High Points| from El Camino Real

Folks along El Camino Real are still hard at work picking up and cleaning up and I imagine that it will be going on for a good while.

We even got a chance to see some much welcomed sunshine over the weekend that lifted everybody’s spirits.
I hate to admit it but this is one year that I will be ready to say good bye to spring and get on with summer. Sweating and slapping skeeters beats the heck out of sitting in the closet waiting for the next storm to go by. If things keep going like they have been I’m going to have to move my computer in the closet to work on your six bits’ worth of news.

We need to keep Chad Fletcher in our prayers while he is undergoing some more testing and a search for treatment to a serious health issue he has been recently diagnosed with.

Chad is good guy and we need to do our best to pray him well soon.
On Saturday afternoon the Relay for Life to benefit the American Cancer Society’s fight against cancer was held on the courthouse square in Rusk.
It makes you feel pretty good to line up with all of the other cancer survivors and do that first lap. I wasn’t too excited about the second lap, but the first one was nice.
The Whataburger folks had a booth set up and you could buy chances to enter a jalapeno eating contest for a chance to win a free Whataburger every week for a year. I like peppers and I like Whataburger, so I bought some chances. My name was drawn and I got to enter the contest and I thought I had a pretty good chance.

They gave us 12 big peppers and we had to eat them all the way down to the stem in 60 seconds. I got seven eaten and thought I was doing good but a dispatcher from the Sheriff’s Office ate nine and beat me.

They gave us some orange and white sunglasses and a Whataburger towel for our efforts, so it wasn’t a total loss. I’ve survived cancer and the jalapeno eating contest so I have nothing to fuss about.
I’ll be in the tomato eating contest at the Jacksonville Tomato Festival in June and I plan on surviving that, too.
The Relay for Life takes a lot of work each year and a big thanks goes out to all the teams and all the people who work so hard to make it a success each year. A special thanks goes out to all the people who are presently battling this disease, the survivors, and all the caregivers who came out to support each other.
The Alto Junior Senior prom was on Saturday night at the Landmark(the old Post Office) in Jacksonville. I’ve always heard that when a plant goes through stress makes it bloom more beautifully in the spring.
I guess the tornadoes provided that stress for the Alto juniors and seniors. I don’t know when I’ve seen young people look as good as all the ones I saw in the pictures from Saturday night.
The weather was great and I hope everyone had a great time and made lots of great memories.
They can all look so nice when they want to so there is still hope. Even a mullet haircut doesn’t look so bad when its sitting on top of a dressed up young man.

In 20 or 30 years a lot of these boys will be wishing they had enough hair left to comb, much less cut in a weird hair style. Congratulations to a great looking bunch of kids.

You make us proud.

The tornadoes interrupted the Stella Hill Memorial Library Patron Drive that we have every April, but don’t worry, they will still take your donation.

Our new library is absolutely fantastic now that all the renovations are done, but its going to take money to keep it up and running, so do your part now. You can mail your donation to the Alto Thursday Study Club, PO Box 98 Alto, TX 75925.

I wish I was sitting in my chair reading a good book from the library, but it seems like I’m always sitting at my computer writing something for you folks to read.

The annual Shiloh Cemetery Homecoming will be held on Sunday, May 19. The homecoming celebration will be at the Shiloh Pavilion two miles west of Alto on Farm Road 752.

Please make plans to bring lunch and join your friends and relatives as we honor loved ones.

There will be a brief business meeting at 11:30 a.m. with lunch immediately following.

This is a beautiful old cemetery filled with lots of wonderful memories.

Make sure you get out there and honor those memories and make some new ones.
I ran into Virginia Ward at NeNe’s Table last week and she told me that she had lost her granddaughter in Houston. We need to keep Virginia and her family in our prayers during this time of loss.
Two of my favorite young men had birthdays this month. My nephew, Judson West, turned 16 on May 1. Elijah Russell turned 16 on May 7. I just hope they will still be as good boys with driver’s licenses as they have always been without them. Wheels can do crazy things to a fellow.
Happy birthday to Judson and Elijah.

After the droughts and wildfires of 2011, I swore I would never fuss about rain again, but I sure want to.

I know that in just a few weeks the faucet is going to get turned off and we are going to burn slap up, but I really want to gripe about all this rain and mud now, but I won’t. I’m just going to slop along in the mud like everyone else and try to smile and bear it.
I’m not happy about the weather. Sometimes I wish I was a frog, so I could be, but I’m not. I’m just a waterlogged man with things to do.

I know we’ve all got lots of things to do and lots of stuff on our minds, but please don’t forget to keep me posted on any events or happenings in your life that you think people need to know about. I’ll see ya next week!
And remember, Forget injuries but never forget kindness.