First published in BarBar Magazine, March 26, 2025
Grandpa George and Grandma Athena in Zakynthos, Greece in 1951. An earthquake destroyed most buildings on the island in August 1953.
Summertime, June. Heat shimmers off a two-story, cinderblock building. On its 1906 façade, a sullied, octagonal window frames a flickering neon sign. Even from the outside, I can hear “W_st Be_d Restaura_t” buzzing sporadically. Shiny, peach-and-black tiles cover the building’s lower façade, art deco-style.
The door is heavy; my mom has trouble opening it for my brother and me. We barely make it inside before the door slams shut behind us. Inside, a strange, dank smell. The floor is sticky. Deep bass, booming, blasts from an old jukebox. I can feel the air shake; my body vibrates. I’m sensitive to sounds.
This is the first memory I have of my Grandma Athena’s place. By the time I first see the West Bend Restaurant in 1959 or 1960, it’s already rundown, way past its heyday of the 1940s, when servicemen crowded around the bar, flirting with my mom and Aunt Marina, the two Greek goddesses who waitressed there.
It’s dark inside, and with the loud music, disorienting. Once my eyes adjust, there’s a shuffle-puck table immediately to the right. I can barely see over it. I’m drawn to the puck, but I don’t understand the sand on the table. Mom says I can’t play with it now, maybe later. Further to the right, a long bar with a couple of lit-up Hamms’ Beer signs above it. From the land of sky-blue waters.
Tall, empty, wooden booths people the place with embellished brass coat hooks, the kind that would fetch a pretty price these days. My family—me; Grandma Athena; my mother, Katina; my younger brother, Paul—are the only people here. I don’t see my Grandpa George, whom I barely remember. If it’s June 1960, he’s been dead six months. My dad isn’t here either; he’s already left to go back home to Milwaukee after dropping us off. He barely said hello. He just couldn’t wait to leave.
Grandma Athena, smiling. She’s short, warm, doughy; I get lost in her hugs. She wears a stained, white apron over her widow’s weeds. Sturdy, black-laced shoes. Gray hair in a bun, covered with a hair net that crisscrosses the very top of her forehead. Sweet voice with a thick, Greek accent. Grandma asks me in broken English if I’m hungry; I’m starving, and she starts to make me one of her amazing cheeseburgers.
Grandma turns on the industrial griddle, fetches a ground beef patty from a huge, commercial refrigerator, slaps the patty on the griddle, presses it flat with a well-worn spatula.The burger hisses and sings as the heat sears it. Smoke rises; a greasy exhaust fan sucks it quickly upward to where I don’t know. Grandma butters a bun and places it on the griddle; it crisps brown around the edges. Next, she puts a sliced onion on the grill. Flips the burger, and when it’s nearly done, she melts a slice of yellow cheese over it.
Perfection. To this day, more than sixty years later, no other cheeseburger has ever come close.
#
We’ve stopped in West Bend, Wisconsin for a short visit with Grandma before Aunt Marina and Uncle Bob come to pick us up. They’re making a special trip to get and drive us the rest of the way north to their home in Neenah, where we’ll stay for two weeks. We go there every summer, and Neenah is my favorite place in the whole world. Aunt Marina, Uncle Bob, and cousins Jeff and Greg—Stacy isn’t born yet—live in an old 1850s house. It’s mysterious and full of strange smells; I can get lost in it for days.
Their attic is amazing, full of dust and cobwebs, dead flies on the windowsills, bat dung, rat traps, abandoned picture frames, my uncle’s World War II locker and other war stuff, broken Victorian furniture. Boxes with who knows what’s in them. My mom doesn’t like me playing up there because I get so dirty.
Grandma Athena, Grandpa George, Aunt Marina, my mom Katina, and Uncle Danny, in West Bend, Wisconsin in the early 1930s
The basement is surprisingly huge. Uncle Bob has knocked out part of a stone wall to reveal the cistern, so my cousins and I can play in the pitch dark. There’s a ritual to it. First, I go to the Victorian house next door to get an eye exam. There’s an ancient ophthalmologist who has his practice in the basement. Then, after the exam, with my eyes dilated, I hurry back and out of the bright day to fumble my way downstairs to the cistern. Jeff makes me sit on a stone slab while he holds up various objects and asks if I can see them in the dark. Paul is too young to join in, and he makes a fuss.
There’s always some fun project going on or some magical, new critter they’ve found; and their house is far larger and more interesting than our tiny, late-1930s, Lannon-stone house on North 54th Street in Milwaukee. Our house has no secrets; even the attic is pathetic, never mind the basement.The house is trimmed in pink; I’m a little girl who hates pink. I hate it so much; I have my dad paint my bedroom blue.
There are no wild critters in our neighborhood that seek me out. When compared to my cousins’ house, Milwaukee is such a disappointment, and I always beg my mom to let me live in Neenah. I’m too young to realize how much that hurts her.
#
Grandma’s talking to my mom. I’m eating my juicy burger on its buttery-crisp bun, ketchup oozing and onions slithering. For a second, a slant of bright light and warm air from the outside, then the door slaps shut, and it’s dark and cool again as my Uncle Danny walks into the restaurant. Danny has thick, black, curly hair. It’s the first thing you notice about him. He’s not tall, and he’s pudgy around the middle. UncleDanny is the eldest of Grandma’s and Grandpa’s three children.
Next is Aunt Marina, my favorite person in the whole world; and then my mom, Katina, who is her daddy’s little girl. My mom is spoiled and stubborn. She doesn’t smoke, drink, or swear—ever. She’s pretty, with huge eyes and a trim figure. If it’s the summer of 1960, she’s sad because she really misses my grandpa.
Danny pushes a couple of buttons to change the record onthe jukebox, then reaches behind to crank the volume up. I don’t recognize the song, and the noise level disturbs me.The bass burrows deep and blasts in my chest. Now I can’t hear what my mom and Grandma are saying. I can’t think. Danny walks behind the dark, sticky bar and takes a beer out of the beverage fridge, cracks it open with an Indian-head bottle opener mounted under the bar. He grabs a Kit-Kat candy bar out of a box on the shelf behind the bar, walks back to the wooden booth nearest the kitchen where we’re hanging out, and hands the Kit-Kat to me. My fingers are gooey from the burger juice, ketchup, and onions.
Still no customers. The floor looks dirty.
#
Uncle Danny confuses me. He’s my mom’s older brother, and he’s a grown-up, but he acts a lot younger. He talks with a funny cadence, pronounces words differently. He doesn’t have a Greek accent, but nobody I know talks the way he does, except for Cousin Georgie. More than sixty years later, I’ll finally hear someone outside my family speak that way—Steven Avery in the documentary, ‘Making a Murderer.’ Turns out, Avery is from Manitowoc County, about 61 miles northeast of West Bend, so it could be an accent specific to the area.
Uncle Danny in West Bend, Wisconsin in the late 1930s or early ’40s
Danny is divorced and has two kids: my cousin Athena, named after my grandma; and Georgie, named after my grandpa. It’s the Greek way: Children’s first and middle names alternate between generations, so my great-grandfather’s name, Dionysios, becomes Uncle Danny’s first name, Americanized to Dennis, or Danny for short. Danny’s middle name is George, after his father, my Grandpa George. Grandpa George’s name becomes my cousin’s first name, Georgie, and Georgie’s middle name is Dennis, after his father, Danny.
It seems that Greek families are destined to have the same names forever, but my family has broken with tradition. My brother should have been named William George like my dad George’s father, our Papou. Instead, my brother is Paul George. I don’t know who we’re named after. There are no other Victorias or Pauls in the family tree.
Cousin Athena is seven years older than I am. She’s deaf and mentally challenged. She wears above-the-knee girly dresses, white socks, and patent-leather shoes. She has a pixie haircut. Cousin Athena is obese. She breathes through her mouth.
Georgie is younger than I am and older than my brother. Danny’s first ex-wife abused their kids, and Georgie, like Cousin Athena, is grossly overweight. He speaks with the same funny cadence as his dad. He looks lost, calls Danny, “fahdder.” Neither I nor my Neenah cousins are close to these West Bend relatives. We rarely see them, and we have nothing in common. We’re polite, but my Neenah cousins snicker and make fun of Georgie and Danny behind their backs.
#
Grandpa George was 16 years old when he came to the States from the island of Zakynthos, Greece in May 1912. He found a job as a varnisher in a piano factory somewhere in Illinois. Grandpa’s service in World War I forged his way to US citizenship, and he was naturalized in 1918 in Ladysmith, Wisconsin. In that unlikely town, Grandpa had a series of “confectionaries” with his brother, John. After some years, the brothers had a falling out—John had a temper—and John moved to Minnesota to try his luck at candy-making. A newspaper clipping from the 1970s disclosed John’s quest to rid himself of a decades-old pain in the neck with acupuncture. Uncle John was a pioneer.
My grandparents married on May 10, 1921, in Ladysmith. The priest who officiated the wedding traveled all the way from Chicago—a drive that takes about six hours today; he may have traveled by train.
This priest later came to a very bad end. He was mugged in1948; the thief stole his 150-year-old cross, the only thing that he managed to salvage from SS Thessaloniki, the ship he had been traveling on to America in 1915. After nearly 50 days at sea, battered by a series of storms and a late-season hurricane, SS Thessaloniki lost power, took on water, and began to sink; SS Patris rescued passengers and crew on New Year’s Day, 1916. Everyone disembarked with only what they could carry.
In September 1948, about a month after the mugging and theft of his precious cross, the priest was robbed and beaten to death in his sister’s Chicago apartment. The police surmised that after the priest posted a reward notice for the cross’s return, thieves pretended they had the cross. They thought he had money; he had none. When he let the thieves into the apartment, they ended him.
Nobody in my family knows about this. I know only because in my 60s, I researched my genealogy and family history to apply for dual Greek citizenship. It’s also how I found out that my grandpa Americanized his middle name, Dennis, from Dionysios. That one, seemingly minor change, created a cascade of errors that had to be corrected before I could submit my application; the Greek authorities demanded that birth, marriage, and death records in Wisconsin and Michigan be amended.
#
Why did my people choose Ladysmith, a place with just 3,500 people in 1920, to settle into? Most Greeks like to congregate in close-knit communities; it could be that Grandpa, Grandma, and Uncle John were the only Greeks in that tiny town.
Farmers were attracted to the area because of fertile soil left by the two-mile-thick Wisconsin Glaciation—the same that carved out the Great Lakes—but my immediate family weren’t farmers. Grandpa’s other brother, Uncle Pete, had a somewhat famous hatchery in Eau Claire, an hour south of Ladysmith, so maybe that had something to do with it.
In a photograph from the late 1920s, Athena and George stand in front of an early 1920s model Ford car with their young children, Danny, Marina, and Katina. The car is parked in front of Uncle Pete’s ramshackle farmhouse.
Unknown child; my great-uncle Pete; Uncle Danny; Grandpa George holding my mom, Katina; Aunt Marina; and Grandma Athena, in the 1920s at Uncle Pete’s farm in Eau Claire, Wisconsin
Athena wears the latest fashion, accessorized with a jaunty hat and a purse. This surprises me. I’ve only seen her wear black, old-lady clothes. In the same photo, George wears nice pants, a white shirt, tie, and a straw hat. Uncle Danny looks to be about eight years old. He has on formal short pants and a white shirt with a bow tie. Scuffed shoes. Aunt Marina, around six years old, wears an above-the-knee, A-line dress; socks; and a ’20s haircut. She squints into the camera. Grandpa George carries my mom, Katina, just a toddler, in his arms. She has on a frilly, white dress. She’s the only one not looking at the camera. You can tell that she’s a handful. Even her curls are unruly.
My family overdressed for this visit. Uncle Pete stands with them wearing faded, soiled overalls.
#
My parents took us to the Eau Claire hatchery in 1962. We were there for the wedding of my mom’s cousin, Mary. I was seven years old; Paul was five. Mary told us to stay away from the big dog that’s chained to the doghouse because she had just fed him; and to not pick up anything that looks like candy because it’s poison. My dad walked me around the chicken building that seems to go on forever. I could hear the chickens clucking inside, but I was too little to look in the window, and my dad wouldn’t lift me.
I didn’t see any candy, but there were tons of dead and dying rats and mice piled up on the perimeter. One rat lurched forward on his hind legs, unsteady, jerking; he looked almost like a cartoon. My dad warned me away, found a board, and smacked him.
Uncle Pete gave Paul and me five chicks to take home with us to Milwaukee. I wondered about the odd number, was that such a smart thing. Sure enough, the chicks quickly established a pecking order and pecked one poor chick clean of his down. He looked so bald, so sad; we separated him for his own safety. When the chicks began growing feathers, my mom gave them to Grandma Athena. I kept asking mom how the chicks were doing. Fine, just fine. They’re happy. They live on Grandma’s back porch, mom told me.
Years later, I learned that my sweet Grandma Athena killed and butchered my chicks. She had a restaurant, after all.
#
Uncle Danny was murdered on February 3, 1981. A passerby found his body, face discolored and distorted, in his car, abandoned near the Woolen Mills Dam in West Bend. He had been robbed and shot six times in the back of his head with a .22-caliber revolver. It was the first homicide in the city in more than 20 years. My uncle was 58 years old. In a newspaper article about Danny’s murder, a neighboring shop owner described my uncle as a “nice guy.”
The two killers were 19 and 20 years old. One drove my uncle’s car, the other sat in the back seat behind Danny and emptied the gun into my uncle’s head. Six bullets seemed excessive. The motive: My uncle was flush with about $800 in cash and checks because he’d just collected rents from some tenants in the old buildings Athena and George had bought decades ago in Milwaukee. The neighborhood had deteriorated over the years, and it wasn’t safe for Danny to go alone to collect the rents.
Danny liked to flash his money and socialize with young people. He’d always been young at heart. At the time of his death, Danny was unemployed and lived above the West Bend Restaurant, which he had rented out. He had lost his liquor license years before; he couldn’t control the unruly customers that frequented the dive.
His violent death was not surprising, really. Nearly twenty years before his murder, Danny, at forty years old, along with a man half his age, was arrested for “contributing to the delinquency of children.” The police discovered both men in a parked car with two seventeen-year-old girls, beer cans strewn around.
Cousin Georgie’s death in 1994 was equally tragic. Georgie died after a night of partying at a friend’s house; he choked on his vomit. The friend didn’t report Georgie’s death until the police came looking for my cousin two days later. They were there to arrest Georgie for being in arrears on child support.
That side of my family had the worst luck.
#
My mom’s grave in West Bend in 2021. She is interred in Cousin Athena’s plot, above and to the right
Decades ago, my grandparents had purchased four cemetery plots for their family, in West Bend. Grandpa, Grandma, and Uncle Danny are buried there. Cousin Athena’s name was carved into the base of the crumbling family headstone, and a plot next to Danny had waited for her. It sat empty for decades; last I knew, Cousin Athena had been surrendered to an institution while in her teens. Nobody knows what happened to her, where she is, or if she’s even alive.
My mother died in 2021 at 93 years old. She had wanted to be buried near her father, so Paul and I had her interred in the plot reserved for Cousin Athena. Mom is two plots away from Grandpa; it’s the closest we could get her without digging somebody up. There was no room left to carve my mother’s name on the long side of the headstone base, so the engraver carved her name on the short side—where nobody rests.
When my brother and I are gone, nobody will know this.
END