HIGH POINTS FROM EL CAMINO REAL
CHRIS DAVIS
Folks along El Camino Real are doing their level best to get things back to normal after a whirlwind Alto Yellowjacket football season and the hustle and bustle of the holidays. Many of us are having trouble even remembering what normal is. I don't think anything has ever been really normal around our house. I have taken several tongue lashings over leaving all my readers hanging last week, when I decided to take the week off and not put my four bits worth of wisdom in the paper. I think I've only missed five or six issues since 1997, so you can't fuss too much. I'll do my best to catch you up from last week and give you a full measure of four bits worth of news this week.

It seems like we would be use to our crazy East Texas weather by now, but it is almost too weird to accept. Last week I was splitting firewood and replenishing my stack for the big cold spell and this weekend I was breaking my garden and wondering what I was going to do with all that wood. I'm not thinking about planting anything in the garden anytime soon, but it did feel good to get out there and stir the dirt up. The ups and downs in the weather have left lots of our folks down with bad colds. I think many of these colds or allergies are caused by stirring up all the dust putting the Christmas decorations back in the attic. We turn our house upside down during the holidays dragging it out and putting it back up when its over. There is no job I hate worse than wrestling that big artificial Christmas tree back up into that attic full of junk. I'm just glad that I didn't let her talk me into putting the lights on the outside of the house this year.

Deer season closed for most folks with the setting of the sun on Sunday evening. It was a really strange deer season this year. An over abundance of acorns that wouldn't sour had the deer staying in the woods and bottoms and seldom venturing out to corn feeders and oat patches. Some good deer were killed early in the season, but they became pretty scarce by December. In fact it was a last of December deer hunt that caused me to miss writing last week's column. I was sitting in a deer stand with Judge Bascom Bentley, when I remembered that my column had an early deadline. A mediocre eight point buck came out in the bottom on the other side of a small branch that runs across the place.

Judge Bentley hadn't killed a decent buck all year and the pressure was making him desperate. He told me that he thought the buck in the bottom was a good one and asked what I thought. I told him it didn't look that good to me. He wanted to know how I would get across that little branch in the bottom. I told him that I would jump across it. He said that I couldn't jump across it carrying a deer. I told him that I wouldn't be carrying a deer, and if he shot a deer he would have to go and get it, and since he couldn't hit a deer that far we were wasting our time talking about it. Ray Charles was probably a better shot than Judge Bentley. I should have left right then and come home and wrote my story, but I kept hunting and we didn't kill anything. Some deer seasons you shoot big bucks and some you don't, but hunting them is still fun.

When the Alto Yellowjacket football team finishes their season each year the sounds of screaming fans are replaced by the bawling of cows and the squealing of pigs as our Agriculture Teachers John Griffith and Erica Hunt begin showing the students how to wash and groom their pigs and cows for the livestock shows that are starting up. I dropped by the Ag Barn last week and Brandon Mitchell was bathing his heifer while Tanner Jones gave his a haircut. I don't think any barbers in the area should be worrying about losing their job to Tanner. These young men and some more students attended shows in Tyler and Henderson this past weekend. These early shows help them to get the training they need for the bigger shows that will be coming up in February and March. Some students will start raising chickens for the show in February.

Shop projects for the shows are in the planning stages and some are underway. Our agriculture students across the county do a terrific job each year with the help of some great agriculture teachers and some very helpful parents. If you want to have some fun and be around some great kids plan on attending a youth livestock show this year.

This is the time of year when people examine their lives and start the new year with all sorts of resolutions and hopes for the future. I've been there and done that on many occasions and none of the resolutions I make ever seem to work out the way I planned. This year I'm going to try and keep my resolution simple. I think back to the old Kirk Douglas movie when he played Odysseus in the Iliad of Homer. The men all strained to string the bow of Odysseus and win the hand of Penelope, but try as hard as they could no one could string the bow but Odysseus. I feel like those guys who were trying so hard to string that bow, but in my case I'm just trying to button my britches. This year my New Year's resolution is going to be to lose enough weight to button my britches with ease or buy some bigger britches. I'll decide which route to go later. I wish everyone the best whether they are trying to quit smoking or lose weight. We can all strive to be better people than we were last year and to lift out a hand to help someone who is struggling along. Good luck and best wishes on the new year ahead.

Life along our little stretch of the King's Highway should be back to normal or at least as close to normal as it can get around in another week or two.

If something exciting is going on around your place and you want it told, then give me a ring or drop me a line. I'll see ya next week! And remember, A New Year's resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other.