One recent Saturday morning during our bi-weekly visit to the Mother-in-law's house, I walked by several yard sales in the local 'hood before I started my housecleaning chores. I enjoy yard sales and always search for books, music and other items the sellers have decided they can live without.
I bought some cool stickers for $.25 each at one house, shopped a few others and on the way back stopped at the last yard sale between me and the vacuum cleaner.
I knew this house well, as the owner always parked a mid-60's Volvo Sedan out front and a rough-but-very-cool Ford E-100 Van, also mid-60's vintage, normally sitting in the driveway but now gone. I notice these things.
Among the car parts, toys and other items displayed in the driveway was a folding table with several books and magazines. The book pictured above titled 'Early California' was there too, so I picked it up and began to leaf through the pages because I Love History.
The spine was slightly torn, the cover stained with a sticky ring from a cup, and some pages were starting to come loose from the binding. What jumped out at me was the inside cover and first page illustration, repeated on the back cover and last page.
As I leafed through the book and saw the numerous drawings, photos, maps and illustrations, I had to have it and gave the owner $1. I also found out he'd sold his beloved Ford van but didn't regret it in the least. I returned to the homestead, showed the booty I'd bought to the girls and began with my Domestic God duties.
A few weeks later, I grabbed the book to read while eating breakfast. I like to read every morning before my 50-foot commute from the kitchen to my desk in our second bedroom, where I've worked remotely since the Year of Covid 2020.
I discovered 'Early California' was a State school textbook published in 1950, originally allocated to the Monrovia (CA) School District with additional markings inside showing it was used in the San Marino (CA) School District. A Google search of author Irmagarde Richards yielded little information, except that she'd written other textbooks and had a 1921 bestseller titled 'Modern Milk Goats'.
Over the following weeks, I read and read and read, captivated by the basic yet beautifully-descriptive writing and the way the author created scenes of life that were easily pictured in my mind's eye. The following is from the first page of Chapter One, titled 'Flying Over California Long Ago' about wild ducks leaving their winter home in Mexico:
"The ducks rose up into the air. They flew in a circle high above the water. Then they turned North in a great flock. They flew away from that beautiful lake in Mexico where they had lived all winter... On the third day they left behind them the land of Mexico. Now they were flying over the California land. The ducks knew that this was where they would find a good summer home. They knew it was a good place to raise their families."
"When they came to California an old duck led the way. Perhaps in their bird way he said 'Let us fly toward the west, toward the ocean. I have been over this land before. Near the ocean it is cool. There are little streams and good places where we can rest. We shall find food there."
This style of simple, lyrical writing is what hooked from the very start of the book. Every Chapter that followed was filled with descriptions and imagery and illustrations and facts that brought the story of Early California not just to life, but into reality. More text nuggets:
"Indians came to America from Asia. They did not come in big ships across the Pacific Ocean. They came most of the way by land. A globe shows that Asia and North America came close together in the North. Between these two lands are many islands. The Indians came across these islands to America."
(snip)
"Indians thought boys fourteen years old were ready to be men. They were old enough to do all the things that men do. If they passed the tests, they were called men. They had to show that they were strong and brave. They had to go without food for two or three days. They had to go out into the woods and stay alone through the dark nights. If a boy was not afraid, alone in the dark, the Indians believed some good spirit would come to him. This spirit would be his friend and would help him all his life."
The story of Indian boys in the woods resonated with me. It closely describes a Boy Scout ceremony I went through in the San Bernardino (CA) mountains called an Ordeal. It was required to earn entrance to the Order of the Arrow, an honor camping society based on Indian lore. The Good Spirit that befriended me during the Ordeal still helps me all these years later.
As I read on, the famous names and events from history kept coming: Cortes, Cabrillo, Drake, Viscaino, Portola, Serra, Anza, Sutter, Bidwell, March. The era of Spanish exploration. The search for a huge mystical bay that eluded the Spanish for years, which they eventually found and named Yerba Buena, later renamed as San Francisco. The founding of the Spanish Missions. The Russian and Yankee foreigners that arrived to trade Asian goods for furs and food, and Spain's loss of the territory to Mexico.
Then came the Americans and the discovery of gold, which brought with it a tidal wave of (mostly) white people hoping to get rich, forever changing the land in just two short years. Eventually, Mexico lost the land when the Republic of California was established in 1846 and became a member of the United States in 1850, where the story ends.
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