MERCEDES — A wonderful place to be.
This is how Dolores Grisham described her old home on the 400 block of South Missouri Avenue in Mercedes. But while it’s true that any family abode would elicit warm recollections of times past, this house has character that sets it apart.
Its age, for instance, is up for debate since some of her mother’s records were lost over the years. The belief is that it was constructed during the early to mid-1920s, making it near 100 years old and a historical landmark in the community.
For Dolores, 72, it’s the joy she and her two sisters experienced, which still resonates within its walls, that gives the house its allure. So much that while the exterior displays a charming two-story home fashioning all the character expected in Georgian colonial architecture, its interior evokes the love created by her mother and father, Hope and Robert Mondragon.
“It means a great deal to us,” Dolores said of its sentimental value. “It was a gathering place for family, so my memories of the house are all very happy memories of family gatherings and celebrations, holidays and babies. It was a wonderful place to be.”
Dolores lived there even before she graduated from high school in the early 1950s, this before pursuing a teaching career that took her from Houston to Weslaco until retiring in Edinburg. Much changed during that time, however. Her father died in 2000, and her mother was later diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
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