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| Beatrix Lopez receives her badge from Roscoe Police Chief Felix Pantoja. |
She is Beatrix Lopez, who recently retired from the Snyder Police Department after 11 years’ service. She was also a School Resource Officer for the Snyder ISD. She will be employed here part-time.
She says she’s excited to work for the City of Roscoe and ready to get started.
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KEEGAN COVINGTON ON ROAD TO RECOVERY IN LUBBOCK
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| Keegan Covington |
According to a report posted on the Prayers for Keegan Covington Facebook page yesterday, the doctors have now taken all the tubes out, including the central line in his neck, and he is off oxygen and doing well.
We are all thankful that he is steadily improving and wish him a speedy recovery!
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MICKY & THE MOTORCARS, HOT TEXAS SWING BAND AT LUMBERYARD THIS WEEKEND
It’s midsummer’s eve tonight, the weather is hot, and so will the music be this weekend at the Lumberyard with two popular bands in town.
On Friday night, it’s Micky and the Motorcars and on Saturday the Hot Texas Swing Band.
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| Micky & the Motorcars |
Top singles include “Carolina Morning,” “July, You Are a Woman,” “Careless,” “Hearts from Above.” and “Long Road to Nowhere.”
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| The Hot Texas Swing Band |
Over the past few years, they have created a name for themselves by winning such awards as the Academy of Western Artists’ 2013 Western Swing Song of the Year, “Way Too Soon.” Their CDs, Ain’t Dead Yet (2016) and Off the Beaten Trail (2017) were both finalists for Western Swing Album of the Year, and the City of Austin proclaimed October 17, 2013, “Hot Texas Swing Band Day.”
They have released four CDs: Off the Beaten Trail, Ain’t Dead Yet, ‘Bout Time, and Hot Texas Swing Band. Popular singles include “Ain’t Dead Yet,” “The Shrimp’s on the Plate,” “Way Too Soon,” and “Back in My Texas Home.”
For reservations or more information, contact the Lumberyard at 325-766-2457.
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Editor’s Note: The news in Roscoe has been a little slow this week, so I thought I’d include this memory of Roscoe in years gone by. Its author, Hershel Whittington, a student in Roscoe High School at the time, tells of the coming of the WASPs to Avenger Field in 1943. The memoir seems appropriate with all the activity that’s gone on there this past week with the 42nd running of the Air Race Classic, a contest featuring all-woman teams, who are racing their planes this year from Avenger Field to Bangor, Maine.
“Invasion of the WASPs”
(adapted from an article, “The Day the WASPs Landed,” by Herschel Whittington, published in Dispatch magazine, July/August 1990)
The folks in West Texas have grown accustomed to wasps—they deal with them every day. But they hardly were prepared for the great WASP invasion of 1943.
We heard they were coming. We even knew which day, and almost the hour. Actually, a strong wind out of the southeast brought them over the horizon a full hour ahead of schedule.
They were, as anticipated, beautiful creatures, with tiny waists, and naturally graceful fliers.
They were a species to themselves—the WASPs, the Women Air Force Service Pilots (originally Women's Auxiliary Service Pilots). Actually, most were at that time only WASPs in training.
The U. S. Government's program to train women pilots to ferry military aircraft and perform other flying services began in 1942. Without getting into the history or politics of this program, let's note only that the first "class" of WASPs trained on an airfield south of Houston. But conditions there, in the view of program head, Jacqueline Cochran, were far from adequate. So when the British pilot training program ceased at Sweetwater's Avenger Field, Cochran seized the opportunity to move her WASP program to this new, nearly ideal West Texas facility.
Word that the WASPs were coming spread like a prairie fire across Central West Texas. Some thought it a grand development, especially the younger male population of the area. Some looked upon it as a curse. More than a few menfolks expected training planes to be falling out of the sky with great regularity, posing extreme risks to area residents. Certain womenfolks thought it disgraceful, and a threat to local morals.
Whatever my parents thought, I and two of my compadres (all of us high-school juniors) bailed out of school after lunch that sunny, breezy May afternoon in 1943 and pointed the Chevy toward Avenger Field, which was equidistant from Roscoe, where we lived, and the larger town of Sweetwater, itself only eight miles away. These WASPs were, after all, young females, and we were (God help us) 17-year-old boys. Enough said.
Our intent was to park the Chevy beside Highway 80, which ran along the south side of the airfield, and watch the arrival from that vantage point. But by the time we got there, two hours ahead of the announced ETA for the WASPs, the highway already was lined with parked cars on both sides for two miles in each direction. We shifted to Plan B.
My Dad was a civilian gate guard for the airfield. We drove up to the gate, and sure enough he was on duty. I'm no George Washington, but it seemed to me that honesty not only was the best policy but the only policy apt to work in such a circumstance. I explained to Dad that we had skipped school to watch the WASPs fly in, but that the best spots along the highway were taken.
Dad smiled. That may have been the first time it ever occurred to me that he'd once been a 17-year-old himself, although admittedly a long time ago. He gave us gate passes, and directed us to a spot alongside the flight line where we not only could park and watch the planes approach and land, but could see the pilots up close as they deplaned.
What a Dad!
It was about two o'clock when the first AT-6 Texan swooped in over Sweetwater, buzzed the field, circled over Roscoe, then bounced in on runway 15 in a swirl of dust. As it taxied toward the parking ramp, a second yellow Texan showed, and another, each buzzing downtown Sweetwater, before it turned down-leg, skirted the north side of the field, then lined up with 15. Most made beautiful landings in spite of the gusty wind.
The first plane parked and disgorged its crew: a not particularly attractive middle-age woman and a chubby drug-store cowboy dressed for an ice-cream social. Turns out he was the mayor of Sweetwater who had traveled to San Antonio to join the fly-in with the middle-age woman who was Jacqueline Cochran, head of the WASP program and perhaps the most famous woman pilot ever except Amelia Earhart. But we three disappointed young "stallions" weren't there to see politicians or famous pilots.
The second plane parked and disgorged two figures shrouded in flight helmets, goggles and baggy fatigue suits that could easily have covered two of the finest cows from the Double Heart Ranch.
Even after they removed the goggles and helmets, the fliers looked more like sweat-drowned prairie dogs than beauty queens.
This parade of dowdyism continued for about an hour, as plane after plane landed, was parked, and abandoned by a pair of woman pilots—in those days women, even those in baggy attire, were distinguishable by their long hair. We returned to school disappointed, sans any tall tales to tell, fully capable of describing the new arrivals without use of our hands.
That night Dad said, "You fellows just gave up too soon. You should have been there," he said with an ear-to-ear grin, "after they got cleaned up and headed out for the Bluebonnet—Miss Cochran was giving them a welcoming party—they looked great to me."
I could tell by his expression he had more interest in pretty, young women than I'd ever heretofore imagined. Anyhow, the next Saturday my buddies and me staked out the Bluebonnet.
You know what?...Dad was right. Those women pilots cleaned up unbelievably pretty, with their little waists and gorgeous br...broad smiles.
Turns out the "Chicken Littles" who'd forecast a high frequency of WASP-flown trainers dropping out of the sky onto our heads and property were grossly pessimistic. And, as for the potential threat to local morals....Yeah!
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WEATHER REPORT: RAIN FOR SOME, NONE FOR OTHERS
Here in town, all we got was a sprinkle on Sunday evening and a very brief shower on Monday at about one o’clock. My rain gauge measured only .12”, although some areas north of town around Claytonville got over an inch and others east of town about a half-inch.
After the heat wave of the previous two weeks, the temperatures of the past week have been comparatively mild. Highs were in the mid-nineties from Thursday through Sunday with the maximum for the week coming on both Thursday and Friday at 96°F. Monday and yesterday, however, were milder with a high on Monday of only 90° and yesterday of 91°. The low temperature for the week was Monday’s 70°.
Today will be somewhat warmer with somewhat cloudy skies and a high of 93°. That will increase to 95° tomorrow, 103° on Friday, and a sweltering 106° or thereabouts on Saturday. Sunday is forecast to be only slightly cooler with a maximum of 101°, dropping on Monday to 98°. Lows will be in the mid-seventies through Sunday, falling to 71° or 72° on Monday and Tuesday.
And, although scattered showers are always possible this time of year, at this time there is little to no chance of rain in the forecast.
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† TERESA CLYDENE NEVES THOMAS
Funeral services for Teresa Clydene Neves Thomas, 74, will be on Friday, June 22, at 12:30pm at Cashner Funeral Home in Conroe.A 1962 graduate of Roscoe High School, she passed away in Conroe last Friday, June 15.
Condolences may be expressed at the Dignity Memorial website.
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