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Home || Ministries & Organizations || Our History || Calendar || Contact Us || Donations Harry Kockos Autobiography - Chapter 1 <--Kockos Introduction || -->Go to Chapter 2 My name is Harry Kockos. I was born in 1882 in the town of Licouria and in the county of Kalabrita, Greece. I am the son of Basil and Amanda Kockos. Basil Kockos was the son of Paul Kockos and my mother's maiden name was Amanda Mangalares. I'd like to say something about my family. My father, who was quite a handsome man, married a beautiful woman from Licouria. My mother was six feet, if not better, and my father was about five feet, eleven inches. They brought four sons and three daughters into the world: Asimakis, Panajota, Maria, Christine, George, Harry, and Andrew. For most of his life, my father held the office of supervisor in Licouria. And because we didn't have hotels in Licouria, my parents would treat visiting politicians to food and lodging. At one time, he was a candidate for mayor; but he was defeated in an extremely close election. My father was also the town butcher and at the same time, he wholesaled herds of cows, goats, pigs, and sheep, in other countries, making a nice profit. But his best business venture was organizing bazaar like fairs. Thousands of people, especially Jewish merchants, came from nearby vicinities to buy and sell their wares. My father had to hire many workers and he and other butchers would watch the sales department. My mother, a wonderful cook, would carefully oversee the barbeque pit where at least six delicious lambs were always cooking. During the summer my father organized about four or five fairs in the vicinity. When I started school, there were about one hundred children attending Licouria's only grammar school. (Licouria had a population of four thousand). We had one teacher, Father Evegenios, who was also the village priest. He was a very well educated man, but so mean that when any of the pupils did anytbing wrong, he would punish them with loures, or switch, hitting them as hard as he could. He only had one opportunity to hit me; for after that first painful whack, I never gave him another chance. He couldn't catch me for I would jump all around the school! After my graduation from grammar school, my father and Father Evgenios made arrangements for me to study the high school subjects. Father Evgenios had some property and a country home about three or four miles from Licouria where we used to go during the summer months for vacation. It was decided that after the school hours, I would go to the country home and Father Evgenios would teach Pante, his son and my playmate, and myself. One time, when we were studying under the arbor formed by the grape vines, our teacher tried to use the same technique on us - beating. His wife heard the crying and ran down to the arbor. Here she was, a small woman, under five feet tall, scolding her husband, "If you touch those children anymore I will pull your whiskers and moustache, hair!" Thereafter, the teacher did not touch us again, and we were able to learn quite a bit. There are many other things connected with the above writing, but do not want to make this history too long. When I was sixteen years old, my brother George had to go into the Greek army. Because he had been operating the grain mill and the edrotrivi that my father owned, I left the priest's house and learned to operate the business. I want to explain the operation. The edrotrivi consists of two tanks. One called a sifouni, about thirty feet in height, looks like a funnel -- the top is eight feet wide and the bottom, only eight inches. The second tank, twenty feet by fourteen feet, is set in the ground. The operation requires very pure water, and for this reason, there were only two or three edrotrivis in all of Greece. Six hundred feet from our edrotrivi, an underground spring surfaced in millions of gallons and with tremendous force. At this spot, a lake, about one hundred feet by two hundred feet, was formed. It, in turn, flowed into the Ladon River on one side and a creek, four or five feet in depth, on the other. This creek supplied the necessary water to run our operation. The purpose of the edrotrivi was to prepare cloth for different types of clothing -- for example: stockings, shirts, overcoats, and blankets. The trick was to know how long to leave each particular type of cloth in the edrotrivi. And day or night, depending on the type of fabric that was wanted, each piece of cloth had to be pulled out of the edrotrivi exactly on time. The man in charge was also responsible for the grain mill inside the building. He regulated the rate and the amount of wheat that was ground into flour. After my brother showed me around the mill and the edrotrivi, I was left all alone. But when the clothes began to come from all over Greece, I surely did a good job; we earned many thousands of drachmas each week. The worse experience that I remember there was when the pure spring water somehow became contaminated. It was so dirty that it killed all of our wonderful trout and put the edrotrivi out of operation. But our mill still did an excellent business.
About a year thereafter, I was dealing with many of our new customers, including about 90% of the people who had formerly patronized a nearby
mill. Even so, I wanted to handle more business; the operation had grown to small for me.
One day, Rodis, the fellow from the neighboring mill, came over to see me. While we were talking I said, "Rodis, I see that your mill is practically closed. I'll tell you what I'll do for you. I'm willing to lease you my father's mill so that, instead of doing nothing, you will be able to make some money!" He liked the idea so much that he askeed me to write a contract. The contract specified that Rodis would touch neither the several bins of wheat that we had on deposit, not any of our poultry, 150 chickens and 200 ducks. Rodis accepted every word, agreed to pay my father so much wheat and corn per month, and signed the contract. Giving him the keys, I told him that my father would probably agree to the provisions that we had decided upon.
My hometown Licouri, was an hours walk from the mill, and on the way I met my brother-in-law, Tom:
"Tom, you have alot of work to do in your orchard. You go ahead and mind your business and I'll take care of mine."
When I got home that afternoon, my father was asleep. And when my mother learned that I had come to talk to Father about the lease, she told me that I was crazy! But I told her that it was for Daddy and me to discuss the business. She woke up Father, but he evidently had already heard every word I had spoken. I told my father that the mill was just too small for me and that I had made an excellent deal in leasing the operation; futhermore, I was old enough to follow his line of business. Without saying a word, he read the contract very carefully. He got up, dressed himself, and put the agreement in his silakei, a large cumberbund-like belt with several pockets made for carrying papers. He rode to the mill on horseback and signed the contract -- without changing a single word. Coming back home, he kissed me, saying that I had done a good job. And asking me what I wanted, I told him, "10,000 drachmas to follow in your line of business." A couple of days later, I met a shepard outside my home, told him that I was going into business and bought a female goat from him, sight unseen. And when this shepard brought me the goatess, I was surprised to see that she was worth three times as much as I had paid. Meanwhile, my father had given me about 10,000 drachmas, entrusting them to my best judgement. So I took my brother Andrew and we purchased over 100 goats for an excellent price. Amongst the herd was one large male as big as a donkey. The next day, Andrew and I took the goats and travelled about thirty hours until we reached a place where my father never did business. And selling the entire stock to butchers in several towns, I made a profit of about 8,000 drachmas. When my father learned of the profit that we had made, he was very surprised. And giving him the 8,000 drachmas, we kept the original 10,000. I was successful in every deal that I made. At this time, a few of the boys who had emigrated to the U.S. were sending money to their folks in Licouria. It surprised me that these boys, coming from a poorer group of people, were able to give more money than I could. Within a year, I was able to tell my father that I had earned enough money to buy a ticket to the United States. When he tried to persuade me to remain in Greece, I said "Dad, I'm sorry to leave you but my decision is final. If my brother Mike wants to come with me, it's fine with me. And if you want him to stay here, he is welcome to." But Mike, who was in business with my father, wanted to go to America more than I. On March 10, 1903 we left Licouria. About twenty of us walked from our hometown thru Mazaeka, to Patras (This was a twenty-four hour walk). There we found the Kabranis family, handsome cousins of ours. They gave us a big dinner and gifts and kissed us good-bye with the wish that some day they would welcome us home. In Patras, we also saw a fellow whom my father had introduced into the wholesale grocery business. A successful business man, he had married his boss's daughter and had even bought the business. And because of the help my father had given him, he prepared a big dinner for us. During the meal, while Mike and Mr. Bouyoukos talked about Licouria affairs, I had my mind on his daughter, a good-looking girl. Mr. Bouyoukos rather liked me and asked me to stay in Patras to work for him. I thanked him very much, but replied that I had firmly decided to go to America. The next day we boarded a Dominion Lines ship. We met many Italians, as well as some Greeks who were returning to the United States after visiting the "old country." I didn't understand a word from those Italians and realized how necessary it would be to learn the language that was spoken in America. I bought a small Greek-English dictionary, and during the thirty days that it took us to reach Boston, I kept my entire mind on that dictionary. I learned the words for the food we were eating, for our clothes, and for other everyday necessities. Evidently, I was pretty fair. After landing in Boston, I took the train to Chicago; there we met quite a few of our countrymen. We went to a restuarant and it cost us each fifty cents ; figuring it out, we had each spent twenty-five drachmas! A friend of mine who was my own age, Theodore Cholios, told me that we couldn't afford to spend so much money; so we went to the grocery store to buy some bread, cheese, and olives. Theodore was worrying how we would tell the grocer what we wanted; but, I told him not to worry about that because I spoke English. Now he was laughing -- we had never spoken English in Licouria! I told him not to laugh -- "Just come with me and keep your mouth shut!" It was about ten o'clock A.M. when we walked into the store. I said, "Good morning, gentlemen. We want to buy a loaf of bread, $.15 of cheese, and $.10 of olives." The grocer gave us the merchandise and we gave him the money. Theodore looked at me from my shoes to my eyes. The way he looked at me was a big success for me and I knew that learning the English language was a very important thing. From then on, I was always reading that dictionary and asking other Greeks how they said this and how they said that. After we had been in Chicago for 3-4 days, a fellow by the name of Theodore Karawounzos, who was from a village near my hometown, heard that Basil Kockos's sons were in Chicago. He found where we were living, met us, kissed us, and told us how my father had helped him come to America -- and for this he was extremely grateful. On that account, he offered us some railroad work in Carlisbell, Montana. The gentleman was heaving the next day and with a free ticket, we too took the train to Carlisbell. In our carriage we met half a dozen Greek boys from Mycenae. And the next day we started work straightening the height of the rails. At the time, I was about six feet tall and only 110 pounds and I wasn't used to such heavy work. After we left for the night and went back to the carriage, called a "trizina" in the railroad business, our foreman, Mr. Malone, told me in front of the other boys, "Harry Kockos, you aren't built for this hard work, but I have a job for you watching for fires on the bridge." In those days, the trains were burning coal, and unloading the fuel could easily set the bridge on fire. He also gave me the keys to his carriage with instructions to clean it and to make the bed anytime during the day. The next day after watching the bridge for a few hours, I went to his carriage, cleaned it up and found some meat in a cool place. I cut up some onions and made some Greek food as I had done at my father's mill and when he came in that night, he was surely pleased. I continued with this work until it began to snow and all the laborers had to be laid off. We left Montana and headed for Portland, Oregon. In those days, Portland saw a lot of big gambling. My brother, who wanted to get rich quick, gambled -- and lost all our money. But our friends, the Mycenae boys, had alot of respect for us and they paid for our food and the carriage where we were sleeping. Since I had begun to understand English pretty well, I had been reading the newspaper and was thus able to find a job unloading unloading lumber on a boat. But the work was very hard for me I began looking through the paper, I found an opening as a dishwasher in a restuarant. This job paid $1.10 / day and I was happy to earn it. The railroad had paid us $1.35 / day for an eight to nine hour day (There was no salary for working overtime). I made the most, $2 / day, unloading lumber, but I couldn't stand the work. <--Kockos Introduction || -->Go to Chapter 2 |