Remembering April 4, 1968--When Martin Luther King Was Murdered

The day after Martin Luther King Jr. was killed, April 5, 1968, I was riding in a truck across the island of Crete. I was hitchhiking with a girl we met on the ferry boat sailing from Athens to Iraklion, a guitar, and my buddy Brian Wilson. Having a guitar was a great way to hitchhike--it offered instant entree. Having two guys, a girl, and a guitar--that was a little tougher.

On the ferryboat Brian and I met an American girl--I think we were the only Americans aboard that trip. Turned out this girl was from Eastlake, Ohio. I knew of her father's clothing store at E.222nd Street in Euclid. I even knew one of her cousins.

When we got off the ferry boat in Iraklion, we hitched a ride on a tiny motor scooter (well one of us did) and then got to the main road that crossed the island. Our destination was Matala, the tiniest of villages, on the southern coast of the island. Hitchhiking was tough because there was almost no traffic. Almost no one owned a car. We finally got a ride in a dump truck. The Eastlake girl and I (and the guitar) got in the front seat with the driver. Brian wanted to ride up on the load of gravel--a dangerous and uncomfortable position for him. While we were driving, we tried to communicate with the driver, but it was difficult. We only knew a few phrases of Greek, and he knew just a little English. He did know some German, so between these three languages he told us of the assassination of Martin Luther King. Still, I could hardly believe what I heard, and it would be hours more before King's murder was confirmed for us.

On that trip across Crete, we stopped at an archaeological site (very famous, very important, unbeknownst to us) called Phaistos.

Image of Phaistos, found in Wikipedia

We spent some time looking around the site, and then proceeded to the long walk to the village of Matala. On the way there, a man saw Brian carrying his guitar and invited us into his house. He wanted to show us his bouzouki, a spectacular instrument that must have cost the equivalent of weeks of work. We got to meet his entire family, and we took this beautiful photo with his three children. What a blessing to be invited into this home!

Matala, Crete family--circa April 5, 1968 (this might have been closer to Pitsidia than Matala)

From here we walked to Matala. There was a dusty road, with absolutely no traffic. I'm guessing we walked a couple of hours, finally arriving at the tiny village on a blue cove on the Mediterranean Sea. Either side of the cove was lined with cliffs, and in the cliffs were carved-out  caves--which, we assumed, were once used for burials. We found an empty cave and lived in it for a week.

A view of one of Matala's cliffs, with caves. [WWW.visitMatala.com]

A year or two later Joni Mitchell came to Matala. She wrote a beautiful song about the village and the "Mermaid Cafe" and the local wine and a boy named "Carey." I'll try to find a Youtube version of that:

So that was the day we learned Martin Luther King died. While in Crete, we had no news, no telephone, nothing, So we didn't have any sense of how America exploded after the assassination.

Postscript. I had a couple more memories of that visit to Matala and Crete I thought I'd mention. When Brian Wilson and I were walking to Matala, we passed through a little village where we saw people dining outside. I noticed they were eating escargot--snails. That was the first time in my life I saw people eating that! I'm guessing this was the village of Pitsidia. Maybe that's the town where we met the Greek family seen in the photo above.

Here's another strange memory. As we were hitchhiking back to Iraklion, an army convoy drove by us, then stopped and told us to get into the troop truck. We got in, with our guitar and backpacks. About 20 soldiers sat stiffly inside the truck, not speaking to us. Then, a few minutes later, someone in charge, maybe a sergeant or an officer, ordered us to get out of the truck. We had no idea what was going on. I do remember seeing the soldiers' weapons during this incident, but I wasn't really afraid. About a week later, in the Northern Italian (German-speaking) town of Bolzano, I was searched by an Italian federal policeman, a "carabinieri," with his machine gun pointed at me. Again, that ended without an actual arrest and with no violence.

40 years Ago Today: April 4, 1968, MLK RIP

My roommate Brian Wilson and I got on a ferry boat at Piraeus, Greece, just outside of Athens the evening of April 4, 1968. We hadn't seen a newspaper in days and were far from any televisions or radios--blissfully cut off from the Vietnam slaughters and the American race wars. The ferry was heading overnight to Iraklion, a city on the northern coast of the island of Crete. It was a very crowded boat, not luxurious in any way (and that was fine with us). Overnight some of the Cretans were playing a wild music on some sort of folk instrument played with a bow. Brian Wilson met a girl on the boat from Eastlake, Ohio, a Cleveland suburb just miles from my home in Euclid. I actually knew some of her relatives and had shopped in her family's little clothing store in Euclid. A young mother in my quarters pulled out her breast in public and began nursing her baby. I was astonished beyond belief, never having seen anything like that back home. I slept a little that night in the crazy cacophony, in a setting where Zorba the Greek would have felt quite at home.

In the morning we arrived at port in Iraklion. We hitched a short ride up a hill on the back of a moped and then began walking. We had only a vague clue where we were headed. Somewhere we had heard a vague rumor about a place on the south central coast of the island where we could live free in caves. The place was called Matala, so we decided to head there. When we got out of Iraklion, we began hitchhiking. Unfortunately for us, there were hardly any cars at all on the roads. Finally a truck came by carrying a full load of gravel and stopped. I hopped in the cab, but there wasn't room for Brian and his guitar. The driver signalled for Brian to get up on the load of gravel, which he did. We began driving over the incredibly bad roads of Crete, occasionally passing by areas where the road had been utterly ruined by earthquakes. I passed the time trying to talk to the driver. I only knew a few words and phrases of Greek, but I discovered he spoke some German--apparently useful in Greece during the World War II era. And that's when he told me: that Martin Luther King had been murdered. His German was shaky enough that I wasn't sure exactly what he was telling me: that the king was dead, was shot. The driver was deadly serious about this and he certainly communicated to me that something very serious, very terrible, had happened.

We had a few more rides that day and walked a great deal. We walked right past one of the most historic archaeological sites in the world: "Phaistos," an ancient civilization, almost a birthplace of the world I lived in. The final 10 miles or so of our journey was on foot. There were no cars, no buses, and very primitive roads to Matala. I do remember one beautiful moment. A Greek man noticed Brian's guitar and invited us into his home. He spoke a little English and introduced us to his family, told us of relatives in America. He brought out his pride and joy, a magnificent bouzouki, one that must have cost him a year's wages, and played it for us. I took a photo of that scene, inside this Cretan house, the man holding his bouzouki, his wife and children by his side. About 4000 miles away in America, all hell had broken loose. The grim tide of blood and chaos that WB Yeats had spoken of had been unloosed. Evil and hatred had its day in America, while Brian and I were so blessed by this man and his family in Crete.