HIGH POINTS FROM EL CAMINO REAL
CHRIS DAVIS elcaminoreal@consolidated.net
The dust is beginning to settle along El Camino Real after all the hustle and bustle on Monday getting the kids off to the first day of school. I for one am proud to see things start settling back into a regular routine. When the wife and kids are back in school, a certain sense of freedom enters my life just in time for hunting season. With all the homework, new forms to fill out and rules to read about for the upcoming school year, I just hope someone will have time to read my four bits' worth of news.

Congratulations go out to Betty and Greg Duplichain on their 40th wedding anniversary. The couple was honored with a reception at the First Baptist Church in Alto on Saturday afternoon with friends and family. Happy wedding anniversary to Betty and Gregg!

The Alto High School classes of 1950-1954 are planning an Alto Alumni Reunion on Saturday, September 22 at 1 p.m. The event will be held at the First Baptist Church. If you want to make plans to attend you need to call Tommie Jean Hester Anderson at (936) 858-3523 or (903) 658-2073. I'll give you more details as fast as I hear about them.

Plans for the 2007 Alto Homecoming Festival are in full swing under the direction of the Alto Cloverleaf 4- H Club. This year's parade and festival will be held on Saturday, Sep. 15. The theme for this year's festival is "We are the Champions." I can't think of a more fitting theme after the Yellowjackets brought home the first football state championship to Alto. We didn't get to honor the team enough after it was all over last year, so here is our chance. I will have more information coming with times and contacts for vendors and parade entries. Let's make this year's Alto Homecoming Festival the best ever.

School started back without a hitch. The kids got the teachers they wanted, the teachers got all the kids they wanted, all the parents are happy and no one has any complaints. If you believe this, I won't even have to look for news any more because you'll believe anything. It's hard for me to believe that the Alto Middle School will be turning 10 years old this year. There are going to be some changes at the Alto Schools this year, but the faculty has worked hard to get the word out on dress codes, school start and end times, and all the other things that parents and students will need to know to get things started off right this year.

I ran across something that I wrote seven years ago as school was about to start and I thought is was worth repeating. My then twoyear old is now going into the fourth grade. In August of 2000 I wrote: "I was watching my two-year-old play in the dirt on Sunday with his trucks. He came across the yard hot and dirty with the sweat cutting little trails through the dirt down his red cheeks. If life could only stay as pure and innocent as those little streams of sweat running from the ringlets on his head. I couldn't help but think of the anguish many parents were going through this week as they send their little angels off to school for the first time. When they step out into the world of school and leave the safety of home and meet up with people of different values and backgrounds they encounter a strange new world that must be explored. Alto's own, George B. Terrell wrote this about children entering school in his 1942 textbook, Texas and the Federal Government. 'He must learn the ways, manners and dispositions of others, which is a most essential part of his school life and education.' I totally agree with this statement. The world is made up of all kinds of different folks and one of the main things we have to learn to get by is how to get along. Parents worry about every possible thing imaginable from things as small as head lice to problems as big as violence in schools. The sad situations are the ones where the parents are too busy with their own lives to worry and are just eager to ship the kids off to school for a day of free babysitting. Children can adapt to just about any situation and all the worrying done by parents is usually for nothing except for the head lice and all the worrying in the world has never killed a single head lice. As parents we need to take an active role in our children's educations and continue to pray for a great and safe school year."

The parents who gambled their life savings and sent their older kids off to college are also the people that we need to keep in our prayers. And I want to include myself on the top of that list. I ran into Kevin and Tessa Pierce on Sunday afternoon and they had just gotten back from getting Lauren settled in for her first semester at Texas A&M. Everyone is a little nervous about all the new experiences ahead. Thank goodness for cell phones. We went over to Nacogdoches on Sunday to help our oldest get settled in and buy him a few groceries. I say a few because after you pay for tuition and books there isn't much left. We were doing pretty well in the grocery store until my son asked me what he would need to fry shrimp. I don't know why such a simple question lit my fuse, but it did. He could have asked me how to fry spam, venison or fish he caught, but shrimp costs lots of money. College kids and the parents of college kids, more often than not, don't have lots of money. I explained the unfortunate situation that he might find himself in, if he came home from college with the smell of shrimp on his breath and met me with the smell of spam on my breath.

Poverty is good for a college student - it makes them work harder for the future so they won't have to always keep those poor ways. If you are one of us lucky parents who have sent your money and your child off for a higher education this fall, we need to remember each other in our prayers. The best advice that I can give a young man or woman that is starting college is two little words, "rich spouse."

I guess I've rambled on enough for this issue. I've got to get busy scheduling two football games a week into my plans. At least I'll get to see everybody and rake in some news while I'm sweating away at the opening games.

I'll see ya next week! And remember, Education makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave. --- Henry Peter Broughan.