Kostadino Kostopoulos: A Tale of Greek Life in Portland

Kosta opened the boxcar door as the train entered the Willamette Valley. It was November of 1905. The Oregon landscape thrilled Kosta. They were enclosed by majestic evergreens, trees shedding red and yellow leaves, and snow-capped mountains. The sun was shining though the blue sky and silver clouds, unlike Greece's stark white architecture, and dry, rocky landscape. He couldn't wait to get off the train and explore the crisp, autumn surroundings. The train slowed down at the Portland depot and he quickly gathered his belongings, but no sooner had he stepped outside and onto the boardwalk than he felt a drop of rain on his hand.

Within a few minutes the weather was a gray downpour. The raindrops were heavy and with each step the crew became more and more bogged in mud ... The rain seemed never-ending. Kosta followed along with his few belongings, a few clothes, his money in a leather pouch concealed around his waist, his shoemaker tools, boots, and an extra coat all rolled up and tied together and his cobbler's bench dismantled. They weaved through the rain and gray shadows until they reached a hotel downtown, owned by the Union Pacific.

ETHEL PULOS LEON was born in 1920 in Portland, Oregon, the youngest of six children born to Greek immigrants Kosta and Panayota Kostopoulos. Kostadino Kostopoulos tells her father’s story, starting in 1898 in Greece, as Kosta tries to immigrate to the United States, and details life for an immigrant and his family during the ­ first half of the twentieth century.  In 1995 at the age of 75, Ethel retired and sold her beauty salon, which she had opened in 1960. She then enrolled in Clackamas Community College and took classes in writing and computer basics. Ethel published her ­first book, The Gold Locket, a mystery set in Portland and Greece, in 2007. This is her second published book. 

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