City Sewer Line Upgrade Begins

The scene on Third Street yesterday morning.

After some delay, the upgrade of Roscoe’s sewer line began in earnest yesterday morning on 3rd Street between Bois d’Arc and Ash Streets with workers from Whitney Underground digging a hole in the street twelve feet deep and installing a manhole and new piping there. The entire project will take about six months to complete.

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CITY AND TxDOT DISCUSS PLACEMENT OF SCHOOL ZONE ON MAIN STREET

The future Early Childhood Center on South Main.

The new Early Childhood Center will open in the fall, and when it does, a school zone will be placed on Main Street next to it. Yesterday TxDOT (the Texas Department of Transportation) and City Manager Cody Thompson met to settle on the necessary signage and regulations.

One of the rules concerns the speed limit for vehicles passing through the school zone. Main Street is also FM 608 and, as such, is a state highway. There is a state law that a school zone on a state road can be no more than 15mph below the normal speed limit for that location. The speed limit on South Main next to the Early Childhood Center is currently 45mph, so when school opens in August, the school zone’s speed limit will most likely be 30mph.

The Center will also have a designated entrance and exit onto the lot for people picking up or dropping off children. The setup will be similar to the current system used at the Elementary School.

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SWIMMING POOL OPEN FOR THE SUMMER

Kids at the pool yesterday.

Even though the fresh water was cold, there were a lot of happy faces at the City Swimming Pool yesterday as kids enjoyed their first swims of the summer. The pool is open from 1-5pm, Tuesday through Saturday. Daily admission price is $2, and season tickets are available for $75.

For private party reservations or additional details, contact Pool Manager Isabel Moore at 325-514-9416.

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INDEPENDENCE DAY CELEBRATION ON SATURDAY, JULY 1

Program

8-10am             Roscoe Lions Club Pancake Breakfast
10am                 Parade down Broadway
10am-6pm        Roscoe Historical Museum
10am-10pm      Vendors Open
12pm-4pm        Plowboy Mudbog (Baseball Field)
1pm-5pm          Free Swim (Roscoe Swimming Pool)

Live Music
(Music Stage on Cypress St.)

4:30-6pm          Aaron Einhouse
6-8pm                Saints Eleven
8-9:30pm          Shooter Jennings

9:30pm             Fireworks Show
10:00pm           The Black Lillies (Free at the Lumberyard)

Texas Tech’s Masked Rider will once again be in attendance.

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SOUTHWEST ENERGY SUMMIT TO BE HELD AT STEM CENTER, JUNE 13-14

The RCHS STEM Agricultural Research Center

As the locus of wind energy in west Texas, Roscoe will host the ninth annual Southwest Energy Summit at the STEM Center next Tuesday and Wednesday. The Summit will feature seminars with discussions on several energy sources including oil, natural gas, solar energy, nuclear energy and related sectors, as well as wind.

US Representative Jodey Arrington will deliver the congressional keynote speech on Tuesday at 11:30am. He will discuss federal energy policies, his experiences working with the Trump administration, and the outlook for the Southwest.

On Wednesday at 9:00am, Texas Senator Charles Perry will deliver the legislative keynote speech and provide updates on energy, infrastructure, and other issues from the recent session of the legislature.

Other sessions will include talks from experts in several energy areas, and the conference will conclude with Regional Energy Solutions tours of various energy sources as well as battery storage, transmission, pipelines, and rail and road.

Participating organizations include the Southwest Energy Coalition, Cline Shale Alliance, Texas Wind Energy Clearinghouse, New Amsterdam Global Solutions, Solar Ranch Development, and Roscoe Collegiate High School.

For more information, phone 325-280-5800, or consult the website at http://www.southwest-energy.info.

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ROSCOE HISTORICAL MUSEUM GETS GOOD NEWS FROM TWO SOURCES

Several couples in buggies pose in front of wooden buildings at Main and Broadway (then 1st Street), circa 1906. This is one of the photos donated to the Roscoe Museum this week. For a much magnified image of the photo above, click here.

This was a good week for the Roscoe Historical Museum as it got good news on two fronts. The first concerned some early-day photographs found in the bottom of a cardboard box, and the second was news of two 1972 Roscoe interviews from the Southwest Special Collections Library at Texas Tech.

The old photographs found in the cardboard box come from Barney & Betty Johnson of Abilene. The Johnsons frequently make purchases at estate sales and don’t always immediately inspect what they’ve bought. For that reason, they don’t know where the photographs came from, but there are fifteen of them. Five are photos of an old building-moving company that worked in this area, but the others are of early-day Roscoe. Some are from old postcards that the museum already has, but four are unique and previously unseen. Each captures some of the life of early Roscoe that would otherwise be gone forever.

The news from Lubbock is that after a long delay, two interviews conducted in Roscoe in 1972 are now available as transcripts on the Special Collections Library website. One is a discussion of the Roscoe Boys Club and George Parks by Phil Haynes and the other a more general discussion about Roscoe’s history by Walter Potter. Other interviews were conducted at the same time with George Parks, R. E. Gracey, Caffee Welch, Billie Whorton, and Gordon Wood, but the permissions for their public availability have not yet been completed. If and when they are, they will also be made available.

The interview with Phil Haynes is available here.

The one with Walter Potter is available here.

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WORK TO BEGIN ON SEVENTH STREET

The planned widening of Seventh Street between Ash and Main should begin today. The work will be done by West Texas Aggregates.

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ROSCOE COMMUNITY CENTER NEWS

3rd SUNDAY LUNCH - There will be NO 3rd Sunday Lunch for June 18th in observance of Father's Day . The next lunch will be July 16.

COMMUNITY CENTER RENTALS
Have several dates open, so call and book your next event.
Call Misty @ 325-338-1005

GENERAL NEWS
Work is scheduled to start on the kitchen renovation June 12. Stay tuned for updates and pictures.

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BLACK DIRT REVIVAL AT THE LUMBERYARD SATURDAY NIGHT

The Black Dirt Revival will be the featured band at the Lumberyard Saturday night. For reservations or more information, contact the Lumberyard at 325-766-2457.

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WEATHER REPORT: MILD TEMPERATURES, MORE RAIN

Morning sky.

Temperatures continued to be milder than the average for this time of year, and the area got some more rain, most of it the slow, easy kind. The most rainfall came on Friday evening right when Sammy Kershaw was scheduled to appear outdoors at the Lumberyard. The show had to be called off, but Kershaw told those who showed up that they’d get a rain check, which he will honor when he does return at some still unspecified date. For the week I had a total of 1.7” with .02 on Wednesday, .54” in two separate rains on Thursday, 1.04” on Friday, and .1” on Sunday. Several people in surrounding areas, however, reported more than what we got here in town. Kenny Landfried reported an official total of 1.75” for Roscoe over the same time period.

Since Wednesday through Saturday was mostly cloudy, temperatures were moderate with highs in the low eighties, except for Saturday, which got up to only 79°F. Lows were in the low sixties. The sun broke through on Sunday, and since then it's been sunny with steadily rising temperatures. Yesterday’s high was 86°, while today and tomorrow should peak at around 88°. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday will be sunny and hot with highs of 95° and 96°. After that, highs will consistently climb into the nineties.

Rain is not likely in the coming week. There’s a 20% chance on Friday and then nothing after that until next Wednesday, when chances increase to 50%.

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