Re: CAS' California?
Posted by:
calonlan (IP Logged)
Date: 11 February, 2006 08:04PM
I just learned from my brother, that one of the last true, legendary locations of
Old Town Auburn is gone -- The Shanghai Restaurant - existed catty-cornered from the Happy Hour across the square in old Auburn and next to Marilyn Novak's antique and trade store. This restaurant was founded by an old chinese who was still alive when
I was a boy and we ate there(or took out) regularly. He had built his wealth as an assayer by wearing very long nails and stuffing miner's gold under them when they came in for assay. The restaurant also connected underground with all the chinese houses up the right side of High street, where the chinese were secretly mining in day's gone by. Both Grassvalley and Nevada City near where Ron Hilger lives were even more extensively "undermined" during the Gold Rush days. This is the basis for the wonderful scene in "Paint Your Wagon" (Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood sing!!) where the whole town collapses into the secret tunnels beneath where gold was sifting through the floor boards. When you examine the county records of the amount of Gold being brought in monthly from Rattlesnake Bar (where Clark got much of the Talc for his carvings), sometimes as high as 17,000,000 a month (pre-Roosevelt dollars), it is easy to see how this came about - when you visit, shed a tear for an institution with a colorful history now gone.
drf