justplainbil

Just Plain Bill

Limburger Sandwich for 10 Cents

Eighteen years ago, my wife and I purchased a two-story, four-bedroom, two-bath home in San Leandro, California, built in 1929. As the second owner in 1999, we found several artifacts that had been left by the prior owner’s father in his small basement heater room and workshop.

In addition to an old, wool NY Yankees baseball cap (made long before cotton caps with adjustable head sizes), I found a menu for the Dimond Inn (spelling correct), a small restaurant in a neighborhood in nearby Oakland. The one page, two-sided menu, headed with GENERAL BILL OF FARE, was printed on heavy card stock, which I’m sure helped it survive in good shape for what I estimate to be at least 50 years. (The printer’s phone number started with a name, Highgate, and did not have a prefix.)

I found the menu items and prices quite fascinating. A few examples included the following: chicken tamale, 35 cents, baked ham and beans, 20 cents, minced hamburger and egg sandwich, 25 cents, root beer, 5 cents, homemade pie, 10 cents, and a bottle of Golden West Sharp Steam (on draught), for 10 cents. And the limburger sandwich; the fragrance of limburger cheese reminds many of dirty wool socks, but was, interestingly enough, one my father’s favorite cheeses. (Haven’t seen that item on any menu through the nearly eight decades of my life.)

I’m guessing the year of the menu was sometime after 1933, after the end of Prohibition, when the buying and selling of alcoholic beverages was prohibited in the United States, and before Oakland addresses included numbers designating their city region, and the change of numbers for names and prefixes in phone numbers.

I checked out what is now located at the previous site of the restaurant at 3449 Fruitvale Avenue, in Oakland, California (an address before the days of zip codes). It’s now a cocktail lounge, in an area that is still providing retail services of all types, including a large grocery store, a Peet’s Coffee house, a gas station, hardware store, barber shop, beauty parlor, and a few bars, with few examples of gentrification that is spreading in many communities.

This was a fun look back at what life was like in the days before my birth.