Amerikai Magyar Szó, 1986. július-december (40. évfolyam, 27-49. szám)
1986-10-09 / 38. szám
Thursday, Oct. 9. 1986. AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZÓ 7. JÓCSÁK AND SON BY JOHN T. GOJACK The gripping story of the struggle of a Hungarian American immigrant family. An unforgettable epic of life in America. n. Erzsébet was at the same meeting in front of the Catholic Church in Sárköz where Janos and his brothers signed up for the promised land, but her strong ties to family, especially her ailing mother, helped her resist the Labor Recruiter's description of America as heaven on earth. For almost a year Erzsébet Vigh, soon to be Elizabeth Vig, was intrigued by the ideas planted by Mosonyi, labor broker for the Barney <5c Smith Car Works and smaller employers in Dayton, Ohio. The fabulous jobs he promised and the people who left for them, became the major subjects for conversation in Sárköz-Újlak. Elizabeth never forgot how she saw the first group leave for America. Being a good Catholic, she helped bid them farewell with blessings. "Have you heard from America?" Elizabeth would ask friends and neighbors. None of these peasants could afford school, so they could not read or write. Yet there was always someone who, for a modest sum or favor, would write a letter or card to let the folks in the Old Country know how they were doing. Reports raced down the village's only street of "Good news from the Nagy family", or "the Gabors", or "Tibor Szabó", or whichever friend or relative sent a message home. Recipients of news from the New World knew that Elizabeth would pass the news quickly and accurately. Elizabeth's reputation as the best and fastest weaver in the village was even more widespread than as a messenger. "Erzsébet Vigh?" she was often asked by those who did not know her. They noted her proud "igen", the Hungarian "yes". Her blue eyes and dark brown hair, thick, wavy and very long, caught their attention. This beautiful and striking young woman, who wore her hair in braids wound around her head, and who was five feet, six inches tall while most Hungarian women were shorter, left a strong impression. Despite her fine appearance, Elizabeth was not strong and was prone to illnes. Yet, within a year after the first Hungarian group followed the Pied Piper, Mosonyi, to Dayton, Elizabeth decided to leave her home for an unknown country and unknown future. Why did Elizabeth leave on this long journey to a strange land? Until then she had never traveled beyond Szatmár the shopping town just twelve miles away. She never saw Debrecen, the great cultural and educational center and birthplace of Hungarian independence, only about seventy-five miles away. Elizabeth's older sister, Mary Vig, declined to join her, though she did follow the trail to Dayton six years later. Mary was not alone in resisting Mosonyi's sales efforts. In fact, the overwhelming majority of the village never left Sárköz, despite the compelling evidence from friends and relatives of a better life in America. Many men left their families and sent money for them to come over when possible. A few saved their money carefully and returned to Hungary, richer for a time at least. Since all were more or less in the same circumstances, why did most hesitate to go to America when all were descendants of the nomadic Magyars? Hungarians were always known to be courageous people. The Vig sisters were in a large family and had a fairly comfortable life in sárköz, for peasants living off a small plot of land. As soon as I could travel to Europe, I had to look for her home village. Five trips were failures because the village name was changed. In 1976 I found my relatives in Sárköz, with a cousin living in the same house that Elizabeth and Mary Vig left in 1907 and 1913. It was a solidly built brick bungalow, expanded in recent decades with more bedrooms. My sister Pauline, from Dayton, Ohio and visiting Hungary for the first time, checked the house out thorougly. Our Magyar relatives were proud of it. Outside, they had a bountiful garden on one-half acre or more. There was no indoor plumbing or water, none in the entire village. On the way to the well, under a grape arbor and just outside the main door, Pauline whispered to me, "Johnny, this house is better than mine in Dayton." One of the boys dropped the bucket down the well and it went down quite a way before we heard the splash. Cranking up the rope, we soon saw the over-flowing bucket. With a big cup, my cousin offered me a drink, and another for Pauline. "This is the same well your mother drank from. Nothing has been done to it over the years," he said. Even before hearing that, I realized it was the coolest, sweetest drink of water I ever had. When he mentioned our mother drinking the same water, Pauline and I both had a good cry. Four or five times in the past forty years, I have had nightmares about my mother, and always went into another room so my heavy sobbing would not wake others. "Why did she have to die, why did she have to die? Only thirty-two years old, with six children, why did she have to die?" is the recurrent cry in those dreams. Elizabeth Vig came to America, and was deathly sick all the way on the ship. Cattle boats had no stabilizers in 1907. Janos Jocsák was boarding with the Hanos family since his arrival in America and they were kind enough to introduce him to Elizabeth Vig shortly after she came to Dayton. Hanos' later were god-parents to my sister Bessie, brother Andy and me. A solemn duty and honor in those days. Courtships in a strange land, where single Hungarians needed all the help they could get, were sensibly brief. They were married, with Elizabeth attented by twelve bridesmaids, in a typical three-day wedding of music, dancing and choise Hungarian It was under similar condition that my mother came to the United States in the early part of this century.
