High Points from El Camino Real
Folks along El Camino Real have gone to war over the past few weeks and its getting ugly as people battle for every blade of grass they have against wave after wave of army worms. The recent rains brought hope of another cutting of hay for our cattlemen, but the army worms are eating that hope away. Now everywhere I look I see people hooking up to their spray tanks and doing everything they can to poison as many of the tiny worms as they can. I don’t have a cow so I wasn’t getting too excited about the army worms until I walked across my yard on Sunday morning and found it working alive with worms. I went to spraying as fast as I could and got most of them killed. It was like a Biblical plague. I wound up being late for church, and I was going to justify my tardiness with the ox in the ditch scripture, but as I said I don’t have a cow or an ox. I do have your six bits worth of news and I figure I better get it to you as fast as I can, so I can get back to fighting the army worms.
Dan and Vivian Cates of the Cold Springs Community and their son and daughter-in-law, Daniel and Heather Cates of LaMarque, were in Dallas on Friday, September 14 for the visitation and grave side services for Doris Nell Cates Shofner of Garland. She was 93 years old. Mrs. Shofner was the middle child of nine Cates children born at home on the Cates family farm in the Cold Springs Community west of Alto. Dan Cates of Alto and Claire Belle George of Sunnyside, Washington are the only two survivors of the original nine siblings. I had the pleasure of knowing a few of them and they were good folks. Please keep this family in your prayers as they mourn the loss of their loved one.
The Alto Yellowjackets went all the way up to New Diana on Thursday night and Friday night to play football. The field in Alto was too wet from all the recent rains, so the JV and Junior High played up there because they have turf and we just have grass, without army worms, I hope. The Yellowjackets were able to get the job done by a score of 32 to 14, but the folks I talked to said that the game went on forever. Those far away games always do seem to go slow when you know you’ve got a long trip home. This week the Yellowjackets will be playing Garrison here in Cam’ron Matthews Stadium. It will also be the mini cheer camp, so you will get to see all the little kids cheer before the game. The mini cheer camp usually packs the stands with grandparents, aunts and uncles, and other kin who come out to see the little ones perform.
On Saturday morning I went to town early and it looked just like another quiet Saturday on the streets of Alto. Later on in the day I headed down El Camino Real into town and there were black and yellow flags hanging from every light pole. At first I thought Alto had been taken over by some third world country and then I saw the Alto “A” on the flag. I saw a bunch of the Duplichain Family putting them up with fork lifts. I think they put up 90 in all. The great thing is you can buy one of these flags to display yourself for $20 at the next Band Booster meeting on September 25 or at Duplichain Contractors. It’s a great way to show your school spirit. I just hope they hold up until the playoffs. Maybe you better buy two and put one up for later. When I first started writing this column back in the late nineties, Alto had a really good football team and the Booster Club put up a big Alto Yellowjacket banner stretching from the front of the Alto Food Center across the highway to the building by Lyons Butane. I was sitting in the Hall of Justice in downtown Alto one day and a big truck came through and caught the banner with its load pulling the front off the grocery store and down onto the cars in front. I think flags will be safer for now.
Every year about this time our highways get covered up with empty corn sacks that deer hunters let fly out of the backs of their trucks. I’ve been guilty of this myself a few times, but I want to remind everyone to put the sacks where they won’t blow out or put something heavy on top of them. We live in one of the prettiest places in the country and we have to do our part to keep it that way. I don’t know why somebody doesn’t invent edible corn sacks and then you could just go throw the whole sack out and it would be easier for the hogs to eat. I don’t think the deer get two bites of all the corn we buy. Hunting season is here, so whatever you enjoy killing, do it safely.
The war on the army worms must go on and I’m sure you people have other things to do than sit and read the news paper all day. If it takes you all day to read this paper, then you should have paid better attention in school. I’ll see ya next week!
And remember, Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
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