As far as I can tell that's exactly what's been described in the original post - the "California 3-way" or "Thunder and lightning 3-way" as it's called in Germany. If you ground to the neutral you could hook up a 3-way switch and a grounded receptacle to a 2-wire w/o ground... commonly done in Germany pre-WWII. Grounding to the neutral was legal until 73, in Eastern Germany 90.
