It's a bit of a stretch to call Fair Play a "city." During the Gold Rush days, it was a "watering hole" and gambling hot spot for the miners. It's rather nice to know it got the name of Fair Play, as opposed to the self-explanatory nickname for Placerville--"Hangtown." In descending order of size, the dictionary lists city, town, village, and hamlet. (Hamlet sounds like a small pig to me.) I guess we'd qualify as a mini-hamlet. Far past its glory days, Fair Play now consists of a pretentious bistro that caters only to the flatlanders who come up for wine tasting and the Fair Play Hardware. The hardware store has been there forever, and was run for many, many years by a woman who was in her nineties when we moved here. Joyce has since retired, but still lives next to the store. The site of the bistro used to house a small convenience store that my late friend Doris and her husband Dennis promoted as the Downtown Fair Play Mall. Everyone on the hill would stop in the store for some forgotten grocery item, one of Doris's wonderful deli sandwiches, or to catch up on the news...they knew everybody. When a stray cow would show up in the yard here (used to be a common occurrence)...call Doris. If a siren was heard down on the road (a rare occurrence)...call Doris. She had her finger on the pulse of the community. A couple of years ago, we did get a stop sign at the T by the store and bistro. That makes it easier to give directions into the hinterlands.
Waiting for the "sex?" Well, that's a story for another day.
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Waiting for the sex???....Hell, we are still waiting for "The City!!" Oh, that's right...that's Hangtown! And I heard that Ione's other name was "Bed Bug!" And I think that some high-fallutin' types tried to re-name Fiddletown, but it didn't stick. My late grandfather (Katherine's dad), with a twinkle in his eye, called Fiddletown....Violin City! LOVE the Gold Rush hamlet names!
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