High Points from El Camino Real

Folks along El Camino Real continue to be slow roasted as our thermometers continue to be stuck around a hundred degrees.
I don’t know what happened to the paper last week, but somehow the pages got folded in wrong and your six bits worth of news got folded into the back section. I had several folks pretty upset about having to turn all four pages to get to their six bits worth. Its too hot for all that extra effort and page turning, so I do apologize.
Alan Singletary came in from Austin to see his mother Virginia Singletary and I visited with him in church on Sunday. He said that he still reads my column, but was wondering how many different ways that I could say it was hot.
I never thought about it much, but in the last 21 years, I have written about some pretty blistering hot summers. We have two kinds of hot summers in Texas dry ones and wet humid ones.
In 2011 we had the hot dry summer that dried up all our creeks and lakes, followed by all the wildfires. This summer we’ve had the other kind. The temperatures have been higher, but we have had some rain and lots of humidity.
Either one is miserable if you are trying to do anything outside. When you add all that dust that is blowing in from the Saharan Desert in Africa to our weather it does raise the misery index a notch or two.
The Aggie researchers are saying that all that dust from the desert is helping to slow the formation of big hurricanes we had forecasted for this year down, and also keep them out of the Gulf of Mexico.
The farmers and ranchers got really excited about the rains we got a few weeks ago, but just as the grass started to grow the army worms and grasshoppers have hit and are eating it up as fast as it grows. I guess that dust out of the desert picked up a few Biblical plagues and brought them over here with it.
Where is Charlton Heston when you need him?
It seems like the babies have been coming steady for the past few months. Ronnie Rose and his wife Katie are the proud parents of a beautiful baby boy. Carson Reed Rose was born on July 16 in Midland, Texas.
I’ve been griping about how far my new grandson lives away and he just lives in Tyler. Ton and Kay are going to have to travel all the way to Midland to see their precious new grandson. Ronnie was always a great kid and I know he’ll be a great dad. Congratulations to the Roses on their new addition.
They put the new roof on the Stella Hill Memorial Library and I don’t believe its rained enough to wash the dust off of it since it was installed. We have some great things happening at our library and we are pretty excited about all the renovations and new things to come.
We have come a long way since our little library moved to downtown. Donations are still being taken to help with the project.
Some of our Cherokee County TEEA ladies (aka Home Demonstration Club) won with their entries in the District 5 TEEA Cultural Arts Fair. The ladies are Zoe Ann Conway, Marylyn Bennett, Carolyn Easter, Virginia Barefield, Virginia Bush, and Susie Blackmon. These winning items will now be entered in the cultural arts fair at the State TEEA Conference Cultural Arts contests in September.
Our Cherokee County TEEA ladies always make us proud. Our Cherokee County Extension Family and Community Health Agent Jennifer Pearman does a great job with the programs. Wonderful ladies doing good things in our communities.
Congratulations and Good Luck on the State Competition in September.
I ate lunch at the Eagles Nest in Rusk the other day and it was really good, but I do miss seeing Barbara Lindsey Click around. She was having some health problems but the last I heard she is out of the hospital and back at home.
She has made more hamburgers in her life than most of us could ever imagine. She was gaining on old Ronald McDonald himself in total burgers made before she retired.
She told me that she sold her first hamburger to Mickey Lenard in Alto. I think it’s a pretty good thing when you can remember who you sold your first hamburger to. The Hamburger place was where the Donut Shop is now.
She put lots of pounds on many of us while she was in the restaurant business. Get well soon, Barbara!
I guess I’ll wind this up and get on to doing something else. Sometimes I feel like I am repeating myself in some of these columns and I often worry about it, but after 21 years I realize that in many cases I’m writing to people who weren’t born when I told it the first time.
If stories never get repeated then they don’t get remembered and are forgotten. Life is all about the memories. I’ll see ya next week!
And remember, Wealth isn’t how much money you have. Wealth is what you’re left with if you lose all your money