One Rainy Day

There is a little produce stand just down the road from my condo. It is housed in an old gas station and owned by a Greek couple. Lots of things in Tarpon Springs are owned by Greeks. Tarpon Springs is notable for having the largest percentage of Greek-Americans of any city in the U.S. The first Greek immigrants arrived to this city during the 1880s, when they were hired to work as divers in the growing sponge harvesting industry. In 1905, John Cocoris introduced the technique of sponge diving to Tarpon Springs. Cocoris recruited Greek sponge divers from the Dodecanese Islands and by the 1930s, the sponge industry of Tarpon Springs was very productive, generating millions of dollars a year. (info found on Wikipedia).

I didn't need a sponge, but I needed a couple of avocados. In Publix, the local grocery store, the avocados were ninety-nine cents a piece, while at the produce stand a dollar bought two.

The owner, a heavy-set Greek with wavy sliver hair and mustache, who had never seen me before, asked if I was married. Despite his heavy accent, I completely understood him when he went on to say, “A beautiful woman like you should be married.” Oh, boy.

His audience was a slim middle-aged Greek, shamefully single in the eyes of the owner. “Why aren’t you married,” he needled his friend, "with such beautiful women around?" Embarrassed, his friend walked away and if not for the rain, I am sure he would have slipped outside. As the owner took my dollar, he told me his friend was shy. He suggested I should call him and he handed me a business card for a Handy Man named John.

With this much meddling in my life from complete strangers in this Greek town, I’ll be married and living in Greece before the end of the year.