Crook County

Crook County is not home to the Hamburglar, as some have suggested.  It was the home of Les Schwab Tire Centers empire.  But when the old man passed on, the grandkids moved corporate over to Bend, leaving Prineville as a city without a tire magnate. 

I had a meeting in Prineville a few weeks ago.  I stayed at the western-themed Stafford Inn.  The hotel room was bedbug free and the room was nice.  And just like the Old West, they give you a warm cookie at check-in.  Right next door was the Pioneer Steakhouse, where I was determined to have me a 16 oz ribeye steak, served up medium rare.  The food was excellent, to the point where I was full, but I kept on going.  Steak doesn't keep, I told myself.  Not enough to box up so I better just eat it up, I told myself.  I am so full I am going to die, I told myself.

The following morning, I couldn't eat anything.  I was still full.  I had some mediocre hotel coffee and headed over to the library for the meeting.  My boss was with me, and he kept asking for weeks leading up to our meeting, "have you seen the Crook County Courthouse?  It's awesome!"  He asked again. 

Lunch was interesting.  The host liked to go to a thrifty sandwich place.  We all thought cheap sandwiches sounded tasty, so we went.  The group is made up of environmental health specialists, and some of them inspect restaurants in their respective counties.  One of the guys looked up and saw a sewer pipe right over the sandwich prep area.  It looked watertight, but it does give one pause to consider that one drop leaks from that pipe, it is on my lunch.

Prineville's recent coup was facebook is building a huge server center.  It is giving this rural city a big boost with construction jobs for the next few years, and will create a few jobs maintaining servers and filling vending machines. 

So as the Hamburglar once said, "Check out Crook County prices.  They are so low, it's a crime."