51c - Football! (In the Streets and the Sandlots)

Grandpa and Father might have unwittingly charted the path, but most of my love for the game I owe it to a friendship with two neighborhood boys. First and foremost, to my peer and classmate Kostakis, less so to a couple of years younger Christakis, whose presence, although usually on the fringes of the little gang we formed, was always desirable, since he made up a critical mass for certain games his shortcomings due to age: our friendly football encounters could become three-way match – a sort of novelty, or the one-a-side duels tournaments with points. Sometimes the three friends formed the core of small teams that played with others from nearby neighbourhoods.

But all started in the small front yard of the old Kazineris’, Kostakis grandparents’ house in our alley across our block, or in our little street itself, our little football patch bounded by an L-shaped formed by the walls of the old house and an annex of the house of Tsapatsaraina, the legendary tavernier of Deligiorgi Street. Our street was not asphalted, it had potholes and grooves, and it offered in inadequately small area, so the trio of friends had to expand their range into the adjacent Deligiorgi Street, still narrow but at least asphalted, in front of Tsapatsaraina’s taverna. The tavernier and her husband, even the Jew Isaac and his brother a little further away, left us undistracted to play our games. Horse drawn carts and cars passed by the street or parked on it were still a few in those years, although their sporadic appearance caused unwanted interruptions to the flow of our play. The rarity of these incidents made them an interesting sight, but in later years of increasing traffic and less free space, their nuisance was tolerated them with stoicism. All that was really needed was a ball, any kind of ball: made of rubber, even from cheap plastic, which never took long before it bursts and the ball-kicks turned into cap-kicks. In the latter days of maturing childhood, we afforded a cheap leather ball. One of us would have always ensured its supply -at all costs!

The most appealing site in the neighborhood for playing our ball was a sandlot on the far bank of the stream that dissected the long Gambetta Street at one end of our alley. That stream could not be crossed by car, but only on foot through Gambetta Stret and that was not even possible in days of heavy rainfall. But cars and people could cross it over the small bridge through Deligiorgi Street, at the other end of our insignificant alley. over a small bridge. At the intersection of the stream with the dirt road that was still Gambetta Street, at one corner stood a shanty where an elderly couple lived, rarely seen behind permanently closed shutters, opposite weather-battered old willow tree, whose trunk leaned downwards and parallel to the ground until after two or three it inclined towards the sky. Its shade was an oasis of coolness in hot midsummer afternoons and its trunk, which we could easily climb and sit on it, a good place for a rest from our games and a chat. Under its shade in a hot afternoon after a game under the sun, I passed out for the first time in my life.

The square sandlot, about a dozen meters wide, was bounded by the Gambetta Street, a row of old houses and the usually dry bank of the stream and its diagonal, which started at the willow tree at one corner, at the other reached the gate of a more prominent two-storey house, that belonged to a teacher of theology, who spread fear and terror amongst the children of the neighborhood and, I presumed, the kids of the school where he taught his religious classes. That sandlot naturally offered a more than satisfactory pitch, because its relatively flat surface; it was ideal for impromptu matches amongst the three friends, but also with children from nearby neighbourhoods and sometimes gangs of kids from distant areas that were attracted by the open flat space, a brand-new leather-ball that we might have brought, as well the adventures the stream and its banks offered, especially after some heavy rainfall. With a pair of stones or our shirts for goal-posts on each side, that plot of land could be transformed into a decent football ground. For many years, the bank of that stream that descended from the Seih Sou hills and Upper Toumpa drew us in afternoons like a magnet, for kicking a ball in its dust, until dusk or until our grandmas’ calls from the other side of the stream asked us back home.