Karen Sandler

Tag: memories

  • Holidays, Family, Memories

    With the November and December holidays approaching, I’ve been thinking back to how we celebrated in the past. As I was growing up, every holiday get together took place at Grandma’s house. From New Year’s Day through New Year’s Eve (including all the birthdays), everyone gathered at Grandma’s for too much food and drink, and sometimes way too many presents. After dinner, we’d often crowd around the dining room table for a poker game.

    How I learned the crucial life skill of playing poker

    By the time I had my first son, my mom and stepdad had bought a restaurant overlooking Mono Lake, and Grandma moved up there with them. After that, we celebrated at least Thanksgiving and Christmas in the dining room of the Mono Inn. It was a long drive (7 hours) with a toddler and a baby, but so beautiful once we were there.

    Left, the family restaurant, middle, the restaurant dining room with all of us crowded around the table, right, Mono Lake CA

    All those years that Grandma hosted the holidays, she did all the cooking. When I was old enough, she’d let me do the relish tray, but other than that, it was all on her: the turkey (for Thanksgiving and Christmas) or ham (for New Years and Easter), the mashed potatoes or potato salad, the yams or her incredible baked beans. She did it all. Amazing.

    The dessert table, as if we had room after a huge Easter dinner. It’s possible I made the bunny cake.

    How do you do your holidays? Always in the same place, or do members of the family trade off? Let me know in the comments. It would be great to share stories.

  • Temptation: 1, Me: 0

    Generally speaking, I should not stop for yard sales. If I do, there’s a .999 probability that I will spend money. Usually it will be some small knickknack that only costs a couple dollars. But sometimes (like today), it requires pulling out my mad money to lay down some semi-serious cash.

    I could blame it on my husband. I certainly blamed him that time I was admiring a kitten at an adoption clinic and begged him to let me take her home. We already had three cats, and I counted on him to tell me, in a reasonable tone of voice, “No, Karen, we already have enough cats.” He did not. Instead, he said, “Sure, let’s adopt her.”

    Cosette turned out to be a wonderful cat who spent most of her waking hours snuggled up to me. Sadly, a heart condition cut short her life at a young age.

    In any case, you can see that my husband is supposed to be the safety brake to my acquisitive nature. So when we stopped at a yard sale to check out a dining room set (we actually do need a dining room set), I counted on him to temper my temptations. But I’d already seen the school desk/chair when we were scanning the offerings from our car. Close up, I liked it even more. It turned out the price was kind of reasonable and when I made an offer, the counter was exactly what I’d expected and was willing to pay.

    So, I said, “I want this.” Hubby’s response…crickets. Other than opining that he had no idea where in the house we would put it (I said I’d jam it into my office if I had to), he just let me go on my merry way.

    I did pay for it with my aforementioned “mad money,” cash I receive from book sales that I happened to have tucked away. So the purchase didn’t impact our household finances at all. But hubby didn’t exactly live up to his side of the bargain by saving me from myself.

    But why did I want it, from the moment I spotted it at the yard sale? Because (A) I love old furniture. I love that it’s made from solid wood, that it’s well put together. It’s something I inherited from my dad, I guess. He loved to work with his hands and was an amazing woodworker. (B) I’ve always thought purpose-built furniture is particularly cool. The fact that this is a combo desk-chair is so neat. (C) I love its connection with the past. As I was carrying it into the house, it occurred to me that my mom likely sat at a desk just like it when she was in school in the 30s and 40s.

    There’s a divot carved out of the desktop and I can imagine a restless boy like my father carefully drilling out that hole with his pen knife to while away the slow moving hours in the classroom. There’s a big X scrawled across the desk top too, maybe made by some frustrated student who just had enough of the times tables when a beautiful spring day awaited him or her just outside the schoolhouse windows.

    What am I going to do with this desk-chair? No idea. For now, I piled a few of my granddaughter’s books in the storage area under the seat. She’s a toddler and a little too small to use the chair, but I bet she’ll be intrigued by it next time she comes over.

    And maybe I’ll just sit in the chair myself, write out a few times tables and think about the students who once used it. Girls like my mom, who won a contest in high school with the slogan “Don’t be square, the cafeteria’s not the place to brush your hair.” And boys like my dad, who would sit in old stuffy classrooms dreaming about how he would have much rather be running in an open field with a kite, or riding his bike to the ocean.

  • Happy Birthday, Dad

    Today is my dad’s birthday. He would have been 86 today. He died of Alzheimer’s nearly 5 months ago on January 9th. I’d like to share his eulogy today as a way to remember him.

    Great men don’t always become president, or build tall buildings, or run corporations. Sometimes greatness comes from a man’s kindness, his generosity, his good heart. Sam Stier was that kind of man.

    Sam was a loving husband of Barbara, father to four daughters and stepfather to one son, grandfather to nine grandchildren, great-grandfather to five great-grandchildren. He was also a friend to everyone he met. That last is no exaggeration—everyone who met him came to love him.

    Sam was born in Los Angeles, California, June 4th, 1926, the oldest of Harry and Rose Stier’s three sons. Sam was just 10 years old when his mother died of tuberculosis. Before she left for the hospital that last time, she took her oldest son aside and told him, “Sam, be a good boy.” He took those words to heart after she died, watching over his two younger brothers, Irwin and Arnold, while their dad worked as a long-haul trucker.

    When World War II broke out in 1941, Sam was too young to enlist, but felt a sense of duty to fight for his country. When he turned 16, he tried to persuade his father to sign the papers allowing him to enlist in the Navy. His father refused. Sam asked again when he was 17. This time his father relented. Sam served in the Navy from 1943 through 1946, mostly in the South Pacific.

    One of his first jobs out of the Navy was as a TV repairman. He loved working with his hands and he loved electronics and figuring out how things worked. He was always thinking of better ways to do something, even when the “better way” took longer than the other way. In the case of his job repairing TVs, Sam just wanted to fix the TV right there at the customer’s house. Sam’s boss wanted those TVs brought into the shop so he could charge a higher price for repairing it. Sam was far too honest a man to go along with his boss’s scheme, so he quit.

    Not long after, Sam started working at Space Technology Laboratories, which later became TRW. As a spacecraft technician, Sam helped build many a communications satellite. He traveled to Cocoa Beach, Florida numerous times to help with the launches. He enjoyed those trips to the East Coast, but at the same time hated leaving his family.

    Over the years, he enjoyed a wide variety of activities. He was an avid skier and loved tinkering with cars. In the ‘70s he bought an Alfa Romeo, fixed it up, and raced it at the track in Gardena, California. He was a voracious reader, but also enjoyed outdoor sports like hiking and whitewater rafting. In later life, he took up woodworking, and did much of the work remodeling his home in Pollock Pines.

    And throughout his life, Sam was an amazing father. He supported his four daughters in everything they did. He always let them know he loved them and how proud he was of them. He taught his daughters by example. They learned to be kind from his kindness. They grew to be generous through witnessing so many acts of Sam’s generosity. They became responsible adults because he took responsibility for his actions. Everything Sam gave his daughters, they passed down to their own children, raising another generation of loving, generous people who live by their grandfather’s example.

    For many people afflicted with Alzheimer’s as Sam was, their personalities change. They become unhappy, sad, or angry. But Sam’s spirit was so strong that despite the theft of his memories by the disease, his basic nature never changed. He was just as kind, just as generous and upbeat throughout his illness as he’d always been. He charmed the staff at his care home, and they grew to love him as their own “Papa Sam.” And although it was difficult for his family to see Sam fade, to have him move farther and farther away from them with time, it was a great blessing that he never lost his loving nature.

    I love you, Dad. Still missing you.

  • 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.