 |
| Kaidy Ornelas (5) sets to throw the ball to Cameron Greenwood (11). |
The Plowgirls got a little payback Friday evening in the Special Events Center by downing Coleman 38-21. The Lady Bluekatts had beat Roscoe in their first district meeting in Coleman 40-28 and no doubt were confident going into Friday’s game that they could get another district win.
But the Plowgirls, who had been starting slow, came out strong and by the end of the quarter were ahead 8-0. The second quarter was just as devastating for the Bluekatts as they were down 23-3 at halftime with the game essentially over. The Plowgirls have obviously improved since that first game on December 15.
Carson Greenwood was the Plowgirls’ leading scorer with 13 points, followed by Shauna McCambridge with 10. Kaidy Ornelas had 7, Cameron Greenwood 5, and Jacey Rodriquez 3. McCambridge had 13 rebounds, Cr. Greenwood 5, Rodriquez 4, Ornelas 3, and Cm. Greenwood 1.
Scoring by quarters:
1 2 3 4 T
Plowgirls 8 15 7 8 38
Coleman 0 3 4 14 21
(To see a nice article about this game in Saturday’s Abilene Reporter-News, click here.)
Then, last night the Plowgirls defeated Miles for the second time, this one 51-26.
Scoring by quarters:
1 2 3 4 T
Plowgirls 15 10 13 13 51
Miles 5 3 4 14 26
Carson Greenwood led the Plowgirls in scoring with 20 points, followed by Kaidy Ornelas with 12, Shauna McCambridge with 12, Jacey Rodriquez with 4, and Cameron Greenwood with 3. McCambridge had 7 rebounds, Rodriquez 6, Cr. Greenwood 2, Ornelas 2, and Cm. Greenwood 1.
The Plowgirls are now 10-6 on the season and 5-2 in district play. Their next game is with Forsan in Forsan Friday evening, followed by Winters in Roscoe next Tuesday.
--o--
PLOWBOYS FALL TO COLEMAN, WINTERS
The Plowboys lost two district contests this week, one to Coleman on Friday, the other to Miles last night.
Against Coleman, Seth Wilcox led the Plowboy scoring with 6, followed by E. Raney with 5, Antonio Aguayo with 4, J. Wells with 2, and Zackary Jordan with 1.
Scoring by quarters:
1 2 3 4 T
Coleman 18 14 18 18 68
Plowboys 0 0 3 15 18
Against Miles, Parker Gleaton led the Plowboy scoring with 16 points, followed by Antonio Aguayo with 12, Seth Wilcox with 10, Jax Watts with 5, Jake Gonzales with 3, and Lupe Leanos with 1.
Scoring by quarters:
1 2 3 4 T
Miles 25 23 13 23 82
Plowboys 10 13 11 13 47
The Plowboys next face Forsan in Forsan on Friday and Winters in Roscoe next Tuesday. Their final district game will be with Colorado City on Friday, January 29.
--o--
COVID-19 UPDATE: THE BEAT GOES ON
The vaccine rollout has been and continues to be uneven and chaotic with many places either behind schedule or still with no doses. This general confusion is likely to continue in the near future and is true all over, including Texas.
In Texas, the Covid-19 numbers continue to hit all-time highs in new cases, now over 10,000 a day; hospitalizations, now about 14,000; and deaths, over 300 per day. The Abilene, Bryan/College Station, and Laredo areas are all out of ICUs, and Covid-19 patients comprise over 21% of hospital beds statewide. The Texas Department of State Health Services reports that the pandemic has never been worse in Texas, and it has never been easier to catch Covid-19. It is also concerned about hospital capacity and says the “ICUs across Texas cannot take much more.”
In the Big Country’s trauma service area, 22.39% of the hospital beds are for Covid-19 patients. Active cases have also started going back up again after dropping for a couple of weeks. There are now 2,585 active cases in Taylor County compared to 2,386 a week ago. Also, 20 patients have died of Covid-19 in Abilene since last Tuesday. The total for Taylor County is now 246 deaths. Covid-19 hospitalizations are currently at 122, compared to 128 last week. Of those, 95 are from Taylor County and 27 are from out of county. 59 employees are in quarantine.
In our four-county area, the numbers are still high but improving. Nolan County has dropped to 275 active cases after last week’s record 328, and Fisher County has dropped to 25 active cases from 33 last week. Mitchell now has just 32, down from last week’s 48, and Scurry is down to 101 active cases from last week’s 137. However, it did have 7 more deaths this past week.
As of Monday, there were still some vaccine shots available in Nolan County. Whether that is still the case is anybody’s guess. Folks who qualify as either tier A1 or A2 may inquire at Rolling Plains Memorial Hospital, Brookshire’s Pharmacy, or the Nolan County Health Department.
RCISD reports good news with no active cases among students or staff.
Here are the Big Country’s county totals since the pandemic began as of yesterday (with last Tuesday in parentheses): Howard, 2,662 (2,616); Erath, 2,379 (2,308); Scurry, 2,270 (2,202); Jones, 2,015 (1,939); Brown, 1,643 (1,532); Nolan, 1,399 (1,367); Comanche, 915 (909); Eastland, 705 (672); Runnels, 668 (653); Mitchell, 535 (522); Callahan 481 (467); Stephens, 402 (392); Coleman, 419 (392); Fisher, 266 (258); Coke, 234 (229); Haskell, 171 (169); Knox, 144 (141); Shackelford, 100 (91); Stonewall, 48 (46); Throckmorton, 35 (34); Kent, 33 (30).
Selected west Texas counties yesterday (with last week in parentheses): Lubbock, 45,600 (44,547); Wichita (Wichita Falls), 13,325 (12,595); Midland, 13,334 (12,421); Ector (Odessa), 6,547 (6,363); Tom Green (San Angelo), 4,337 (4,146).
Texas now has had a total of 1,872,614 cases (1,753,059 last week), 376,764 active cases, and 32,394 total deaths (30,219 last week).
--o--
MEMORIES OF THE WINTER OF 1931-32
(from Herschel Whittington’s Smiles and Tears of Boyhood Years)
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| Boys stand before the old City Hall, in a park where the bank is now. |
Editor’s note: Anyone with relatives who lived through the depression may recall their reluctance to talk about it, probably because they didn’t enjoy re-visiting those hard times. Rather than go into detail, they’d often dismiss the memory with a statement or two, such as “There just wasn’t any money,” or “You were lucky to find work.” However, the following excerpt from Herschel Whittington’s memoirs details some of the hardships he and his family went through, living in a shack with no plumbing or electricity. With the comparative prosperity most of us have experienced in recent years, it’s truly a different world we live in today.
When the ginning season ended in January, and we no longer could afford to rent the Cedar Street house, Dad moved us to yet another shack in the country, about two miles east of Roscoe and a mile north. Indeed, this house ranked "worst" in my memory: two small, bare, ugly rooms, plus a covered porch, all setting up on posts about 18 inches off the low ground—a necessity since the water stood for months beneath the house while we lived there—water that could be seen through cracks between the floor boards.
We struggled through the rest of the winter there, placing cardboard over the holes in the floor in a pitifully vain attempt to keep out the icy wind and the bone chilling damp.
Dad, Mama, Hillman and Ray worked as field hands whenever work could be found, which wasn't often.
An elderly lady, living alone about a quarter-of-a-mile up the road, had a cow, and a heart of gold.
She often gave us home-made butter, which was all she had to share. Hungry as we were, though, we couldn't eat it. Very nearly blind, this kindly woman was not aware that a virtual mesh of her flaky gray hairs interlaced every block of that butter.
Across the road, the Hamilton family, themselves poor as lizard-eating cats, lived in a much larger house and seemed wealthy by comparison with us. They owned their farm, raised garden vegetables, milked their own cows, owned a pen full of chickens, which kept them supplied with fryers, broilers and eggs, and they butchered their own hogs. In the winter of 1931 Dad helped them butcher and they gave us some of the meat.
It rained so much around Roscoe that fall (1931), and on into the spring (1932), the farmers couldn't head their maize or pick their cotton. Water stood under our house (and over much of the land) for nearly a year.
Very little spring planting got done in 1932. There was almost no field work for Dad to do—almost no way for him to feed his family. He worked a few days helping with a construction job—something to do with the Gulf oil refinery in Sweetwater—then caught a freight train back to where we'd come from in Oklahoma, and on to Arkansas. But folks there were no better off, and he found nothing but an occasional hand-out and a few hours of work in exchange for food and shelter.
During the eight weeks Dad was gone, we had little to eat: the greening meat the Hamiltons had shared with us, some turnips from their cellar, a few rabbits sling-shot or caught by Ray and Hillman and our dog, Penny, and “greens” concocted by Mama: she used tender weeds—a leafy plant we called “Careless Weed” and tender shoots of the leafless “Tumbleweed.” [To this day I've absolutely no taste for greens.]
Throughout my boyhood I often supplemented my diet by foraging. Such “delicacies” as mesquite beans, tender, sweet new cotton bolls, cactus apples and cactus pears, and juicy ripe sorghum cane. These edibles, though perhaps lacking in nutrition, were filling, and quite sating to my “sweet tooth.”
Another measure of our poverty during that miserable winter was what we wore on our feet—when we wore anything at all on them.
Ray's old Keds were so worn out that, to avoid the embarrassment of wearing them to school, regardless of the weather, he'd take them off and hide them in the weeds and grass alongside the road every morning as he, Hillman, and Gwen walked to classes at the Blackland School. As luck would have it in those days when we enjoyed hardly any luck at all, the county road crew came along and burned the grass and weeds in the bar-ditches beside the road, and Ray's shoes.
Ray didn't mind losing those raggedy old shoes to the fire, except that he had to explain to Mama what had happened to them—an unenviable task. There was no money to buy him more, so he did without shoes for quite a while, somewhat as all of us made do without food from time to time throughout that dreadful winter.
The acres of water standing over the fields surely was heaven for toads and bull frogs. There must have been a billion within earshot of our house, all with loud voices: the toads ranged the scale, while the bulls croaked deep, melodious chords. It's impossible to describe their round-the-clock lulling yet insidious din. More entertaining to Gwen and me, however, than the frogs themselves, were their children: the zillions of tadpoles.
Both of us having observed Mama preserving various fruits and vegetables in clear-glass, quart-size Mason jars, decided to "preserve" some tadpoles. I don't recall how many quarts we'd "put up" before Mama vetoed the idea.
When the ginning season ended in January, and we no longer could afford to rent the Cedar Street house, Dad moved us to yet another shack in the country, about two miles east of Roscoe and a mile north. Indeed, this house ranked "worst" in my memory: two small, bare, ugly rooms, plus a covered porch, all setting up on posts about 18 inches off the low ground—a necessity since the water stood for months beneath the house while we lived there—water that could be seen through cracks between the floor boards.
We struggled through the rest of the winter there, placing cardboard over the holes in the floor in a pitifully vain attempt to keep out the icy wind and the bone chilling damp.
Dad, Mama, Hillman and Ray worked as field hands whenever work could be found, which wasn't often.
An elderly lady, living alone about a quarter-of-a-mile up the road, had a cow, and a heart of gold.
She often gave us home-made butter, which was all she had to share. Hungry as we were, though, we couldn't eat it. Very nearly blind, this kindly woman was not aware that a virtual mesh of her flaky gray hairs interlaced every block of that butter.
Across the road, the Hamilton family, themselves poor as lizard-eating cats, lived in a much larger house and seemed wealthy by comparison with us. They owned their farm, raised garden vegetables, milked their own cows, owned a pen full of chickens, which kept them supplied with fryers, broilers and eggs, and they butchered their own hogs. In the winter of 1931 Dad helped them butcher and they gave us some of the meat.
It rained so much around Roscoe that fall (1931), and on into the spring (1932), the farmers couldn't head their maize or pick their cotton. Water stood under our house (and over much of the land) for nearly a year.
Very little spring planting got done in 1932. There was almost no field work for Dad to do—almost no way for him to feed his family. He worked a few days helping with a construction job—something to do with the Gulf oil refinery in Sweetwater—then caught a freight train back to where we'd come from in Oklahoma, and on to Arkansas. But folks there were no better off, and he found nothing but an occasional hand-out and a few hours of work in exchange for food and shelter.
During the eight weeks Dad was gone, we had little to eat: the greening meat the Hamiltons had shared with us, some turnips from their cellar, a few rabbits sling-shot or caught by Ray and Hillman and our dog, Penny, and “greens” concocted by Mama: she used tender weeds—a leafy plant we called “Careless Weed” and tender shoots of the leafless “Tumbleweed.” [To this day I've absolutely no taste for greens.]
Throughout my boyhood I often supplemented my diet by foraging. Such “delicacies” as mesquite beans, tender, sweet new cotton bolls, cactus apples and cactus pears, and juicy ripe sorghum cane. These edibles, though perhaps lacking in nutrition, were filling, and quite sating to my “sweet tooth.”
Another measure of our poverty during that miserable winter was what we wore on our feet—when we wore anything at all on them.
Ray's old Keds were so worn out that, to avoid the embarrassment of wearing them to school, regardless of the weather, he'd take them off and hide them in the weeds and grass alongside the road every morning as he, Hillman, and Gwen walked to classes at the Blackland School. As luck would have it in those days when we enjoyed hardly any luck at all, the county road crew came along and burned the grass and weeds in the bar-ditches beside the road, and Ray's shoes.
Ray didn't mind losing those raggedy old shoes to the fire, except that he had to explain to Mama what had happened to them—an unenviable task. There was no money to buy him more, so he did without shoes for quite a while, somewhat as all of us made do without food from time to time throughout that dreadful winter.
The acres of water standing over the fields surely was heaven for toads and bull frogs. There must have been a billion within earshot of our house, all with loud voices: the toads ranged the scale, while the bulls croaked deep, melodious chords. It's impossible to describe their round-the-clock lulling yet insidious din. More entertaining to Gwen and me, however, than the frogs themselves, were their children: the zillions of tadpoles.
Both of us having observed Mama preserving various fruits and vegetables in clear-glass, quart-size Mason jars, decided to "preserve" some tadpoles. I don't recall how many quarts we'd "put up" before Mama vetoed the idea.
A huge mulberry tree shaded the west end of the Hamiltons’ house, nearest the road. That old tree produced a bumper crop of juicy sweet purple mulberries that spring. The Hamiltons never bothered with them, but their children assured me, smiling cheerily all the while, that I was welcome to eat as many as I wished as often as I wished. Consequently, I sated my sweet-tooth appetite many times before sister Gwen finally explained and demonstrated to me that the white core in each berry was, in fact, a worm. I've not been much of a mulberry arbiter elegantiae since that revelation.
(This excerpt from Whittington's memoirs ran in the March 28, 2018, posting of the Roscoe Hard Times.)
--o--
WEATHER REPORT:
COOL, WINDY, A LITTLE WET
 |
| Strong north winds punish the flags at Edu-Weld yesterday. |
The weather this
past week has been variable but generally cool and, at times, windy. This was
especially true on Thursday, when strong north winds of around 28mph blew with
gusts up to 43mph and Monday with strong southwest winds of 20-25mph with gusts
up to 36mph.
The latter half of
last week was also cool with highs of 54° and 52° and lows of 30° and 28° on
Thursday and Friday. Saturday and Sunday were warmer with a high of 68°
Saturday and 54° Sunday. The wind shifted to the southwest on Monday, raising
the high to 69°, which was warm enough that being outside with a t-shirt was
not uncomfortable. Yesterday was much cooler with north winds, cloudy skies,
and a high of only 47°. The front brought with it some wetness but not much, maybe as much as a tenth of an inch last night.
Today the wind will be from the southwest and the chances of any more rain should end around noon with only a slight chance this evening. Tomorrow will be cloudy and warmer with a 25% chance of rain and wind from the southwest. The high should reach 64° with a low of 47°. The winds shift back to the north on Friday, and the high will be only about 56° under partly cloudy skies. The weekend will be warmer with a high of 65° on Saturday and 74° Sunday. There is also a 40% chance of rain on Sunday, which falls to 15% on Monday. Lows should be in the forties for all these days except Saturday when the low will be a relatively warm 55°.
--o--
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