It’s All Greek to Me

It’s All Greek to Me

We are wrapping up our western summer roadtrip today, heading home on a long stretch of road from Salt Lake City to our hilltop, 718 miles. I like driving out west and all I need is a good book to listen to from Audible and I can go for miles and miles. We are leaving from the home of our dear, dear friends Deb and Melissa, who have a lovely Air B’NB in the house next to theirs on Parley’s Canyon. The house used to be Deb’s family home and as her parents have moved on into the great tabernacle in the sky, she has converted it for rental and done a wonderful job of making it ever so comfortable. Our friends Sam and Chris stayed here last fall in the house’s inaugural Air B’NB flight. When we mentioned that our next roadtrip was planned for October and that we would be going to Oregon and seeing Sam & Chris, Deb and Melissa who came to know and like Sam & Chris during Their stay, said they would like to join us for the trip. We will now be making that trek with Gary & Oswaldo, our friends from Sonoma and, it seems, Deb & Melissa. It should be a great trip and it reminds me that there is nothing but good things that come from letting your friends’ worlds collide every so often. Everyone on this trip knows one another to one degree or another and they will know each other that much better afterwards. Kim and I are the common element at the moment, but from such seeds grow all sorts of new friendships.

We witnessed that phenomenon just last night at dinner. We had booked a stop to see Deb & Melissa here in Salt Lake City, but Kim cannot come through here without thinking of and wanting to see her old friend Joni and her husband Basil. Joni & Basil are Greek, both having been raised in Salt Lake City. Kim asked Deb & Melissa if we could possibly accommodate Joni & Basil for our dinner together and they were more than happy to do so. Despite being lifelong residents of Salt Lake City, they did not know one another…or so we all thought.

We arrived early enough from our uneventful 512 mile drive from Denver to catch up with Deb & Melissa and plant the seeds for the October Oregon roadtrip. When Joni & Basil arrived, Kim made the introductions and as part of the niceties, Deb & Melissa and Joni & Basil went through the customary “do you know” routine. Salt Lake City seems like a big city, but with only 205,000 residents (1.258 million in the greater metro area), it becomes a small town very quickly, especially when you have a point of triangulation. In this case it was the Greek angle. Melissa started by asking if Joni & Basil knew XYZ Greek friend of theirs. Basil immediately said he knew her well and that he had roomed at college with her brother. That was a good start, but from there the connections just kept coming. As is common in American cities, much is connected by which high school you went to. When Deb said she went to such-and-such high school, Basil immediately asked if she knew this person and that person and sure enough, there were more and more connections. This quickly became a version of MyBig Fat Greek Wedding Slat Lake CIty style.

Deb and Melissa were both raised in the Mormon Church, but have since left the Church by choice. Joni & Basil, being Greek and therefore Greek Orthodox, are among the non-Mormon population of Salt Lake City. We all know Utah is a Mormon state, founded by Joseph Smith and Brigham Young in the mid-Nineteenth Century, and that the heart of the Church begins at Temple Square in Salt Lake City, from which all street numbers in Utah emanate. But the population of Salt Lake CIty is now only about 35% Mormon and given how closely-bound the Mormon members tend to be with one another, it is not at all strange that the non-Mormons would tend to hang together as well.

From that point the Greek and non-Greek, Mormon and non-Mormon connections kept flowing the more we all talked. And then we got to the napkin rings. That’s right, the napkin rings. Melissa had set the table with some lovely beaded brass napkin rings and at one point when mentioned that she had wanted to put out some other brass napkin rings she had, but she couldn’t get them to polish up right. Joni immediately jumped in and asked to see them. It seems that Joni is quite the collector of napkin rings, having a collection of about 3,000 of the buggers. This carried into a full-blown discussion of not just napkin rings, but other collectibles. It seems that Joni has never met a garage or estate sale that she didn’t like. She trolls the local Goodwill stores and is basically a scavenger for hidden treasures of all sorts. It seems she has a collection of about 150 lamps from all this scavenging, as just one other example. As it turns out, Melissa is, herself, quite a devotee of scavenging and the conversation turned to the finding of hidden treasures and what then to do with all these treasures once in hand. Joni is contemplating opening an antique store and it seemed like Melissa could think of no finer endeavor to undertake,

It’s unclear whether either Joni or Melissa will ever open a store, though they both agreed that they had enough goods to stock it for years, but they did acknowledge that they were comrades in arms when it comes to scavenging for antique treasures. This is a prime example of what is to be gained by allowing your friendship worlds to regularly collide. We may well have spawned a new friendship between Melissa and Joni by giving them a chance to share their passions about collectibles. As we all approach retirement age, we are more and more free to follow our passions and it is nice to find kindred spirits in the world, and all the nicer if there is a common thread of friendship, which, in this case, runs through Kim. There are risks to this as well. I watched as consummate shopper Kim listened intently and realized how many shopping opportunities there were to be gained in pursuing a scavenging lifestyle. I’m hoping that Joni and Melissa join forces in mutual scavenging expeditions, but I will also admit that I am hoping that Kim stays out of it. We are in the decummulation stage of life, not the accumulation stage.

My first wife’s family were avid collectors and ones who actually knew what they were doing in that they collected many things that gained considerable value over time (life Tiffany lamps and Rookwood pottery). Nevertheless, as she and her sister are aging, and like all of us, thinking of decummulation rather than accumulation, they are now becoming regular eBay resellers of all these accumulated treasures to other avid collectors. In all our own ways we all collect and then release our treasures to the world at large.

So, today we are heading off in a few moments after a tiring but fun week on the road. Daughter Carolyn and her brood are stuck in Charlotte, North Carolina with daughters Charlotte (seems only fitting) and Evelyn, trying to get back to NYC during a weather-interrupted travel day in the friendly skies.

We got home almost exactly on time after a nice long, hot 11-hour drive (which, for some strange reason I didn’t mind at all…driving a rented Chrysler Voyager Minivan). We picked up Buddy, much to his and our pleasure, and suddenly, all was right with the world…almost. I called Carolyn and they had finally gotten out ahead of the east coast weather and flown to JFK and gotten to home sweet home after a month with us out here in the west. While we spent some quality time gathering friends and collecting travel souvenir treasures, we spent even better time collecting memories with family and friends. The nice thing about memories is that you never have to go on eBay to sell them…they can stay with you for a lifetime and without paying any storage room fees. I’m sure the Greeks figured all that out years ago.