High Points from El Camino Real

by Chris Davis

Folks along El Camino Real that have roasted through a blistering June are turning over to cook the other side as we head into July. It’s another hot Texas summer and we are just getting started good.
I often wonder how people in the old days made it without air conditioning and their six bits worth of news. If you don’t have an air conditioner I guess after a while you’ll get use to it, but I can’t imagine having to survive in East Texas without your six bits worth of news.
We need to keep Barbara and Dwain Grogan in our prayers. Dwain had heart surgery this past week in Houston and Barbara is also facing some health problems. Dwain was doing pretty good after surgery, so hopefully he will be back home soon.
Mindy and Kim Scott have an even dozen grandchildren now with the birth of Sutherlyn Hollis Scott on June 21 in Galveston. Tad and Keri Scott are the parents. David and Holly Middleton are the maternal grandparents. Sutherlyn weighed 8 lbs 8 ounces.

We were at the hospital when Tad was born and I think this new one is going to look like him. Sutherlyn was welcomed into the world by his sister Waverly and his brother Paxton. Congratulations to the Scott family on their new addition.
Just when we thought it couldn’t get any hotter, drier, and more miserable outside we get covered up in this African dust from the Sahara Desert. To tell you the truth I wouldn’t have even noticed it if they hadn’t of told about it on the news.
I had several people tell me that it was making them sick and it made their colds worse. I don’t think dust from one place is worse than any other. I mean outside dust. I’ve been in some people’s houses and it looks like they have never dusted, so inside dust can vary from house to house. I just wish we could get a good rain and quit talking about dust altogether.
In the cool of spring when you start breaking up ground, planting, and riding on the tractor farming is fun. As the weather starts warming up and things start to really go and put out, farming is fun.
When everything comes together and you are up at daylight picking peas and tomatoes until you are hurting all over, then farming quits being fun. Over the weekend I picked four bushels of purple hulls and put up 48 quarts of tomatoes. I peeled and cored tomatoes for almost five hours.
There is something ingrained in us as East Texans that we just can’t stand to see things go to waste, so we work frantically to can and put up stuff in quantities larger than we will eat in a year and then do it all again the next year. When we moved out here to the farm I found jars of stuff in the back of our cabinet that was twenty years old, I guess we were saving it just in case we got hungry for a good case of food poisoning when we get old.
I think the real reason we put all this stuff up is because it sparks childhood memories of our parents and grandparents doing the same thing and all the smells and laughter of happy homes with plenty to eat. Shelling peas, cutting corn off the cob, and putting up tomatoes, and preserves is a part of our heritage and our way of life. If we let this tradition die then our children and grandchildren are liable to starve to death.
The pews were kind of sparse on Sunday with so many folks out of town on vacation. It suited me fine because I don’t like to be all crowded up. In fact I’m hoping that by the time I go to Heaven they’ll have one of those fast track lines like they have at Disney World, so I don’t have to wait to get in. Those folks that have a lot of explaining to do can stand in the line and it will give them a little more time to make up a big lie.
Most of the Scott Family was on vacation, so they weren’t there with a half a dozen or more of their grandkids crawling all over me, slobbering, and wrinkling my church clothes up. Actually church isn’t much fun when people you are use to seeing every Sunday are gone out of town. You can’t afford to miss much or someone new might come in and get your pew.
I’m not planning on doing anything on the Fourth of July, but eating fish, homemade ice cream, a little watermelon, and taking a nap. I’ll probably wind up rocking my grandson Sawyer part of the time, but that is the best part.
When I was a kid we would go camping down on the Neches River on the Fourth of July with all my old, aunts, uncles, and cousins. It was lots of fun during the day, but at night when you had to sleep in the back of the pick up with a mosquito bar thrown over it, you were just hot and miserable. You itched from head to toe, and the sweat made crooked trails through the dirt as it ran down your body and around the mosquito and red bug bites. I’ve got lots of fond memories of those days but I think if I had to spend the night in the back of a pick up truck on a pallet today, I’d never get over it. Whatever you do or did on the Fourth, I hope you had a great time with your family and made lots of memories.
I you need to spread the word about a Bible School or a family gathering that you’ve got planned then give me a call. The grass is all dead, the best part of most of the gardens have already been picked, and its too hot to fish except at night, so people have some free time on their hands that needs filling, I’ll see ya next week! And remember, Freedom is never more than a generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream, it must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same. - Ronald Reagan.