Having Back Home and Sun, Too : Nostalgia: State and city clubs keep memories alive for those transplanted to San Diego.

Remember the scene in Casablanca when Rick says he came to Casablanca for the waters?

“What waters?” counters Louis, “We’re in the desert.”

“I was misinformed,” Rick responds.

People move to San Diego for many reasons. They come to escape the winters of the Midwest, the crime of the Northeast, the summer heat of the south.

And like Rick, once they get here they sometimes find that things are not what they expected: They find they miss home.

The problem has given birth to a host of out-of-state clubs, where people from other places get together and commiserate. There are San Diego-based social clubs for people from just about everywhere: displaced New Yorkers, homesick Texans, Alaskans who miss snow and Iowans who crave Minnesota jokes.

Even though people from elsewhere clearly want to live in San Diego (San Diego County ranked first in California as the favorite destination for net out-of-state transplants), there are days when they stand poised on the sands of the Pacific waiting to watch the sun set and all they can see are the bagels they can no longer find.

There are other days when San Diego’s always-perfect weather comes up short. Or as translated by a former Alaskan, “Yes, you do miss snow.”

At an out-of-towners club meeting, picnic or cocktail party, you’re likely to find kindred souls. It helps make the adjustment to a new environment easier. There’s a touch of the familiar (although salsa and chips was the fare at a recent meeting of the Former New Yorkers Assn.), and it’s comforting.

“I come to hear a Brooklyn accent,” says Seymour Weissberg, who moved to Chula Vista from Brooklyn a year ago. “It’s music to my ears.” Mostly what he listens to during the day is his wife, Dolores, complaining about having to learn to drive at age 65.

“Who needed to drive in New York?” she asks.

Vital information about life in California is swapped.

“Hey, I found a place to get decent cannoli,” offered another former New Yorker. A crowd formed around him as he doled out the address of the newly discovered bakery.

Several members of the New York State of Mind Assn. discuss shipping in pastrami-on-rye sandwiches from the Carnegie Delicatessen.

“If we use same day air, you think the pastrami would keep?”

A newcomer wants to know: “If I don’t register my car in the first 20 days, what’s the fine?”

The reasons why people move here vary.

Paula Shifrel came to San Diego four years ago from Scarsdale, N.Y. The mother of four says she left upper-income Scarsdale because she didn’t want her kids to adopt that community’s values system.

“Scarsdale is a ghetto, a rich ghetto,” she says. “I like the diversity here. But that doesn’t mean I don’t get homesick for New York.”

When Prudy Wood, who lives in La Jolla, moved 28 years ago from New Jersey to be near her famous brother (Frank Tallman, Hollywood’s number one stunt pilot), friends predicted she’d last less than two years.

Now, she says, with a “New Yorker fix” every month or so gleaned through her club, she’s managing just fine.

Mostly, these clubs exist as a means to meet people, make new friends, or just have an evening out, says Gary Peters, president of the Iowa Club.

The Iowa Club, (perhaps best known for crowning a vegetarian as its Miss Beef Queen a few years ago) welcomes as a member anyone who ever lived in Iowa, visited Iowa, thought about visiting Iowa, or has flown over it in a plane.

“We’re really just a bunch of people who want to get together and have a good time,” said Iowa Club co-founder and local attorney Bob Ottilie.

In keeping with its good-time philosophy, the Iowa Club recently imported Diesel (AKA Tim Maddigan) the favored bar-keep at the Bob-O-Links saloon in Oelwein, Iowa (pop. 7,564 and dropping).

As part of the gala five-day celebration known as “Diesel Days” (or is that Diesel Daze?), Diesel was flown first-class to San Diego at the expense of the Iowa Club, his plane met by a stretch limousine, followed by five days of parties, fancy dinners, and a proclamation honoring Diesel by the Mission Beach Town Council.

Why do all this for a man who is best known for pouring beer?

“I’m an institution,” says Diesel. “I’m like the statue in the town square, except there’s no plaque in my stomach and I talk.”

University alumni clubs, particularly those in the Big Ten, are also bountiful in San Diego.

But, as one former New Yorker put it, life is bigger than a basketball game--or at least it should be.

There are actually three clubs of former New Yorkers, although, in true New York fashion, two of them recently merged and now devote a fair amount of time complaining about the third. The level of venom-slinging has been rising lately, and a club rivalry is clearly in the making.

It can only lead to one thing: a stickball competition between the two groups. Smart money is on the State of Mind club. They have a three-sewer man. (For the uninitiated, New York sewers are approximately 100 feet apart. A three-sewer man is someone who can hit the ball the length of three sewers.)

The Colorado Club of San Diego was founded by one-time San Diegan John Jensen, who went traveling about 10 years ago and discovered Colorado. He liked it so much that he wound up staying several years. Financial reasons brought him back, but his heart remains in Colorado, he says.

“There’s something about the people there and the land,” said Jensen. “They have a quality of life and spirit toward their surroundings that is just unmatched.”

That spirit carried over into the club’s First Annual Al Packer barbecue, held recently. Al Packer was a murderer and cannibal. In 1874, Al Packer and five gold-mining buddies were stranded in the rugged San Juan Mountains of southwest Colorado as winter set in. For survival, Packer killed and ate his friends. When he came down off the mountains alone in spring, looking particularly well-fed and fit, the townspeople became suspicious.

He was eventually charged and convicted, but not before becoming a folk legend along the way. Today, even the campus restaurant at the University of Colorado is named after Al Packer.

At the Colorado Club’s Al Packer barbecue, the burgers were shaped like small humans.

The Alaska-Yukon Club of San Diego may be the grand-daddy of them all. It was founded in 1915 by San Diegans returning from gold rushes to Nome (1899), Fairbanks (1902) and the Great Klondike gold rush (1898).

When the gold miners got back to San Diego, they brought with them recipes for sourdough bread, giving the miners the nickname of “Sourdoughs.” According to the “Parka Chatter” (the Alaska-Yukon club’s quarterly newsletter), the Sourdoughs started visiting among themselves and, when the group grew too large, they started holding picnics. The picnics grew into an official club.

So what do Alaskans talk about when they get together?

“Mostly, the weather here,” said club president Jane Rykerd. “Most of us have lived here a long time, but we still can’t get over it.”

A Sampling of Clubs

* Former New Yorkers Assn.: Call 549-FNYA.

* New York State of Mind Club: Call 686-7790 for recording of upcoming events.

* The Colorado Club of San Diego: John Jensen, 8380 Miramar Mall, San Diego 92121. Or call 558-1155 or 573-0110.

* Alaska-Yukon Club: c/o Jane Rykerd, 5245 Lea St., San Diego 92105-3229.

* The Iowa Club: 6378 Winona Ave., San Diego 92130.

* Michigan Club: Cindy Simpson, 435-6309

* The ILLINI Club of San Diego County (University of Illinois): Bob Giles, 296-3260

* Indiana University Club: Rick Bunke, 451-1967.