National Affairs: Pied Piper

• Share

"I was becoming a prisoner," said 23-year-old Ronald Jacobowitz, manager of a Detroit dance studio, "a prisoner of that ridiculous machine," and he pointed at his television set. His mustache aquiver, Brooklyn-born Jacobowitz added: "I decided to go somewhere where I could be my own man."

Jacobowitz made his decision a few months ago: he would quit nerve-jangling Detroit (pop. 1,910,200), take his wife and child north to live the unadorned homesteader's life near Moose Pass (pop. 70), Alaska. Before he could get moving, Jacobowitz was besieged by dozens of other families that wanted to go along. By last week he was the leader of a projected 40-family caravan (plus 20 "tentatives"), badgered day and night by scores of callers all eager to get going to the 49th state.

Pied Piper Jacobowitz and his followers have no illusions about Alaska. "Nobody," says Jacobowitz, "has the picture of a land of milk and honey. We expect at least three years of hard work before anything pays off." The exodus begins around March 1, and by summer the pioneers should all be settled down in the land where men are men—and TV watching would be a grand way to spend the long cold nights.