HIGH POINTS FROM EL CAMINO REAL
CHRIS DAVIS elcaminoreal@consolidated.net
I don't see how life along El Camino Real can get much busier than it has been over the past few days. The school year is off and running and there are activities almost every night involving kids and school. If you throw in football games and extra curricular stuff, you have a full load. On top of all of this, it's time to start getting your deer stands ready and food plots planted for deer season in a few weeks. We have to try and fit work into this schedule somewhere and that gets harder and harder to do all the time. I'm just glad that I squeezed in enough time to write you this four bits' worth of news before I had to move on to something else.

Hannah Collie is out of the hospital and is recovering from her heart transplant at the Ronald McDonald House in Dallas. Prayers have certainly been answered in this special little girl's life. Our town looks forward to her being able to come back home to Alto in the near future.

John Blackmon may have graduated from Alto High School last year, but he didn't forget about his school before he headed over to Stephen F. Austin State University to join the Lumberjack Band. John worked this summer painting the concession stand buildings for the Mean Sting Music Machine. John has now traded in his black and gold for purple and white and is marching proudly for the Lumberjack Band. Several Alto folks attended the first SFA home game and saw John perform. A big thanks to John for his paint job on the Mean Sting Concession Stand. Good luck as a Lumberjack!

I ran into Jimmy Selman at the football game Thursday night and he told me about his new hobby. Jimmy is now collecting stamps. Jimmy has been collecting things for as long as I have known him, so I know from experience that he will have a pretty good collection of stamps in a very short time. I just wonder where Jimmy keeps all the things that he has been collecting over the years. I try not to collect things and I ran out of room a long time ago. If you run across a stamp Jimmy might want let him know about it. He told me that he collects anything from Green Stamps to Duck Stamps.

The Alto Yellowjacket football team headed over to Timpson on Friday night for some football. The game was supposed to start at 7:30 p.m., but after a couple of lightening delays it wound up kicking off a little before 9 p.m.. This made for a late night of football, but the Yellowjackets came out on top 67 to 0. The boys were a little sleepy and the kicker had a sore toe from kicking so many extra points, but other than that the Yellowjackets were just taking care of business and heading on deeper into the season. This week the Yellowjackets will play Burkeville for our homecoming game.

The Alto Homecoming Festival is being sponsored this year by the Alto Cloverleaf 4-H Club. This year's parade and festival will be held on Saturday, Sept. 15. The theme for this year's festival is "We Are the Champions." Hopefully this theme will be the prelude to another great year in Alto. Contact a Cloverleaf 4-H member if you need some more information about a booth or a parade entry. See more information on the front page of this issue, and also on pg. 10A. We always have a great time at the Alto Homecoming Festival, so make sure that you are a part of it.

Plans are finally being made to build a new elementary school here in Alto. Our old school served us well for more than 50 years, but it is finally outgrown and worn out. Folks have been talking about building a new one for a long time, but we now have plans drawn up that you can look at and see for yourself. A bond election will have to be held in November, but most folks who are familiar with the old school should be jumping to see a new one built. It will look much like the Alto Middle School. I still can't believe we have already been in that building for 10 years. There should be lots more information coming about the new elementary school, so keep a look out for more news. I'm excited even though my youngest will be heading to the middle school by next year. Strong communities are built around good schools and I'm glad we are looking towards making our community a little stronger in the near future.

I've gotten myself into a real mess. My wife and sister-in-law, along with the mother-in-law, loaded up and went to the Hill Country this past weekend to shop and go to the 90th birthday party of an old friend. If the lady turned 90 she is an old friend even if she hasn't been your friend but a day. Anyway, I had a free weekend for just me and the boys. I needed to go down to the Coon Pond Hunting Club and see what kind of damage the wasps and buzzards had done to my deer stand. It is time to start mowing oat patches and filling up corn feeders because deer season is just around the corner. That is what I needed to do, but instead of dong what I needed to do I did what needed doing. I removed all the furniture from our den. I rolled up the old carpet and threw it away, except for one piece that my brother put in a deer stand he was building I began cleaning and scrubbing and getting my concrete slab ready to dye. On Sunday after the dye dried the concrete had to be scored and sealed. This took most of the day on Sunday. The women came back to Alto on Sunday night, the wife is not happy about all of our den furniture being outside and the concrete sealer is still too wet for her to get to the washing machine.

Monday is her birthday, so even if she goes completely off on me, I can't say anything back to her. You have to be nice to people on their birthday. Happy birthday, Jay Anna! I don't think the boys have read their school lessons or bathed since she left. I did feed them twice if peanut butter and jelly counts as a meal. The work on the den will be finished and life here will return to normal, but my deer stand will still be full of buzzard crap and wasp nests. If I ever win the lottery, I'm hiring one of those personal assistants.

You've got your four bits' worth and I've run out of anything else to say. Things are going to stay busy for a while, so if you need something told, you better write me a note. I'll see ya next week! And remember, It is far more impressive when others learn your good qualities without your help.