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Reflections: Yesterdays by Dan Schaffer
November 4, 2004—Dan Schaffer,
"Reflections:
Yesterdays," San Diego Jewish Times:
I
have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, I have seen the eternal footman
snicker, and, in short, I was afraid—T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufrock.
Every
two weeks or so, Shimon and I sit in a neighborhood restaurant, fittingly called
The Gathering. We get there early to avoid the noon crowd.
We’re both long retired and can choose convenient lunch times for
ourselves. We were born a couple of months apart in 1936, the last year of
FDR’s first term.
We
first met at the San Diego Jewish Community Center in the late 1940s. The JCC
was in a rented storefront near 30th and El Cajon in North Park. That
was long before it moved to its present La Jolla location and almost twenty
years before Jews were even allowed to buy real estate in La Jolla.
Shimon (then named Stanton) lived in South Park, two blocks east of
Balboa Park. His father owned a small retail business in downtown San Diego.
Last
month, Shimon and I walked his old neighborhood near 30th and Upas.
He recently finished writing a book about his childhood there entitled The Canyon Kids. His block is still a tidy street of single family
homes. When he was a child, the area was part of San Diego’s largest Jewish
residential concentration, within easy walking distance of the storefront
JCC and two of the only three synagogues in town. We were teenagers in a
much smaller San Diego than today’s sprawling conglomeration..
My
family lived in Linda Vista, then a Federal government development for 25,000
people. It sprang up around the outbreak of World War II to house defense
workers. My father painted buildings for the Navy. We had no car. A drive to the
JCC, which would have taken fifteen minutes by car, gobbled up at least an hour
by bus.
Mixing
with Jewish kids my age was not an everyday event for me as it was for Shimon.
At my high school, there may have been ten Jews out of 1,000 students. Shimon
filled me in on personal and social details at the JCC that I wouldn’t have
known otherwise.
Both
my parents had immigrated to America from eastern Europe prior to World War I.
Shimon’s father and his maternal grandmother Anna
Shelley came from the same region between the two World Wars. His mother was
American-born, as was his aunt Gertrude. She and my mother were good friends and
fellow ardent Zionists. Shimon and I were both affected by their dedication to
Jewish survival.
Shimon
impressed me from the moment we met. He was bright, easy to talk to, funny,
good-looking, comfortable with girls (and vice versa). He seemed super-confident
in a nice way: no arrogance. In spite of all these qualities, I liked him
anyway.
He
went on to college, but his grandmother, his parents, and my older brother Ezra
moved him in a new direction. Mrs.
Shelley’s Zionism gave Shimon a grounding in Jewish history, hopes, and fears.
His parents gave aid and comfort to Holocaust survivors who settled in San Diego
in the post World War II years. He absorbed their lessons of Jewish and world
complacency in the face of virulent anti-Semitism. Ezra followed the example of
my uncle Isaac who had moved to Israel and settled on a kibbutz. Shimon did the same.
Shimon
moved back to San Diego and got his Ph. D. in public health. He has used his
knowledge to educate ordinary people and politicians here, in Mexico, and in
Israel about community health problems and solutions. His latest project has
been to provide public restrooms for the downtown homeless population. He and his wife Joyce make periodic trips to Israel to see
friends and relatives and give him a chance to work with local authorities on
public health initiatives.
My
last fifty-five years haven’t been nearly as exciting, dangerous, or
world-repairing as Shimon’s. I
went to college and grad school, taught at a boys’ middle/high school in
Nigeria for two years, taught high school social studies in Santee, married,
raised a daughter. I
have been to Israel a number of times since 1962 to visit my brother Ezra
and his family.
So,
Shimon and I have a lot of shared
memories plus our individual pasts to talk about. We’d have enough to
reminisce about even if we limited the conversations to our pre-college days. We
even dated a couple of the same girls but didn’t know it at the time. Of
course we have a lot to say about Israeli and American politics, where we
usually agree to disagree. Since we knew each other’s parents and I knew Mrs.
Shelley, they, too, come up in our talks. So does Shimon’s aunt Gertrude, one
of Israel’s strongest and most effective champions.
Her San Diego Jewish Times
byline is Gert Thaler.
Shimon
has been good at staying in touch with “long retired” friends. There
aren’t many people left to whom we can say, “Remember when there were real
streetcars, going down normal streets in San Diego?” Or, “Wasn’t it an
exciting time when Israel declared its independence in 1948?” Or,
“What’s-her-name from San Diego High class of ’54-- wasn’t she a
sweetie?”
In
a few more years, one of us will recall those things alone. T.S. Eliot’s
Prufrock was afraid of his end time. Shimon and I are, I think, more sad than
fearful. If moments of greatness passed us by, we likely neither knew nor cared.
Until the eternal footman snickers at us, we’ll gather at The Gathering and
share old men’s thoughts.