The Clarendon Enterprise - Spreading the word since 1878.
The people of Clarendon once again are set to welcome visitors to their annual Saints’ Roost Celebration, and a full list of activities are set for this weekend.
Celebrating America’s independence is a tradition here that dates back to July 4, 1878, when Christian Colonists who settled Old Clarendon gathered for the ocassion. The festivities have changed some over the years, but people still return to Saints’ Roost every year for a good time and to get reacquainted with old friends.
The 133rd annual celebration will be held July 1-3 with the Fourth falling on Sunday this year.
Activities begin Thursday, July 1, with downtown merchant sales, an afternoon blood drive at Clarendon College, and a junior rodeo at the Clarendon Outdoor Entertainment Association’s arena followed by a dance on the slab.
The fun continues on Friday, July 2, with more sales downtown, a Depression Lunch at 11 a.m., and annual Henson’s Turtle Race will be held at 1:30. The first night of the COEA Ranch Rodeo at 7:30 p.m. Music for the dance that evening will be provided by the Buster Bledsoe Band.
Saturday will be the big day of activities with a Donkey roping at the arena and the Kids Bicycle Parade at 10:00 a.m. downtown. The 4H Craft Fair also begins at 10 a.m. on the Courthouse lawn with the Old Settlers Reunion at 10:30 and live entertainment during the day. Contact the Donley County Extension Office for craft fair booth space.
The Shriners’ Barbecue Lunch will start at 11 a.m., and tickets are on sale at Henson’s and the Enterprise..
The annual Western Parade will be at 2 p.m. followed by the Lions Club’s Cow Patty Bingo. The Ranch Rodeo will be held at 7:30, and Greg Allen will open for Tommy Gallegher at the dance.
The celebration will also feature a Trade Show each night at the rodeo, and Guy Ellis is the contact for booth space. COEA will also be hosting the traditional calf scramble and other kids’ events prior to the rodeo.
If you have other events going on during the celebration, please contact the Chamber of Commerce to get them on the official schedule.
The nine- to ten-year-old All Star baseball team will advance to the state tournament in Denver City, Texas, during July 10-15 after competing well in the District tournament last weekend.
The team consists of 14 players and is coached under manager Jeremy Hicks, Brad Elam, Cameron Word and Casey Cobb. They played on June 26 and 27 and lost to North Randall and Hereford but won to Canyon.
“I’m proud of the boys,” Hicks said. “This is a huge accomplishment for Clarendon’s baseball program to beat Canyon and compete well against schools so much bigger than us.”
The team consists of 14 boys all but one of whom is from Clarendon. They are Garrett Barnett of Panhandle along with Clarendon’s Joshua Cobb, Damarjae Cortez, Andy Davis, Noab Elam, Preston Elam, Ben Haney, Payton Hicks, Payton Havens, Kade Hunsaker, Nathan Shadle, Raylyn Shelton, and Colt Wood. Also on the team is Gavin Word, who did not play this past weekend but will be playing in Denver City.
The All Stars will compete in an eight double elimination tournament in the state competition. They are guaranteed two games, and if they win, they will advance to the regional tournament at the end of July.
“These boys are getting better every day. We want to keep it going as long as we can.”
A Hedley woman had her car stolen last Tuesday during a quick stop at a local convenience store.
Donley County Sheriff Butch Blackburn said Timber Lee Potts had filled her 1995 Cadillac with gas at Uncle Bob’s and then went in the store.
“A kid came in there and asked if they had a Western Union,” Potts said. “Tonja (Ruthardt) told him he would have to go to Lowe’s in Clarendon for that. He left, and when I went out about 20 minutes later, my car was gone.”
Potts said she didn’t immediately react because she thought Travis Ruthardt was playing a prank on her and had just hidden her car.
“By the time we called the sheriff, he probably had an hour head start,” Potts said of the subject.
Blackburn said the subject turned out to be Clint Stevens of Wichita Falls, who left his girlfriend’s 2005 Kia at Uncle Bob’s and inside was information that identified the subject as well as a picture of him.
“He took his keys, but he was out of gas,” Potts said.
The sheriff’s office put out an alert for the stolen vehicle, and two hours later the Armstrong County Sheriff’s Office found Potts’ vehicle behind a building in Claude and Stevens attempting to break into the building.
The car was recovered, and Steven was arrested on charges of Unauthorized Use of Motor Vehicle and Burglary of a Building. He was still in the Armstrong County Jail at press time.
Blackburn advises people not to leave their keys in their car even if they are just running into a store for a minute, and Potts agrees with him.
“You always think, ‘It will never happen to me.’ Well, it happened to me,” she said. “I just hope nobody leaves their keys in their car with their kids in it because it could sure not be a good thing.”
Stevens has a lengthy criminal history, including charges of burglary, robbery, and deadly conduct, Blackburn said.
When a representative of the Working Ranch Cowboys Foundation called Laban Tubbs, director of the Ranch & Feedlot Operations Program at Clarendon College, and told him that the Foundation wanted to give the program some financial help, Tubbs was excited.
He immediately began to think about things the program needed, such as a few supplies, a jacket sponsor for all the students and maybe some scholarship help. That’s when the Foundation representative told him that all that was fine, but they were talking about a significant grant, maybe $50,000. Then, Tubbs got really excited.
The Working Ranch Cowboys Foundation is the benevolent arm of the Working Ranch Cowboys Association, which is headquartered in Amarillo and produces the World Championship Ranch Rodeo each November in Amarillo. The Foundation has as its goal to provide assistance to ranch cowboys and their families in times of need.
“The association was started years ago with the intent of furthering our Western heritage and helping the working cowboy on the ranch,” said Sam Daube, president of the Foundation.
“Now, we’re able to make a bigger impact with this grant to the Ranch & Feedlot Operations program. They are educating kids to work on a ranch, and by making a grant to that program we are able to help a lot of people.”
Daube says that the grant is a matching grant, and in order for the program to receive all of it, CC must raise another $50,000.
The Ranch & Feedlot Operations program is a work force educational program that is structured to help young people get an introduction into the ranching and feedlot industries.
“Clarendon College was seeing a lot of rural kids who weren’t going to college but needed some sort of education to help them get started with their lives and their careers,” said Jason Green, an instructor with the program. “We start out with basic animal health, basic nutrition, basic feeds and feeding, marketing, anything that you would probably learn while working for an operation for a year or two.
“Probably 80 percent of the students coming into this program have what you would call a cowboy background,” Green said. “They grew up on a ranch, and they know that working on a ranch is what they’re going to do the rest of their lives. Some of them already have jobs. Sometimes the ranches pay their tuitions so they will come here and learn something and then go back to the ranch and go to work.”
To complete the Ranch & Feedlot Operation program takes two semesters. However, Clarendon College also offers an RFO Associate Degree, where the student takes math, English and science courses in addition to the agriculture courses taken in the RFO program. The student graduates with an associate degree after two years of course work, and this provides a good basic program for a student who wants to transfer to a major university and obtain a bachelors degree.
Green said that each student pays, in addition to his tuition, a professional services fee that goes toward artificial insemination schools, training clinics and things like that. He says that they always run short of funds for those services before the end of the year, and they plan to use part of the WRCF grant to supplement that.
“There are also lots of travel expenses,” Green said. “We have two vans that hold 14 passengers each, and this year we went 6,500 miles. So we can use some help on those expenses, and we’re also going to use some of the money to help boost our scholarship fund. We give 13 scholarships a year, and we need some help in that area right now, too.”
Plans are in place for a spectacular Saints’ Roost Celebration next month in Clarendon.
The 133rd annual celebration will be held July 1-3 with the Fourth falling on Sunday this year.
Activities begin Thursday, July 1, with downtown merchant sales and a junior rodeo at the Clarendon Outdoor Entertainment Association’s area followed by a dance on the slab.
The fun continues on Friday, July 2, with more sales downtown, a Depression Lunch at 11 a.m., and annual Henson’s Turtle Race will be held at 1:30. The first night of the COEA Ranch Rodeo at 7:30 p.m. Music for the dance that evening will be provided by the Buster Bledsoe Band.
Saturday will be the big day of activities with a Donkey roping at the arena and the Kids Bicycle Parade at 10:00 a.m. downtown. The 4H Craft Fair also begins at 10 a.m. on the Courthouse lawn with the Old Settlers Reunion at 10:30 and live entertainment during the day. Contact the Donley County Extension Office for craft fair booth space.
The Shriners’ Barbecue Lunch will start at 11 a.m., and tickets are on sale at Henson’s and the Enterprise..
The annual Western Parade will be at 2 p.m. followed by the Lions Club’s Cow Patty Bingo. The Ranch Rodeo will be held at 7:30, and Greg Allen will open for Tommy Gallegher at the dance.
The celebration will also feature a Trade Show each night at the rodeo, and Guy Ellis is the contact for booth space. COEA will also be hosting the traditional calf scramble and other kids’ events prior to the rodeo.
If you have other events going on during the celebration, please contact the Chamber of Commerce to get them on the official schedule.
The Clarendon Enterprise won first place for its new website during the 2009 Texas Better Newspaper Contest this past weekend.
Winners were announced Saturday during the 131st annual summer convention of the Texas Press Association in San Antonio. The Enterprise competed against 23 other weekly newspapers in Division 9.
The new website, ClarendonLive.com, was rated “excellent” by contest judges for content, ease of use, and design. Judges also liked online poll, local links, and the archives available on the site.
“We were very pleased to win this award,” said publisher Roger Estlack. “Every member of our staff was involved in designing the new site, and special recognition goes to contributing editor Ashlee Estlack and advertising director Julie Shields for their efforts.
We also want to thank Dr. Randy Reddick of Texas Tech University, who advised us and really is responsible for making our ideas come to life.”
The newspaper also received a first place plaque for Roger Estlack’s column writing for his memories of his mother, former Enterprise copy editor Helen Estlack, which judges called “moving and descriptive” and for comments on a new era of big government.
The Enterprise also received third place for editorials and placed fourth for the best paper overall in its division.
The Gladewater Mirror was named the top paper in Division 9.
Roger and Ashlee Estlack represented the Enterprise at the convention.
Sales tax receipts for the City of Clarendon fell nearly six percent when Texas Comptroller Susan Combs announced her office’s May tax allocations recently.
Clarendon’s sales tax revenue for the month was $21,846.84, which was down 5.86 percent from $23,207.08 for the same period last year.
For the year-to-date, the city is at an almost break-even point with total sales tax revenue of $149,029.72, which is up 0.03 percent over last year.
Hedley’s May allocation was down 10.61 percent to $328.37, but that city is running
ahead for the year-to-date with $3,509.05, an increase of 8.92 percent.
The City of Howardwick’s allocation this month was up 71.62 percent to $1,152.28, but the gain only brought the year-to-date figure up 1.38 percent to $5,876.38.
Statewide, Combs’ office collected $1.78 billion in sales tax revenue in May, a 0.1 percent increase compared to May 2009.
“Total sales tax collections have met or exceeded year ago levels for a second month in a row, following 14 months of decline,” Combs said. “This may indicate that a bottom has been reached.
“May sales tax collections from retail trade, oil and gas, and restaurant activity outpaced those of May 2009. Remittances from other sectors, however, such as construction and manufacturing, fell below last year. While overall economic conditions and sales tax revenues appear to be stabilizing, there remains a risk of further deterioration, before a sustained recovery is underway.”
Combs delivered June sales tax allocations of $292.6 million to Texas cities, down 1.5 percent compared to June 2009. So far this calendar year, city sales tax allocations are down 4 percent compared to the same time period last year.
June’s sales tax allocations represent sales that occurred in April. The Comptroller’s July sales tax allocation will be made on Monday, July 12.
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