My Uncle's House, Santa Fe, NM |
In 1981, after I made my decision not to return to Hungary I flew to Santa Fe
from San Francisco .
I stayed at my uncle’s house and started working at a silk screen printing
shop. I worked under different names; changing my identity frequently. My
employer was not afraid to employ an undocumented
alien; however, years later, when I needed to have a witness to testify that I
was here illegally, he totally chickened out. Some of you may remember that the
amnesty of the 1980s legalizing all aliens who entered the US illegally before December 31,
1981. Of course, catch 22 applied, you had to be able to prove that you were
illegal, and that you entered before said date. I was on the deportation list
for nine more years, just because I could not prove I was illegal. Mind you,
there was plenty of proof of me being here, I just could not prove that I broke
the law!
Unlce's Back Yard |
At the T-shirt printing factory I was only trusted to do
inventory, count out orders and do heat transfers on baseball hats. The prints
usually said clever things like: “Where the hell is Roswell ,
NM ”, “High on Santa Fe ”. They were all designed by Steve,
who worked there 4-6 hours a day. Jerry ran the shop and his wife helped out
occasionally. Once, when we did our inventory, we counted “Beefy Hanes”
T-shirt, and the count was over one thousand. She confided in me that she did
not know how to write a number greater than a thousand, but she begged me not
to tell the owner! As if he did not know! I learnt about the assassination of
Anwar Sadat while working in that shop in 115 degree heat. It was a bad day.
New Mexico |
I biked to work every day on my cousin’s bike, which was a
bit small for me, especially when I had to go uphill at 4 pm in the pouring
rain, day after day. It rained every day in August between 4 and 4:30 pm. By
the end of the summer I had enough money to buy my first car, a boat on four
wheels, a 1973 Buick Le Sable. In September I started college in Santa Fe , just to get some courses under my belt before I
could go to the University of NM
to get my MBA the following year.
I moved to Albuquerque
in January 1982, took a couple of undergraduate classes for one semester
because my GMAT score was not high enough to start the MBA program. After
completing Calculus and Micro Economics classes that were actually graduate
level courses, I was able to transfer to the MBA program. I also took German.
Who knows why I was so dumb to pick German instead of Spanish? My classmates
have difficulties pronouncing the letter “ü”, which of course for me was a
natural sound. But what was even more interesting, that they not only did not
know how to say it, they actually did not even hear that it was different from
„u”. One of our exercises was to read
and translate a short text in class. I finished my portion and noticed that all
eyes were fixated on me; my classmates were staring at me like I came directly
from the Moon. Then the coin had dropped! I translated German to Hungarian! Causing
even more surprise was when that the professor smiled and said: “That was
correct”. Tuned out she was from Austria and she understood some
Hungarian!
International Students with Ioanna, Claudia, me and Gyuri in New Mexico |
Before she dumped me she at least introduced me to Ioanna
from Romania and I started hanging out at the international center of which
Ioanna was the director. I met Shiao Hong at the center. We had a huge cultural gap or rather abyss
between us so our relationship did not last more than four months.
Meanwhile I worked for my uncle’s fast food joint, Hardees;
flipping burgers. I got in a huge argument with the manager after he put me to
work at the cash register one day. We came up about a dollar short and he
wanted me to pay. He said it was only he and I who handled the money, so it
must have been me who messed up. I told him I was willing to take a test to see
which one of us can count faster and more accurately but I was not willing to
pay. He only responded by blowing smoke, showing me who the boss was, even
though I knew that the real boss was my uncle, the owner. I quit as soon as I
could and started working for the university cafeteria, La Posada or La
Poisonada, as it was called. There I got free food and worked with students
washing dishes. Cool job and it paid $3.50, a whole quarter more than Hardee’s
minimum wage.
I moved to the dorms for graduate students and got a Korean
roommate. His first words out of his
mouth when he found out I was from Hungary were: “I hate communists”.
That was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. He kept asking me to bring my
ex Taiwanese girlfriend to our room, which of course I did not even consider.
Later he got kicked out from school because of harassing girls.
I met Claudia from Germany and soon I moved in to her
house which she shared with two other German girls. Maybe it was not that
stupid to take German, after all.
Claudia at the Grand Canyon |
In the summer my brother Gyuri and Juli, his wife, visited
us. Claudia and I went down to the Mexican border because they were coming from
Cuba via Mexico . So Claudia and I were on
the famous border crossing between Juarez and El Paso . I had no legal papers; Claudia had
no reentry visa if she were to leave the US. A border patrol came over to us
and asked if we wanted to sit down on the bench after watching us hovering around
for over an hour waiting for Gyuri and Juli. “But it is on the other side of
the border” I said. He said that he would be there, not to worry, we could come
back. So we went, sat there for another hour, but my brother did not show. We
decided to walk back to El Norte but we could not find our friendly border
patrol. Instead we found a not so friendly one. We kept explaining what
happened, to no avail. Finally he got sick of us and looked at Claudia’s blond
hair and blue eyes and decided that we were not Mexicans trying to sneak across
and let us go. And lo and behold, our friendly border guard appeared from out
of nowhere; smiling. I asked him where he was, and he said: “I was watching you
guys, would have come if there had been a problem”. What problem I thought, but
minutes before I was sweating bullets.
My brother Gyuri |
My brother was waiting on the US side of the border! Apparently
they caught a cab in Juarez that took them
across the border without ever stopping. They came from Cuba with a Hungarian passport, but
nobody bothered to check them out! Border patrol was at its best even then!
Mesa Verde, Pink Desert, Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, San
Diego, Yosemite, San Francisco – and what is AIDS?
Claudia and I at Mesa Verde |
Juli at Grand Canyon |
White Sands and I |
Painted Desert but no Snakes or Scorpions |
Monument Valley |
Gyuri and I in the Great South West |
From Las Vegas we drove to San Diego where Gyuri and Juli walked across the border to
Tijuana . It was
an easy walk and I watched them disappear in the crowd of Mexican migrant
workers. I wished I could cross with them but I had to wait almost another
decade before I could do that. It was sad to see them go but I had to continue
my journey.
Claudia and I went to Santa
Barbara to see my cousin Kim and my friends Tim and
Pam. I did not have Pam’s address but I drove around and found the house where
Karcsi and I stayed a couple of years earlier. Some of the original people
still lived in the house and they were able to help me find Pam. We then took Highway One up to San Francisco . Or at
least that was the plan but the road was closed. California had more rain and
snow that year than in any other time in a hundred years. The road was closed
because of mud slides, so we took a detour, but still did not miss the
Seventeen Mile road and Carmel.
In San Francisco I stayed with my Aunt Julie’s brother who
had a house on the corner of the steepest street! It was scary to drive my
Buick around, because every time I needed to come down on a steep street the
nose of my car proved to be too long, I could not see a thing!
Mirror Lake |
Hiking in Yosemite |
With Claudia we went to Chinatown where she got tricked by a
Chinese restaurant owner. He was about eighty years old and told all the girls
that they have to give him a kiss in order to get served. When they did, he
turned his head really quickly so he got a peck on the mouth. But the food was
good and the Chinese kite flying competition was interesting. We listened to a
free classical music concert in the park. During the concert the conductor had
a heart attack. But it so happened that there was somebody in the audience who
apparently was a famous conductor and he finished conducting the piece. Only in
America !
Pride Parade San Francisco, 1983 |
We went to the gay parade, the first of many I saw. It was
one of the most fun parades I have ever seen. But I had no clue why everybody
was asking for aid. What kind of aid do these people want from me? I guess I
was pretty ignorant or was it still not much talked about in the news? In any
case, I learnt about AIDS during the 1983 Pride Parade in San Francisco . I wish we never had to leave San Francisco . We drove
to Yosemite Park which was practically closed
because of the amount of snow still on the ground in June. Camp sites were
closed officially, which meant we could stay for free! The waterfalls had more
water than at any other time and Mirror
Lake was still there and
had tons of water in it. We hiked up to the top of Yosemite Fall without
carrying food or water. Then we crashed for a whole day having too sore muscles
to go on. We stayed a whole week and hiked all
over, walking up and down, under and over waterfalls, in and out of the mist.
On the way back to Albuquerque I figured out that I didn’t
need to put on a sweater when I run my air-conditioning, I just needed to
adjust the temperature! Still when I got out of the car in Needles Arizona, I
felt like somebody hit me on the head, so heavy and hot the air was. I got back
to Albuquerque and Claudia went back to Germany .