School Still in Session at Roscoe Collegiate

Although many schools in other places have closed their doors to slow the spread of coronavirus, classes are still being held at Roscoe Collegiate, albeit with some necessary modifications.

For starters, extracurricular activities have been suspended. The UIL (University Interscholastic League), which governs all public school sports and academic competitions in Texas, has canceled all meets, contests, rehearsals, practices and workouts through March 29. Thus, the Blackland Divide Relays at Plowboy Field scheduled for this week will not be taking place, nor will anything else related to the UIL be going on at Roscoe at least through next week.

All activities at school with faculty and students now cease at 4:00pm. The only people in the building after that are the custodians, whose daily work hours are now 10:00am-7:00pm. These hours allow them to disinfect rooms and wipe everything down after each school day so no viruses will be in the building each morning when students start another day.

RCISD is receiving updates from the TEA (Texas Education Agency) every day at 3:00pm, and the TEA is working closely with the CDC (Center for Disease Control) in setting guidelines for school districts to follow. As of yesterday, there were only 17 counties in Texas with confirmed cases of COVID-19, all in urban areas, and the current guidelines from the TEA suggest that schools should go on in counties with no known cases of the disease.

Other Nolan County schools are following a somewhat similar pattern. Students had the day off at Highland yesterday because the school had a teacher-training day for dealing with the coronavirus, and Blackwell is taking the rest of the week off but will resume on Monday. Sweetwater schools are taking their spring break this week and are scheduled to return next week. All these schools, including Roscoe, are having students complete a questionnaire asking about symptoms that might suggest the student has contracted the coronavirus so that proper precautions can be taken if necessary.

Of course, all these directives and guidelines are subject to change, as schools are dealing with a novel situation, and as conditions change, so may the schools’ procedures for dealing with them.

Roscoe is hoping to keep students in school as long as it is safe without closing, but once a call to close is made, it will likely be a long-term closure, as CDC is recommending closures be a minimum of eight weeks.

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RCISD SPRING STEM ADVISORY MEETING CANCELED

Due to the threat of COVID-19, the April 13 STEM Advisory Meeting has been canceled and won’t convene again until the fall meeting on October 27.

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ROSCOE IN YEARS GONE BY: THE GREEN BOLL PROGRAM

The Farmers Co-op Gin in the late 1960s.

Editor’s note: I’m probably not the best person to write about the Boys Club’s Green Boll Program of the late 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s, primarily because I was involved with it only in its first couple of years before getting too old and going away to college, and that was before the program got really large and prosperous. But I’ll give it my best shot, and I’m sure others will correct me if I get something wrong or fill in the gaps if I omit something.

The Green Boll Program was a unique but successful way the Roscoe Boys Club used to make money for many years. During the time it was in operation, the boys used the proceeds to fund their summer trips to various vacation sites around the country, the July 4th fireworks show, which drew crowds in the thousands, and annual donations to the Roscoe Girl Scouts, the West Texas Rehabilitation Center, the United Way, and other deserving groups and charities.

It was a project that started small around 1958 and steadily grew in subsequent years into a large money-making operation involving Roscoe farmers, the local gins, the labor of the boys, and individual donations and loans of various sorts, including the use of pickups, trucks, and front-end loaders. The program was possible because the mechanical cotton strippers of the day sucked up the unopened green bolls off the cotton stalks along with the open ones, but since they couldn’t be ginned, they were discarded at the gin lots.

The program got its start when someone mentioned to George Parks, the Boys Club director, that there was a large pile of green bolls at the Farmers Co-op Gin and that many would open in the heat of the sunshine there if given the time. George thought that with the help of the boys, they could rake the piles out and spread them to dry on the concrete slab of the old tabernacle that had once stood next to the gin lot. He got permission from the gin to do so, it worked, and the project was underway. In that first year, we boys spent some afternoons spreading the bolls on the slab and gathering the open ones. Our labor was rewarded with a single bale that year, but it was enough to get George thinking about how we could improve our methods and turn it into a regular source of income.

I could be wrong, but I believe the old tabernacle slab was used for another year before a larger collecting place was found in an old abandoned strip of highway once part of the road to Snyder on the north side of Roscoe. Afterwards, that location was always used for the ripening of the bolls. In addition to the drying and the sun’s heat, another way to speed the opening of the bolls was running over them in cars and trucks, and after the boys had spread them out on the pavement, George and others would drive over them. Other Roscoe gins besides the Farmers Co-op joined the effort and before long all the gins in town were giving their green bolls to the Boys Club, and the number of bales produced each year grew.

As many farmers learned of the generosity of the Boys Club in helping the Girl Scouts, the Rehab Center, and other worthy groups, they joined in by giving the boys piles of green bolls in their fields, and part of the boys’ work was in going out and gathering them. The gins developed special rejection spouts, which the boys could put trailers under, and as the green bolls were rejected during ginning, they fell into the trailers that the boys hauled off when full. Car dealer Bill Pollard, who once sold Chevrolets in Roscoe before moving on to a dealership in Big Spring, donated a pickup for hauling the trailers of green bolls from the gins to the drying area in north Roscoe. Also, one cotton buyer consistently bought their bales at the price of better-quality cotton than the green bolls ever had.

A green cotton boll on the stalk.

By 1965 the program had grown enough to produce 55 bales and in 1966 110 bales. In 1969, the program made $4903, which may not sound like all that much until you remember that the buying power of a dollar back then was about ten times what it is today. In 1970, the boys made 96 bales, but the price of cotton that year was so high that the profit was a record $8,300. Then, in 1973 they made a total of $17,405 and of that gave away about $11,000, $1000 each to the Roscoe Girl Scouts and the West Texas Rehab, various amounts to several school organizations at Roscoe and Highland schools, and $6,000 to build tennis courts at the Roscoe school.

Most of the money they kept was used to finance the weeklong trips they took to faraway places in the summer. These included trips in chartered Greyhound buses to the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone Park, Disneyland, Washington DC, New York, Niagara Falls, and other well-known tourist destinations.

To show their appreciation, every year the Boys Club put on what was called the biggest and best fireworks display in West Texas at the Roscoe baseball field, now George Parks Field. Along with the ever-increasing earnings of the cotton bolls, the fireworks show grew with each passing year, and attendance sometimes went over 7,000 spectators. On I-20, across the dry lake from the baseball field, cars lined the access roads as spectators watched the show along with the crowd at the field and local residents in their back yards. Boys shot off all the fireworks themselves, and despite the occasional spectacular mistake, such as dropping an exploding display rocket down the pipe backwards, no boy or spectator was ever injured.

As time went on, advances in cotton strippers caused the number of green bolls arriving at the gins to diminish, and in the latter couple of years of the program, there were complaints from the gins that the use of front-end loaders and other practices caused the quality of the bolls to be less than acceptable for ginning (because of rocks and asphalt mixed in with the bolls). But the coup de grace came in 1980 when the town’s remaining gins, the Acme, the Planters, and the Farmers Co-op, merged to become the Central Rolling Plains Co-op, which built the new gin northwest of town and decided not to accommodate the program.

Nevertheless, the Green Boll Program was well known as a distinctive feature of Roscoe in the many years that it flourished. Its donations to charities were recognized throughout the region, and all the trips it funded to faraway places were a lasting benefit to all the boys who were privileged to go on them. The boys also took pride in knowing the trips resulted from the hard work they had done the previous fall and winter.
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References

“’Cotton Boll’ Program Nets Roscoe Boys Club $5,232.” Abilene Reporter-News, March 2, 1965.
“The Green Boll Program.” Abilene Reporter-News, March 2, 1973.
“Roscoe Boys Club.” Abilene Reporter-News, February 28, 1969.
“Roscoe Youths ‘Boll’ for Charity Causes.” Abilene Reporter-News, January 20, 1974.

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WEATHER REPORT: CLOUDS, MIST, MORE RAIN

Water was pouring from my roof during yesterday's rain.

Normally, Roscoe has an abundance of sunshine, so much so that a cloudy day now and then is welcomed. But this past week, most of the days were marked by clouds and a couple of days by fog and mist, so more sunshine is now welcome.

As a result of the clouds, temperatures were generally mild. The high for the week was Thursday’s and yesterday’s 76°, and the low was 45° on Sunday and Monday morning.  There was a light rain early Friday morning. Roscoe weatherman Kenny Landfried recorded an official .30”, and .16” more on Sunday, which was more an accumulation of mist than it was rainfall. Then yesterday and last night more rain fell, and I got 1.25" more in my rain gauge, although the official amount was only .92".

The forecast is for continued cloudiness for most of the coming week. The forecast high for today is 77° under mostly cloudy skies. Tomorrow will bring some sunshine along with high southwest winds and a high of 71°. Then, a cold front will blow in on Friday with winds from the north, a low of 33°, and a high of only 51°. Saturday will also be cool with a high of 48°. On Sunday, winds will shift to the southeast, and the high will warm up to 63°, and Monday will be similar with a high of 70°.

The chances of rain for the coming week never go above 20%, so maybe the puddles will have a chance to dry up and people with yards a chance to mow their lawns.

The official first day of Spring this year is Friday, March 20.

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† MARGARITO TERAN JIMENEZ, SR.

Holy Mass of Christian Burial for Margarito Teran Jimenez, Sr., 79, was at 10:00am on Monday, March 16, at Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church with Father Nilo Nalugon officiating. Interment followed at Roscoe Cemetery under the direction of McCoy Funeral Home. A musician, welder, and friend to all, he passed away peacefully March 12 at his home in Roscoe surrounded by his loving wife and four devoted children.

Born on October 15, 1940, in Loraine to Eutimio and Luz Carreras, Margarito worked his early years as a farmer and over 40 years in the railcar repair industry. On May 14, 1966, he married Julia Santiago, the love of his life. Together they raised four children, Diana Jimenez Segovia, Linda Brooks, Margarito Jimenez, Jr., and Fabian Jimenez. He will be remembered for his musical talents, teasing jokes, his wildly entertaining stories, his unfailing work ethic, generous smile, and his willingness to help anyone in need. Margarito was loved by many and knew no strangers.

He is survived by his wife of 54 years, Julia of Roscoe; two daughters, Diana Jimenez Segovia and her husband Miguel Angel of Eagle Pass, Linda Brooks and her husband Greg of Bryan; two sons, Margarito Jimenez, Jr., and his wife Becky of Sweetwater and Fabian Jimenez and his wife JoAnn of Snyder; 11 grandchildren, Laura Gutierrez, Adriana Lopez, Samuel Vera, Jr., Temisha Marshall, Keenan Brooks, Kandis Brooks, Ashleigh Ann Jimenez, Margarito “Trey” Jimenez III, Brittany Jimenez, Joshua Jimenez and Justin Jimenez; 11 great-grandchildren; and his mother-in-law, Tomasa Santiago of Roscoe.

He was preceded in death by his father-in-law Manuel Santiago and brother-in-law Robert Santiago.

Pallbearers will be Samuel Vera, Jr., Keenan Brooks, Joshua Jimenez, Margarito “Trey” Jimenez III, Justin Jimenez, Andrew Lopez and Jesus Leaños. Honorary pallbearers will be Laura Gutierrez, Temisha Marshall, Adriana Lopez, Brittany Jimenez, Ashleigh Jimenez and Kandis Brooks.

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