We are nothing more than reflections of our childhood and all the interactions with out fathers and mothers our brothers, sisters, our uncles, aunts and cousins…. this we are in fact a reflection of all of them and all the ‘stuff’. I have such strong traits of my father, his ability to yell and holler at a drop of a hat. He was a captain in the United States Merchant Marine and later the United States Coast Guard, he commanded ocean going ships. He was never not going to be giving commands and letting you know who is in charge….. ever watched myself when I was a little upset or not happy with a “result”? This not genetic as much as exposure to those in our environment and that same environment.
My father was a great man and a great provider and did his best to support and raise a family while out to sea for months at a time. For me, personally, I always felt there was something behind those ‘curtains’ that I was never allowed to look behind, as a child. I would find out years later while living on Everett Dr. Newhall, Calif. Especially my aunt Rena, my dad’s sister and she had a strong personality, pushy actually. Whenever I was in the room she would switch to Armenian and could look at me in such away as if she had pulled a dirty foreskin out of her mouth. She tolerated me, it was obvious to me as a child. Something that really pisses me off to this very day, if everyone is speaking English and for some reason switch to a foreign language. Sorry that is just fucking rude, and I generally will leave the area or inform them that we better all switch back to English or I am done! I too, know the difference when it is my world or someone else’s, after all I am John J. Nazarian.
After my mother died (March 1962) I was sent off to live in Aunty Rena’s and Uncle Jack’s house on 224 Governors Avenue, Medford, Mass. I was only 10 years old and I can recall that night as if it had just happened. It was raining and I was sitting in the front seat of my dad’s 1962 Chrysler Imperial. I had never seen my dad cry and he tells me in no uncertain terms, “your mother died”. I believe it was Boston City Hospital and I had just left after visiting with my mom and now this. I was inconsolable as was my father. It was just terrible and as I stated, my mom’s death had a terrible impact on me, for years later. I was with my mom every hour of the day and night except when I had to go to school. School was tough for me, every time I heard a siren or saw an ambulance racing through town, I thought it was my mother in trouble. Pretty terrible for a child as I look back as I reflect on how I became what I am today. It was because of my mother’s illnesses I learned how to make a simple sandwich or how to warm a can of soup, my mom was bed ridden much of the time and it was always just us. It was my job to get my own food and if she needed something to get that, too. I was just a little kid. When we went to see her doctors, we would go have spaghetti at some diner while we waited for a taxi to take us home.
Living at Rena’s and Jack’s with their 3 kids was interesting, Joseph, Nancy and Philip were high achievers in school and I was the ‘troubled’ kid in school. Due to my truancy and I guess I had other bad habits, go figure as far as many were concerned I was just the ‘bad seed’. Funny that in the end I ended up with more financial success than any of them.
Nancy was a real piece of work, it was the 60’s and she seemed awkward and always under the eye of Aunty Rena. I often wonder if she ever got laid other than by her own hand. Nancy was pretty good at playing the piano and was close with her little brother Philip. Philip played the violin and was pretty good at that too, at one point it was thought that I too could do the same, “John play the violin”, very short lived musical career.
Sending me out to rob banks would have made more sense, my god a violin!? Joseph helped my uncle at the family variety store in Cambridge, Joe was a pervert, enough said on that. Was never married, I wonder if he had girlfriends or boyfriends who got tied up? I enjoyed all of them most of the time, Philip and I were close due that we were the same age. Lots of good times and lots of not so happy times, that I feel was my fault as not taking advantage of now having a house and being in a “family” setting. What next, was I going to have to wear shoes?? It just was not my family and this would in fact be proven years later, I was the adopted one! It would be revealed in the 70’s that I was in fact adopted as an infant. I was born in a hospital for the mentally ill and criminally insane. Just another bump in the road of life that was John J. Nazarian.
