Donald H. Harrison, 77 Miles of Jewish Stories, History, Anecdotes & Tales of Travel Along I-8. (San Diego, 2017)
By Oliver B. Pollak
RICHMOND, California –There are book length guides to Jewish Italy, Germany, Poland, Eastern and Central Europe and New York City. Now there is a 338-page Jewish guide to a portion of San Diego County. San Diego has a population of 3.3 million, 89,000 of them are Jews, perhaps the 19th largest metropolitan Jewish population in the world, ranked between Moscow and Montreal.
Don Harrison, a San Diego resident since 1972, believes “There is a Jewish story everywhere.” As a journalist he edited the 90-year-old San Diego Jewish Press-Heritage until it closed in 2003. He embraced the online San Diego Jewish World. In 2017 he assumed editorship of Western States Jewish History, now in its 50th year, in print. San Diego’s Jewish past has included the San Diego Jewish Times and Southwestern Jewish Press.
The seventy stories in 77 Miles originally appeared online in 2015 and 2016 in the SDJW. This humorous and intelligent Jewography of the bottom left hand corner of the United States contributes to the fascinating nature of American Jewish identity.
Harrison’s road stops are an exploration of background and hinterland based on driving Interstate 8, the Kumeyaay highway (the Native Americans who once lived rgwew in greater numbers), from the Pacific Ocean and San Diego to Jacamba Hot Springs near Imperial County. I 8, built in the 1960s, is 359 miles long and ends in Tucson.
From the Greco-Roman gazetteers to auto club plastic comb bound triptiks travelers were guided with a degree of predictability to commercial, cultural, and topographic sights. This San Diego guide has a charming religious twist, akin to guides to Spain’s Camino de Santiago and the Mormon Trail. The travelogue is organized by 77 miles of freeway exit signs and off-ramps.
We quickly learn that the first known Jew, Louis Rose, arrived in 1850 and settled in San Diego then a village of 650. Harrison published Louis Rose, San Diego’s First Jewish Settler and Entrepreneur in 2004. Then follows a cavalcade of interesting philanthropists, rabbis, Federation officials, synagogue and temples mergers and relocations, Chabad’s arrival in 1970, businessmen, entrepreneurs, delis, butchers, tanners, sports personalities and team owners, physical and mental healthcare innovators, political alliances and corruption, junk, salvage and recycling, hotels, real estate and mall developers, University of San Diego Law School, San Diego State University, Hillel, teachers, administrators, archivists, intermarriage, divorce, Mikvah lady, names of buildings, and refugee resettlement. It is a rich tapestry of engaging stories of Jewish community. The dark side is an interview with a Jewish California Highway Patrolman who recounted some horrific accidents on I 8.
The author had no flat tires, no tickets, did not run out of gas or Jews. It’s good to be reminded that there were trails before byways and highways. This book may inspire some imaginative and energetic San Franciscan, Angelino or Chicagoan to produce a similar auto age volume. I’m always grateful for reading interesting and salient vignettes that fill me with wanderlust.
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Pollak, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, is a freelance writer now based in Richmond, California.
Oliver B. Pollak is a freelance writer who moved in 2016 to Richmond, California. He lived in Omaha, Nebraska for 42 years. He is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He practiced law for 33 years and is the author of over ten books and 650 scholarly and popular articles. He is currently working on the history of the Jews of Contra Costa County.
Very nice article, Mr. Pollak!