he used to shine shoes.  He and his friend Jimmy partnered, naming it Normandy Florists  (after a part of France abundant with flowers as well as an homage to the ship that brought him home) and he figured he was set. A year or so into it his brother Nick joined them.

A few years later, the military draft was to send letters to Chris and his army-eligible brothers. While they all went off to boot camp, Chris found himself unhappy with his plight. Always one to break out of his confines, he applied to officers’ candidate school, eager to take all the tests in order to have some sense of control over his time in the army. He was heartily discouraged from doing so, since nearly all officers had at least a year of college under their belts, and Chris had none.  He was subjected not only to written tests, but to logistical and tactical interrogations by training officers who looked for traits that could demonstrate the candidates’ abilities to make life-saving decisions under fire.

Out of the 2,000 or so men who entered the program, only 300 non-college-educated candidates made the grade to second lieutenant. Chris was one of them. He was to go on to train men instead of going overseas, considered part of the “Greek Battalion” that included a number of Greek merchant seamen caught up in the U.S. at the time. Eventually, Chris became part of the modern day CIA (then called the OSS) and proudly served the intelligence community.

During that time, Chris injured his back and was sent to a military hospital in Santa Barbara to recuperate. He fell in love with California instantly. Coincidentally, a Greek family San Francisco who had relatives living in Muncie invited Chris to their home. It was there, at the age of 24, he met 17-year old Alice Tsirlis, another child of immigrants who helped to run their mom-and-pop grocery in the San Francisco’s South of Market area. A year later they were married and moved to Muncie, a huge culture shock to my 18-year old mother-to-be at the time.

After my oldest brother was born, Pop left his flower shop to brother Nick and headed back to San Francisco not knowing what he might do for a living. That led to jobs in a meat packing company,  a lamp factory, and eventually a partnership with a buddy as owners of a theater in Brisbane, near San Francisco. They sold it after thinking TV would kill the movie business.

By then my other brother was born and Pop was able to buy a brand new  “row house” out in San Francisco’s sandy beach area, on the GI Bill. After snagging a job as an account salesman for Anheuser Busch, he was to roam some of San Francisco’s most colorful neighborhood bars selling beer. He was good at it, earning more in commissions than bosses earned in salaries. I was born shortly thereafter and still retain innocent, happy memories of those foggy San Francisco days.

Chris got promoted, taking us to sunny Sacramento. But that promotion also meant he was on the road a lot. Restless and unhappy being away from his family, Chris quit. He approached a local Sacramento piano store, telling them he could play piano by ear and was good at sales. As usual, Pop rose to the occasion. But this also gave him the urge to own his own business once again.

Soon we were to leave our idyllic existence in 1960s backyard-pool-laden Sacramento to live in Muncie, where dad would open a piano store in his father’s building. His goal was to pay his dad back for the money borrowed to renovate the hamburger restaurant that would become The Keyboard Shoppe. It took him only a year.

I was to spend 12 years in Muncie with my family, among pianos, organs, snow, steamy summers, high school basketball, Indiana accents and farms before making a beeline back to California. We had prospered, my dad having been the first in Indiana to take on a line of Japanese-made pianos that were eventually to make their homes in the dormitories, classrooms and stages at Ball State University. Yamaha was now more than a motorcycle in Muncie, Indiana.

In 1965, Pop decided to close his business for a solid month to take us to Greece. His memory of his time there was so precious he wanted to share his experiences with all of us. He also wanted our mom to see where she was born. And just like that, we piled into our Ford Econoline van and were off to Chicago’s O’Hare airport. Boarding a jumbo jet, we would soon be exposed to a country where TV was still new, toilets had pull chains (or remained holes in the floor), and everything was outrageously inexpensive. My parents’ knowledge of Greek served them well, while my brothers and I met brand new relatives who spoke not a word of English. When we piled out of our rental car in my dad’s village of Isari, there was his cousin in full priests’ garb with his hand out for my dad to kiss. They hugged like brothers. It was this first trip that was to serve as a springboard to travel for the rest of our lives.

But that’s not all. My own life in Muncie would be interrupted by my dad’s desire for one of his children to have an odyssey like his 1938 adventure. Once he found there was a college in the suburbs of Athens built by American dollars, he decided to send me there for a year abroad.  Pop insisted that I go by ship instead of plane so that I could have an experience similar to his own. My friends and family in Muncie were dumbfounded my parents would send me so far. But I think Pop recognized many of his own traits residing in me. And by late summer after my freshman year of college, my parents waved goodbye to me as the Queen Ana Maria, carrying a ship-full of Americans moving to Israel in 1970 after stopping in Greece. I can’t imagine what may have been going through my father’s mind at the time. Pride? Nostalgia? The wistful memories of his youth along with the prospect of my own adventures beginning?

Mom would spend the next year fretting, listening to people telling her it was a mistake to let me go, and praying I did not become a stranger.  A year later both she and my dad flew to Athens to collect me just to make sure they had dispelled all notions I may have had to stay there for good. Back in Indiana, my brothers greeted me, remarking on my weight gain. I was home for sure.

A year later, I was about to experience another of my father’s off-the-wall ideas for me. I had changed my major to French and Pop had a notion that his daughter could become a United Nations interpreter. Soon I was winging my way to Paris for a study abroad class that would keep me in France for an entire summer. Before I left, however,  Pop marched me into the local savings and loan and co-signed on a personal loan to pay for the trip. He was teaching me something — that nothing came for free, and money is precious. The funds I borrowed for that summer weighed heavily on my conscience. I came home with change in my jeans and plunked it back down at the bank, paying off the rest of it with my part time job.

In 1973, Chris watched with immense pride as his oldest child received his master’s degree and my other brother and I accepted our bachelors. It was an immigrant son’s dream to see his children get the education he had always wanted for himself. But in our hearts, we knew Pop was a graduate of the School of Hard Knocks, and we couldn’t compare to him.

I could go on and on about how my dad gave me wanderlust, supporting my desire to work in the airline industry, and always, always, to break out of any confines that made me feel stifled. I  know I learned from the best. He was blustery, controlling, opinionated, funny, patriarchal, chauvinistic, and yet a contradiction to all that in many ways. One could say he loved his family too much, as my brothers never married but also went on to have travel-related work — one as a featured pianist for major cruise lines and the other as a teacher and eventually a talented travel agent.

But more than anything, I think my dad’s hard outer shell and soft inner core taught us that it is perfectly okay to be different. Life was ours for the taking and there was nothing to lose by goin where our hearts and talents led us. No. I never spoke French well enough to be a U.N. interpreter, but Pop was proud of me nonetheless.

Our parents have both been gone for years now, but we carry them with us. Together they fostered a closeness between my siblings and I hard to put into words. We can argue with one another at the tops of our lungs yet forget it all when food is placed on the table — a sacrosanct family time.

As another Father’s Day comes and goes, I know that while my Mom taught me kindness and grace, I owe much of my sense of humor, my penchant for mimicry, and my confidence to my dad. He is probably looking down on me right now, knowing he made a traveler, a writer and and now a voice actor out of his daughter.

The next punch line is just around the next corner. And I am already laughing just anticipating it.