Ravings for Remedies

Steve was his name, he sat nearby in the food court killing time; I speared sushi.  Having long mastered the parallel lines, this prompted discussion on the topic.  I’ve never been able to use those things, he said.  They’re too hard to control.  How do you do it, he asked.  With patience, I replied.  Patience and a steady hand.  Of course, a lot of it is luck too.  We both laughed.  He was fourty years my senior, though he could’ve easily been the same age.  There was exuberance in his voice, the kind I’ve always associated with.  He thought it strange that one could ride a bicycle and never forget its use, but fiddle with chopsticks to only resort to the fork.  The brain, it was decided, is an intricate device to control the mechanisms of movement and yet, though some things we cannot master may be much easier for others to accomplish.  To ride a bike, for example, there are many elements which enable the brain to remember instruction, visual information, sense of touch, sound, movement.  All these elements can be traced back to the action of riding a bike.  We were talking psychology and philosophy.  That makes sense, he said.  Well, I stated, we have the greeks to thank for the wonders of modern thought.  He beamed, proud.

When he came to this country back in the 1950’s, he had dreams far beyond application in his home, south of Athens.  The country was struggling to recover from the wreck of war and poverty became synonymous with his vision of the future.  At the age of fourteen, influenced by the pull of the ‘Great Southern European Continent’, he left his home in Greece for the idealistic future in beautiful and bright Australia.  The second world war hit the allies hard and those whom did return faced a short-fall in population.  There was an excess in work and not enough souls to fill it, save those that died on the battlefronts of Germany.  Like many other europeans, fitting the bill under the ‘racial discrimination act’, Steve sought to fill a position as with his countrymen.  Having no idea what to expect, only the tales of opportunity the government spun, Steve arrived at the mining town of Broken Hill only to be crestfallen at the sight he beheld.  Tin shacks, he told me, made from corrugated iron; not just the roof but the walls too.  The town was shambled, not stately like he’d expected, not established like he’d accepted.  There were pubs at each corner and after work, the men would flood the bars and spend their wage on the livers.

It was a rough place.  The heat was exasperating, the work hard and tough.  He did the best expected of a fourteen year old boy.  They used to say ‘go back where you came from’ to me, he recounted.  There was a glimmer in his eye.  When he came to Australia, his luck nosedived, was his belief.  He bought the lies spin-doctors prescribed as did many in his shoes.  Although, it is impossible to determine if life had’ve been better for him had he stayed in Greece.  He made a choice and picked a path.  Whatever the journey, he looked content.  It’s different these days, he said.  There are a multitude of cultures and people are generally more accepting.  This is true I said.

Are you Australian, he asked.  Yes, I replied, with Irish roots.  My mother was on the last ship exiting the Mediterranean through the Suez canal before it was closed due to Egypt’s independance.  Her family came here with nothing but the clothes on their backs.  Life wasn’t rosy as they’d expected, they owned and worked for a long time at the Esso petrol station in Colac, until my grandparents retired.  There was no opportunity in Ireland in those days, Papa set out for better prospects and found those here.  I’m glad he did.

We shook hands and parted, he was going back to Greece for three months, I was going back to my lunch.