CHAPTER 13You Were There?
In the summer of 1955, when Marianne was seven and Audrey was
one, we loaded up our old gray Ford and le Baltimore for El Paso,
Texas. Demoralized by the lack of job prospects, tired of his brother’s
judgment and resentments, worried about his own health, Béla had
contacted his cousin, Bob Eger, hoping for advice. Bob was the
adopted son of Béla’s great-uncle Albert, who had immigrated to
Chicago with two of his brothers in the early 1900s, leaving the fourth
brother—Béla’s grandfather—in Prešov to run the wholesaling
business that Béla had inherited aer the war. It was the Chicago
Egers who had supported George’s immigration to America in the
1930s, and it was also they who had secured our opportunity for visas
by registering the Eger family before the war. I was grateful for the
generosity and foresight of the Chicago Egers, without whom we never
could have made a home in America.
But when Bob, who now lived with his wife and two children in El
Paso, told Béla, “Come west!” I was worried that we might be walking
into another dead end disguised as opportunity. Bob reassured us. He
said the economy was booming in El Paso, that in a border town
immigrants were less segregated and marginalized, that the frontier
was a perfect place to start from scratch, to reinvent one’s life. He even
helped Béla ĕnd a job as a CPA’s assistant at twice his Baltimore
salary. “e desert air will be good for my lungs,” Béla said. “We’ll be
able to afford to rent a house, not another tiny apartment.” And so I