Highway 49 has a dip in the road called Drytown. There's a number of fine things to say about the place--not that Opice would repeat any of them.
Monkey explains,
"Karel. This is very American. We call this a '1 Sign Town' because
it is so small if you blink you'll miss it. It's so small it needs only
one road sign:"
Welcome!
Come
Again!
digging!
Monkey's on a roll. "It's so small Dry Creek has no room for a bed."
The poor Xchange Student doesn't understand. "Why is it dry?" he asks falling into Opice's trap.
"During the Gold Rush," Monkey says in his best know-it-all voice, "it was very important to name places because the Native Americans who lived here were mostly dead and weren't tellin' the miners what they wanted to hear about gold. Therefore, pretty much everyplace picked up a new name. Lots of times those names meant something about the location, like Blood Gulch, and Murderer's Gulch, and Rattlesnake Gulch, or Fiddletown, or Volcano, or..."
"Or Hangtown!" Karel gets it.
"Don't be
silly," Opice scows. "Nicknames have nothing together with
this.
"As I was saying before you interrupted, the prospectors liked
descriptive names and there were no rules. They could even use names
like Hell Hole if they wanted and they did so there is one!
"Besides do you understand what dry means?" [Karel knows it means not wet--no water; but he's kind of afraid saying so after getting slapped down for being right about nicknames.] "Very good!" Monkey patronizes. "But it also means no alcohol / alcohol forbidden. Some places do not allow drinking."
The Czech lad looks shocked. "Bez alkohol?"
Opice underscores with German, "Alkohol verboten!"
"Bier verboten?!" Karel replies in German, but refuses to believe in Czech. That's because he knows, pivo [bier/beer] is liquid bread! Bohemians would starve to death without bread to drink with dinner. And that went double for the 49ers, many of whom starved for liquid gold at lunch and breakfast, as well.
The tour-guide senses Karel's cognitive dissonance and rather than letting the kid become traumatized by what that might mean in English, Monkey quickly finishes his spiel. "Except the miners often used reverse psychology to fool others. Think about it! What would happen if you named your discovery Gold Mountain? Everyone would rush there to make a claim. Instead, you call it Poverty Hill and pretend it's worthless, right?"
At last Opice gets to the point. "Drytown once had 26 bars in it. That's why they called it dry! It's a joke!"
"Yes!" Karel laughs loudly at the revelation. An excellent joke, except... "Where did all the bars go?" None remain today because the town is so small that this history lesson lasted past New Chicago, Bunker Hill, Amador City and nearly to Sutter Creek. [Click here to read Karel's version of this story.]
