Nov. 12, 2019
The McCleary HealthMart Pharmacy currently has a portrait of Nick Rillakis on display.
Rillakis had a store called Rhodes Grocery which basically stood on the very spot his portrait is on display. It was built in the 1920s and heralded as the first concrete structure in town. In the final years of this building it was festooned with murals by James Abbott and served as a storage unit place as it fell into increasing neglect and disrepair. In the 1980s-1990s Abbott's work was all over the place but is now more difficult to locate.
Anyway Nick was part of the Greek wave of workers who came to McCleary when old Henry lured foreign workers here who were not likely to unionize and would be prone to demand to be treated like human beings instead of the slaves they became. Unlike the Italians who came here, the Greeks were economically better off from their point of origin. Those who were not killed in the woods or died from other causes and landed in the McCleary Cemetery just made their wad of dough and went back home. But a few Greeks hung around and the last ones survived into the 1970s.
Some of the Greeks ran a gambling house and bordello in the building that later served as The Pines restaurant and tavern. The Greeks also hosted some of the earliest meetings for the workers to unionize there. The space is now the big empty lot on Main and Maple.
I recall Nick as a rotund, bald, gregarious and bombastic fellow. The most notable part of his store was an old timey giant wheel of cheese close to the entrance where customers could select the size of their slice. Going into his store was sort of like making a trip back in time. But that describes a lot of McCleary in the 1960s.
