Roscoe Students Return to School Monday

On Monday, summer for kids will be officially over as the new school year begins. But this year will be like no other. Along with their new pens and notebooks, students over ten will also be bringing masks, socially distancing from others on buses and elsewhere, taking extra precautions with sanitizers and handwashing, and be subject to screening.

Since Roscoe has been remarkably free from Covid-19 problems thus far, there’s a good chance that classes may resume with a minimum of problems. But it will take care and attention on the part of everyone for it to stay that way for long. Schools that started last week have already shown how just a few positive cases can shut down entire classes and even schools. So, vigilance will be required of everyone, including parents, to keep our students in the classrooms instead of online at home.

Here’s hoping for the best! A return to the normal routine will be appreciated by everyone involved!

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ROSCOE EDU-CAST SCHOOL NEWS BROADCAST

Hannah Ward brings you the latest news from RCISD in this Edu-Cast news broadcast. It was filmed by Riley Sheridan. Time of broadcast is 3:14.

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NEW RCISD TEACHERS ANNOUNCED

These are Roscoe’s new teachers for the 2020-2021 school year:

Early Childhood Center
          Iris Gonzalez
          Victoria Jimenez
          Lusia Rico

Elementary School
          Vernon Carey - Music
          Anabelle Vasquez – 1st-3rd Montessori

High School
          Dennis Campbell - Welding
          Jana DeLoach – Secondary English
          Zane Graves – JH Avid
          Lacy Gregory – Secondary ELA
          Javier Leanos – Welding
          Benjamin Malone -Government, WTC Liaison
          Jamie Maloney - Business
          Melissa Perryman – Credit Recovery

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DIRECTIONS FOR MORNING STUDENT DROPOFFS

Here are the directions for morning student dropoffs for the new school year at RCISD:

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FALL FOOTBALL WORKOUTS BEGIN

Plowboys at the first workout on Monday.

Since Monday, Coach Jake Freeman and his staff have been preparing this year’s Plowboys for the upcoming season. They’ve got a long way to go. Many of the players haven’t done much physical work since the coronavirus shut down regular school back in March. However, other schools are dealing with the same problem, so play should even out, even if it is a little rough for a while.

In any case, it’s good to see the Plowboys back out on the field. Coach Freeman has about forty players trying out who will make up this year’s varsity and junior varsity squads. His assistant coaches this year are Ryan Dillon, Zane Graves, Kevin Lavalais, Joe Rackley, and Shawn Speck.

We wish them all a successful football season.

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STATE COVID-19 INFECTION RATES, HOSPITALIZATIONS LEVEL OFF AS DEATHS RISE

In the state, the good news is that the rate of new Covid-19 cases is slowing  in some areas and declining in others. The number of positives that rose dramatically in June began to decline in the last week of July. Many doctors are attributing this recent drop to Governor Abbott’s executive order of July 2 to wear masks in public.

Unfortunately, the rate of deaths is going in the opposite direction. As the Texas Tribune points out, it took 53 days to get from the first Covid-19 death to 1,000, 39 days to get to 2,000, 24 to get to 3,000, 10  to get to 4,000, and only 6 to get to 5,000. The total as of yesterday was 7,261 (5,877 a week ago) and still climbing, so Texas is still nowhere close to being out of the woods.

In determining whether schools should stay open, Governor Abbott said yesterday that the local school boards are the ones to make that decision.

The Big Country rate of increase in new cases seems to be leveling off with a decrease in the numbers of hospitalizations. Taylor County has 749 active cases (454 last week) after changing their method of counting active cases to conform with state guidelines. They currently have 36 Covid-19 hospitalizations (45 last week) in Abilene facilities with 20 (24 last week) of those patients from outside Taylor County. There have been 19 total Covid-19 deaths.

Nolan County currently has 28 active cases (down from 49 last week) out of 132 positives on the year. 102 of those have recovered and 2 died. Mitchell County has 22 active cases (14 last week) out of 58 on the year with 35 recovered and 1 death. Fisher County has 6 active cases out of 26 on the year with 19 recovered and 1 death. However, Scurry County has 92 active cases (78 last week) out of 214 on the year with 121 recovered and 1 death. The prison system there still has 250 active cases with 0 recoveries.

These are the Big Country’s county totals for the year as of yesterday (with a week ago in parentheses): Jones, 628 (621); Erath, 476 (389); Scurry, 454 (396); Brown, 356 (331); Howard, 161 (130); Nolan 131 (127); Comanche, 118 (83); Runnels, 112 (90); Eastland, 83 (41); Mitchell 56 (42); Knox, 48 (44); Callahan, 43 (38); Coke, 40 (35); Haskell, 39 (30); Stephens, 30 (28); Fisher, 26 (23); Shackelford, 17 (17); Coleman, 13 (10), Stonewall, 4 (4); Throckmorton, 4 (2); Kent, 2 (2).

Selected west Texas counties yesterday (with a week ago in parentheses): Lubbock, 5,652 (5,150); Midland, 2,362 (1,,364); Ector (Odessa), 2,362 (2,158); Tom Green (San Angelo), 1,637 (1,493); Wichita (Wichita Falls), 932 (824).

Texas now has 451,181 cases (394,265 a week ago), 137,658 of them active (143,939 a week ago), and 7,261 deaths (5,877 a week ago).

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ROSCOE IN YEARS GONE BY: TURNER MAY’S TANK

In the early 1950s, summers were hot and dry just as this one is. Roscoe had no swimming pool at the time, but for the town’s boys, most of whom were in the Boys Club, there was welcome relief with the frequent afternoon trips to Turner May’s tank. It was on Mr. May’s ranch about five miles east of Roscoe off the old highway to Sweetwater, a mile or so north of the old city dump.

Boys Club leader George Parks would take as many boys as could pile into the Moose Wagon, usually somewhere between eight and twelve. You had to go over a cattle guard and through a ranch gate on a dirt road to get to it. The tank was a stock pond created by a large earthen dam on a creek, and it was large as stock tanks go. At its deepest it was nine or ten feet deep, but about half of it was shallow enough to stand up in, and it was in the shallow part that older boys taught younger boys how to swim.

Most swimming trips began with swimming instruction, with good swimmers teaching beginners how to swim overhand, sidestroke, and breaststroke. A boy had to demonstrate his ability to do all three strokes before being allowed to try to swim a mile. Swimming a mile was a firm and long-standing requirement in the Boys Club for anyone who wanted to swim in deep water on any Boys Club outing, whether at Turner May’s tank or anywhere else. Near the east end of the tank there was a small island with a telephone pole on it. Boys had to swim from the base of the diving board on the west side of the tank out to the island and then back eight times without stopping to get a full mile. Good swimmers took turns swimming beside the boy swimming his mile--both to keep him honest in his counting and to be there in case anything went wrong.

The whole process took over an hour of non-stop swimming, so it was a considerable feat for the 9-, 10-, and 11-year-old boys who did it. Once it had been done, though, the boy could dive or swim in deep water forever after, so it was a necessary rite of passage.

Swimming instruction would last about a half hour for everyone else, and after that it was a free swim with beginners staying in the shallow part while accomplished swimmers dived off a 2” x 12” diving board someone had set up on the bank beside the deep part. George also had a large raft made of plywood tied to a large tractor-wheel inner tube, and boys also played around it in the deep water.

If no outsiders were around, boys would often strip down completely to swim “in the raw.” It was a great feeling of freedom to be out in the country swimming nude in the hot summer sun. Of course, we always neglected to inform our mothers of this aspect of our swims. After a long swim there were sometimes cookouts, but more often than not, just a trip back to town, where hungry boys went home to supper.  

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WEATHER REPORT: TWO LIGHT SHOWERS, MORE HEAT

Sunrise on Monday.

The area got two cooling showers this past week. Neither amounted to much in terms of rainfall, both about a tenth of an inch, but both brought some welcome cool winds to counter the heat.

The shower on Thursday followed an afternoon high of 101°F, and the one on Sunday evening came after a high of 97°. Both were leading edges of cold fronts that lowered the temperatures for the following day. Friday’s high was a pleasant 88° and Monday’s was 89°. However, yesterday’s high was back to 100°.

The forecast is for more continued heat. Today’s and tomorrow's highs should be around 101°,  and Friday’s, Saturday’s and Sunday’s all 99°, followed by Monday’s 100°. Morning lows will be in the mid-seventies. After tomorrow is partly cloudy, the following ten days will all be sunny with light south winds throughout.

Unfortunately, rain is not a part of the forecast.

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