High points from El Camino Real

Folks along El Camino Real have been given a new burst of energy with the arrival of the norther we’ve been waiting for on Thursday night. We got enough rain to lift the burn ban and enough cold weather to get folks lighting heaters and hunting for their coats. Fall is a wonderful time to live on El Camino Real. I’ve raked up a good bit of news that needs telling in this six bits worth, so I better get to it.
Several organizations in Alto are having Halloween on Wednesday, October 30 because of the football game on Thursday night. First Baptist Church, A. Frank Smith Methodist Church, and the Stella Hill Library will all be having their events on Wednesday.
The Stella Hill Library will be open from 5-7 with “Boo is for Books”. A Halloween back drop will be set up so you can take your Halloween pictures and they will also be giving away free books for as long as they last. The Methodists are having Trunk or Treat, and the Baptists are having their Fall Festival. Happy Halloween a day early in Alto. You can’t let ghosts, goblins, or anything else interfere.
Steve McCarty called again to remind me about the lunch they have planned for the Alto High School Men’s Exes at the Hilltop Baptist Church this Friday, October 18 in the old Alto High School Gymnasium. Steve needs to get a headcount so give him a call him at (936) 462-3599 or email him at mccartyalto@aol.com The lying starts at 10 a.m., and the lunch starts at noon. If you are looking for lots of laughs, and some good fellowship, then this is the place to be.
I went out to Cold Springs the other morning to visit with Elvin Peacock and on my way back to the house I met Jerry Knott coming down the road with a limb sticking up on the front of his four wheeler. It didn’t have any leaves on it, so I was hoping he didn’t think he was camouflaged. He told me that it was to knock down the spiders webs when he drove through the woods. I thought it was a pretty good idea. Then he showed me a telescoping ramp that he built that you can pull out to load big buck.
It was a pretty ingenious invention. The next day I went back out to Elvin’s and here come Jerry on his four wheeler again. Mr. McCollum was out there and they started putting a wench on the back of Jerry’s four wheeler to pull stuff up the ramp on the back. I kept my mouth shut for about thirty seconds, and then I couldn’t hold it anymore, and I told Jerry that I’ve hunted and fished all my life, and I must admit I’ve embellished the truth once or twice, but I have never seen anybody go to that much trouble to load a lie. Jerry hasn’t got a patent on his spider web spreader or his lie loader yet, so you better build yours quick, before hunting season gets here.
Its hard to believe that when I look in the mirror on Sunday, I will be looking straight into the face of a 60 year old man. When my mother went into labor back in 1959, Aunt Maybelle called the ambulance to take Momma to the hospital in Jacksonville. Alto didn’t have a regular ambulance back then. They just put a little red light on the hearse from the funeral home and called it one. Some people might worry about going to be born in a hearse, but I take comfort in knowing I’ll have the same transportation round trip, coming and going.
It’s less confusing that way. When you are young you think about people being old at 30 or 40 years, and ancient at 60. As the years go by they just become numbers marking decades of memories. I’ve stacked up some good ones in 60 years and look forward to making lots more.
When the norther hit, the pecans started hitting our metal roof and the side of our house so hard they sounded like gunshots. You don’t get pecans every year, so I set to work picking them up. It becomes an addiction after a while, but my addiction was making my back hurt, so I decided that I needed a new pecan picker upper. I bought the best one they had at Wallace Thompson Hardware. It is the Weasel Nut Gatherer. It cost over 30 dollars, but I figured my back was worth it. When I got home to try it there was a big fox squirrel in my front yard with a peroxide blonde tail. The squirrel looked like it weighed about 12 pounds.
I think he knows when I go to work because I can’t catch him. I only see him when I drive up and he takes off running. I guess I’m going to have to fight him and the crows for every pecan I get. Things get pretty exciting around here when the crows and squirrels come at the same time.
I was 37 years old when I sat down to write my first column in this paper. It cost two bits back then, and nobody had ever even thought of Facebook. I know that anything you read on Facebook is the truth. I can’t say that about my column. I’ve stretched the truth two or three times in the past 23 years and 1142 columns, but I still enjoy telling the tales about our little stretch of the King’s Highway.
If you have something that I need to write about, then give me a call.
I’ll see ya next week! And remember, Count your age by the number of memories, not by the number of years.