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After his family returned, Papa moved on from ranching to land trading.
    My mother, Virginia, was born in 1917, followed six years later by Wade, the baby of the family. My mom was a beautiful young girl with thick, dark hair, dimples, and a set of slightly crooked front teeth that protruded a bit beneath her upper lip. She begged not to have to wear braces because she had heard that they could rot all her teeth and make them fall out (a realistic fear back in those days). And so all her life Mother had a tiny flaw in her smile that became part of her charm. She was a good student and loved music, but for some reason she hated piano lessons so much that she would hide behind the piano when the teacher arrived. She idolized her siblings and her parents, particularly her father. She told us that when she was a little girl she got God, Santa Claus, and her daddy all mixed up.
    The Spilmans were a gracious, happy family even though their lives were complicated and sometimes tragic. When Mother was a toddler, both of her grandfathers decided to ride the train down to Mission to visit the family. As soon as they arrived, T. Holl offered to take everybody out for a spin in the Model T. The story goes that T. Holl was standing in front of the Ford, cranking the engine, when it suddenly caught, and the car lurched forward. Joseph Holliday tried to stop the car and was crushed under its wheels. He died from his injuries a few weeks later. My grandfather broke his leg in the accident and walked with a cane for the rest of his life.
    From the stories our mother told us about growing up in that large family, it’s a wonder any of them survived to adulthood. One afternoon Big Mama invited a group of women over for a special tea. Her four young children were instructed to go outside and play, and under no circumstances were they to interrupt while she had company. The kids started playing out in the field where they kept a little mule, and somehow young Newt got on the wrong side of him and was knocked out cold. The other children debated for a while what to do; they had been told not to go into the house under any circumstance. Finally they got up their courage and knocked on the door. “We’re sorry to disturb you, Mama, but Newt’s been knocked unconscious for a long time,” they told Big Mama, who screamed and came running. Somehow Newt survived and lived to a ripe old age.
    Wade, the youngest, also had more than his share of close calls. When Mother was about eight years old, she was left to babysit Wade, who was still a toddler. She was trying to get him to sleep, but he kept fussing and fussing, getting out of his crib and asking for a glass of water. Finally she told him, “All right, Wade. I’ll get you a glass of water, but if I do you’ll have to drink every drop of it and then go to bed.” On her way to the kitchen, she saw a glass of water on the mantel, grabbed it, and made him drink it down. But the glass on the mantel wasn’t filled with water like she thought, it was filled with clear coal oil. She shuddered telling us how sick it made that baby, and how he nearly died from the poison. But Wade bounced back and grew up tall and athletic, and never seemed to hold the coal-oil incident against her.
    After they moved to Texas, the Spilmans never had much money, but they loved one another, and by all accounts had a wonderful life. T. Holl adored his wife; always gave her a kiss when he left the house and when he returned. They were never known to argue, even about politics, although their views were diametrically opposed. She was a yellow dog Democrat, and he was a Republican. Every Election Day, my grandfather would link his arm in hers and say, “Come, Elizabeth. Let’s go to the polls and cancel each other’s votes.” And that’s just what they did. Even after they lost almost everything, they lived out their lives in threadbare gentility.
    T. Holl had invested in land all over the Rio Grande Valley, but he was