Final School Board Candidates Announced

With the deadline for submissions on Monday, March 1, the candidates for the three two-year positions on the Roscoe School Board have been announced. They are the following in alphabetical order:

               Jerad Alford
               Aaron Brown
               Jason Freeman
               Cheyenne Smith

The candidates have not yet drawn for a place on the ballot. They will do that on Monday.

The election on May 1 will also include the selection of School Board members for the four regular four-year positions. The six candidates running for these are the following with their names appearing in the order they will appear on the ballot:

               James Arnwine
               Kenny Hope
               David Pantoja
               Eloy Herrera
               Allen Richburg
               Jose Ortega

The election will be held Saturday, May 1, at the RCHS School Cafetorium.

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PLOWBOY POWERLIFTERS QUALIFY FOR REGIONAL

The Plowboy Powerlifting team has qualified for the Texas UIL Region 2 Meet to be held next Thursday, March 11, in West, Texas.

Coach Zane Graves’ team of qualifiers is composed of the following members. Alternates are Justin Saenz and Lupe Leaños.

 

                Name                           Weight Class
                Zeke Murphy                      114
                Xander Moffitt                   114
                Keller Vinson                     132
                Seth Martin                        181
                David Diaz                         198
                Peyton Friedman              242
                Britt Justiss                       242
                Diego Vela                          275
                Xavier Lopez                     308

Go, Plowboys!

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CITY COUNCIL SETS ELECTION FOR MAY 1

In a special meeting at City Hall on Thursday, February 25, the City Council approved setting the City election for Saturday, May 1. Two Council seats are up for election or re-election as two members, Edwin Duncan and Robert McBride, have terms that are expiring. Terms for council members are for three years.

Qualified citizens desiring to run for one of these offices may apply at City Hall. Monday, March 15, is the last day for prospective candidates to submit applications and Wednesday, March 17, is the day to draw for the ordering of names on the ballot.

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COLORADO CITY RELAYS TO BE HELD HERE TOMORROW

The Colorado City Relays will be held here at Plowboy Field starting at 3:30pm tomorrow. Originally scheduled for Colorado City, the track there is being worked on and is currently unsuitable for a meet, so they are hosting it here instead.

The temperature tomorrow afternoon is predicted to reach a high of 77°F, so this is a good chance to see how our varsity Plowboys and Plowgirls as well as Junior Varsity Plowboys can do against some good competition.

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Shannon Sanders, of the Roscoe FFA, placed 7th in Class 42 with her Simbrah steer at the 2021 San Antonio Livestock Show.

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COVID-19 CONTINUES TO LOSE INTENSITY

In the United States, the Covid-19 numbers continue their steady fall from the January holiday peak. On January 8 the U.S. reported an average of 259,000 new cases daily. On Monday, that number had fallen to under 57,000. Covid-19 hospitalizations back then numbered over 132,000. Now, they are under 46,000. Deaths were around 3,500 per day, and now they are under 1,500 and still falling. The main concerns now are getting the population vaccinated and determining how effective the vaccines will be against the mutant coronavirus strains that are popping up.

In Texas, the numbers also continue to drop, enough so that yesterday Greg Abbott announced that on March 10, next Wednesday, the statewide mask order and capacity limits on businesses will be dropped, and all businesses may fully reopen. New cases of Covid-19 across the state are now under 2,000 daily compared to over 10,000 in January, and hospitalizations are down to 5,600 compared to 14,000 in January. The number of deaths has fallen from over 300 per day in January but remains fairly high compared to new cases and hospitalizations. They will naturally lag behind the other categories

Vaccinations are once again in full swing after the holdup caused by the winter storm, and the new Johnson & Johnson single-dose vaccine is on its way to Texas, along with the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines that are already here.

Positive trends also continue in the Big Country. The number of active cases in Taylor County has fallen to 635 from 818 last week and 1,278 two weeks ago. Hospitalizations for Covid-19 in Abilene are now at 22 compared to 27 last week, 39 two weeks ago, and 127 six weeks ago.  However, there were nine more deaths to bring the total to 351, which continues to be high, and there are still no ICU units available.

In the Big Country’s trauma service area, the percentage of hospital beds for Covid-19 patients also continues to drop. On Monday, it was down to 2.96% compared to 4.36% last week, 5.82% two weeks ago, and 7.55% three weeks ago. The number of hospital staff in quarantine is now at 7, compared to 9 last week and 14 two weeks ago.

In our four-county area, the numbers are also low. Nolan County has dropped to just 12 active cases from 26 last week and 98 two weeks ago. Fisher County has had no cases for two weeks now and only one the week before that. Mitchell County now has 11, up from 6 last week. Scurry County has stopped posting their numbers, and I was unable to get definite numbers from them. At last count, they had 53 active cases two weeks ago. There were no new deaths in Nolan, Fisher, or Mitchell Counties.

RCISD reports good news again this week 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): Scurry, 3,381 (3,379); Howard, 2,976 (2,966); Erath, 2,707 (2,692); Jones, 2,098 (2,076); Brown, 1,917 (1,902); Nolan, 1,495 (1,489); Comanche, 1,134 (1,040); Eastland, 903 (870); Runnels, 765 (764); Callahan 587 (585); Mitchell, 585 (575); Coleman, 473 (471); Stephens, 400 (414); Fisher, 290 (290); Coke, 215 (215); Haskell, 195 (194); Knox, 171 (170); Shackelford, 126 (126); Throckmorton, 49 (49); Stonewall, 48 (48); Kent, 35 (35).
 
Selected west Texas counties yesterday (with last week in parentheses): Lubbock, 48,160 (47,788); Midland, 16,236 (16,140); Wichita (Wichita Falls), 14,566 (14,358); Ector (Odessa), 8,416 (8,161); Tom Green (San Angelo), 4,572 (4,548).

Texas now has had a total of 2,292,097 cases (2,225,399 last week), 156,989 active cases (192,883 last week) and 42,995 total deaths (41,641 last week).

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WEATHER REPORT: MILD, DRY

Clear skies at sunrise yesterday morning.

After the wild winter weather of the preceding week, this past week was thankfully mild and temperate, what you might call average weather for the month of February. It didn’t get too hot nor too cold. Rain was predicted for Saturday night, but it never arrived. Between 1:00 and 1:30am Sunday night, we got some thunder and lightning, but I checked the driveway when I woke up the next morning, and it was as dry as a bone.

The high since last Wednesday was Saturday’s 74°F and the low was Monday morning’s 28°. The weekend weather was nice but a little bit windy. In short, there was nothing remarkable, but that’s okay.

The forecast for today is for sunny skies, a high of 74°, and a medium breeze from the southwest. Tomorrow should be even warmer with a high of 77° and windier, with southwest winds of about 20mph. Friday will be cooler with strong north winds and a high of only 59°. The weekend will be partly cloudy with southerly winds of about 15 mph and highs of 63° on Saturday and 67° Sunday. Lows will be in the 30s and 40s with no freezes.

And, unfortunately, no chances for rain.

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ROSCOE IN YEARS GONE BY: BOYS CLUB MEETINGS

The museum doesn't have a photo of a Boys Club meeting, so I used this one instead. I have no idea what these boys are doing, but maybe they are looking for arrowheads. Photo is from the 1950s.

Anyone who was a member of the Roscoe Boys Club for any length of time will remember the meetings that took place on Monday evenings from seven to about nine.

In the summertime, meetings were held at the Boys Club hall—during the school year, in the old Roscoe High School gymnasium. They were generally attended by about thirty-five or forty boys and, besides announcements and plans, included games. On a normal Monday evening at the gym when school was going on, boys would gather on or just below the auditorium stage while George stood before them presiding. After a general meeting which included announcements and plans, the boys would divide up into their respective patrols to further discuss plans or to prepare for the games which followed.

There were usually six or so patrols, each with a leader selected by George. These leaders would be the oldest, most responsible boys. In creating the patrols, the leaders would take turns choosing the other boys, the oldest going first and littlest last, until each patrol had six or seven boys. Then each patrol chose its own name. Some of the ones that come to mind are the West Side Alley Cats, the Fearless Fleas, the Pipsqueaks, and the Freaks. (Maybe some readers remember other names.) These patrols had a life of one year each, after which new patrols with new names were formed. Patrols competed against one another for glory and sometimes even prizes. Games included relay races of various sorts (hopping on one foot, running backwards, etc.), or games that involved throwing balls to one another or at an opponent.

One popular ball-throwing game was called chunk ‘em. The game was played by dividing all the boys into two groups, one at one end of the basketball court and the other at the other. George would then throw about a dozen rubber balls onto midcourt, where brave souls would make a dash from the ends to grab them and immediately throw them as hard as they could at an opponent. The balls were about 2½ inches in diameter, a little smaller than a tennis ball, and were the type you could buy in the variety store for a dime. They were firm enough to hurt when someone hit you with one or to bloody a nose with a direct hit, but not so firm that they were likely to maim anyone—even when that someone got hit in the face, as sometimes happened.

The rules of the game were that you could keep playing until you had been hit three times, at which point you were out and had to go sit on the sidelines. Every time someone threw a ball, whether it hit its target or missed, it would go bouncing off, and a chase would ensue to get it to throw at an opponent. The only rules were that neither team could advance beyond the free-throw line of the other team’s end of the court. Toward the end, the game would reach the point that players on the more numerous team would have all the balls. They would then steadily advance, while the remaining victims of the other team retreated to the wall at their end of the court to await “target practice” as the other team slowly eliminated them, boys standing just behind the free throw line and throwing the balls while the victims ran and dodged for as long as they could.

Summertime games were usually played in the little park beside the Boys Club hall, but some had a wider range. One was called capture the flag, which involved boys dividing up into two teams, and a flag, which was placed on the 50-yard line of Plowboy Field. One team defended the flag while the other tried to capture it with widespread action and everything happening in the dark. Another game was a scavenger hunt in which patrol leaders drew a piece of paper from a hat that contained a list of items. Patrols then had an hour or so to come up with as many of the listed items as they could. The patrol that came up with the most was the winner. These items consisted of things that involved going to members’ houses and finding things in garages, closets, kitchen drawers, storage boxes, and so on. Boys rode off on their bikes and dashed home to ask their mothers where they could find such things as pictures of patrol members when they were babies, fishing corks, cheese shredders, cardboard fans advertising funeral homes, rattlesnakes’ rattles, and so on. The winning patrol usually got a prize of some sort, a piece of candy or a treat the next day at the drug store.

Summertime meetings were sometimes feasts of one sort or another. One was a homemade ice cream feed. Several boys would bring hand-crank ice-cream makers from home, and the Boys Club would furnish all the necessary supplies: ice, rock salt, cream, milk, fresh peaches, vanilla, Hershey’s chocolate syrup, and so on. Boys would pair off and work the ice cream makers, one sitting on top to hold it firmly in place while the other manned the hand crank. And when the cranker’s arm got tired, they would switch places, and the other would go to work. When the ice cream was made, there was always enough for each boy to get three or four paper cups full, quite a treat at a time when freezers in home refrigerators weren’t good enough to keep ice cream, and nickels were hard for boys to come by for ice-cream at the drug store.

In August, when the watermelons started coming in on trucks from east Texas, George would buy a bunch for a watermelon feed. There were extravagant methods of eating at these with boys’ faces completely covered in watermelon juice. Seed spitting would be normal at first but would soon get out of hand with boys “accidentally” spitting seeds on one another—and sometimes watermelon, too. Wild chases of revenge would frequently follow, and the night would be capped off with George hosing sticky boys down with water from a garden hose. Bean feeds involved pinto beans cooked in a big steel vat; slices of raw, fresh onions; pickles, catsup, shredded longhorn cheese, and light bread. Certain boys achieved honor by eating prodigious amounts, going back for seconds, thirds, and fourths.

But at all Boys’ Club meetings, whether at the school gym or downtown by the Boys Club hall, it was impossible for that many active boys to be together without some getting out of line now and then. And when that happened, George was always ready to mete out punishment in the form of the cord that was on the whistle that hung around his neck. He would tell the offending boy to come forward and “bend it.” One of the cords, as I remember it, was made from weaved plastic thread with a little knot on the end. A swift blow with this cord across a boy’s rear end produced an immediate pain sharp enough to cause a cry or at least gritted teeth. Although taunting was not allowed, this punishment was just another form of the evening fun and entertainment for the other boys who witnessed it.

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