A legend with sheep in it

Amos carves an honest crook

Amos Crook was a shepherd who whittled in the evenings. In 1962 he set up a counter at the back of a feed store and started selling the crooks he carved, for whatever the neighboring farmers could spare. The crooks were sturdy. The name took some getting used to.

"Are you really the Crooks?" customers would ask, grinning. "The honest ones," Amos would say, and hand over the change.

Wanted: by every flock in the valley

The jokes kept coming, so Amos decided to join in. He pinned a mock Wanted poster above the till: wanted for selling the sturdiest crook in three counties at a fair price. It stayed there, and the habit stuck with it. To this day, everything new on the shelf gets a poster of its own.

Naomi fills the shelves

Naomi Crook looked at a counter full of staffs and saw room for more. Wool and rope, lantern oil and honey, and a drawer of buttons nobody could explain. The feed store became a general store. Naomi kept the books and, by most accounts, kept Amos too.

Gideon rings the bell

Their son Gideon moved the shop into the stone building it still occupies. He hung a bell over the door that no one has managed to quiet since, and he invented the seasonal hours: lambing season, shearing season, and the rest of the year, more or less.

Hannah keeps the counter

Hannah Crook, Amos and Naomi's granddaughter, runs the counter now. She kept the staffs, the bell and the posters, and added a few things her grandfather would have called nonsense, like T-shirts. Orders now travel farther than the sheep ever have. The crooks are still honest. The sheep are still not.