Shinazy Family History & Genealogy

I thought of my VW as a member of my family. For 38 years I could rely on it. My children grew-up in those seats: from baby-car-seat to passenger seat - but never driver seat, that was my seat ;-)

There are so many more stories to tell ... and this is one of them.

Enjoy!

It’s December 1969 and I’m writing a check for $1,700 – I’m now the proud owner of a Tan Volkswagen Beetle, equipped with a powerful 54 hp engine and an Automatic Stick Shift transmission. Yes, VW made automatics, actually semi-automatics, I still shifted through the gears, but no choreographing my feet, as there was no clutch pedal – Hallelujah. However, this improvement decreased the power, but it was easier to operate. And operate it I did, for the next 38 years.

My bug became part of my identity, a major piece of my history.

For one of my daughter’s birthdays, I hauled 11 pre-teen girls and my friend Jean to play miniature golf. As I stood in the driveway staring at the car, then at the mob of girls, then the car . . . “How was I ever going to get all of us into that tiny space?” College students crammed themselves into phone booths; I should be able to do the same, but with a higher level of comfort and safety. Like logs in a cord of wood I stacked the girls, they thought this was the best part of the day.

Every Christmas there was the excursion to the tree farm. Folks in the parking lot with their trucks and station wagons would stare as I lashed a tree, longer and wider than my Beetle, onto the roof and proceeded to secured it with lines and knots that would hold the Titanic to any dock.

One Labor Day, returning from Volcano, CA, roasting in stop-n-go traffic, my son and I decided a water fight would be a welcomed activity. While sitting inside the car – a plastic interior has its advantages – we splashed each other until we looked like it had just rained. There we sat, all wet and smiling and cool. We stopped at every gas station to refill our bottles … and the battle continued.

Although there were many joyous experiences, the lack of power was always an issue.

When my son finally weighed 100 pounds I stopped parking the VW in the up hill direction. It’s hilly here so this parking technique was …if not impossible, at least, impractical. Whenever it was the two of us in the VW, I would have him walk to the corner and wait for me; I’d eventually get there. And then, there was that incident when his grandmother was a passenger and he had to give the VW a push to get the bug moving.

During the entire 38 years I lived in the Bay Area where freeway on-ramps were driveway entrances to bumper-car traffic. And, of course around here anywhere I went I encountered undulating streets. All of this resulted in me driving in the slow lane watching cars flash by at the posted speed limit.

Every few years, when I just could not take it any more, I’d decide to “buy a fast car.” After a few months the urge would pass and I’d continued to be passed. But in 2007 that ended. Oh, did it ever … zoom, zoom.

This is a story about my grandmother, Pauline Shinazy - a major influence in my life.

Pauline Shinazy came from a lineage of strong women. Her grandmother left Paris, with no knowledge of the English language, to stake her claim in America. It is no wonder that Pauline inherited these ideals of a liberated woman in a non-liberated era. Pauline was born in 1900 in an area outside of San Francisco. In 1910, after the family home was lost in a fire, Pauline’s mother and aunt with the assistance of a handyman rebuilt their home. The main home had the craftsman or bungalow style, but over the generations, as the family grew, it was expanded, again and again. It is uncertain when Pauline first decided to create, but her first medium of choice was oil painting. In the mid-1930′s, an unfortunate family accident led to Pauline’s studio being destroyed. From this accident, she moved to the medium of pottery.

Pauline never formally studied pottery-making at an art school, and like many of potters from the Movement, she experimented in the medium to reach very desirable results. To create pottery, Pauline built a shed, where she kept a couple wheels of differing sizes and the necessary inputs to produce ceramic art. She also mixed her own glazes. Her pots were primarily functional in nature, and her granddaughter recalls using them for everyday life. The family is uncertain of the output created by Pauline, and her work should be considered rare because she was not a production potter.

Unless Pauline was going to a social event, she always wore trousers. Although a very sociable person, Pauline typically only shared her process of creating with her family. With six grandchildren, Pauline stirred the creative spirit in each of them and from speaking with her granddaughter; this spirit is as fiery as the day when it was introduced by Pauline many years ago.
She was a person who was always working with her hands. Pauline created pottery until the early 1960′s, when she progressed into the medium of jewelry making. She then ceased to create pottery. She constructed a new addition to her pottery shed to separate her jewelry making from everything else. It was this progression and dedication from medium to medium, which appears to be a common theme in her design.

Although there was a period, where her work showed Native American influence, she created from a “sphere of vision,” where her design represented a unique meandering of her translation from objects in nature and everyday life. The jewelry making was particularly memorable for her granddaughter because of the interesting hunts for different stones in California and Nevada. The trips to Lovelock, Nevada were especially poignant because they searched for a particular stone indigenous to this area of the Silver state.