By Jerry Stamatelos

Once upon a time there was an island on the Greek Sea called Tradition. Tradition’s port embraced dozens of sturdy wooden trawlers where fishermen toiled and flirted with the sea, with only the usual rude interruption from a ferry.

Tradition’s town was large enough to buzz with activity, but small enough for the townspeople to know each other’s business. "Kalimera—Good morning!" could be heard exhaling from the gateway of one soul to another.

The town was wrapped by tiny villages that hugged Tradition’s redolent mountainous spine. Some of them were roosted hazardously along gnarled cliffs that lunged into the sea, a sea where wavering pines screened clear turquoise waters and fine dove-white sands. Others were tucked between rolling hills and rested like drowsy cats basking in a garden. Wild flowers and shrubs—peeking— carpeted the interior.

Under the vigilant eyes of the villagers, Tradition’s soil poured out produce from a surreal wonderland of olive groves trimmed with orange and lime trees. Donkeys burdened with goods drudged up and down the green countrysides. Tinkling sheep and goat bells joined in on the chorus of birds, bees and cicadas. Everything on Tradition blended like a baton leading an orchestra.

Unlike its neighbors, it had defied the impact of the travel industry. It remained unmolested because the inhabitants were just like the tenacious, durable plants that gripped its soil. No commercial air whatsoever, totally unprocessed. They certainly weren’t in any hurry to join the modern world. They were pessimists about the future but optimists about the past, like a baseball player trying to steal second base while keeping his foot on first.

The soul of most inhabitants was sentimentality, and it preserved the good and the bad with indiscriminate relish. There was loyalty to fossilized customs, perfectly healthy legs that hadn’t learned to walk forward.

Then one day, Tourism decided to pay Tradition a visit.

"I’ve come to make you an offer." Tourism spoke mightily and loudly so all of Tradition’s inhabitants who were gathered at the town square could hear him. The turnout was indeed encouraging. Tourism never appears nervous, wordy, or unsure of himself, and always uses appropriate gestures and facial expressions. How else could his sales pitch have worked on the neighboring islands?

"Well, let’s hear it even though you’re wasting your time." The mayor’s impulse was backed by an undercurrent of voices.

Tourism decided not to dilly-dally and get to his sales pitch at once: "Look, the other islands have built homes for their children, sent them to schools and educated them. One day your children will hate you because of your stubbornness. Don’t you want what’s best for them?"

The townspeople as well as a few villagers fell silent. Tourism pierced their frailties as easily as a knife through butter.

"If you agree to my terms, I’ll get you special loans from the government to build. In a few years you’ll have paid the loans and will be able to start putting the money in the bank for your futures."

"Have you seen what’s happened to the other islands as a result?" The lone voice of the mayor barked like a dog. As their spokesperson, he felt the need to put up a fight.

"It’s up to you. Do you want to stay the way you are while everyone around you progresses? Like I said before, think of your children." This was yet another stab wound after the fatal one.

Tradition agreed to start welcoming its first package tour groups that summer with the understanding that if they were in any way to its detriment, Tourism would move on. Over the winter, Tourism’s construction crews almost became as quotidian as Tradition’s sheep.

For the first few summers, Tourism bloomed on the island’s periphery, still unsuspecting of the ecstatic serenity of the interior. Vacationers were greeted with a kindly disposition and a dash of bewilderment. They feasted and imbibed boisterously all night long. Authenticity, value and quality became Tradition’s mantras and couldn’t be stressed enough. Owners tinged their service and food with the zest of celebration. Priests, papous (grandfathers) and yiayias (grandmothers) turned a blind eye to skimpy bathing suits, while younger generations welcomed them like bread from a wood oven stove.

But Tradition’s wealth was becoming painfully lopsided. All the town could do was watch the small and removed seaside communities become thriving resort centers, magnets to Tourism’s currencies.

With an alarming frequency, agonizingly obvious, drab, anomalous hotels of all shapes and sizes uncontrollably sprouted up like wild invasive plants and inhibited what were once intoxicating, numbing views. Blissfully secluded villages discouragingly coexisted with these and other modern, homogeneous establishments catering blatantly to Tourism.

Townsfolk scurried like ants, hurrying what was once a leisurely pace in their areas. "Kalimera" was speedy. As a result of this megalomaniacal effort, pre-cast frames of future lodgings protruded threateningly in the countrysides, providing a hillside mass of dispiriting gray-white dwellings in their wake.

But Tradition’s wealth was still disproportionate, far less so though. All the villages could do was watch the town now able to keep pace with the small and removed seaside communities in prosperity.

With dizzying regularity, the appallingly thunderous sound of building crews boomed throughout Tradition’s indestructibly tranquil interior. Goat-trodden paths once unyielding to cars vibrated with the din of sun worshipers and the roar of buses. Sleepy villages echoed with the sounds of synthetic music beats, their peasant homes transformed into motor inns.

Tourism continued its creeping invasion. At the removed seaside communities, indiscriminate swarms of deep-fried tanners deluged the beaches, resembling gulls nesting along seacoasts. A discouraging variety of cigarette butts, bottles, and food littered the sands. What’s more, they listened and watched their ravingly drunk clientele do what drunk people do, until exhaustion sent everybody to bed.

A prefabricated eyesore welcomed them at Tradition’s town with a gloomy fusion of multilingual signs. Flagrant incongruities like tavernas involuntarily found themselves between impolitely interrupting, faithfully prosaic fast food restaurants, and displeasing fly-by-night industries selling American T-shirts, caps, and other paraphernalia.

The burbling town played host to tribes of vacationers. It droned with the rumble of buses carrying their cargo; a jangling mess of cameras and camcorders.

At night Tradition exploded into a daze of club lights, irreconcilable choruses of bar music and raucous crowds spilling over from them. Nights left behind a fragrance of beer, vomit and garbage from the inebriated bedlam.

Tradition’s port accommodated slick sailboats, grand yachts, brawny speedboats, and passenger ships. The townsfolk’s hawks armed with slick photo-montages of their amenities, elbowed and shouldered each other for strategic territorial space where ferries anchored. Everything about the island seemed to come right out of an elaborately staged musical performance, faithful to its tourist brochure luster, nothing more than ephemeral modern anomalies.

Sun worship and nightlife had overwhelmed Tradition. Tourism had hardened the inhabitants to visitors: impolite waiters; petite plates; fetid bathrooms; stratospheric prices; notorious noise. Even the free and easy she-gods with their microscopic G-strings wandered about neglected, a neglect that bordered on disdain. No more mingling fancy-free. Tradition’s inhabitants couldn’t put a disguise on mediocrity anymore. There was a likeable anarchy in their ways.

Tourism came less and less. Tradition’s inhabitants’ passive concern graduated to obsessive inquiries as to why. Townsfolk could be seen staring at the twinkling lights of the ferries as they ignored Tradition on their way to other destinations. The town council even considered an awareness campaign to reverse the dwindling numbers and slice once again for themselves a peace of the generously fat and inviting Greek Sea travel pie. Tourism was called in during the off-season for answers.

"Why?...why?" The mayor’s voice shouldered everyone’s climbing masochism of desperation and uneasiness. Neither elections nor a religious holiday could have gathered that many inhabitants at the plateia. "We’ve done everything that was asked of us to do. We even kicked our own sons and daughters from their beds to accommodate your xenous—foreigners. Why do they stop coming?"

Tourism leaned back as if suddenly smelling something sour. His nose wrinkled. "I’m afraid the Tradition that you’ve built and projected over the years is not what those traveling here want to see...anymore..."