Thursday, August 12, 2010

#2 - EPIC FAIL

Last night my buddy Evan told me a fascinating story from the early 1900's about the tumalo reservoir a couple miles away from my hometown of Bend, OR.  A man named A.W. Laidlaw and his company sold plots of what would be irrigated farm land from the near by tumalo creek. They sold 17,000 acres of "irrigated" farmland to people across the nation. People moved their families west from random places like Conneticut, they spent months in their wagons getting here, only to discover that the watered farmland ran to only 1,000 acres of land. Not 17,000! Most people couldn't farm. They were angry and had to take action! Laidlaw couldn't be sued because it was the rugged west, instead they burned him in effigy. What it means is they stuffed a look alike of him with straw, wrote LAIDLAW on the front of it, put a hat on him like frosty the snowman and set it on fire in the city streets.  Man, they really got him. Don't get burned in effigy. It's not good. The city of LAIDLAW lasted for only a few years, and later became what we now know of as Tumalo. Epic fail.

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