If you’ve ever been to Gold Rush Country, you may have wandered through Placerville, a relic of the Wild West. If you’ve ever been to Placerville, you may have noticed the town seal as you drove in. On this town seal is a man mining for gold in front of a tree. Dangling from the tree is a noose.
“Maybe it’s just a really short tire swing,” I said, ever full of optimism.
“Nope. Look, the town’s nickname is Old Hang Town.”
“So it’s definitely a noose?”
“It’s definitely a noose.”
People in Placerville are apparently super proud of the Old West justice they used to mete out from their historic hanging tree. At least according to the flier I saw hanging on the door of Bones Roadhouse when we stopped for lunch, declaring “It’s not racist, it’s historic.”
(Just as a general note, any time “it’s not racist” appears in a sentence and that sentence keeps going, whatever follows is definitely going to be racist.)
We happened to be in Placerville the day after the town council (or whoever is in charge of such things) voted to take the noose off the seal because it’s a little too reminiscent of lynchings, something I think we can all agree were never good.
According to a cursory google search, the only people hanged in Placerville were two Frenchmen and one Chilean, so the townspeople up in arms over getting their seal changed might be technically correct in that the seal is less Strange Fruit and more We Don’t Have a Sheriff’s Department Yet. But why you’d want to fight for a noose is beyond me. Especially when you could be We’re An Adorable Relic of the Wild West and You Should Definitely Spend Money Here instead.
The other intriguing thing about Placerville - aside from the old west main street (I do love me a good old west main street) and the abundance of witch-y shopping options - was the attitude towards masks.
The second thing I noticed about Bones Roadhouse, after my eyes adjusted to the dim light after being in the bright sun and my brain stopped processing the “it’s not racist” flier, was that no one was wearing a mask. No one. People were just hanging out squashed together at the circular bar like it was 2019 and pandemics were as historic as the town.
After lunch, we went shopping, because that’s what you do in an adorable town. We went to the oldest hardware store west of the Mississippi and bought chocolate in the Toy and Candy store because I insisted. When we got a little further down the street, we were told in one of the stores that they actually prefer it if you don’t wear masks inside.
Oldest hardware store west of the Mississippi.
Coming from the Bay Area, where people are meticulous about mask wearing, this was very strange - though maybe not as strange as the effigy hanging from the second story of one of the buildings on main street, neck encircled by - you guessed it - a noose.
If we’re speaking historically here, I would have expected masks to be more popular. Presumably bank robbers of the Wild West would have loved the current world-wide mask credo, as wearing a mask would no longer be a dead give away of your intent to rob an establishment.
And let me tell you, there were some places worth robbing.