Ng Sau Ping lives near China's gateway to America. So it isn't surprising when men from "Gold Mountain" come to her province seeking wives. But then she is summoned home to meet such a man.
She was the cutest girl in math class. I became a distraction and then tried to date her. But was I ready to meet her mother?
I watched too many men lay away conscience in a napkin once they left behind civilization and entered Gold Rush California.
In 1947 Franklin Fongson set sail from California to find a wife in China. How would he go about the search?
Montgomery High's Mark Tompkins sees red in this 1999 film by director Sam Mendes.
Grandpa wanted to stop my cantankerous mare from rearing up. But that wouldn't happen before I first learned what it feels like to fall off a horse.
Sau Ping's father noticed a stranger from America on the streets of Toisan, China. Perhaps this man is seeking a good wife, a woman like his teenage daughter. The next vignette in "American Risotto," the sage of an unusual family.
A 49er endures hardship. But what about the woman who stayed at home and held together their family? Joseph Pike, my great-great-grandfather would find out. His wife Sybil went 10 months before receiving a letter from him. He first wrote in September 1850 soon after reaching the gold fields of California. She wrote back in March 1851 to tell him that “there is not a day goes over but what I lament the decision we made when the question was asked, ‘Shall you go?’”
Kathryn Anderson went from working as an attorney at a large law firm in South Bend, Indiana to doing advocacy work at the United Nations on issues affecting Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She is close to completing her year of service with the Mennonite Voluntary Service and is working with World Vision International's United Nations office.
When our parents objected to our dating relationship, Carol obeyed her folks and agreed not to go out with me. Eventually she and her siblings changed her parents' minds and won permission for her to date me. But I rebelled from my parents. The result was an alienation that cut two ways.
Robert Digitale is a retired staff writer for The Press Democrat and the author of the fantasy novel, Horse Stalker, which the North Bay Bohemian calls “a magical adventure.” Contact him at rdigit9@yahoo.com.
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Photo by Anderson Photography