Life - grace grits and gardening

Bear Down Baylor

November 23, 2013 By Talya Tate Boerner

The year I graduated from high school, Mike Singletary led Baylor to the Cotton Bowl. I took that as a good sign.

Mike Singletary

When Harry and Nancy Wooten invited me to Waco to visit their son (my boyfriend), I watched the impressive homecoming bonfire and knew it was the college for me. Plus Grant Teaff’s worm story intrigued me beyond anything I had ever heard.

At Christmas break, I vacated my Arkansas State dorm room, loaded up my yellow corvette and headed west. Although things didn’t work out with the boyfriend, I am forever grateful he connected me to Baylor.

Pat Neff

Today I should be Christmas shopping. Or brining a turkey. Or something. But I cannot do or plan one single productive thing until Baylor beats OSU tonight. (I did dig out my gold pom-pom and Baylor face tattoos, so that’s something.)

Until recently, Baylor fans have endured less than stellar seasons. We were the butt of every Southwest Conference joke, even worse than the time-worn Aggie cracks. Schools vied to play us for homecoming game. Yet still we cheered and proudly yelled h-e-e-e-e-y sic ’em bears! at every opportunity.

My sister and me with our 1980-something hair. Ready for game day!

I graduated and moved to Dallas.

I worked in banking.

I got married, had two kids, divorced, worked even more, remarried…

Life flew by. Friday nights were spent at high school games. We made occasional road trips to Waco for Baylor games.

I learned to be satisfied if the bears simply showed up and didn’t embarrass me. We only lost by ten points? That’s a win in my book, I’d say…Coping skills—something learned at Baylor right along with macroeconomic theory and the Cotton-Eyed Joe. We limped along hoping for a football team while supporting the school’s other more successful programs…olympic track athletes…amazing basketball teams…

Yet still I waited for football.

I moved my kids into their own dorms, not Baylor, but I was okay with that. Baylor was my special place. Each time I drove to Austin, I stopped at the Bear Pit to chat with the mascots. Will this be our year? Usually the bears were hiding…

Still waiting and aging and waiting and aging…

Then quietly and a bit under the radar, Art Briles breathed life into the program. Robert Griffin III was unstoppable. We began to remember what honest-to-goodness fun felt like, because we’d forgotten, or maybe we never knew.

cute kid at Alamo Bowl:)

And now—another miracle on the Brazos?

Maybe this time we don’t need a miracle.

All that waiting and hoping and dreaming and praying…Give us this day our daily bears… it’s time.

Bear down Baylor.

Do it for me.

Do it for all of Baylor Nation. We’ve been patiently waiting.

Sic ’em Bears!

talya

Grace Grits and Gardening

Farm. Food. Garden. Life.

Musical Pairing:

Blake Shelton, Sic ’em Bears!

JFK and me

November 22, 2013 By Talya Tate Boerner

Momma dumped a clean load of laundry on the couch. She folded towels while watching her favorite soap opera. I played on the floor in front of the television then pulled up onto Daddy’s leather recliner and walked around his foot stool.

When CBS interrupted As The World Turns with the horrendous news, she stopped folding and watched. I was sixteen months old.

This was my first memory.

Ever.

Momma. Laundry. As The World Turns. President Kennedy’s assassination.

Is it possible to remember something at sixteen months of age? Most people say no. Most people say I’ve heard the story often enough I’ve made it my own.

Maybe, maybe not.

Momma says I’m thinking about Martin Luther King’s murder in Memphis five years later, but that couldn’t be the case. King was assassinated at 6:00 p.m. The world always turned just after lunch. And on that day, for a while, it stopped turning.

Dealey Plaza, School Book Depository, Grassy Knoll
Dallas, Texas, November 2013

Things do not happen. Things are made to happen. – President John F. Kennedy

talya

Grace Grits and Gardening
Farm. Food. Garden. Life

CBS Interruption of As The World Turns

Oral History of Howard Peak – Visiting Our Grandparents – Part II

November 21, 2013 By Talya Tate Boerner

The following is a continuation from Part II – Oral History of Howard Peak – Visiting Our Grandparents. Click HERE to read Part I before the next section…

Captain Jefferson Peak's House. First brick house in Dallas, Texas.

Part II:

My! What a supper was spread for us tired and hungry visitors. There was a great steak from Neussbaumers, the Butchers, fried chicken with milk gravy, fresh eggs, vegetables of all kinds, cornbread, hot biscuits, butter and sorghum molasses, milk, tea, peach cobbler, etc.
The dining room adjoined the kitchen which set off from the main building, a great East portico between, and on this porch we would sit after supper and listen to Grand Pa relate experiences of the Mexican war, while Pa would in turn tell of Indian depredations in West Texas. Grand Ma in her cap and smoking her clay pipe would entertain Ma and the female contingent, whilst we boys would nestle around the Sires. A good nights sleep and morning would bring a much relished breakfast.
Here let me state that Captain Jefferson Peak and his wife (nee Malviny Reser) emigrated from Warsaw, Kentucky in 1855, coming direct to the Village of Dallas. At Warsaw, Captain Peak (he subsequently attained the title of Captain during the War with Mexico, 1846-47 being attached to General Marchall’s brigade of Kentucky Volunteers). Preceding the war he, with his brothers Willis and Jordan were merchants at Warsaw and also conducted a transportation business from Cincinnati to New Orleans. Captain Jefferson made many trips on flat boats down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, trading merchandise for mules and various commodities which they brought back with them to the North.
I also desire to impress the fact that both Grandparents were very aristocratic. Grand Pa being over 6 feet tall and slender, was always clean shaven and very neat in his person. Wearing as he always did a beaver (stove pipe) hat (he wore one on week days, keeping a new one for Sunday’s) a long Prince Albert Coat, with pleated shirt front and black tie, ever presented a distinguished appearance. Grand Ma with her silk gown and lace cap with her elegant manners presented ever a queenly appearance.
They were strict disciplinarians and most fervent worshipers, belonging to the First Christian Church of which they were pillars. Grand Pa never failed to give good advice to his children and ever admonished them to live upright and clean lives. He was morally clean and never had a vice-neither swearing, drinking or smoking.
Grand Pa lived to be 83 years old and Grand Ma 78. Both are buried in the old Burying Ground in the City of Dallas. Both having the respect and confidence of all who knew them.
Then the days pleasure and work would begin, for Grand Pa always laid out some work for us boys believing as he did that the vacation from school should be attended by more or less work. Our work consisted of a variety of performances. It may have been gathering fodder, hauling corn, shaking down red apples or Indian peaches or some other duties incident to a farm life.
One of our delights was to saddle Navajo, Mack and Ay the gray pony and ride over to the Butchers and get steak or ride down into the pasture and drive the cows to the pen for evening milking, then too, we would take old Carlo and the hounds and go down to the branch and hunt cottontail rabbits and on moonlit nights, go after coons and possums.
It was Grand Pa’s rule to require each person at the table to memorize and repeat a verse in the Bible at breakfast, as he was very religious. We would make an occasional visit to Aunt Sara’s where we would spend the day with cousins Ripley and Juliette and return by town where Grand Pa would give us red striped stick candy and a glass of lemonade without ice as a reward for the work that we had done.
Playing stick horse with Matt and romping with the dogs in the cedars, gathering pears and dew berries, swimming in the big tank, cutting hay and feeding the stock, with various other amusements and exercises incident to a boys life, enabled us to enjoy every moment of our two weeks visit and to mourn the hour, when our visit being ended, we had to dress early in the morning and pursue our way back home.

Howard W. Peak