My grandparents recently decided that they are going to move from their farm sometime around January. Fortunately, it looks as if they are going to sell the house to my uncle, so it will stay in the family. There's a lot of history there, and I've decided to try to document it as best I can. There are already a number of exhaustive books on the Rio Grande Valley; this is by no means going to be such. This is just going to be a collection of stories going back a couple of generations.
So here's the first in a series.
The farmhouse was built in the early 1900's as a boarding house for wealthy investors and ranchers looking to settle the Rio Grande Valley. At the time, banditos from across the border were still a very real threat; locals wore six shooters in case of raids.
The house itself is located on 300+ acres of farmland, and the border of La Feria and Mercedes runs right through the middle of the house (because of this, my dad actually got to choose which high school he went to). It has an office adjacent to the kitchen, a large living area/dining area, a bedroom in front and four bedrooms upstairs. A few decades back, my grandparents added a breakfast nook to the kitchen. On the property are a few sheds and the mechanic/tractor barns, as well as my grandfather's stand-alone office. There are a number of tractors, several trailers, heaps of junk, and miles of open land. To a young boy, it was a treasure trove of adventure.
To a young man, it is a treasure trove of memory.
Posted by quick at September 29, 2004 10:40 PM