“We are goblins, we are out and about after normal hours, we want the lalagia, we take the children, give us the rooster or the hen, or we’ll break the door!”

By George Zimmar Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us Oscar Wilde A visit to my Uncle Tom Zoumaras’s store involved a series of transit switches from the southeast side of Chicago to the northwest section of the city. We would walk from Drexel...

Raise your glasses! Long live Greece! Long live the allies!

By George P. Zimmar for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God Romans, 3,23 Shortly after WWII ended, Greek immigration to the United States reopened, especially to those without communist sympathies. After Winston Churchill’s March 5, 1946 Iron Curtain...

By George Zimmar When we think of a pilgrimage, like Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, a spiritual journey comes to mind. My grandfather Georgios Zymaras (or Zoumaras), made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1900, where he prayed before the tomb of Christ, and earned Hadji...

Once in Athens, my sister and I were embraced by loving aunts, uncles, cousins, and various other family members. Everywhere we went in Europe, we enthused, we encountered Greece.

By George Zimmar The end of senior year was festive as I joined classmates to party. My parents had purchased a new 1955 Mercury sedan, with a blazing red and white two-tone color. Since my parents did not drive, I was charged with driving duties and used the car to...

By George Zimmar In my years at Hyde Park High School in Chicago, I was not a model student, as evidenced by my three expulsions: two for fist fights and one for smoking in the park across from the school. Hondo, the eagle-eyed cop, spied the canopy of cigarette smoke...