25a - The Old Neighborhood: Kostakis & Christakis (Our First Playground)

Across our alley, with its roof on level with grandma’s balcony was the old and tired two-storey house of the Kazineris’ family, residence of old Kazineris, his wife Marika, their daughter Katina, a retired nurse, and their son, the formidable Yannis. A second daughter, Foula, moved two blocks away after she was married. The small courtyard was delimited by an L-shape formed by the main building and an upper floor kitchen extension, into the open to the sky and elements terrace, and was enclosed by a perimeter wall. The courtyard featured in even humble dwellings, including grandpa’s old house, that dated back to the last decades of the 19^th century and Thessaloniki’s Ottoman era. A high wall at the street-front hid the interior from the few passers-by who strayed onto our alley. It also allowed us to enjoy in seclusion the innocent improvised games of our early childhood: one-against-one in a two-way or one-against-two in three-way football matches, the ‘restaurants’ we set-up and operated with logs for tables, and stones and weeds for the menu dishes, and whatever else our restless imagination had come up with for a few instants of joy. The courtyard was cemented and daily broomed by the two women of the house, whilst in the morning of hot summer mornings sprayed with water. The aged, nearly crumbling wooden gate, noticeably creaking when it was pulled open, was secured after dusk with a padlock from the inside, even though a barely forceful push would have brought it down. Beside the gate there was a kind of well with its rectangular mouth covered by a sheet of metal. We were strictly prohibited from lifting that cover to see what was hidden under, but we dared not disobey despite an itching curiosity. It was just a dangerously deep hole of a disused and stinking well, we were told. On the left of the entrance to the courtyard, a small bed with herb and flower pots and few tomato vines was flimsily fenced by ropes of wire on one side and, on the other, by a chest-level brick wall which separated the Kazineris’ plot from a narrow corridor that led to another house on the bank of the stream and by the bridge of Deligiorgi Street.

The covered well, the flower and vegetable bed, unused sheets metal and planks resting against the street-front wall, logs for the kitchen and laundry room stoves, left limited space for grandiose game designs. But it was enough for what we were coming up with and played and, at the same time, a haven and refuge and cool summer space for naïve and vulnerable beings in the early stages of a yet unripe childhood. It was our first little private playground where we played under the watchful eyes of parents and grandparents.