Tongue in cheek, Press accepts reader challenge

Editor's note: We recently heard from Phil Daugherty, a Christian from Hayden, that he was offended and appalled by our front page story of a couple who were just recently married after living together (presumably in sin) for many years. In a letter to the editor, Daugherty asked, "Are you now promoting sin and immorality? Why not a front page story on a couple married in the eyes of God for 75 years?" We agreed entirely and commissioned Timothy Hunt, also of Hayden and also a Christian, to right our wrongs with the following story also published, as requested, on page one of this online newspaper.

By TIMOTHY HUNT

Press correspondent

When Mike Patrick, managing editor of the Coeur d'Alene PRESS, asked me to find and interview a couple who had been married for "75 years in the eyes of God," I did not think I could possibly succeed. After all, both parties to such a marriage would have to be in their 90s, I reasoned, though I soon found out I was looking at the problem through elitist Western eyes and that was my mistake.

Billy Bob Snopes, 89, and his wife, Daisy Mae, 86, have been married for 75 years, five months, and 11 days. They married when Billy Bob was 14 and Daisy Mae was 11 and began having children only five months later, 26 of them in all, 15 boys and 11 girls. They were married in the spring of 1936 by the Reverend Clem Arnold of the Upper Basin Scared of Hell Baptist Church on the east branch of the Missouri River in northeastern Kansas.

Billy Bob made his living as a driver for the Pepsi Corporation delivering mainly Mountain Dew to stores, restaurants, homes, and dentists' offices all through Kansas. His own kids were raised on sow belly and Mountain Dew and Billy Bob and Daisy Mae are proud to have a family which barely has enough teeth for one person among the whole litter.

Billy Bob also made moonshine, mainly corn whiskey, in the woods around Miami, Oklahoma, until a run in with some Revenooers forced him to open business near Joplin, Missouri. Daisy Mae did most of the distilling using the corn Billy Bob heisted from corn fields in Kansas.

They probably would have had more kids except for a few dalliances that Billy Bob had with Daisy Mae's younger sister, Lula Belle, who had 14 kids of her own all out of wedlock, as the saying goes, which is why she is not being featured in this story. Daisy Mae and Billy Bob raised three of Lula Belle's children just like they were their own, which they may have been.

Billy Bob and Daisy Mae have hardly missed a Sunday at Scared of Hell Baptist in their entire 75 years of wedded bliss. Billy Bob nearly got booted from the fellowship way back in 1959 for suggesting the church replace their grape juice for communion with some of his corn whiskey but Reverend Clem forgave them when Billy Bob gave him a couple of gallons for penance.

All of Billy Bob and Daisy Mae's 26 kids have become successful: seven as bootleggers, three as preachers, eight as deputy sheriffs, four as welfare recipients, two as farmers, one as a ditch digger, and one as a dentist, though he has a hard time making ends meet because he has to do so much free work.

A 75-year anniversary party will be hosted by all 26 children and 84 grandchildren on the church grounds of Scared of Hell Baptist in September. The event was originally scheduled for March of this year on the actual date they were bound together in marriage but 14 of their grandkids were pregnant at the same time so they decided to wait. Unfortunately, at least eight of them are pregnant all over again but Daisy Mae and Billy Bob both said, "The more the merrier. There is plenty of welfare and disability money to go around."