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  • 'Little Armenia'

    'LITTLE ARMENIA'
    By Kathleen Moore

    The Globe
    April 1, 2010

    Watertown's Hood Rubber Co. was hub of ethnic neighborhood a century
    ago, film recalls

    It was demolished more than 40 years ago, but Watertown's Hood Rubber
    Co. never really disappeared from Areka Der Kazarian's memories. At
    98, she still smiles when someone mentions the once-bustling factory
    that gave her a job not long after she fled her native Armenia.

    "At 16, I went to work at Hood because there were no jobs for
    my brother, and I could make $18 to $20 a week," says the former
    conveyor-belt operator. "It was important to have that money because
    we had to eat.

    Areka Der Kazarian was not the only one.

    A newly released documentary, "Destination Watertown: The Armenians of
    Hood Rubber," is introducing local audiences to the "Little Armenia"
    that formed within the now-defunct sneaker and tire manufacturer
    during the first half of the 20th century.

    "Really, in some ways Hood Rubber was a sweat shop, and they worked
    under very trying conditions," said Roger K. Hagopian, an amateur
    filmmaker who produced and directed the 68-minute documentary. "But
    good or bad, it was the foundation of their community. When they
    remember Hood, they remember their parents, their grandparents,
    their families who worked there."

    A self-employed businessman who calls Lexington home, Hagopian,
    60, is long removed from the grueling factory work that allowed his
    grandmother to flourish in her adopted country.

    But Hagopian is never far from his history.

    Over the last 14 years, he has produced four other films that explore
    Armenian experience: "Memories of Marash," "Journey of an Armenian
    Family," "Our Boys," and "Memory Fragments of the Armenian Genocide."

    "Destination Watertown," which Hagopian completed last year
    and debuted at the Watertown Free Public Library in December, is
    replete with charming black-and-white photographs and trembling news
    reels from the 1920s and '30s. It also gives a brief history of the
    Armenian migration that contributed to the plant's success. Narrator
    Robert Mirak, board president of the Armenian Cultural Foundation,
    gently introduces viewers to the gruesome backdrop -- genocide --
    that prompted thousands of Armenians to move to Watertown around the
    time of World War I.

    But it is Hagopian's decision to give most of the air time to the
    former employees and neighbors of Hood Rubber that brings "Destination
    Watertown" alive. Often salty, at times gauzy, their reminiscences
    lend an unmistakable grace to Watertown history.

    "You ask me what was the impact of the Hood Rubber Company on the
    neighborhood, and I'm puzzled," former Oak Street resident George Mooza
    says to an off-camera interviewer. "Hood Rubber was the neighborhood."

    Mooza's observation is not too much of a stretch. Founded by
    Frederic and Arthur Hood in 1896, the Hood Rubber Co. was a major
    local employer for nearly 75 years, using as many as 10,000 laborers
    in its heyday. The multiacre complex in East Watertown included a
    fully automated factory, a research lab (believed to be the first
    of its kind in the country), and the Abraham Lincoln House, where
    workers could get medical services and tutoring in English. For the
    struggling immigrants who flocked to its gates each day, the most
    important thing it offered was a steady paycheck.

    "Word spread as far away as the Ottoman Empire that there was work to
    be found at a place called the Hood Rubber Company," Mirak reminds us.

    "By the end of the 1920s, approximately 3,500 Armenians, or 10 percent
    of the population, were living in Watertown, and more than 500 were
    working at Hood Rubber."

    The working conditions that prevailed in many turn-of-the-century
    factories would shock modern sensibilities. Hood Rubber was no
    different.

    "I think if OSHA had known what went on, they'd have objected,"
    said Mark Der Mugrditchian, a former worker.

    Areka Der Kazarian calmly recalls getting her right hand caught
    in the conveyor belt, causing an injury that kept her out of work
    for a month. Her ring finger has been set at a 45-degree angle ever
    since. The filmmaker's own grandmother, Hranoush Hagopian, was run
    over by a cart, one of many that transported materials around the
    mammoth plant. There were no lawsuits. There were no complaints.

    "They say I could have sued, but I didn't know any better," Der
    Kazarian says. "It was a job."

    The air inside the plant was often infused with rubber dust, and
    its huge smokestack regularly spewed ominous black smoke into the
    air. Several former employees and neighbors interviewed by Hagopian
    said they suspect this contributed to the cancer that they or their
    relatives later developed.

    "The smell of burning rubber was like waking up and smelling the
    leaves," says Mooza. "If the wind was right . . . you could get the
    stockyards in Brighton and the fires from the junkyards in Watertown."

    Long before there were focus groups or market surveys, Hood Rubber
    recruited dozens of local kids to test its sneakers, including the
    popular PF Flyer.

    These weekly distributions were more frenzied lotteries than sober
    consumer research, but no one seemed to notice.

    "The wearability of those sneakers was based on the activities of
    Watertown kids," says Leon Janikian, a former Dexter Avenue resident.

    "We used to ride our bikes and drag our feet so we'd get a new pair,"
    Der Mugrditchian admits.

    More than anything, the "sneaker tests" divided the neighborhood into
    two groups: the ones who got a pair, and the ones who didn't. Decades
    later, many of Hagopian's subjects were still keenly aware of which
    group they fell into.

    "I'd wait until they opened. . . If they had your size, you'd get
    the shoe," says Katherine Kaloyanides. "I had small feet so it was
    almost an impossibility for me to get a pair. I don't think I ever
    got sneakers."

    Rose Magarian had better luck.

    "I used to wait two to three hours to get a pair, but I was a good
    test girl," she says. "My mother had me running around all day."

    Bob Sanasarian was not so blessed.

    "My mother thought it was a good thing that I never got any sneakers.

    She thought that I should only be wearing leather shoes."

    Roger Hagopian's documentaries can been seen at the Armenian Library
    and Museum of America, 65 Main St., and purchased on DVD by contacting
    him at [email protected].

    Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company
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