Karen Sandler

Category: Family

  • Bubble Gum and Pineapple Crush Memories

    Back in the early ’70s, I lived with my dad and two older sisters in Inglewood, CA in a little 2-bedroom, 1-bathroom house. My dad had the big front bedroom and my sisters and I were squeezed into the smaller back bedroom. The house was right under the flight path for LAX, and boy those jet planes were loud going overhead.

    On the other side of our street, half a block down, was a little corner grocery store. A family of Mexican heritage owned the store and they made these fantastic tamales that we’d sometimes pick up for dinner. My dad loved tamales.

    The store also sold the usual small grocery stuff, including soda, candy, and bubblegum. I certainly ate my share of candy (3 Musketeers was a favorite), but I was more often down there for a bottle of Crush and a supply of bubblegum.

    Rather than the typical Bazooka Joe flat rectangle, I bought Double Bubble bubblegum, which was cylindrical and wrapped in brightly colored waxed paper that was twisted on the two flat ends. They sold for a penny apiece, and I would always buy 10 of them at a time.

    As to the Crush, I was a real connoisseur. This was back when soda came in glass bottles. The Crush bottles were very tall and slender, clear glass so it was easy to tell one flavor from another. The corner store sold Crush in the familiar orange, of course, but also grape, strawberry, and my personal favorite, pineapple. Pineapple wasn’t always available, but if it was, I snapped it up. Second choice was strawberry, third was the classic orange, and I generally avoided the grape.

    I’d take my sugary stash of bubblegum and soda back home, then I’d hang out in the living room reading (some Ray Bradbury short stories or maybe a comic book that I’d also picked up at the store). I’d chew one piece of bubblegum after the other, abandoning each one the moment it lost its sweet flavor. I washed all that sugar down with the additional sugar of the Crush. My jaws would ache by the time I’d finished all that gum.

    Even though I paid for all that indulgence with cavities and some TMJ issues, it’s such a fond memory. Not just the sugary treats, but the convenience and pleasure of little corner grocery stores like that, set right into the neighborhoods they served. We could walk right to it, get our sugar rush or the night’s dinner, without ever having to climb into a car.

    I do miss pineapple Crush and bubblegum, although I don’t dare indulge in either anymore. But maybe it’s not the soda and gum I’m nostalgic for. Maybe it’s the laziness of summer, the wonderful convenience of a corner store, and the joy of finding exactly the flavor I wanted most in the cooler.

  • Happy Turkey Day

    To those in the U.S., happy Thanksgiving! I hope whatever you feast on Thursday is abundant, delicious and entirely to your liking. Even that weird green bean casserole with the funny crunchy stuff on top.

    Now I’m off to make some pies.

  • The Mystery of Where We Come From

    My husband and I do genealogy as a hobby. My husband more than me because his relatives are much more organized. He got a head start with a cousin who’d explored that particular branch of the family in great detail. Then there’s the fact that there are so many cousins that make it easy to stumble across a Sandler or other relation in the census or birth records.

    My ancestors are much more evasive. There’s my father’s father’s family, the Stiers, who were Austrian (Hungarian?) Jews. They came here sometime in the mid to late 1800s, had a few children, which might have involved more than one marriage. They then conveniently scooted off to Britain for a few years in such a way that they avoided the census, so I have no idea where they were when. My grandfather was born in the UK (supposedly in Greenwich–no idea for sure since I can’t find the records), then the whole family returned to the U.S.

    Problem #1 with the Stiers is that this seems to be a common name among German Christians. While I do have another relation of German ancestry (don’t get me started on the Satenburgs), I know my Stiers were not German, nor Christian. But was Samuel married to another wife before Fanny? Is that why his oldest daughter is so much older than her brothers? No clue.

    Ida (Chave), Louis & Harry (Aaron) Beckenstein

    The Beckensteins, my father’s mother’s side, are much more orderly. That’s them to the left. Because of their somewhat unusual names, I found them fairly easily in a ship manifest. The person transcribing the manifest had made a bit of a hash of their names, but still, my Ellis Island search led me to a record with Aaron and Chave Beckenstein. Aaron later changed his name to Harry and Chave to Ida.

    What’s kind of cool is that there is a definite family resemblence between Ida and my niece (my niece would be Ida’s great-great-granddaughter). Aaron even looks quite a bit like my niece’s brother.

    A few others who are hanging out in my family tree–the great-grandfather who was a stowaway coming over from Italy, the grandfather who changed his name from the unusual (Fratantonio) to the common (Russo), perhaps because he was into some shady dealings and wanted to stay on the down-low. That grandfather, Domenic Russo, died in prison when I was an infant.

    Then there’s this mystery man who’s not even related to me. He was apparently the friend of my great-uncle Sam Beckenstein. Uncle Sam saved a ton of pictures from the 40s, mostly photos of his girlfriends of which there were many (he never married). I came across the photo to the left amongst his other pictures, which I’m guessing was taken during WW2. Uncle Sam had written on the back Lew Gill standing in front of our tent.

    Since I have no idea who Lew Gill is, I posted the photo on Facebook and Twitter in hopes someone would jump out of the blue and e-mail me to say, “That’s my dad/grandfather/uncle!” It would be very cool if that happened, but so far, no luck.

    As a writer, I can’t resist wondering. Where exactly was the picture taken? Here in the States, or overseas? Did Lew survive the war? Was he married before he headed off to the army, or did he marry when he got home? What kind of life did he have? Did he raise a family? Could his children/grandchildren be out there somewhere?

    It would be lovely to have those questions answered, to solve the mystery. In the meantime, my imagination will just have to fill in the blanks.

  • Life on Hold

    My niece, Angie, sleeps alongside my dad.

    I hate waiting. I don’t like standing in line, or waiting for a publisher to respond to a query or proposal, or for an exciting event that’s coming up. About the only time I enjoy waiting is on a lake shore when I have a fishing pole in my hands.

    I’m in that life-on-hold position right now with my dad. Although we know he’s in his last days, he’s in a holding pattern at the care home he’s been living in the last year-and-a-half. Since he’s returned from the hospital, we’ve had some joyful times with family gathered around him, many tears, some moments of Alzheimer’s-addled awareness from him, many hours of sitting at his bedside while he sleeps.

    For as long as I can remember, my dad always seemed to find it hard to be on time. It was a family joke. My grandmother used to say, “Sam, you’d be late for your own funeral.” Later, when my grandmother died, amidst our grief, we laughed when my dad was late for her funeral. It was almost an homage to her that he was the last to rush into the chapel.

    So maybe he’s just living up to the family joke. Or maybe with all of us gathered around him, he doesn’t want to miss a thing. He loved us all so much and showed it in so many ways, he’s maybe finding it hard to say goodbye. I know we are.

    We all know it’s coming. But as of now it’s just a waiting game. So we’ll just keep laughing when we can, crying when we must, and holding onto a lifetime of precious memories.