Damianos Pavlioglou’s cobbler shop

Damianos Pavlioglou was born in Volos in 1931. His parents, Prodromos and Kyriakoula, had come from Asia Minor in 1924 as exchangeable refugees according to the terms of the Lausanne Treaty. They used to live in the Ikonio (Konya) province in the village of Permanta (Savaş). Kyriakoula came from a rich family of ceramics manufacturers with several people in their employ. Prodromos was a builder and a musician. Christina Pavlioglou, daughter of Damianos Pavlioglou, remembers what her grandma, Kyriakoula, used to say about Prodromos: ‘He was a very good builder and an excellent bouzouki player’.

After the Asia Minor Catastrophe, Kyriakoula’s siblings migrated to the United States. At first, they kept in touch through letters, but as far as Damianos’ family is aware, they never visited Greece and soon Kyriakoula lost all contact with them. Prodromos had a sister, Maria, who had also come to Volos as a refugee and lived in the Iolkos settlement.

Prodromos and Kyriakoula had five children, three of which were born in Asia Minor: Pavlos in 1915, Charalambos in 1917, and Kalliopi in 1922. The other two children were born in Greece: Sofia in 1925 and Damianos in 1931. The family settled in Volos in the Iolkos neighbourhood, specifically in Foros, in a refugee shack granted by the state. As Christina says, ‘One shack next to the other, one poverty next to the other…’. In the northern part of the neighbourhood, there were public water taps that supplied the refugees with water. Christina says:

 ‘My grandparents came here and started over. They never came to terms with the fact that they would have to stay here forever. Even deep into their old age, they would cry and sing of their beautiful homeland, its beauty, its blessings, the life they left behind. They refused to learn Greek. They could understand it, but refused to speak it. Due to his work as a builder and a logger in Volos and Pelion, Prodromos, my grandfather, had practiced the language more. Kyriakoula, my grandmother, would take on all sorts of farm work or work at the salted goods factory in Volos; anything to bring in some more income and feed the family… She gave birth to my father, Damianos, in a field where she was picking spinach… They were decent, hard-working, proud people… And then the war came in 1940 and the occupation…’

During the occupation, the settlement and its residents suffered through a terrible famine. Kyriakoula was tasked with finding food for the family. Along with the family’s youngest children, Sofia and Damianos, they used to wander around the villages of Karditsa and glean the grain left behind by the reapers in order to make bread for the family. As Damianos told his daughter:

‘Many nights we would fall asleep waiting for our mum to finish cooking our dinner. But there was no dinner, there was only water simmering in a pot. That’s how she would trick us into forgetting our hunger’.

Christina recalls the stories her father told her when she was growing up:

‘Grandma also used to sort through the tobacco that would fall off the trucks of the Matsangos Tobacco Industry in Volos and sell it in the black market. While doing this, she would often have my father, Damianos, with her’.

‘[Kyriakoula] would put the tobacco in a sack, take some rope and tie one end around the sack and the other around me so that she wouldn’t lose me and we wouldn’t get robbed. That’s how we travelled on the train from station to station where we would spend the night. We sold the tobacco in the black market and we would travel to Katerini or even further…’

That’s how the family managed to survive. By that time, Damianos’ sisters, Kalliopi and Sofia, had got married in Neo Ikonio Sofadon, an exclusively refugee village in the Karditsa Prefecture. Damianos’ elder brother, Charalambos, was also married and had a son. During the occupation, he joined the Greek Resistance and lived in the mountains. He went missing and no one heard from him again.

In 1941, Damianos was 10 years old. He dropped out of school after second grade.

 ‘He takes his little shoe shine box and goes out to earn a living. He also has a harmonica that someone has given him and he plays well. Across from the shacks where they live, there is a gym where Italian soldiers are staying. They hear the music coming from the kid’s harmonica; they hear him knock his brushes against his box and call him over to shine their boots. They joke around with him and shower him with gifts.’

When the ‘kid’ grew up, his mother took Damianos to Karavasilis, an old expert cobbler who had also come from Asia Minor and was willing to take him on as an apprentice. ‘My father evolved into one of the best cobblers in Volos’, says his daughter, clearly taking pride in her father’s craft.

 ‘He makes new shoes for men and women, 100% handmade, which means the leather and the soles were all assembled and sewn by hand. He has clients coming from Larisa, Trikala, Karditsa, because they want something special, but he makes most of his income repairing shoes. He sets up his first stall literally on the street, under a tree in the neighbourhood. He then finds an abandoned hovel, fixes it up and opens up a shop. His final shop was a room in the small house he built with my mother on the land plot granted to them by the state. They built this house room by room. Two more families lived on that plot, each in its own small house, sharing a long narrow yard and one squat toilet. So, it was my family — my father, my mother, Efthymia, who was a second generation refugee from Constantinople and Malakopi in Asia Minor, and my brother Prodromos — Uncle Pavlos’ family, which was another six people, and lastly my grandparents… My father would often sell his wares in bazaars and fairs in the areas around Volos. In 1965, he started working at the Adamopoulos Cotton Industry in Volos where he worked until he retired. But he never gave up on his cobbler shop. He would come home after working at the factory, take a short nap, and then sit in his favourite chair behind the counter with the hammers, awls, nails, pegs, cutters, pliers, anvil…’

‘My father loved his craft. Until he died at 91, he still had his coffee at the counter of his cobbler shop…’

Oral interview of Christina Pavlioglou, 30.4.2022. The interview was conducted in Volos, in Damianos Pavlioglou’s cobbler shop.