POLITICS ’88 : Ancestral Greek Hometown Dreams of Dazzling Future : On Lesbos, It’s Mike the President

The pavement peters out one town away, but change blows on the fragrant summer breeze in lonely and lovely Pelopi.

“Welcome to the hometown of Michael Dukakis,” say spanking new signs in Greek and English along the dirt road at both ends of town.

The signs are not strictly accurate but the welcome is genuine. Warmhearted Pelopi, a tiny village on a small island, is not one of those places where facts come homogenized or well-packaged.

Much to its own delight, Pelopi is having a wonderful election year, thank you. The unilaterally proclaimed hometown hero was actually here once. He stayed four, maybe five hours. Perhaps he’ll even come again--one day.

‘Give Him a Plot of Land’

“If he wins, maybe more people will paint their houses,” Mayor Constantino Stephanou said. “We’re going to give him a plot of land. He can build a cottage on it, or even a small hotel if he wants. We don’t have a hotel.”

With great brio, an occasional fortifying swallow of potent ouzo and the unfettered flow of free-form information, island farmers are rearranging the Pelopi past and accommodating its present to prepare for what, they are beginning to imagine, could be a dazzling future.

Election ’88 is the biggest thing that has happened to Pelopi since the earthquake of (around) 1816 or the flood of Nov. 16, 1954--or was it 1955? Olive farmers exhausted by hard months of following the delegate hunt thousands of miles away would now be talking of little else even if a current spate of visitors hadn’t materialized to encourage them.

Main Street Renamed

For the past half century, the narrow and twisting main street in Pelopi was named for Athanasiou Diakou, an army, or maybe navy, hero in the 1921, or 1922, war against Turkey. A few weeks ago, Pelopi’s main drag became M. Dukakis Street. There were more new signs. Everyone notices but the patrolling chickens.

At the Anthos Cafe one recent afternoon, in the friendly shade of what is either an acacia or a jacaranda, Kyridkos Plianthidis was bragging how he can put bees into his mouth without getting stung. Dip his finger in honey and slip the clinging bees right in, no problem.

“That Chinese lady from the American television, ACB, she didn’t believe me,” the beekeeper of Pelopi confided, looking out onto M. Dukakis Street and not quite getting the network right. “They took my picture while I did it. Seven of them; they were here three days.”

Reporters Ask Same Questions

Everybody around the outdoor table at the Anthos remembered the seven ACBs. The mayor, spooning a savory mixture of honey and fresh goat cheese called ambrosia, thinks they might have been ABCs, but no matter. American journalists fetch up on the island of Lesbos nowadays with almost every tide. They wend their way to Pelopi, population 650 political savants. Some bring cameras, some tape recorders, some notebooks. But they all ask the same questions.

For the hero’s brethren in Pelopi, for the 12 Dukakis families in the town of Kalonia, for the 27 Dukakises in Mytilene, the island capital, there is no beating around the, er, bush.

Admiration for Candidate

We are all proud of him, they say. He’ll make a great President, they say. He’s noble, they say, and bold, and true, and. . . .

Whatever else he is, it is hard to imagine that Pelopi’s Finest is having as much fun as his island kin, real and imagined.

“If it were possible, we’d all vote for him with both hands,” said George Xatzimihalatis over coffee at the Karmiri Cafe, which is on M. Dukakis Street along with the church, the three-desk City Hall, the goat cheese cooperative, the supermarket, the Anthos, a pinochle parlor, some stone houses, and, or so it seemed one recent morning, every male Pelopian above the age of 40.

All Are Olive Farmers

In Pelopi, everybody is an olive farmer. Olives are not harvested until the fall, and apparently there is little useful that can be done for them until then.

The harvest-awaiting farmers on M. Dukakis Street are wiry, strong-faced country folk with hands that are gnarled and eyes that twinkle as they regard questioning foreigners. In general, subsequent waves of anthropologists may conclude, they subscribe either to the Anthos or the Karmiri schools of history. Which does not presuppose that everything they tell visitors is exactly what is taught to the 50 students at the village school.

The olive farmers of Pelopi are as proud of their town as they are of its hero. Pelopi, it is quickly established on M. Dukakis Street, is a new name for an old town on a historic island where Dukakis is an old, and--who can doubt it?--noble name.

Town Once on Coast

Once upon a time, the town was located on the coast nearby, but was so often attacked by marauders from the Turkish mainland, just six miles away, that it came to be known as (something like) Kliou, which (possibly) means “crying.”

In self-defense, the town moved to its current location in a natural bowl invisible from the sea, thereby becoming so safe that relieved villagers renamed their home Gellia, which may mean “laughter.” This occurred in 1462 (Karmiri) or 1770 (Anthos).

“Outsiders made jokes about the name,” the mayor explained on M. Dukakis Street. So, in 1944 or 1958, the town changed its name to Pelopi, after an ancient Greek king born on Lesbos.

On modern Lesbos today (or Mytilene, as the island is also called, after its capital,) there are 80,000 people and 11 million olive trees, Gov. Costas Kentros said. These are official figures.

“Another 180,000 of our people live abroad. Dukakis is one of them,” the governor said.

Like so many other Greeks, the Dukakis family left in search of better economic horizons in the late 19th Century. Michael Dukakis’ father, Panos, emigrated from Turkey to Boston.

Dukakis Farm Bought

In 1933, Iacobos Nanolis bought the Dukakis family farm and the two-story stone house that went with it.

“I paid 1200 drachmas, a lot of money then. Later, I rebuilt the house,” Nanolis said at the Karmiri, flashing a Dukakis for President button. Nanolis, 81, is a favorite among visiting photographers. He poses readily, but not with his walking stick--”It makes me look old.”

In 1976, the Dukakis family came home for a visit that is now living history in Pelopi.

“I got a call from Mytilene to say that an American from Massachusetts was coming to see his family home. He came with his father and wife,” the mayor said. “He came as a relaxed, normal man, not acting as though he was important.”

Vivid Memories of Visit

Dukakis wasn’t a local hero then, either, but today, virtually all the Pelopians have vivid personal recollections of that momentous visit.

At the Karmiri, fly-swatting farmers recall in exquisite detail how Dukakis drank coffee and passed hours chatting in excellent Greek.

At the Anthos, they remember that his Greek was not so hot but that he ate watermelon like it was going out of style. The beekeeper remembers giving Dukakis a fresh honeycomb. “He ate some with his fingers and took the rest away in aluminium paper.”

Prediction on Presidency

“He looked surprised when I told him that one day he would be President,” said the mayor at the Anthos, although the same bit of potential political foresight is attributed at the Karmiri to the village priest.

There is general agreement along M. Dukakis Street that Pelopi has not developed as much as some other Lesbos villages. There is no beach, for one thing, and no tourists, except for some heat-fleeing Greek mainlanders who come for the summer.

Electricity did not reach Pelopi until 1968, more or less, and dial telephones arrived only a few years ago, give or take one or two.

Municipal priorities now are persuading a doctor to live in a small rural village where there are many old people, and getting one final stretch of road paved between Pelopi and the capital.

Governor Tells of Plans

It would be poetic to imagine that the Dukakis name might help but Pelopi doesn’t expect it. Besides, the Socialist governor of Lesbos says the doctor and the road were on the island’s current five-year development plan before Pelopi’s hero was even a winter dark horse.

It is not profit but pride that fuels Pelopi’s fun. Villagers are already talking about the big Election Day party Pelopi will throw for itself, win or lose.

“Then maybe we’ll be famous,” said the mayor. Maybe not.

Either way, it doesn’t take much imagination to realize that one day the regulars at the Karmiri and the Anthos will instruct a new generation of visitors about how a local boy first ran for President in America back in ’88. Or was it ‘92?