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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.        Stan changed his name to Shimon. He lived on Kibbutz Neot Mordecai for 22 years and raised a family. He fought on the Syrian front in the 1967 Six Day War. He published a book about his years in Israel and that war called The Outhouse War. It’s absorbing, touching, hilarious, and informative.
  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.