My Friend Cory

I don't mind admitting that Cory Blake is one of my best friends, even if he is a boy. We have lots of fun together. He's especially good at racing and fishing--two of the things I like to do best. The Circle C ranch is so far from town (about an hour's ride), that I don't see my town friends except at school. Cory has a lot of freedom, so he rides out to the ranch often. He knows I'm always good for a fast race (he hasn't won yet, but he keeps trying).

Cory's a year older than I am, and his blond hair is always wild and messy. He lives in a small house behind his father's livery stable in town. His mother died when he was about four years old, and his father remarried. Now Cory has 4-year-old twin sisters, Amy and Amanda.

Cory's chief aim in life is to have fun and play as many jokes on his classmates as he can get away with. But nobody can stay mad at Cory for long--he's just a happy-go-lucky kind of fellow. He doesn’t like school at all (neither do I) because the lessons are difficult for him. He’d much rather be working alongside his father at the livery or, better still, racing around the countryside looking for adventure.

You know how Cory and I met? It was terrible! It was my first day of school. I was only 8 years old, and this strange boy flicked a fly onto my desk. Later he tried to give me a snake. Then, when another bigger boy started picking on me, Cory flew to my rescue. I decided I liked him after that. Now we're good friends.

Taffy, My BEST Friend

My best friend is Taffy, my golden palomino mare. She's about 15 hands high, with some white on her nose and four white socks.

Taffy was a gift from my big brother Chad, when I turned six years old. He took me out to the barn on my birthday and showed me the brand-new filly. Then he told me she was mine and that together we'd train her to be the best little filly in the valley. I couldn't believe what he was saying, since Chad is sometimes so mean and teases me. But when I looked at my mother, she nodded, so I knew it must be true.

It was a lot of work, but Chad knows horses better than anyone in the whole valley, and Taffy is the very best horse around (well, I think so anyway). She's fast, too. She won the Fourth of July race (the boys' heat) last summer. I almost didn't get to race her, since I'm a girl, and girls aren't supposed to do such rough things. But the racing officials listened to my brother and they let me enter the race. Ha! So much for boys doing all the fun things!

My Friend Rosa

I met Rosa last spring. It wasn't the best plan to make friends the way I did, and I'm ashamed now to admit I did such a foolish thing as take Taffy and run away. However, I don't regret meeting Rosa and her family. Her family--mother, father, and brother Joselito--came to California to try and escape their poor life in Mexico. It is hard for me to believe that Rosa was once one of 5 children. The other children died from illness or as babies. It is a very hard life for some folks south of the border.

It's a good thing for all of us that Rosa's father found me after a rotten thief stole Taffy. I taught them English and translated for the family while they looked for work. This was not enjoyable work. Picking beans and other crops is hot and sweaty, and we got paid hardly anything! The Garduño family finally ended up working on the Circle C, and now Rosa and I are friends. We can't see each other a whole lot, since her mother makes her do a load of work in the "big house," as she calls our ranch house.

Rosa is about my age, with shiny black hair and the darkest eyes I've ever seen. She's always cheerful and smiling, in spite of the hard times her family has been through. Rosa is shy, but maybe that's because she doesn't speak English very well. She's also cautious, while I'm impulsive. It would be a good thing if I listened to her warnings. But unfortunately, by the time I've figured out I should have listened to her, I'm already in a heap of trouble.

My Little Friend, Lin Mei

This is my new little friend, Lin Mei. I never really discovered how old she is, because she was snatched from her home near Canton, China, when she was only about four or five years old. But I think she's about eight.

She can't remember much of her life in China. She only knows that her father owed a lot of money to a gambling den, and he sold his own little girl to an old woman. Lin Mei cried and shrieked; her mother cried, but the old woman bought her and put her on a ship to America. I guess the old woman promised Lin Mei's parents that she would have a much better life in the Golden Mountain (America). Can you believe that? Little Lin Mei became a Mui Tsai, which translates "little sister" but really means "slave."

I met Lin Mei while I was attending Miss Whitaker's Academy for Young Ladies (a whole other subject!). She was a kitchen servant. I had no idea she was a slave. The Chinese man in charge of the school's kitchen was passing her off as his niece. Jenny (my roommate) and I felt so badly for this miserable, overworked little girl. We decided to befriend her, little knowing what terrible things would happen because we did!

You can read all about my adventures with Lin Mei in Andrea Carter and the San Francisco Smugglers, coming out fall 2008.

I hope to post some entries in the "Old West" category about the true, historical facts about the "Yellow Slave Trade" in the west, many years after the Civil War was fought and slavery was abolished. Stay tuned!

Jenny Grant

Well, I didn't know whether to post this in "My Friends" or in "Sneak Peeks." This is a new friend I meet when I get stuck in San Francisco to finish out the winter school term. Why am I there? Oh, such a twist of fate! Just when I thought I'd be having myself an unexpected holiday with Taffy (the grammar school in town got shut down! Why? That's another post, I'm afraid)...BAM! My mother gets this incredibly terrible idea to make me finish school at a fancy, young-lady's school in the City. Jenny Grant is my new roommate at the school.

This is an old picture of her, but she's really my age--almost thirteen. She's kind of wild, with lots of tangly red hair and more freckles than a body can count. People may think that I don't act much like a lady, but goodness! Jenny is the only girl in her family, with a whole passel of brothers. She's from some backwoods place called Washington Territory. Her mother sent her to San Francisco, hoping the school would teach her young lady ways. So far, it's not working very well. I like Jenny. We get into all kinds of interesting scrapes together in the big City. And some scary ones, too... Our adventures got written down in the book Andrea Carter and the San Francisco Smugglers, but you have to wait until next fall to read it. They're still turning the story into a real book! It takes awhile.

Virginia . . . Friend or Foe?

I found a picture of "Virginia" the other day, so I thought I'd post a little character sketch on Virginia Foster, my (Andi's) "thorn in the flesh" from Dangerous Decision.

As probably most of you know, Virginia Foster is the younger of our schoolmaster's daughters. Her older sister, Grace, is Melinda's age, and she and Melinda get along just fine. I'm afraid I can't say the same for Virginia and me. It's not like I haven't tried! It didn't help that she found Cory's snake in her desk the first day of school, but really! It wasn't my fault! But since then she has done nothing but find fault in everything I do. I think she picked up that attitude from her father, our schoolmaster. He hasn't liked me much from the day I nearly (accidentally) trampled him with Taffy.

I do feel sorry for Virginia, so that's why I've at least tried to be friendly. I guess her family moved out West to help her regain her strength from being ill all the time. She really is a sickly-looking girl. Pale hair; pale skin--she hardly ever goes outside. And she faints. She hasn't got much "sand" in her, as we say it out here, or "grit" would be another word. And she's scared of bugs and snakes and boys and loud noises. And she can't ride a horse, either. (I learned that the hard way, when she insisted she could, but it was all a big, fat lie).

Virginia sort of softened up a bit after our class's run-in with an escaped convict. We've been on better terms since then, but I'm still cautious. I used to think she was just showing off in front of our class with how smart she is (she really is the smartest scholar in the school) and it made me mad, but now I'm all right with it. I mean, how would you like to have your father teaching your entire class and always expecting you to know all the answers?

It's possible (but not very probable) that we could one day be better friends.

Juan Carlos, a friend from San Francisco

My new friend, Juan Carlos, is a shy, quiet, keep-to-himself fellow, but I managed to find a picture of him to share:
I met Juan Carlos during the first day of my ill-fated enrollment in Miss Whitaker's Academy for Young Ladies in San Francisco. I didn't want to be there at all, but when Aunt Rebecca told me the school had a few horses, I decided to make the best of it. I went to check out the stables, and this very nice young man was worried sick over a mare about to deliver a foal. I stayed and helped and we became friends . . . sort of. Juan told me we couldn't be real friends because I was a student at the school and he was only a "lowly" stable boy.

It's sad because his grandfather was a don, a Spanish landowner with wealth and power. But the Americans managed to take over his family's holdings, his father and grandfather died, and now it's up to Juan Carlos to work hard to support his mother and sisters in the city. Juan remembers happier days as a little boy on his grandfather's hacienda. But those times are over for him.

Juan Carlos is an excellent horseman and teaches me a few things about riding that I didn't know. He shows himself to be a good friend when Jenny and I need help with a risky plan to rescue our little friend, Lin Mei, from her cruel "uncle" (really her master).

Photo Afternoon

Every so often we get together and take more pictures for possible future covers. So . . . Taffy, Rosa, Taffy's "owner," the photographer, "Rosa's" mom, and I all got together the other day to play around. Now, whether any of these pictures will ever find their way on a cover of the Circle C books is anybody's guess. But it's fun to at least post some of the fun we had. Who knows? Maybe one day you'll see a book with our new pictures on it.

The weather was sunny but cold. Poor Rosa! Her tennis shoe had to come off and her foot nearly froze. We were there for over two hours. "Taffy" (AKA Star) was a good sport and did everything we asked.

Enjoy the pictures!
We like the outdoor pictures the best!

All of us taking a break!

Hope you enjoyed the photos!

Pictures of 1880s Chinatown, San Francisco

Here are a few pictures of some of the places I visited while attending Miss Whitaker's Academy for Young Ladies in San Francisco. I didn't visit these places because I wanted to, by the way. My friend Jenny and I sort of ended up in Chinatown while we were trying to help Lin Mei escape from her cruel slave master. (See Andrea Carter and the San Francisco Smugglers).

I am sharing tiny pictures to get you interested. You need to click on the pictures, which will take you to the full-size image on the original sites. These pictures are copyrighted, and I wanted to be as honest about this as I could. Sharing it this way sends you to the real pictures.
Enjoy!

Click on the pictures to see the larger images!
A little mui tsai with a baby on her back. She has to work hard from dawn to dusk.

A busy sidewalk in Chinatown.

A narrow alley much like the one Jenny, I, and the little slave girls got trapped in!

There are many, many openings that lead under Chinatown--dark, dangerous places.

A street vendor "writing" for a child.

And lastly, "Nob Hill," the site of Miss Whitaker's Academy for Young Ladies--up where the rich folks live.

I hope you take time and visit all these places and "see" what I saw in 1881.