High points from El Camino Real

Folks along El Camino Real are still waiting on cooler weather, but its coming mighty slow. A good soaking rain should be on the list of things we need also. We need the burn ban lifted before cold weather gets here.
I worked up a sweat just trying to find you six bits worth of news. I visited with Donald Wolfe just a week or so ago in town and then I heard we lost him in a accident in his truck a few days later. Donald was 58. I had known him since high school.
We never know when it’s the last time you’ll get a chance to visit with an old friend. I wish I would have talked longer. Please keep his family in your prayers as they attempt to cope with a life taken way too soon.
Our friend, Jimmy Selman cut the end of his thumb off last week and had to go to the hospital to get it seen about. They couldn’t reattach what was gone, but he is in good spirits and is doing well the last I heard. I heard two different stories but I think he got a cord wrapped around it and a four wheeler or something like that. It sounds painful to me.

Please pray that Jimmy gets well real soon with as little problems as possible.
Marie McCullough Thomas is going to be having a big birthday on October 2. Marie will be turning 99 years old. I’ve written about Marie many times in this article because she has always been such a wealth of information about our little town.
She lives in assisted living in Nacogdoches now, but I know if I needed to find out something about the Alto of old all I have to do is pick up the phone and call her. She will be celebrating her birthday on Saturday October 5 between 2 and 4 at her residence, The Arbors 3002 Westward Dr. Nacogdoches, Texas.
Happy Birthday, Marie! We love you!
I guess one of the best stories that Marie ever told me was about a wrestling match here in town.

She told me that when she was a little girl around nine or ten years old, she watched a wrestling match in Alto. Back in the 1930's at the area on the southeast corner of the Highway 69 and 21 intersection, about where the Valero is now, there was an empty lot behind the old telephone office. That lot played host to various assortments of medicine shows, tent revivals, and other performances.
A medicine show had come to town and was looking for a local man to take on a big wrestler they had as part of the entertainment. The Justice of the Peace in town was Judge Mack Ray. Judge Ray had six boys Lawrence, Roy, Troy, Joel, Max, and Vardeman.
He also had two girls Eunice and Coletta. The dashing young Vardeman Ray volunteered to take on the big wrestler from the medicine show. A big crowd showed up to watch the Judge’s son take on the wrestler and Marie Thomas was one of the crowd.
The two men stepped into the ring and began circling each other, and before you knew it Vardeman had that big wrestler in a hold that he couldn’t get out of and in just a little bit he whipped him good and pinned him to the ground.
Marie said that the girls all went wild after the handsome young man after he bested the professional wrestler from out of town and made Alto proud. I don’t think wrestlers came back to Alto anymore after the humiliating defeat of one of their own by Vardeman Ray.
I guess one of the best things about growing up in a little town like ours is the fact that you are friends with people that you can never remember meeting, because you have known them all your life. Mindy Grammer Scott and I were in the first kindergarten class that Alto ever had together.
We graduated as the last graduating class of the Old Alto High School in 1978. We were Mr. and Miss AHS. We’ve raised our kids together (they had six and Jay Anna and I had three), lead youth groups at church together, vacationed together, and most of all laughed together for what seems like a lifetime. This week on October 6 my friend is turning 60 years old. It breaks my heart to see her get old.
Happy Birthday, Mindy!
If you haven’t gotten the wasp nests and flying squirrels out of your deer stands I think its time to get it done. I procrastinated one year and wound up sitting in a stand with a big red wasp nest in it when it got daylight. I fought wasps with my hat until I gave out.
Another time I crawled up in one and the flying squirrels had made a nest out of a roll of toilet paper and an old paperback western. I guess the year I forgot to close the windows when season was over and the buzzards moved in was the worst. Don’t procrastinate.
A nice plaque was placed in front of the Stella Hill Memorial Library to honor the contribution that Bill and Marjorie Warner made to our community when they donated the old Boyd’s Drugstore building to be used to house the library.
With the help of the Tocker Foundation the recently renovated building continues to be a blessing to our town. Mr. and Mrs Warner have always a been a blessing to me. A big thanks to Dan and Sunny Connelly for their gift of this beautiful plaque in memory of Bill Warner.
We kept our grandson this weekend and the little fellow was coughing at night, so I went to town and bought a green jar of mentholatum and greased his chest up good before we put him down. He slept nearly the whole night without coughing. When I was a little kid my mother kept so much mentholatum on us she didn’t have to worry about us getting kidnaped. We stayed so greasy nobody could get a hold of us. It would draw a sticker out of your foot too if you slept with a wad of it on the sticker and sock on it. Its funny how the old remedies still work if you can remember to use them.
I can’t think of anything else that needs telling for now. If something important pops up let me know about it and I’ll try to catch it in the next issue. I’ll see ya next week!

And remember, No time is ever wasted that makes two people better friends.