Dennis, I thought you might get a kick out of this story . . . One night, I was in a hotel/bar in California's gold country - the building dates back to the gold rush and has been restored. I noticed there were several bells hanging from the ceiling, and every now and then some of them would be ringing. At one point ALL the bells were ringing and a great cheer went up and everybody headed for the bar. It seems this particular saloon once had a brothel upstairs where the hotel is, and the house tradition - started during the gold rush - is if all the bells are ringing at once on a Friday or Saturday night, drinks are half price as long as they continue to ring. The bells are connected - through a small hole in the ceiling/floor - to the springs on the beds upstairs! Not that I am begging for cheap drinks from the ranch bars, but wouldn't it be great if there was some way of knowing if ALL the beds were bouncing simultaneously at the ranches and a tradition was attached to that as well?
I love that story! I would love it if all the beds were rockin at once! I would have loved to have been in that bar when it happened!
From what some of the locals tell me, they often arrange to fill up the rooms and synchronize their watches . . . and their sexcapades!
Dennis - I thought you might like another story - this one from the history of Gold Rush Sacramento. Enjoy! One night the constable was sent for to deal with a unique disturbance. There was a large crowd gathered on to watch one of the local prostitutes - naked except for carrying a knife - chasing a man - half-dressed - up and down and through several businesses on Front Street. The constable took both into custody and retired to a back room of a nearby saloon to sort out what was going on. It seems the man was a customer who had grabbed and tried to run off with the lady's money. The constable locked the man in the jail for the night and let the lady go - covered up with a blanket, of course - to return to her place of business. The next day - at a well-attended and boisterous trial - the judge fined the suspect and sentenced him to be banished from Sacramento - AFTER he was taken naked to the lady's place of business to make a public appology - from the street while she stood on the balcony - and paraded through the streets out to the edge of town where his clothes were waiting. Of course there were no shortage of currious on-lookers to whoop, holler, and witness the public spectacle . . .
Db ! Might I ask where in " Gold Country " I think I've been to just about all those little towns Chili
