Unsuspecting visitors to Old Sacramento this weekend were confronted with a man named Dr. Cornelius Poindexter claiming to sell miracle elixirs saying that they cure everything from measles to hair loss.

“The cream, when applied to the skin, removes unwanted freckles, warts, boils, blemishes, carbuncles, what-cha-ma-goofers and thing-ma-bobs…whatever you wish to remove,” Poindexter said. “It’s a remedy for alcoholism, and it also cures terminal illnesses.”

“It even cures baldness!” Poindexter shouted to a bald shopper. “I can grow hair on a rock!”

Poindexter quickly disappeared, however, when an older man in a yellow scarf and wide-brimmed hat appeared, claiming to be Charles Crocker himself, one of the founders of the Central Pacific Railroad. “Upon which we drive such ruffians out of town,” Crocker said.

Poindexter cleared his throat. “I wouldn’t know anything about being tarred and feathered,” he said before leaving.

The miracle medicine man was just one of the volunteers helping to take Old Sacramento back to early years of the city with a street theater program.

“We’re indulging ourselves in a little time twisting,” Crocker portrayer Carl West said.

Children were able to make dolls out of straws with the help of one settler, while others took the games to the field next to the Discovery Museum, where they played games like Battledore-- an early form of Backgammon where players hit a cork with wooden paddles back and forth in an effort to keep it off the ground.

Another popular game with visitors was Graces, which involves each player holding two wooden rods. The rods are crossed toward the base and an embroidery hoop decorated with ribbons is tossed to another player by quickly separating the crossed rods. The player on the receiving end catches the hoop with one of his or her dowels and tosses it back in the same fashion.

While some children seemed hesitant to play a game without batteries, they quickly forgot the video games waiting at home.

“As the kids are running around having tons of fun, I’ll turn to the parents and tell them, ‘Now, absolutely nothing plugs in, and your child is having a tremendously enjoyable time with two dowels and an embroidery hoop with a little ribbon on it,'” Red Barn Production’s Wells Twombly said. “We try to introduce some of the simple pleasures and remind kids that there was a lot of fun in the world before they invented Nintendo.”

Red Barn Productions and the Old Sacramento Living History group teamed up to bring history out into the streets. Some participants play music while others act out scenes. One little girl in 19th century dress got her basket stolen by a little boy. The girl chased him throughout the streets of Old Sacramento shouting “Thief!”

Historical gunfights are also staged in the cobblestone streets throughout the summer weekends. “We we’re trying to do is get away from these sort of bang-bang, stick-‘em-up sort of movie things and moving them in the direction of historical scenarios,” Twombly said. “What we’ll be doing here over the next couple of years hopefully is developing more historical exhibits living and breathing right here in the streets.”

So far, the reaction has been positive. People laugh as the man selling the elixirs tries to con them into a miracle cream that smells suspiciously like mayonnaise while children enjoy making the same kind of toys that children in the 19th century played with. And the games are a hit with all ages.

A controversial stage show also plays at the Eagle Theatre, where dancer Lola Montag shows a bit of leg and performs the much-talked about spider dance. “It’s best not to discuss it in the presence of ladies,” Twombly joked.

Lotta Crabtree, the Queen of the Fairy Stars, also performs at each show.

“When it was all mostly gentlemen out here, it was such that they so missed the company of womanhood in general that even the smallest female child could become a star singing and dancing upon the stage,” Twombly explained. “Gold would be thrown at their feet just in tears in remembrance of their own children that they left behind.”

The Fairy Stars, Lotta Crabtree included, represent those girls who became stars in the early mining town.

Old Sacramento’s street theater will continue every Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. - 5 p.m. and will feature gunfights, parlor games, and some familiar characters from the early days of Sacramento wandering the streets in a time warp to the past.