Greece | WOODY WOODBURN

“It’s better, I think, when we all stay together,” said Nicolette, a green-eyed, olive-skinned, sunny-voiced, sandy-blonde, thirtyish-year-old Greece native who served as tour guide for our group of two dozen sightseers at the ancient ruins of Olympia.

It seems to me this is wise advice for life in general. As an African proverb puts it: “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.”

Our bus driver, however, wanted to go both fast and far and thus expressed impatient displeasure with the dawdling driver ahead of us by blaring the horn with one hand while making a gesture of anger with the other. With his mouth, he barked briefly in his native tongue.

“We Greeks, we do not respect speed limits and traffic signs,” Nicolette sang out with a laugh, perhaps as a hint to our coachman to not tailgate and certainly not try to pass on this winding two-lane rural road.

Champions at the ancient Olympics received olive wreaths instead of gold medals, Nicolette had explained earlier at the Games’ historic site. Now, on the 30-mile drive back to port in Katakolon, she talked about the golden value of olives.

“We call olives ‘green gold’ because 600,000 families make their livings from growing and selling olives and olive oil,” she said, further noting that almost every family with a backyard has at least one olive tree, and usually three or four – or even 30, as with her childhood home – to produce olive oil for their own use.

“It is not common for people to sell their private olive oil,” Nicolette continued. “If you have more than your family needs, then you give it to friends and coworkers who do not have trees in their family.”

Winter, from early November to Christmas, is olive harvesting season. The “green gold” is always picked by hand because mechanical culling is believed to damage the trees and bring bad luck – and bad taste – to the fruit.

“Picking” is not quite accurate. Men climb the trees and shake the ripe olives loose while women and teens accomplish this by banging the lower limbs with clubs. The fallen gems are then gathered from a tarp below. One tree produces 80 pounds of the stone fruit, give or take, which yields roughly six quarts of liquid gold.

“Olive oil is our culture. My father even makes natural soap from the olive mash – it is so healthy for the skin,” Nicolette said, her flawless fashion-ad complexion serving as evidence of the soap’s beautifying powers.

A few miles later, at a four-way stop, a car to our right came to a full halt and waited even though it had the right of way. This drew the ire of our bus driver.

Ho-n-n-n-n-k! – longer this time.

Hand gesture(!!) – made more wildly.

Two syllables!!! – even louder than before.

“Greeks lack patience,” Nicolette said, again playfully, trying to calm our driver and perhaps rescue her monetary tips. “We are always in a hurry, especially when driving.”

Further proving her point, our bus lurched through the intersection as the other car, its driver obviously not Greek considering his or her patience, remained at a standstill.

“What did our driver say?” I asked Nicolette. Ever the good sport, she repeated it, translated into English, then coached me in pronouncing it correctly.

Obviously, Nicolette’s gratuity from me was not only rescued, but increased twofold. After all, she taught me all about Greece’s “green gold” and also a Greek blue word.

Onward next week to Naples, Italy, and the ancient ruins of Pompeii…

* * *

Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

Zeus was the God of the Sky in ancient Greek mythology, so it seemed like a smile from the heavens to visit Greece’s Olympia ruins – including the Temple of Zeus – under a cloudless sky as blue as the nearby Ionian Sea.

Adding a divine wink, my wife and I were there on an early September day, the exact time on the calendar the original Olympics were held beginning in 776 B.C. Still, it was difficult to imagine these historic grounds in their former glory because all that remains are toppled stone blocks scattered about like colossal headstones in a cemetery of disrepair.

Among the ancient ruins at Olympia with Lisa.

One area, however, does remain largely as it once was: the track stadium. Visitors today can even use the special entrance, called the Krypte, with its stone archway still intact overhead. To be honest, however, the stadium that awaits across this threshold is underwhelming. Unlike the breathtaking Colosseum in Rome, some 300 miles due south, Olympia’s “stadium” had no seating structure. Instead, two grass slopes rising up gently the full length of the track on both sides provided Standing Room Only for 45,000 spectators.

The dirt track is not an oval but rather a long-and-narrow drag strip measuring just over half the width, and nearly twice the length, of a modern football field. Start and Finish lines of white marble mark off a distance of 192 meters – called a “stade” – with races ranging from a sprint of one length to 24 up-and-backs equaling nearly a three miles.

The “Krypte” entrance used by ancient Olympic athletes.

Before competing in footraces, as well as events later added such as the long jump, javelin, wrestling, and boxing, athletes rubbed olive oil over their bodies and then dirt.

“Other than a dusty sheen,” noted our tour guide, Nicolette, a sandy blonde whose olive skin was undusted, “they competed fully nude.”

A javelin toss from the track’s Krypte was Olympia’s most important building, The Temple of Zeus. Nearly a matching bookend of the Parthenon in Athens, the temple had 38 limestone columns, each 30 feet high, surrounding the perimeter and supporting a marble-tiled roof that shone as white as a full moon. The centerpiece inside was a 40-foot tall statue of Zeus, made of copper and bronze and covered with gold, and considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

The statue was stolen in the 5th century and later destroyed in a fire. Seven decades later, the temple was fully razed by a pair of earthquakes. Standing among the present rubble it is again hard to envision the glory that once rose here.

The historic starting line made of marble…

Speaking of glory and imagination, at the track visitor after visitor toed the two-foot-wide, inch-high marble starting line posing in runners’ crouches to have their photographs taken. More than a few let their visions run further, literally, by bolting into sprints as if a starter’s call had just bellowed.

Most of these Olympic daydreamers were men of middle age or older. One even shuffled with a quad cane. Not surprisingly, their initial dashes typically slowed to a jog by the halfway mark and became a walk for the return stade.

Invariably, except for the gentleman with the cane, the competitors resumed a sprint for the final 10 meters or so, always beaming as if the champion’s olive wreath was up for grabs.

Watching them, for I did not join in, I could not help but smile as well – with thanks that they did not take their ancient Olympic daydreams so seriously as to run wearing only olive oil and dust.

To be continued next week with more about olive oil…

* * *

WOODY WOODBURN

Writer, "Streaker" & Speaker

Tag Archives: Greece

Greece’s ‘Green Gold’ and Blue Word

Ancient Olympics Site Sparks The Imagination