The Early Days in Philadelphia (about Armenian women and men)

When anyone speaks of the good old days, in reference to the immigrant days of our 
refugee Armenians, they’re not talking about their quality of life, but of their tenacious 
ability to re-establish their plundered past.


Malatia, the section that my parents were from, was located in the interior of Armenia and 
was quite difficult to escape from when the Turks started massacring our people.  This 
was true of all interior villages, and it was because of this that the percentages of victims 
from these areas was higher than border towns or ports.  When I was growing up, all 
Armenians talked of loved ones whom the Turks had massacred.  It didn’t shock us 
because we had bee told horrible stories about our own family relatives and accepted the 
massacre as part of being Armenian.


A great many of the young Armenian men who came to America during those early years 
came without women.  Some of the more unfortunate among them were not experienced 
in Western ways, fell victim to venereal diseases.  The more sensible and conservative 
held onto their meager earnings in order to bring surviving family members to this 
country.  Almost every Armenian family had someone they were sending money to 
overseas -- money that they desperately needed for themselves.  


During those early turbulent years, it wasn’t uncommon for an unattached male to 
romance and propose marriage through correspondence.   Because of the massacre, there 
were many orphaned children with many blossoming young girls among them.  They 
were in charge of orphanages operated by sympathetic philanthropic organizations.  
Correspondence was one of the means they used to relocate many of these unfortunates 
into a new life.  Through the information they supplied, eligible men could make a 
selection from a supplied list of available females.  After initiating formal correspondence 
and exchanging photographs (with some personal assurances, of course), the marriage 
contract would be consummated.  Some of the brides were hardly fifteen and the men 
they married were, at times, old enough to be their fathers.  It was, without a doubt, a 
cold, unromantic and calculated way to get the job done, but looking at the non-existent 
alternatives, it was logical and practical for those times.


In Philadelphia and throughout the Western world, the sicknesses people died most from 
in those days were consumption (tuberculosis) and pneumonia.  If you had a bleeding 
ulcer and you didn’t bleed to death, you probably would have three-quarters of your 
stomach removed.  Quite frequently, someone got appendicitis; if it burst, it was generally 
fatal.  There was a lot of blood poisoning in those days -- antibiotics had not been 
discovered yet.  As children grew, they had to survive a gauntlet of juvenile illnesses:  
Diphtheria, measles, chicken-pox, mumps, whooping cough, scarlet fever, to name a few.  

During 1917, an influenza epidemic raged through the United States and a great many 
Armenians fell victim to it.

Through the twenties and on through the depression, these new immigrant Philadelphia 
families had their work cut out for them.  It was a total team effort.  The wife would take 
care of the children and the home, miraculously stretching her husband’s small earnings 
beyond all imaginable limits.  For added income, she would usually take to weaving 
shade pulls at a time for a penny a pull.  The curtain factory would supply her with yarn 
and rings, and while she was sitting and talking to her husband or guests, she would be 
weaving pulls.  A spool of yarn would be on the floor while the rings, finished pulls and 
tools would be in a wooden cheese box on her lap.  She would boil water on her stove for 
laundry while her evening meal was cooking; she would hand scrub her laundry with 
brown soap, hand wring them and hang them up to dry, then iron what needed ironing.  
She would bathe herself and her children every Saturday night before bedtime.  
Sometimes she would pack food and toilet articles, get her toddlers and meet the ladies at 
the Turkish Bath for a day out.  One day a week she would get her oilcloth shopping bags 
and take a trolley to South Street to buy food for the family.  She would bake choreg, 
paklava, cook yalanji and sarma for festive occasions.  She would make parag hutz for the 
family -- soojoogh and basterma for Sunday’s eggs.  She would clean and requilt the 
family bedding periodically and take care of all the bedbugs along the way.   She never 
got sick even when she got sick -- she always kept some delicacies hidden from the 
children in case unexpected guests dropped in.  And this is only a part of what those 
women did.  However, the most amazing quality about these women was that with all the 
suffering they had experienced -- with all the horrible memories they carried from the 
massacre -- with the never-ending day-to-day struggle they were involved in, they still 
had time to care for their loved ones, bear children, and remain optimistic about their 
future.


Things weren’t any easier for their husbands.  There were no labor unions, minimum 
wage laws, overtime, retirement packages, social security, medical benefits, or 
unemployment compensation.  The jobs, if you were lucky to find one, were usually the 
hardest in labor, longest hours, lowest wages and you sometimes had to slip the foreman 
something if you wanted to stay on.   A lot of the Armenian men who came to 
Philadelphia wound up at the sugar refineries, the dye works, or the tanneries.  They 
rented homes that were within walking distance to where they worked.  They weren’t 
concerned whether the neighborhood was white or black as long as the rent was cheap.  
Many a time a family would move out at early sunrise because the rent was due.  If you 
couldn’t pay your rent, a constable would come and evict you after the landlord had taken 
claim to some of your possessions to cover the money you owed.  It wasn’t uncommon to 
see a houseful of furniture on the sidewalk -- in the rain -- in the snow -- whatever the 
weather, with the family guarding the remainder of their belongings while the husband 
went around trying to get help from his friends.  Among the Armenians, a dispossessed 
family would usually move in with another until they got back on their feet.  As time 
went on, Armenian men worked themselves up to better level jobs or went into 
businesses of their own.


Old country Armenians were very social.  There was always one family visiting another -- 
kids and all -- and usually unannounced because no one could afford telephones in those 
days much less speak English well enough to tell the operator what party they wanted.  Of 
course unannounced visits would be considered rude today, but it was considered normal 
then.  In any case, when a family visited another unannounced, the mother would push 
one of the kids out of the back door to get a few things from the store.  Incidentally, one 
of the most important requirements in a rented house was that (edevee toor) back door.   
There were no supermarkets then, but you could always find a ‘momma-poppa’ store on a 
nearby corner.  


If the store was closed, you’d ring the bell because the people who owned the store 
usually lived upstairs and never turned business away.


When Armenians got together on such occasions, the men would sit around the table and 
talk; they would drink and eat while the women served them and kept the children in line.  
If you were a child and you were visiting, and if your host offered you something to eat, 
you were taught; even if you were starving to death you were taught never to act hungry.


The accepted alcoholic drink among Armenians was Raki.  No Armenian table was 
considered complete without it and almost every Armenian family knew how to make it.  
I especially remember my grandfather when he made Raki.  He would crush the water 
soaked raisins, put them in a large crock, add lukewarm water, mix in some sugar and 
start the ferment with a mixture of yeast.  When the right time came, and he always knew, 
he would put the ferment into his copper still and boil the whiskey out of it.  I’ll never 
forget how serious he was before starting the stilling and how happy he was after the first 
gallon.  I suppose it was partly from the fumes that escaped from the still and partly 
because he had to keep testing it in order to maintain quality control.  He would distill the 
mash in the cellar and stuff the windows and cracks with old rags so the smell wouldn’t 
get outside.  


He was afraid of getting caught by the "vostigan" (Armenian for policeman).  Nothing 
stopped the flow of Raki, not even prohibition.  Looking back, my grandfather must have 
inhaled more Raki than he drank when he was stilling.  Though he may not have been in 
good spirits when he started, he was always in good spirits before he finished.


Those early Armenians were very clannish and they had reason to be.  They spoke little 
English, if at all.  They had funny names and the natives looked on them as foreigners or 
"starving Armenians."  As a result, they stayed to themselves coming out into the 
mainstream only when it was necessary -- to earn income or to shop for their needs.  
Whatever social life they had was confined to their close-knit community.


Armenians did everything with spirit.  Not because everything they did was something 
special, but because they made something special out of everything they did.  They didn’t 
have too much going for them so they made everything count.  For instance, on one given 
Sunday during every summer, two or more families would go on an outing to pick grape 
leaves.  The women would fill their oilcloth shopping bags with food and drink, get the 
family together and go.  No one stayed at home.  They would leave early in the morning 
and return by early evening with the shopping bags filled with grape leaves.  In any case, 
the women and the kids usually bore the brunt of it.  They were the ones who usually 
came back with the insect bites, thorn scratches, sunburn, sumac, poison oak, and poison 
ivy.  The men fared much better.   For one thing, no grape leaf picking sortie would be 
complete without Raki and with it, the men seemed to manage the day with less pain and 
discomfort.  Besides that, men never changed from winter  to summer underwear or short 
sleeve shirts in those days.  They always wore long underwear the year round with long 
sleeve shirts.  And there would all be, at the end of a grape leaf picking day, sitting 
around a big table stacking and bundling the leaves, getting them ready for boiling and 
jarring, while they laughed, sang and joked like they were having the time of their lives.


These were people who had suffered, seen their loved ones killed, seen their villages and 
homes destroyed.  They hated the Turks for what they had done.  But with all that, they 
made time to laugh and play and they even turned some of their struggles into moments 
of joy.  When the older ones talked about something the children shouldn’t hear, they 
spoke in Turkish.  When they got angry, I mean real angry, they always cursed in Turkish.  
They made no effort to restrict or restrain their use of anything that they had been a part 
of their lives.  They were Armenians and they were proud of it.  They set no standard 
other than they one they lived by.  


Joseph Vosbikian