Ashlyn Tubbs

Twinkling lights illuminate the homes of Clarendon residents Glen and Susan Bailey, Steve and Robin Sell, and Larry and Jamie Jeffers. Cars passing by slow down, pause, and even stop to gander at the beauty of the various Christmas decorations that temporarily engulf these houses. As multicolored lights shine, Christmas spirit from these homes spreads to all those witnessing their glow.

“Our main goal is to cheer people up,” Glen Bailey said. “Everyday life will get you down, and hopefully it makes people happy even for a little while when they come by. That’s what it’s all about.”

These families are displaying their Christmas joy by “going to the extreme” with their Christmas displays, as Bailey said.

“We’ve always decorated, it’s just gotten bigger and bigger because we’ve got more grandkids,” he said. “We have about 23 blowups outside our house right now. Too many after season specials. We try to get at least one blowup a year if we find one we like, but last year we got four.”

All three families agree that the weeks of putting up their decorations are well worth it when they see people’s reactions.

“Sometimes I just stand in my living room and watch people get out and take pictures with their kids,” Larry Jeffers said. “It’s neat to watch. If you’re a grinch, then you don’t need to come by the house.”

At the Sells home, there are light shows set to music. The songs they included this year are from the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Yule, and the worship band from Trinity
Fellowship in Amarillo.

“We’ve had some people who have been in tears after seeing our music with the lights,” Steve Sell said. “We look out at the window every night just to see who is all out there. It’s really fun to watch the little kids. They dance in the street with the music playing. They get pretty into it.”

One of the main reasons the Jeffers and Baileys decorate is for their grandchildren.

“We have seven grandchildren, and one of our granddaughters calls our house a ‘Christmas Wonderland,’” Bailey said. “As long as we can afford to, we will go to extremes for our grandkids because Christmas is special for them, and they will always remember it. You’re only a kid once, so we feel like this is important.”

The grandchildren are not the only ones enjoying the lights, though. These spirited families are receiving compliments from many people for their decorations.

“We had people at Halloween thank us for the Christmas decorations before hand,” Bailey said. “We have people stop and tell us how much they enjoy it all the time, and we see cars lined up and kids leaning out with smiles on their faces. It makes us feel good that we’re making others feel good.”

All in all, the mass of extension cords and breakers is plugging in more than mere lights – it’s also turning on Christmas spirit.

“Christmas is our favorite holiday, and we hope that everyone is enjoying our display,” Bailey said. “I hope we’ve inspired more people to decorate. There’s no such thing as decorating too much.”

Christmas is described as a time of selflessness and giving.

One local opportunity available to donate for a good cause is to help the Care Net Pregnancy of Donley County purchase an $11,000 sonogram machine by taking your children to get their picture with Santa Claus.

Clarendon High School senior Matthew Williams will take the photographs from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the old JAMZ building at Third and Kearney Streets this Saturday, December 11 or next Saturday.

A silent auction at the same time features a beef certificate from 3H Cattle for $250; a free spay or neuter from Clarendon Veterinarian Hospital & Supply; a free computer sweep for $125 from Panhandle CyberMedics; three free haircuts from The Hair Connection; items from Hensons, Every Nook & Cranny, and Sayes: as well as woodcrafts and quilting items.

“We will deeply appreciate any donations we can get,” said Care Net representative Karla Johnson. “This fundraiser will also to help the Clarendon Merchants Association keep shoppers here in Clarendon instead of going out of town to shop for the holidays.”

The Care Net Pregnancy Center is a free, outreach ministry established in 1995 by Billy Graham. According to Johnson, there is variety of things they do.

“We touch anyone’s life,” Johnson said. “We are able to do things that schools and churches are not able to do. We minister to children starting at eight years old to college. We teach them who they are in Christ, abstinence before marriage, and we let them know that God loves them and has a plan for their lives even though everyone makes mistakes.”

The center recently received a house in the country donated by Landon Lambert.

“This will serve as our new facility, like a doctor’s office or clinic,” Johnson said. “Since it is in the country, this help protects the identities of people and (provides) privacy.”

There are many classes and programs that the center will hold. Some of the classes taught by the two nurses on staff are over prenatal care, a five-week child birth class, and newborn care.

“We have a program, called the Benevolence program, where we give free formula, diapers and clothes to needy families’ toddlers,” she said. “We only ask that we have a Bible study when they come through the door. Women who say they take advantage of our program have also said that they gave their lives over to the Lord, and have thanked us for it.”
The center is against abortion and supports life.

“We have counselors to help people who have had an abortion, since one out of four women have had an abortion,” Johnson said. “It facilitates the pain and guilt women feel, and then the love of the Lord and His forgiveness. Those women grieve the child they never held. We are 100 percent against abortion, and we recommend adoption.”

Johnson said one reason they want to purchase the sonogram machine is to prevent abortions.

“About ninety-nine percent of women choose life for their babies when they see the baby’s heartbeat,” she said. “Our main goal is to share the love of Jesus and save lives of the unborn child.”

The center is still looking for committee people and more volunteers they can train.

“We have four openings on our steering committee,” Johnson said. “We’ll be meeting until we open our new facility’s doors. We’ll be doing all the things we need to do before we can open.”

If you are interested in making a donation of money, baby items or items for the silent auction, contact Lori Howard at the Clarendon Family Medical Center or Dr. Guy Ellis at the Clarendon Veterinarian Hospital.

“Most of all we just need prayer,” Johnson said. “We’re asking for prayer and financial support, but most importantly prayer for our staff, our center, and our future clients, men, women and their families.”

A recent increase in ambulance calls has the Associated Ambulance Authority baffled as to the cause.

In 2004, the highest number of monthly calls was 49. This year, the highest number is 96 calls in September, and there are two other months that have received 95 calls.

“We’ve never seen this much activity,” Ambulance Administrator Anna Howard said. “We’ve steadily crept up on our number of calls, but nothing like this year. For unknown reasons, this year has had an amazing jump.”
According to Howard, there are a few more medical calls than trauma, but on average they are the same.

“We don’t have a good explanation because it’s not all one thing,” Howard said. “Our car accident calls have actually decreased since I came here in 2002. We see all sorts of different medical issues, like strokes and heart attacks as well as trauma, so it’s hard to pinpoint what the problem is.”

The average age of the patients varies as well.

“Some wonder if the increase has to do with the higher elderly rate in Donley County, but some of these patients aren’t elderly,” Howard said. “The average age of the patients is pretty much even because there is the same amount of people in each group.”

The majority of the calls are from Donley County citizens.

“We don’t get that many calls from people out of town or just passing through,” Howard said. “In fact in October, we had 56 calls from Donley County citizens and 17 from non-citizens. We thought that was impressive.”

One hypothesis Howard has is that people are putting off going to their primary physician.

“They wait until they start feeling really bad and then finally call the ambulance.”

The amount of calls frequently requires two ambulances running.

“We’re definitely staying busy,” Howard said. “We are fortunate to be able to run two ambulances in Donley County because a lot of small places are struggling to actually get a crew for their ambulance. We staff two trucks 24/7 with personnel, and with the increased calls we even have to staff a third truck at times, but it hasn’t affected the payroll yet.”

The two brand new ambulances received in March already have 24,000 miles on them.

“The old ambulances we replaced got 8.6-9.0 miles per gallon, while the new trucks get 10.9 so that’s good,” Howard said.

“We hope to keep these ambulances until they get at least 300,000 miles on them.”
Howard said the biggest issue with the increased calls is the fuel cost.

“We are still in budget as far as fuel, but if it keeps up like this I’m sure we’ll be over it soon,” she said. “We’ll be $4,000-$5,000 over the fuel budget if we keep up with the call volume of 80-90 calls a month.”

The amount of calls has not affected the care patients receive, though.

“We have a great crew,” Howard said. “If we need a third crew, someone is always going to be there. We have enough people willing to serve the community as EMTs who will even on the rare occasion act as a first responder when all three ambulances are out to provide immediate emergency care until one of our ambulances arrive. To me, that’s unheard of in a rural community.”

What is the secret to living a century?

Just ask Curtis Lee (C.L.) Benson. He knows the answer.

“Tend to your own business and stay focused,” he said. “There’s not too many of us out there.”

Benson celebrated his 100th birthday on October 7. His family and friends gave him a party on October 9, where he became one of the few who get the chance to blow out the candles in celebration of a century of life.

“I’m 64, and C.L. shows me there’s hope coming up to this end,” Benson’s caretaker and friend Diane Chisum said. “His mind is sharp, and he can do his laundry and his ironing on his own, as well as tell us what to do to keep us straight. He does quite well for his age.”

Benson’s long life began October 7, 1910, when he was born in Brice to Justus Lee Benson and Bertha Izella Hudson Benson.

He is the oldest of two siblings. His sister, Susie Kent, will be 99 in March.

“Yeah… I’m the oldest,” Benson said. “I’m the oldest, period.”

When Benson was 8, he moved to Clarendon and has lived here ever since.

“His parents moved them into a brick house on Sixth Street, and that’s where he grew up,” Chisum said. “He has lived on Sixth Street ever since then, just in different
houses.”

He attended school in Clarendon from first grade through college.

“I started first grade in the second floor of what now is the high school,” Benson said. “Mrs. Vaughn was my teacher, and now there’s a dorm named after her. When I was in sixth grade they moved all the primary and secondary levels out of that building and into the old saddlery by the park. Then for high school and college I returned to the current high school building. I went to Clarendon College for one year and studied engineering.”

Instead of playing the Wii or watching movies for fun, Benson and his childhood friends did other activities for entertainment.

“We would go skate on the Courthouse Square or go swimming at the YMCA,” he said. “The YMCA swimming pool was under the City Hall. It was open in the afternoon all week long except Sunday, because that’s when they drained it.”

They also discovered ways to get into trouble.

“We always hunted swimming holes,” Benson said. “We would find a pond on someone’s place and slip in. Of course they would always catch us and run us out.”

But it was not all fun and games. While growing up, Benson had many chores that are unnecessary today.

“Since I was the oldest, one of my jobs was to fire up the furnace every morning,” Benson said. “I would wake up early every morning and go out, chop the firewood and build the fire.”

He still remembers the day America won World War I.

“They blew the whistle to let everyone know it was the end of the war,” Benson said. “Everyone left school and went to [Kearney Street], and then the fun began. We all went to the courthouse square and celebrated way into the night. Most of the kids didn’t even get home until midnight.”

Benson also recalls when the Adair Hospital was running.

“Mrs. Adair built the hospital for the JA Ranch cowboys,” he said. “She wanted them to have a place to go if they ever got hurt.”
When he was older, he became a farmer with his brother Lloyd and grew many crops on the land in Brice they inherited from their father. They called themselves “The Benson Brothers.”

He retired in 1975. He still owns the land, but now he leases it out.

“All I ever knew was the farm,” Benson said. “We grew cotton, maize, a little wheat and even soybeans once. We tried peanuts, but the hogs rooted them out.”
Throughout the years, Benson has witnessed drastic innovations in the farming industry, from having field hands pick the cotton by hand to having cotton strippers and putting in his first irrigation system.

“One of the best things that happened was going from steel wheels on a tractor to rubber,” he said “That made farming a whole lot easier.”
According to Chisum, as a young farmer Benson was “the catch of the town.”

“All the girls wanted to go out with him,” she said.

He met his wife, Avis Lee McElvany at a party held by Willard and Francis Skelton.
“The whole point of the party was to get us together,” Benson said. “It was a frame up.”

He married Avis on December 24, 1941.

“For their honeymoon, they took a train to Dallas to see the football game,” Chisum said. “They loved to travel.”

They were married 40 years when she passed away in 1981.

They had two daughters together: Judith Lynn Cornell and Andrea Jill Finch.

“Avis Lee was the homemaker,” Chisum said. “She stayed home with the kids while C.L. went to work every day at the farm.”

Now, Benson has four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

“You should’ve seen how happy he was when his great-grandchildren came to his birthday party,” Chisum said. “You can really tell how much he loves them.”

According to Chisum, Benson was completely independent until last May when he fractured his hip. Now, he requires around the clock care.

But he still continues to amaze her with his good health.

“He’s on very little medication for his age,” Chisum said. “His diabetes came about two years ago, and we have that under control. His longevity of life is golden raisins soaked in gin. It keeps him from having arthritis, and it works.”

Chisum said that Benson is a “fabulous” person, and she enjoys the time she spends with him.

“C.L. is my hero,” she said. “He is truly a huge inspiration to me.”

Local residents Pat Archuleta and Jo Ann Schaefer both discovered a way to strengthen their faith, family bonds and their values of life.

Not without a cost, though.

Both women are survivors of breast cancer, a life threatening disease that permanently transformed their outlooks on life.

“Surviving breast cancer makes you appreciate life a whole lot more,” Archuleta said. “It makes you realize how mortal you really are, and you realize what’s really important in your life.”

It all started with suspicious lumps in their breasts.

“When I noticed a lump in my breast, I didn’t think too much of it and scheduled a mammogram,” Archuleta said. “Then I noticed it was growing, and I felt like something was wrong.”

Archuleta and Schaefer both were diagnosed with breast cancer in their mid-fifties.

“When I was diagnosed, I thought ‘I don’t want to die’,” Schaefer said. “Then I instantly thought ‘what can we do to stop it’?”

The answer to her question? Chemotherapy.

“After receiving a treatment, I would feel like I had the flu for weeks on end,” Schaefer said. “Just when I would start to feel better, they would give me another treatment. I had never really been sick before that, so it was a rude awakening.”

Archuleta received two different kinds of chemotherapy.

“I got really sick in between treatments because chemotherapy uses poison to kill the bad stuff as well as the good stuff,” she said. “I developed Neutropenic fever and had to stay in the hospital for days. But I knew if they didn’t kill the bad stuff, it was going to kill me.”

Schaefer said the side effects of the treatments were devastating.

“When I lost my hair, I was completely shattered because it was a huge part of me and then it was gone,” she said. “I started to rationalize with myself and wonder if my hair made me who I was. I also got infections under my nails, and lost three fingernails and two toenails.”

Unfortunately, a mere wig could not completely solve the women’s hair loss problem.

“I lost all of my hair, including my eyebrows, eyelashes, arm hair, everything,” Archuleta said. “There was no hair anywhere on my body. I didn’t have to shave my legs for six months, which was nice actually.”

Even though these side effects were drastic, both women still maintained optimistic attitudes.

“There are actually advantages to being bald,” Schaefer said. “It takes you less time to get ready when you don’t have do your hair or put on mascara. Just slap a hat on your head and do your thing.”

Archuleta even found a way to make her great nephew, Nathan, accept her bald condition.

“When I started losing my hair, we had a hair shaving party,” she said. “Nathan and I played games with wigs and scarves so that he would never be afraid of me. It worked.”

But as much as they tried to laugh things off, difficult times hit the women as well.

“The hardest part was having to wait,” Archuleta said. “Wait for them to find out what kind of treatment, when to start treatment, and most importantly, your results. That was very frustrating to me.”

Schaefer felt confusion as to why she developed the breast cancer.

“I was a person who watched my weight, exercised regularly and I never smoked,” she said. “I tried to eat healthy and I still came up with cancer. Cancer doesn’t care about color, age or economic situation. It can get anyone.”

Which is the exact reason why having a yearly mammogram is so essential for all women.

“One year there was nothing wrong with me, and in 12 months the cancer had already formed and was spreading,” Schaefer said. “If I hadn’t of gotten my mammogram, it would’ve spread to other places. I believe it saved my life.”

Longtime Clarendon College Board of Regents member Doug Lowe, who lost his wife in 2008 to ovarian cancer, knows the severity of cancer and encourages women to receive their yearly exams.

“Some people don’t want to know if they have cancer, but they should,” Lowe said. “They shouldn’t be afraid. Early diagnosis is the key. With any kind of cancer, the earlier you get it diagnosed, the easier it will be to get treated.”

Thankfully for Archuleta and Schaefer, their cancers were caught, treated, and eliminated. Both believe that surviving breast cancer has made them stronger.

“If you live through the possibility of dying, it makes you stronger,” Schaefer said. “You learn to not take life for granted, and the loved ones around you become even more precious. You know that you can either sit there and cry about it, or laugh through it. And you make it, one day at a time.”

*******
Please join the Clarendon High School Student Council in supporting the Breast Cancer Awareness Foundation by wearing a “Think Pink” T-shirts on Pink Out Day, which is October 12.

The money from each “Think Pink” shirt sold by student council members will be donated to the Breast Cancer Awareness Foundation.

The Hedley Senior Citizens Center volunteers are constantly working, asking for donations and doing fundraisers in order to keep their facility going.
But that is still not enough.

They are working in a 105-year-old building that is falling apart, and their only hope to continue their service is to build another building before it is too late.

“It’s going to fall down,” said Kathy Spier, bookkeeper for the Senior Citizens Center. “There is absolutely no other place in town we could serve the elderly if something happens to this building.”

According to Spier, the Senior Citizens Building might not make it through this winter.

“Right now as it stands, if we get a heavy snowstorm our roof may cave in,” she said.
The building, which is one of the first built in Hedley, has fallen six inches on the south side, has a condemned second story, and has no central heating or air.

“The wall furnace we use just doesn’t keep us warm enough during the winter,” Spier said. “And we just now got our evaporative cooler to work. We went through the summer without any air conditioner.”

It is also not handicap accessible.

“We’ve had elderly people that have fallen trying to get up the high steps,” Spier said. “And our restrooms aren’t handicap accessible either, so they aren’t able to use them.”

Spier said that they received permission to use five lots across Main Street from their current center to build a new building from scratch.

“The new building will definitely be handicap accessible, energy efficient (which our current building is not), have central air-conditioning, a good dining room, two handicap restrooms, and doors wide enough for wheelchairs,” Spier said. “It could also be used as a community center for showers, school programs, reunions and birthday parties.”
The total estimated cost of this project is around $200,000.

“We have to have everything from the ground up, which includes concrete, electricity, plumbing, and we will probably need some new equipment, like freezers,” Spier said. “We will use as much as we can, but there will have to be some new stuff.”

The center feeds around 60 people a day, and delivers to about 20 homebound people.
Since they cannot legally ask anyone over the age of 60 to pay for a meal, they request a donation of three dollars. But they rarely receive it.

“There are a lot of elderly people that can’t even pay that, but they need the food,” Spier said. “This whole area is under the poverty level. For some of the homebound people, that is their one meal for the entire day.”

Spier said that many people believe that the state pays for the center’s food expenses and the employee’s salaries, but she said that is “far from the truth.”

“It costs us about $5.90 to make a meal, and the state reimburses us less than half the cost of that,” she said. “The center spends between $3,000-$5,000 a month for food. And this is not like New York and California. We can’t have $10 plates.”
In many cases, the money they manage to save up has to go towards bills.

“For the last five or six years we’ve been saving up for the other building, but at one time we didn’t even have enough money to pay the bills,” Spier said.

“Our savings are very little because we have to use most of it for food and utility expenses. So we don’t have a lot saved up, but we’re still working on it.”
Spier said state money seems to ignore small towns like Hedley.

“It’s like all the money that is out there is geared toward large towns,” she said. “It seems like they think small rural areas don’t matter, so they try to help the masses. But our little elderly people are just as important, and we need help just as much as the big towns.”

The center received a good response from an article about their predicament in the Amarillo Globe-News back in August.

“Since the article came out, we’ve received $5,000 from the Jay O’Brien grant, and besides that we’ve received $2,500,” Spier said. “Besides the money, we’ve gotten a lot of encouragement and ideas as well.”

To make donations to the Hedley Senior Citizens Center, either call Kathy or Patsy Spier at 806-856-0143 or e-mail hedleysr@valornet.com.

“The people in this community are so supportive of the senior citizens,” volunteer Roger Hagar said. “They’ll always help and support us, and we owe a big thanks to them, as well as the people of Clarendon and Memphis.”

The center’s next fundraiser is October 9 at the Cotton Festival. They will raffle off a Judge pistol, as well as sell hamburgers.

“Please come out and support our Senior Citizens program,” Spier said. “We need all the help we can get.”

An abandoned chair lay by a dumpster in the alley. Abused, broken and regarded as junk, it waited the arrival of the Clarendon city trash truck.

But then Wayne Tubbs entered the scene. After looking the chair over, he picked it up and carried it back to his workshop, where it became one of the many pieces of old furniture he reconstructs to look brand new.

“That was about six years ago, and we still have that chair today in our upstairs bathroom,” said Patsy Tubbs, Wayne’s wife. “He’s redone a lot of the furniture in our household, and for many other people as well. I call him the Chairman of Clarendon.”

Wayne said that his inspiration to begin fixing furniture came from his grandfather.

“I used to help my grandpa, Earl Berry, in Carrizozo, New Mexico, fix stuff in the late 40s and early 50s,” Wayne said. “Back then they didn’t have any money, so they had to make just about everything they had. He did all kinds of work as a blacksmith and carpenter, and he even made windmill towers out of wood. He was a jack of all trades.”

Wayne started repairing and refinishing furniture for people in 1996, after he retired from his position as superintendent over El Paso Natural Gas Company.

“I’ve been working with furniture all my life, but it became a hobby after I retired,” Wayne said.
“We were living in Roswell, New Mexico, at the time, and there was a lady there who had a warehouse full of antiques. She wanted her stuff fixed, so I started working for her, mainly on rebuilding chairs and tables, until I moved to Clarendon in 2003.”

His work did not stop there though. Since he moved to Clarendon, Wayne has rarely had an empty workshop or any idle time.

“I’ve done work on a roll-top desk, tables and chairs for the Saints Roost Museum; redone doors for the Clarendon Schools; rebuilt stairs and made stair railing for the First United Methodist Church; did quite a bit of work for Poor Boys Antique Shop; built the box that held Kevin Johnston’s spurs that were presented to George W. Bush; and I make picture frames for Patsy’s paintings,” Wayne said. “I also do a lot of work for many other local customers.”

One of his local customers is Virginia Patten. 

“Wayne refinished a slant top desk that’s in my office, and it was a piece of junk,” she said. “It was my grandparents’ desk from the late 1800s, and my parents used it at The Grocery Store. He saw it and said he could fix it, and now it’s one beautiful piece of furniture. As a trademark, he even left one of my father’s cigarette burns on it. It’s worth millions to me. If my house were on fire, I would get that desk out.”

He has also done numerous pieces for Fredie Jo Moreman.

“Wayne is an artist in his trade,” Moreman said. “He is very thorough and detailed in his work. There’s not many people anymore who can do woodwork like him. I’ve been pleased with everything he’s done for me.”

To ensure that the furniture looks as good or better than its original condition, Wayne refinishes and repairs the old fashioned way, which he said is “still the best.”

“I use a lot of tools that people used years and years ago, in fact I still use some of my grandfather’s tools,” Wayne said. “I make a lot of my own tools as well. Most of the old furniture I do by hand without the use of power tools or strippers with harsh acid.” 

Wayne and Patsy figure that he has worked on thousands of pieces of furniture throughout the years.

“When people bring furniture to me that’s in pieces, I see it like a puzzle and I enjoy reconstructing it,” he said

Wayne’s workshop continues to be full of old furniture awaiting an extreme makeover as more customers bring in “junk,” but pick up works of art.

“I love seeing the furniture before and after he gets done working on it because it’s always such a drastic change,” Patsy said. “He continues to amaze me and each of his customers with his endless talents in woodworking.”