WORLD'S DEAREST CAFE

Shannon News, 12 October 1926, Page 4

WORLD'S DEAREST CAFE

A POUND FOR A MEAL. WATER TENPENCE A CUP. The world's most expensive restaurant is to be found not in London, Paris, or New York, but out in the wilds of California, among a hastily run-up scattering of planks and galvanised iron huts, the scene of a gold rush in the hinterland of the village of Kramer, writes Mr Bassett Digby, F.R.G.S., in the "Daily Express." Crude paintings on the outside walls announce that make-shift but filling meals are procurable for five dollars (£1) upward, and that water, costs two bits (lOd) a cup. All food and water have to make a long journey through the desert. Bootleggers were among the first arrivals, and -Were soon selling illicit still rye 'whisky at the same price as water! The camp would be a remarkable sight\for the rough, bearded, hard-bitten" old miners «'of '49. No red flannel shirts, no oxendriven waggons and littered packs of picturesque impediments. The modern gold-rushers wear wrist watches and silk shirts. , They have come across the Mojavo Desert in expensive motor-cars.

The great majority of the firstcomers are men from varied stations of life, the only thing they have in common being a complete ignorance of the elements of mining, a touching trust in the lead given by experts, and a haunting desire to grab a seemingly worthless piece of waste land and sell it. for a large sum. The new fluid, which has been named sGold Dust, covers about 40 square miles, and is about 70 miles north of San Bernardino. About £7OOO worth of gold was mined here

20 years ago by a poor prospector named Bercham, who then moved on to investigate a still more promising vein that proved to be the Yellow Aster, and made millions of dollars for him.

The culminating incident sounds like a story by O. Henry. An old stager turned an interested eye upon another abandoned shaft in the district, and found three holes bored 20 years ago for a charge of dynamite that, had never exploded. Ho' bought the derelict claim, plugged the holes with dynamite, and pressed the switch that ignited it. The ore that came > clattering , down was worth £2O a ton.