Small Town Jermuk

Walking towards the cherry glass cabinet and picking up her frame Lara Akojyan stands in her small house glancing at her picture. In the picture there is a little girl wearing a pink dress and standing in a bundle of flowers. She looks up to the mirror and sees a woman in her 60s; tears fill her eyes thinking about the past and how fast the years went by. Even though she lives in Glendale, California, with her husband, she still remembers and misses her childhood life in Jermuk. Jermuk is a small town in the Southern Armenian province of Vayots Dzor. Lara lived in Jermuk until the age of twelve with her mom, dad, two sisters, and two brothers. Jermuk isn’t like any other town; it had its own specialties. It was a town full of mineral water and a resort which people attended to get their sicknesses cured. “In Jermuk I was like a butterfly from flower to flower from tree to tree, it is really a nice place.”

I am a woman in my sixties, who was born and raised in the small town of Jermuk, located in Armenia. During that time, Armenia was a small republic of the great Soviet Union. Jermuk was a place with mountains and lots of trees, making it seem forest like. There were streams in Jermuk that carried natural mineral water to us. In the town that I lived, everyone was like family. Traditions and hard-to-break habits were always celebrated together. We could not live away from one another for the whole town was in many ways related.

Of course there’s always gossip in a small town, life wouldn’t have been as interesting as it was if there was no gossip. The adults usually spoke of new and upcoming events. We received news by television. There were few newspapers; there was Avangart, and Sovetakan Hayastan. News spread rapidly around the town mostly due to only radio station in Jermuk. The younger generations would spent their day differently .I had a neighbor who I was very close with and during summer we would go to the movies, or climb the mountains. The movies back than also had ratings, if they were adult movies we couldn’t watch them unless we were sixteen and older. I would also spend a lot of time with my younger sibling. My sister and I both were small and we played almost the whole day. We played different games: with balls, with jump ropes, jumping and stuff. Of course we would do our homework’s first, because our mom was really strict and really demanding.

We all grew up together in the small own, all sharing the same ups and downs. We had many traditions starting with Easter ending with Christmas. Christmas was my favorite holiday. I liked receiving presents and I liked helping my family set the tree and later on clean it out. . We helped set the tree with sisters and fundamentally my dad helped more setting the tree than my mom, my mom didn’t have time, she was occupied with setting the table. Christmas was a big holiday for us because we all gathered with our relatives, everybody was together, and we didn’t do it separately.

During that time cars weren’t very common especially in Jermuk. I would say that barley twenty percent of the people had cars, the rest of us made use of the number of buses and trains in our town. Walking was also a big use of transportation; we went to school walking, we came back walking, we went to the movies walking, and we went to the park walking. School was a major part of our life, especially during the Soviet Union. Stalin was the leader of the Soviet people. However, Stalin did a lot of bad things he executed and deported close to 300,000 Armenians to Sibir. Naturally after Stalin’s death the deported people came back to their motherland.

Later on as days passed the Jermuk that I lived in with the broken down buildings and roads became a resort. Before 1945 no one wanted to visit Jermuk, people would go for the city life, but that all changed. When Jermuk became resort it started having connections with the cities and even people started visiting from other places like Russia. Many would visit Jermuk to get treatments from the mineral water. During the Soviet time people who worked at factories would get tickets to visit Jermuk with a lower payment. However not all were able to come. Russia was very far from Jermuk therefore it was very expensive to travel.

Jermuk had many nice places it had a lake where boats were driven. I sometimes went in them too. Facing the lake was a building that looked like a balcony. From there came the mineral water, which was impossible not to have on our tables. Mineral water not only came from there but also from the underground, it had holes, which the mineral water came from. Jermuk also had a park that had a narrow walkway. On the sides of the walkways were statues of soldiers that were made up of mountain rocks.

After the resort was built many of our former neighbors left the town. The town underwent a great change. The once rocky and broken down Jermuk was all rebuilt and ready for visitors. The new resort also brought new ethnic groups, but that was not a problem we all helped each other get along. We helped the visitors who needed help because they were people, they didn’t know Armenian and if they asked for something we would offer help. I myself helped with the building of Jermuk. I along with friends would plant flowers or trees along the roadsides. The school would take us out on a specific day during spring to plant the flowers or trees. Everybody wanted to do it and had pleasure in it; in fact the whole school would go. There was only one school during my time and Jermuk didn’t have any universities. Whoever learned well and wanted to continue had to go to Yerevan or Russia.

However today life is different from the life I lived. Life is harder and colder these days, we all carry one big load. However, back than that load wasn’t as heavy and stressful because there was always the warmth of your family and neighborhood.

                                                                                    Interviewed by Liana Karapetyan