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 burger 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.

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 54^th 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. Uncle Danny 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 on the 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. 

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 cut. 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 is 16 years old when he comes to the States from the island of Zakynthos, Greece in May 1912. He gets a job as a varnisher in a piano factory somewhere in Illinois. Grandpa’s service in World War I forges his way to US citizenship, and he is naturalized in 1918 in Ladysmith, Wisconsin. 

In that unlikely town, Grandpa has a series of “confectionaries” with his brother, John. After some years, the brothers have a falling out—John has a temper—and John moves to Minnesota to try his luck at candy-making. A newspaper clipping from the 1970s discloses John’s quest to rid himself of a decades-old pain in the neck with acupuncture. Uncle John is a pioneer.

My grandparents marry on May 10, 1921, in Ladysmith. The priest who officiates the wedding travels all the way from Chicago—a drive that takes about six hours today; he may have traveled by train. 

This priest later comes to a very bad end. He is mugged in 1948; the thief steals his 150-year-old cross, the only thing that he salvaged 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 is robbed and beaten to death in his sister’s Chicago apartment. The police surmise 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 research my genealogy and family history to apply for dual Greek citizenship. It’s also how I find out that my grandpa Americanized his middle name, Dennis, from Dionysios. That one, seemingly minor change, creates a cascade of errors that must be corrected before I can submit my application; the Greek authorities demand 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 are the only Greeks in that tiny town. 

Farmers are 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 aren’t farmers. Grandpa’s other brother, Uncle Pete, has a somewhat famous hatchery in Eau Claire, an hour south of Ladysmith, so maybe that has 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. 

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 has a big bow in her hair and 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 soiled overalls. 

#

My parents take us to the Eau Claire hatchery in 1962. We’re there for the wedding of my mom’s cousin, Mary. I’m seven years old; Paul is five. Mary tells us to stay away from the big dog that’s chained to the doghouse because she’s just fed him; and to not pick up anything that looks like candy because it’s poison. My dad walks me around the chicken building that seems to go on forever. I can hear the chickens clucking inside, but I’m too little to look in the window, and my dad won’t lift me. 

I don’t see any candy, but there are tons of dead and dying rats and mice piled up on the perimeter. One rat lurches forward on his hind legs, unsteady, jerking; he looks almost like a cartoon. My dad warns me away, finds a board, and smacks him.

Uncle Pete gives Paul and me five chicks to take home with us to Milwaukee. I wonder about the odd number, is that such a smart thing. Sure enough, the chicks quickly establish a pecking order and peck one poor chick clean of his down. He looks so bald, so sad; we separate him for his own safety. When the chicks begin growing feathers, my mom gives them to Grandma Athena. I keep asking mom how the chicks are doing. Fine, just fine. They’re happy. They live on Grandma’s back porch, mom tells me.

Years later, I learn that my sweet Grandma Athena killed and butchered my chicks. She has a restaurant, after all.

#

Uncle Danny is murdered on February 3, 1981. A passerby finds his body, face discolored and distorted, in his car, abandoned near the Woolen Mills Dam in West Bend. He has been robbed and shot six times in the back of his head with a .22-caliber revolver. It’s the first homicide in the city in more than 20 years. My uncle is 58 years old. In a newspaper article about Danny’s murder, a neighboring shop owner describes my uncle as a “nice guy.” 

The two killers are 19 and 20 years old. One drives my uncle’s car, the other sits in the back seat behind Danny and empties the gun into my uncle’s head. Six bullets seem excessive. The motive: My uncle’s flush with about $800 in cash and checks because he’s just collected rents from some tenants in the old buildings Athena and George bought decades ago in Milwaukee. The neighborhood has deteriorated over the years, and it isn’t safe for Danny to go alone to collect the rents. 

Danny likes to flash his money and socialize with young people. He’s always been young at heart. At the time of his death, Danny is unemployed and lives above the West Bend Restaurant, which he has rented out. He lost his liquor license years before; he couldn’t control the unruly customers that frequented the dive. 

His violent death is not surprising, really. Nearly twenty years before his murder, Danny, at forty years old, along with a man half his age, is arrested for “contributing to the delinquency of children.” The police discover both men in a parked car with two seventeen-year-old girls, beer cans strewn around. 

Cousin Georgie’s death in 1994 is equally tragic. Georgie dies after a night of partying at a friend’s house; he chokes on his vomit. The friend doesn’t report Georgie’s death until the police come looking for my cousin two days later. They are there to arrest Georgie for being in arrears on child support.

That side of my family has the worst luck.

#

Decades ago, my grandparents purchased four cemetery plots for their family, in West Bend. Grandpa, Grandma, and Uncle Danny are buried there. Cousin Athena’s name is 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 was 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 dies in 2021 at 93 years old. She had wanted to be buried near her father, so Paul and I have her interred in the plot reserved for Cousin Athena. Mom is two plots away from Grandpa; it’s the closest we can get her without digging somebody up. There’s no room left to carve my mother’s name on the long side of the headstone base, so the engraver carves her name on the short side—where nobody rests. 

When my brother and I are gone, nobody will know this.

END

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