Small Town Memories

It’s a beautiful spring day, and Katrina Chilian is enjoying the warm sunny weather sitting in her back yard of her Atwater Village home. The weather reminds her of her youth, those careless days of summer and swimming in the Golf of Corinth…she smiles as the sun warms her face. She is my great aunt, and one of my grandma’s closest friends. We talk about her experience of her birthplace and childhood in the town of Vrahati. Vrahati is a small seaside town about an hour away from Athens, Greece. Yes, life was difficult in those days, but overall her memories of her childhood are pleasant.

She has been living in Atwater Village for the past twenty-eight years. Katrina is seventy-four years old. She lost her husband of forty-three years a few years ago, but she lives next door to her son and his family and she is very happy.

In 1922, my parents came to Greece from Turkey. The Greeks had saved the Armenians from the hands of the Turkish government around the time of the Armenian Genocide. We were brought to Vrahati. I was born in 1934 in Vrahati. We lived a long time in that village and my parents worked hard to support our family. They were laborers. My mother was a carpet weaver. She worked in a small factory and used a dasgas to make the carpets. My father was a carpenter and a handy man. He would ask around for small jobs.

There were six kids in the family; I had four brothers and a sister. For my family of eight, our house only had two bedrooms. We had a long corridor and the rooms. We had no gas in the house. Small electrical stoves were used for cooking. Our house did not have water; we would go to one of many outdoor water faucets to bring water for our mothers use. It was not far, only ten minutes by foot. There were no laundry machines. When my mom had to do laundry, she would heat the water and use rugged wooden boards to wash our clothes.

When we were little my mom would make our clothes and would dress us up. When we got a little older, we would buy our clothes from one of the village stores where clothes were affordable. There were no big stores in Vrahati, if we wanted to buy nice clothes, we would take the bus to the city.

Vrahati had three churches. Every Sunday morning, people would get up, get dressed in their nice clothes, and head off to church without having breakfast. We did the same thing; our whole family went to church on Sundays. Then we would come home and have something to eat.

My mom would say “come prepare this for me.” She would ask me to start preparing dinner. I would start and she would come and finish it. Then I would help with cleaning outside, watering the plants, sweeping the porch. These were the daily tasks that we had to do to help out. We couldn’t just go to school and worry about homework.

We had a dog, I would feed the dog, give it baths. We couldn’t leave the dog alone, and when we came from school it would run to us wanting to play.

Vrahati would get the newspaper from Athens. Whoever was literate would read the paper and tell others about current events. Of course, us Armenians didn’t know the Greek language we didn’t read it. We just heard the news from other people and elders.

Most people had elementary education. The doctors were the only educated people in the village. They would try and support others of lower class however they could.

There was only one school in Vrahati. We went to school, but for my parents it was more important to help them around the house then worry about homework. So when I came home, I had to clean around the house and organize things before my parents got home.

I believe that having education is better then money. You can have money today and not have it tomorrow, but people who have an education can always get paid.

I was five, in 1939 when World War II started. The Germans came. There would be many times when my father would do work for the Germans. He would chop firewood for them, or do little jobs just so he could support his family. Most of the time though, there wasn’t much work.

Near Vrahati there is a city called Korinthos. The city used to sit on the hilltop, but a severe earthquake in 1858 moved it closer to the beach. Now the ruins of that city are a tourist attraction. People come and admire old and new Korinthos. As for the new city, it’s beautiful.

We lived on the side of the village close to the beach. The Sea, Golf of Corinth was beautiful and was amazing. In the morning we would go to the beach. Our favorite thing was to sit and enjoy the weather. We would watch and study the fishermen. In the evening we would swim in the sea, it was a spectacular sea, and the sunsets were extravagant. During the summer month’s people from Athens would come and fill up Vrahati for its beaches.

The beaches here and the beaches there are totally incomparable because here, it’s an ocean; it’s cold and has big waves mixed with sand, you can’t swim far. As for the Mediterranean Sea, it’s refreshing, clean, and warm. The beach sitting area is clean and the sea is so calm that it looks like cement. You can even see the pebbles on the bottom of the water.

I remember almost every day our parents would take us to the beach. There were these special places that sold suvlaki next to the beach. Here they call them kebab. There were little meat pieces lined up on sticks. It was delicious- wrapped up in pita bread. When we were little we would get really excited over it. We would eat our suvlaki joyfully. Then we would race to the beach to wet our feet. We all had the best childhood.