Spyridon
According to my grandmother Elena, Spyridon is the brother of her father Philip, who was born in 1886 in Galichnik. With Spyridon, the problems both for the family and for the whole of Galichnik started since he was a child. He escaped from Galichnik around 1900 at the age of 14 and went to Albania with Muso Zelez from Peshkopi, who was the owner of one of the largest sheepfolds of Bistra mountain, Solumnica. Spyridon in Albania perfected the craft of the thief, so the next time my people heard of his whereabouts was when he was arrested in Liverpool, Britain in 1912 for trying to smuggle opium to New York on the ship Olympic. The event was covered with a news story in the Belgrade newspapers from the time, hence I could not find any copies.
Olympic arrival at New York port, June 21, 1911
That summer was the last time he was seen in Galichnik, when he came with the intention of buying all that season’s cheese. He asked for over 300 pies, but there weren’t that many, so he only bought about 40, and no one understood why he told them to make holes in them. That summer, 1912, he also left a wooden box with ‘shpirto’, the name that was used for alcohol at that time in Galichnik, and told them that where he brought it from, they called it “Djhin” – at least that’s how they remembered it.
When they sniffed it, they realized that the drink was from the juniper that was everywhere around Galichnik and Bistra mountain. After that year, 1912, there were three consecutive ones when there was no any type of information in regard to Spyridon’s endeavours. It was in 1915 that the first letter from Chicago came, sent by Spyridon to grandmother Magda, the mother of my grandmother Elena and wife of Spyridon’s brother the already mentioned Philip, who at that time was in Alexandria, Egypt as an emigrant. In the letter Spyridon wrote to mother Philipovica to convince Filip to return to Galichnik, take the children and all of them to stay at his place in Chicago.
He was writing about a friend of his, Alfonso, who was very respected in Chicago and supposedly he and Spyridon had already developed businesses with goods that travelled by ship from Italy to America. In the letter, he also sent a photo of him and Alfonso, which we keep to this day.
Spiridon (left), Alphonso (right), Chicago 1915
He also wrote that the ships also went to Durrës, Albania and that they could board from there. But Philip, Spyridon brother, was stubborn and did not want to hear anything, either about Chicago, or about his brother, or about Galichnik, and he stayed in Alexandria. A few more years passed and then the last letter from Spyridon arrived around 1922.
He was still in Chicago and worked in the spirits trade and, as my mother told me, he wrote ‘except for me and Alfonso, no one else is allowed to sell spirits here, money to money, until Debor doesn’t collect it.’ Mother was happy about Spyridon’s success, and she wrote to him that she improved the ‘Djhin’ he brought with two or three new herbs that she herself had collected when she went to collect herbs with her friends, added them and succeeded in distilling it and got, according to her, a very strong medicine, as they would say today.
This recipe came to me from my great-grandmother Magda, through my grandmother Elena, her daughter, to my father Rafe, and I also experimented a little with other herbs from Bistra mountain, and made Galichnik Dry Gin – White Ridge.
We have no more information about Spyridon, but if you think this story is true, you have a 10% discount on White Ridge.
I don’t know if Spyridon sent other letters, but if he did, maybe we will find them and publish them.