MY ARMENIAN HERITAGE

I grew up a mutt actually, half Armenian, half German Swedish Danish etc. My folks were both artists & we were raised in a huge old brick one room schoolhouse in rural Wisconsin. I think my dad was trying to protect us from the shame & humiliation he felt as a kid, being an immigrant. He insisted on raising us "American" even tho we begged him to teach us Armenian. My grandfather Ohanas committed suicide by drinking a bottle of lye shortly before I was born. My other grandfather (Hentry Kohl) was hit by a drunk driver & killed around the same time. Shall we say I was born into a chaotic angst?

I loved my gramma more than all the stars in the universe. Because we did not share a spoken language, we spoke the language of love. That included her braiding my hair, teaching me how to crochet & make Armenian pin lace, and feeding me weird things. She smelled funny, like pine tar soap and mothballs and garlic. She loved me unconditionally & beyond measure.

They were not happy people; in his homeland my grandfather had come home one day to find his wife and children had been raped, massacred & beheaded by the Turks. He convinced them to spare himself because he knew how to cook, and had a fine hand hammered brass pot in which to do so. He traveled with them after that, witnessing their atrocities, feeding them in order to stay alive. He had two gold pieces which he kept tucked inside his rectum. They are still around somewhere, as is the pot.

Eventually he met my grandmother Rebekah, in Constantinople. She was in love with a Turkish soldier, which was a no no and destined not to be. The two of them decided on a marriage of convenience in order to qualify for passage to the United States, where they had been told by missionaries the streets were paved with gold. Single folk had little chance of securing passage on these mission boats. There was no love between them, just the common goal of survival.

Their first son, Arturo, was born on the boat. It was a slow boat. When they arrived in Boston, my grandfather, Ohan, was devastated to find the streets were not actually paved in gold. He was bitter ever after that, about being lied to. My father was born in Boston & named Katcheek. Years later, after too many years of being called "cat shit" by schoolmates, he changed his name to John Jack. It was as American as he could come up with. This was made simple by the army, who could not find a birth certificate and made a new one up for him.

As a child his first day of school was the first time he was exposed to the English language. They had Armenian neighbors & friends, shopped at Armenian stores, went to the Armenian church. My grandparents never did learn English, and my grandfather in particular was a very unhappy and unfulfilled man. Because of his lack of education, and the depression, he was scrambling to feed the family working whatever manual jobs he could find. When the public relief people came to the house & humiliated them, my dad wrote a letter to the Whitehouse describing how they had made his mother cry by treating her badly. President Herbert Hoover wrote back personally, apologizing and promising to change that, and the state welfare folk actually came back to the house & apologized!

My father joined the army but only lasted several months. In basic training, it was his job to show the Venereal Disease films to all of the new recruits. It was bad enough watching them once, but a steady diet of this hastened a mental breakdown. He got a discharge for being homesick basically, and returned home to attend the Layton School of Art on the GI bill, where he met my mother. He met her in the elevator, she had a long blond braid that he tugged on & pissed her off royally. Neither of them could recall being apart after that day. They wanted a dozen kids, they settled for six. I was the eldest.
Smooch,
Auntie Hattie