Ben and Emma Taliaferro
Lubbock Avalanche Journal, Page 2-d, Sunday Morning, May 6, 1979, in the column "IN MY CORNER" by Frances LoweAnniversaries & Such
Kaye Wylie called here the other day to tell us that her grandparents were celebrating their 69th anniversary, and would we be interested in doing a story about them?
69 years! We are coming up on 20 this June, which is longer than any of our friends predicted we would last, but Himself reminds me that this is the year he gets an option to renew, and he hasn't quite made up his mind...
The Taliaferros live in the Lubbock Nursing Home, in the shadow of St. Mary's and near the park. I found them, one sunny afternoon, in their comfortable room, where Emma was dozing and Taliaferro was sitting nearby, rocking. They were delighted to have company.
Neither sees nor hears very well, although Taliaferro told me that he had read the A-J every day for years, but they both seem quite remarkably healthy and cheerful.
They were married, they told me, in front of a country church at Olivers Springs, Comanche County, May 1, 1910, when she was 19 and he was 23. They were, in fact, married in a buggy. "I brought the buggy down to the church," he explained. "It wasn't that unusual then. The preacher came with his daughter. I don't remember whether he was in his buggy or not."
"They used to say that if you married in a buggy you would always be on the move," his wife said, laughing. "We have been proof of that. We have lived all over."
He has worked at farming, in a cement plant, as a carpenter, and in a Sheriff's Department, among other things, and their four children were born in different places. Of the four, two have died.
"That was the hardest part," Emma said, "Losing the children. Our son, he was killed in some sort of an accident on an oil rig, in 1938. He was 24. Our daughter died of a ruptured appendix--there wasn't any penicillin then, you know--in (1932).
They spoke with pride of their son, Lloyd, who they said played football at Texas Tech under Coach Pete Cawthorn and was "just short of" graduating. (In the Avalanche-Journal files, we found the story of an interview with him, under "former red raider"; he went to work with the Texas Border Patrol, and was interviewed on a visit home to Lubbock.)
Their other living child is Mrs. Bonnie Sosebee of Ropesville. They have eight grandchildren, 11 great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild, the Taliaferros said.
They said they found life in the nursing home satisfactory, that it was nice and people are good to them. "We don't get out much," they said, "Once in a while we get out for a ride, not often. We don't see well enough to enjoy it." They said that being there together made all the difference, and Taliaferro smiled at his wife tenderly as he spoke.
Emma said she felt the kids of today were mostly "spoiled," with too much money, too many cars, the ability to be on the go too much.
"We got along well," Taliaferro said of his relationship with his sons. "We were very close. They were good workers. They helped me on the farm and the girls helped in the kitchen. I think kids worked harder in those days, and it was better for them."
"Well it was hard," Emma said. "I worked as hard as can be. I worked in the fields, pulled cotton, raised chickens, hogs. I did everything a woman could do to help a man get along on the farm."
"We had out ups and downs, same as any couple. We had our bad times, but we managed to weather them all."
Her husband nodded in agreement, "That's right," he would add every now and then. "I couldn't say it any better."
"Well, now, you ask me about the good old days," she continued, laughing, "and I don't know what they are. Still, there were some things that were good. We used to visit around more, you know. I remember we used to get into the buggy and go to visit, and maybe stay a day or two. We used to have picnics, at the schoolhouse, and everyone would come. We would bring all kinds of food, and set it out on the ground, and there would be enough for everyone. Then we would just visit. I believe it was better then, people visited more."
Emma said, without self-pity, that her childhood had been hard, too. "My mother died when I was eight," she said, "and I reckon I just raised myself. There were two boys and two girls. (Her brother still lives in Lubbock.) We just managed somehow, or other to keep on going. "When I married, I wasn't running away from anything, because there wasn't anything to run away from."
Her family had "always" been in Texas; her husband was born in Atlanta, where his father was a painter. They worked their way West gradually to Mississippi, where his father died, and on to Texas. Neither had much schooling, they said. "Maybe to the sixth grade. Of course, school was only six months then." They didn't remember exactly how they had met; they had known each other, at parties and gatherings, they said.
Mrs. Taliaferro said they had no rules about rearing children. "We just tried to raise them to be good Christians," she said, "to go to church." They had been pleased Sunday, when members of their church in Ropesville (Church of Christ) came to Lubbock to honor them on their anniversary. "Oh, that was just grand." Emma said.
"When I think about Judgement Day," she went on, matter-of-factly, "I'm not afraid of anything I've done. It's what I haven't done. I never felt I did enough. I never learned to drive a car, you know, so I was limited in what I could do. I used to drive around the farm some, but I couldn't drive in town."
She said she had been happiest living out in the country. "She never would have come here, if I hadn't said so," Taliaferro said chuckling.
"I was never lonesome out in the country," she said. "I never was a person that gets lonesome. I guess I was too busy. I liked best raising the chickens; that was my job. In the spring, we'd get 200 baby chicks and put them in the brooder. Every one of them was my pet. When I'd go out to take care of them, they would just climb all over me. I loved that."
They sold the eggs, she said, and some of the chickens, but mostly they ate the chickens themselves. "We used to have the threshers every year," she said. Many's the time I would kill and pluck five or six chickens when they were with us."
Had she been a good cook?
"Well, I guess I was," she said modestly. "There were those that said so."
Her husband laughed, "She must have been,," he said. "She raised me on it."
To go with the chicken, she would have had biscuits, gravy, vegetables from the garden, fresh or canned. "We always had a garden," she said. "We raised everything we ate. During the Depression I said we ate the best of our lives. We raised all our own meat and vegetables. We always had a cellar full of stuff."
"One man a few years ago sent me some pecans from Central Texas, he said to make some of my 'famous pecan pie'. Coconut cake was another thing I was known for."
I asked if they had any secrets to a long and happy marriage.
"Well," she said, "I'd just say to do your best and try not to quarrel. I told him when we were married, that he could be the boss in everything but the kitchen, that would be mine. And that's the way its been. I never wanted to wear the britches."
Her husband nodded fondly, "That's the way to say it," he commented. "I couldn't say it any better than that."
Carolyn Bethany Sosebee sosebee@esc14.net
Benjamin Mason and Emma Amelia Glenn Taliaferro were my husband's grandparents. They resided in Ropesville from 1960 until they moved to the nursing home.