High points from El Camino Real

Folks along El Camino Real watched the first day of fall officially arrive on Monday even though the temperatures were still hovering close to 90.
I guess there is no wonder that we can’t tell what season it is, when Wal Mart has already put out all the Christmas decorations a good month before Halloween. I miss the simpler times when we just waited on the Sears Wish Book and wore its pages out looking and hoping.
It’s not Christmas yet, it’s hardly even fall, and we’ve got two months to wait on turkey, so I’m just going to worry about what is happening now in this six bits worth of news.
Sherry Cowart passed away on Sept. 13. She was 64 years old. She moved here about eight years ago and lived with Virginia Ward. She had been sick for sometime and is now in a place that knows no suffering. Please keep her family and friend in your prayers during this time of loss.
Several years ago a group of men that were former students of Alto High School started getting together once or twice a year to tell lies to one another. What I meant to say is, they got together to see each other and revive the memories of their high school days as best they could remember them.
I haven’t heard anything about any gathering in a few years until now.
Charles Dean Davis called to tell me and then Steve McCarty called again to remind me that they were having a gathering of Alto High School Men’s Exes. (Men that attended Alto High School not ex wives of men that attended Alto High School).
I guess I should have just said alumni, but the last time I tried to get all the alumni to come to The Hilltop Baptist Church for a gathering, Carlton Jones thought they were buying aluminum beer cans and brought a trailer load to sell.
On Oct. 18 at the Old Alto High School Gymnasium at Hilltop Baptist Church, there will be a gathering of Old Yellowjackets for lunch.
Steve needs to get a head count so if you want to attend you need to call him at (936) 462-3599 or email him at mccartyalto@aol.com.

They will start gathering about 10 a.m., so you better be there early to defend yourself. It ought to be a great time, it always was in the past.

It’s hard to believe that squirrel season is opening in just about a week, and I’m not even getting excited about it.
I can remember the day when life didn’t get any better than being down in the creek bottom hunting fox and cat squirrels.
I guess if a city dweller had walked off into one of those bottoms at that time of year they would have gone back home telling people that the men in these parts were as pious as any priest or as filled with the Holy Ghost as any Evangelistic preacher, the way they stood for hours staring at the Heavens not making a sound, and just looking for the face of God.
I’ll admit I’ve done some praying as I stared up into the canopy of a big old hickory tree waiting for a fox squirrel to drop a cutting off a hickory nut or flicker its tail, so I could get a shot.
There isn’t anything like the sound of a fat squirrel hitting dry leaves after being shot out of the top of a tall tree.
I’ve still got a few scars on my fingers from bites after getting too excited and trying to stuff one that was just stunned into my hunting sack. Squirrel hunting was the sport where dads taught their boys how to sneak through the woods quietly and how to be safe with a gun.
The gun was usually a J.C. Higgins single shot .410 from Sears and Roebuck. If you ever sat under a tree looking at your gun and wondered who J.C. Higgins was I’ll tell you.
John Higgins started working as a bookkeeper for Sears in 1898 and in 1908 when they decided to launch a sporting goods line and needed a name, John’s name was suggested but he didn’t have a middle initial, so they added a “C” and we got J. C. Higgins. He retired in 1930 as comptroller for Sears.
Sorry I got a little sidetracked. Sometimes when old memories start flooding back I just can’t turn them off, but then again why would I want to?
Gas prices have gone up around the county, but you still don’t know the price at the B & B Grocery in Alto because they still haven’t fixed their signs after the tornadoes in April.
Surely Brookshire Brothers can afford a couple of signs. I guess it’s a good thing as gas prices rise. Nobody wants to spread bad news.
We’ve got more oil than we can move here in Texas and yet when something blows up in the Middle East we get higher gas prices.

I’m going to plant a big turnip green patch beside my house. If a goat gets in somebody’s turnip green patch in Istanbul and eats them all up, then I’m going to go up on the price of my greens. I guess my brain just don’t work right.

I think I’ll wind this thing up and do some thinking about where I might find a squirrel in a tree and sit under it for a bit.
I’m not thinking as much about trying to eat a tough squirrel as I am just being still and quiet, listening for what I can hear. Sometimes we just need to listen.

I’ll see ya next week!
And remember, When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know, but if you listen, you might learn something new.