High points at El Camino Real

Folks along El Camino Real had a nice weekend to celebrate the Martin Luther King holiday. It was a little cool on Sunday, but it wasn’t so bad if you stood out in the sun. It’s January, it’s supposed to be cold in January. I hope you wrapped up and enjoyed your day off.
I had to make myself come in the house and hammer out your eight bits worth of news. News has always gotten a little slow in January, but hopefully the news will start coming in and the Weekly Wiper will have as many sheets as a roll of dollar store toilet paper.
Our hearts were aching on Sunday morning when we got the news that Jerry Ray Bobbitt passed away on Sunday morning. Jerry Ray was our local plumber for as long as I can remember. He and his dad Roy Bobbitt worked all over this area plumbing houses. Jerry Ray’s mother Dorothy Lee Bobbitt was my mother’s first cousin, so we were kin. Great family, good folks. Jerry Ray will be missed in Weches and Alto.
Please keep his family in your prayers this week as they mourn his sudden passing.
When you live in a small community like ours, when something bad happens, chances are you know a huge extended family of people who are all connected and you hurt for them. When word came early last week that Danny Wayne Carter had gone missing while hog hunting on the Neches River, I began thinking of all the people that were hurting during this ordeal.
The Cherokee County Sheriffs Department, Texas Parks and Wildlife, The Houston County Sheriff’s Office and a host of volunteers have searched for a week, but haven’t been able to locate Danny Wayne. The Neches River has been a great source of joy to so many of us who have grown up swimming, fishing and hunting along its banks. It’s hard to believe how quickly a place like that brings back such wonderful memories can become a place of such sadness and loss. Please keep the Carter family and all the people who are working so hard to find Danny Wayne in your prayers during the days ahead.
Don and Frances Henley celebrated 62 years of marriage on January 19. Don has been under the weather for a few weeks recovering from surgery, but hopefully he will be doing better before long. Congratulations, to the Henleys on 62 years of marriage. Keep Don in your prayers until he is up and running toward anniversary number 63.
The wall on the side of the building at the red light is beginning to come to life as Marc Eckel an amazing artist from Indiana continues to draw and paint as weather permits. Artists that can paint on a piece of paper amaze me, but someone that can paint a picture on a rough wall is truly special. Being an artist was not ever in the cards for me.

I knew at a very young age that I couldn’t draw anything but flies. We can’t wait to see the finished product.
Sometime before Christmas my wife started talking about getting a Charcuterie Board. I didn’t know what that was and didn’t want to show my ignorance, so I kept my mouth shut. Later on she brought up the subject again, so I asked what it was. She said it was a wooden board filled with meats, and cheeses, and stuff that you serve at parties. I said that I had eaten summer sausage, red rind cheese, crackers and peppers off of waxed paper on the tailgates of pickups or off five gallon buckets flipped upside down on construction jobs my whole life and nobody every called it charcuterie. It’s poor people food. I was raised on it.
The word charcuterie comes from the French which means pork butcher and cooked meat. It’s summer sausage, bacon, and organ meats. I’m sure it can also include potted meat and bologna. If you use the can that your spam came in to slice it up, does that can become a charcuterie knife?
I’m not one to fight the ladies over their fancy ideas and big words, but this is just plain dumb. If you want to do it up right you need to get a plate, slice up a big onion, some of that summer sausage in a red wrapper from Brookshire Brothers, some red rind cheese, then pour a bottle of red wine vinegar over it. Eat this with a jar of those pepperoncini peppers, and a sleeve or two of saltine crackers.
I wonder if they’ve come up with a fancy name for sardines on a board yet? I personally like them on cheap oatmeal cookies with a can of peaches opened with a pocket knife for dessert. I think in a few months, most of these new charcuterie boards will be under the kitchen cabinet lying next to a harvest gold or avocado fondue pot. My ranting is now over.
Its hard to believe that Christmas is over and we are already staring Valentine’s Day right in the face. Valentine’s Day is going to be on Friday this year, so if you are planning on taking your Valentine out for dinner you better plan ahead and make reservations.
I guess I’ve given you about all you can absorb for one week, so I’ll wind this up and let you get back to what ever you were doing.
I’ll see ya next week!

And remember, Every day is something that will inch you closer to a better tomorrow.