Past Life- Nerses Karapetyan

Nerses Karapetyan in his late sixties sits back in a suburb neighborhood located in Glendale, California, and is reminiscing times as a child growing up in an Armenian village located in Abovyan with about a hundred people at the time. Times have changed, to be more exact life has changed. Going to school as a young boy; where land was full of dirt grounds, and grass fields. To messing around with the towns people he had a decent childhood within a country with communism applied to it. Where people didn’t have dreams they just went by what was set. By working as a plumber when there was nothing to strive for, but making sure you end up being able to take care of and support your family. People being safe in a small environment and all of us knowing each other made life much more different in all situations. Easy communication, clean air, with simplicity of life not needing extra necessities is what I miss most.

I lived in Armenian for forty-five years. The forty five years it was life interesting or not I lived there a big part of my life. I have two brothers and one sister. One brother older then me and one younger, and one older sister. I am the middle child. Fewer then, one hundred families lived there. You know that this country was a communist country and we didn’t have classes. We had one class, so we are all kind of middle class. During that time we cannot at least show it on the outside if you even have money or wealth.

  I was about seven years old when I started going to school. The name of the school is Tumanyan, a school by the name of one of the Armenian writers named Hovanes Tumanyan. This schools grade levels were from first grade to tenth grade, one school. I was seven when I started school and seventeen when I ended, ten grades. I went to the same exact school for ten years. In our classrooms we have books and we had about twenty students, we didn’t have in those days a lot of notebooks, but we had books. We were using poor quality papers in those days, not that much pens and pencils. In school I don’t remember hard work because I like to learn. In myself I never had hard work.

We had maybe five books for the whole class; it was enough for those days. The books were like today’s maybe, exactly what you needed those days standard for everyone there; you know what the government gave. We had the routine of going to school at eight o’clock and it finished at about three or four o’clock.  When you are young you don’t have any work routines in the morning. Summer times yea, but school times no. Just a little helping in the afternoon, like cleaning the yard, feeding the animals something like that we do, but no really that kind of job your responsible for. We had no different diversities in the village.

  We had pure Armenians all over the school, and talked Armenian language. After school it was sports of all kinds, kid games, playing soccer with the boys and the girls playing girl games. We usually played it was on dirt. Sneakers, very poor sneakers those days. If not we were running without shoes. The ball we had a ball we had sowed maybe three or four times already, very old one very used; you don’t play today with those kinds of balls.

  After we are finished with school In the Soviet Union time it’s mandatory for boys at the age of seventeen and eighteen when you finish you’re which is until tenth grade. After that you go to the army for two years. If you are healthy you keep on going. You don’t stay in your country. You go to one of the sixteen countries in the Soviet Union. I was in Tatarstan in the Soviet Union.

  The news in the town was very fast, between one day all news spreading because we communicate very fast everyday. There weren’t a lot of people in the village, but we see each other very fast almost the whole village saw another everyday going to work, school and you know. So kind of the inside news spread very fast. Women gossips, and male gossips and male gossips. Bad news as a gossip and good news goes very fast. I can tell you that there is no secret in a village so it’s very fast; news is going very fast. Those days we didn’t have newspapers, after that.

  We have a radio, one radio or two radios for the whole village and we have a village center, which was in the late forties early fifties. In the village we had one antenna and one radio so who liked it, listened to news after dinner. It was in Armenian. We had Russian language to, but we listened to it in Armenian. After dinner we go with our fathers to the village center and went and listened to the news. In the village center they played their board games and listened to the news and we did our thing. Yeah, that after dinner activities kind of. So outside news came from the same sources, no other sources. We didn’t even have newspapers those days there.

We took baths kept ourselves very clean. Took buckets of waters and heated and used it from head down. Used the same big black soap, didn’t have shampoo and conditioners the kinds we use today. We were happy; we used that to keep ourselves very clean.

  My family had animals, but it was limited because it was communist and we cannot get richer on the animals. We had two cows maximum, few sheep’s, chickens and roosters. There is a limit you can not have a lot.

 For transportation, it was a working bus one bus from the center or town. It came around to the center of the village daily maybe two times by the station. If they don’t break down, you catch them. But it was usually walking distance in the village. All of my life I walked to school.

In our village we were all Christians, but in the communist times you cannot talk about the religion, but really in families and the ninety percent of the other houses still kept their religion. We are Christian pure Christian. We are first Christians in the world Armenians. We didn’t have the voice and we kept it in our houses by praying and traditions.

 Traditions we have the tradition which was new years. It was because it had nothing to do with religion and it was easier to celebrate in communism. Also we have one on February fourteenth called Turundez we jump over fire. It was for families with new child and new couples; they gave out candies and things called poxeen. After that came summer time non religion based thing which was called vartevor were we watered each other. As a Christian we kept our spirits in our hearts.

  A memory I always carry one of them I will always remember. In our village we had a man in our town a little crazy, we called him Serop. He tried selling seeds or coffee beans in his sack. He was just trying to sell, but hey he’s a crazy person. He didn’t like when called him Serop HOP HOP. When I was a kid young ten years maybe eleven. One day on the street he stopped talking to the people, and I called Serop, HOP, HOP, and HOP. So he’s getting crazy and his eye is getting bigger. He dropped his sack and started running after me so I run. I run and I look back and see a big man after. I was scared a lot, so I just ran, ran until I knew no one was behind me. After that I saw him never face to face until he died, that is one of the big memories I had as a kid till today.

It has changed a lot there I arrived in 1946 we are together less then 100 families when I left it had more than fifty thousand population. You can see the difference. Even If you ask me late forties early fifties I wouldn’t see the city like now in my dreams. It’s a nice city and is getting bigger. Yeah a lot of differences, all people don’t know each other not like before it use to be. Things I miss most are, first of all it’s easy communication. Second one the clean air, and all the Mother Nature, fresh everything. Natural life, I just miss my natural easy life. Simple life we call it, no more extra necessities.

Interviewed by Argisht Karapetyan