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A heart the size of Texas
Bud Spiller is passionate about cooking and kids
By LEE BEACH
H&N Staff Writer
W.H. “Bud” Spillar, 78, is a tall, Texas-born grandfather who is happiest when he can be helping second-graders at Fairhaven Elementary School, where he is a foster grandparent and a SMART reader.
“If the kids need something, the teacher says, ‘Go see Grandpa Bud.’ I’ve been doing it for four years, and now the children from the first year come up to me in the hallway to greet me and sometimes give a hug,” Spillar said.
“I’m a firm believer in kids.”
He has long since happily given up the desert around El Paso for the ponderosa pines of the Basin and especially around his home in Keno.
“In El Paso, we didn’t have trees like these,” Spillar said. “There are some small Chinese elms, mulberry bushes, sagebrush and mesquite. It’s the most miserable part of the world.”
Those pines would eventually become the way he earned a living for many years, but his work life started as a sheriff’s deputy in El Paso.
After studying business and public relations at Texas College of Mines and Metalurgy, he became a motorcycle cop.
“I had friends who worked in the department, so I joined,” he said. “I was 20. We had to buy our own motorcycles. It cost $495, and that was a lot of money. Now you couldn’t touch one for $25,000.”
His love of cooking developed while he was in high school.
“I was one of the first males to take home economics in my high school class in El Paso. I loved it.”
For two years while he was working with his uncle at Hillis Refrigeration, from 1964 to 1966, Spillar and his first wife started a restaurant, Old El Paso, at the Merrill/Lakeview junction of Highways 140 and 39.
“There was only one other Mexican restaurant in town at the time — Davila’s.”
He convinced his second wife, Ruth, that they should open a restaurant serving Mexican food in Keno, in 1980, while he was still at Weyerhaeuser. It opened as Maria’s of Keno in a rented building that had previously been a restaurant, El Gringo’s. The schedule they kept was exhausting, as Ruth described:
“He would get up at 5 a.m. to cook stuff, go to work, then he’d come home at 4-4:30 p.m., and he’d cook the evening stuff. I would run the restaurant during the day. At the time, we were serving breakfast, lunch and dinner.”
Spillar agreed they were long days, “but the time went by fast.”
Not long after they opened, in November 1980 on election night, when Reagan was running for president, they remembered people were just coming in for dinner. Suddenly, five squad cars and a SWAT team pulled up and pointed guns at the house across the street. They hurried people inside and made them stay away from the front wall of the restaurant until the scene calmed down.
Much good-natured joshing went on between the two as they remembered those days, with Ruth teasing about how she would be cooking and he would be out schmoozing with the customers.
“We’ve had a lot of fun doing it, haven’t we?” he said to Ruth.
Their love for cooking, especially chili, led to entering chili cookoffs. He was emphatic when he said, “Real chili does not have beans in it.”
They met a lot of people and had a lot of fun entering competitions, but perhaps the funniest thing they did at one was the gimmick they used at the 1983 Northwest Championship Chili Cookoff.
“We sold chances on a number. We had scoured the outskirts of Portland until we found and bought a chicken. The chicken walked around during the competition, and whichever number on the ground the chicken pooped on, the person with that number won the money.”
With a smile, Spillar recalled the “saddest moment in a cookoff was when Ruth beat me.”
He retired from Weyerhaeuser in 1985. He and Ruth retired from the restaurant business after subletting Maria’s of Keno and running a sister restaurant in Klamath Falls until 2001.
Spillar has been active in Keno Lions since 1978, was formerly active in the Elks Lodge. He is a Shriner and served as Master in the Masonic Lodge. Recently, he cooked at the concession stand for the Shrine Circus.
After the restaurant closed, he began volunteering at the Klamath County Sheriff’s Office.
“We would go out on patrol doing vacation house checks, or taking cars down to be serviced,” he said. “Anything we could do to relieve a deputy to do what was necessary.”
He now assists there only during the summers, because he volunteers from 7:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at Fairhaven Elementary School.
“That’s my life now. So many kids come from broken homes or foster homes,” Spillar said.
He was concerned about the children coming up to him and hugging him, and he spoke to Debbie Chapman, who was coordinator of the Foster Grandparent Program, asking what he should do about it.
“She asked me, ‘What do you do to your grandkids?’ ”
“I told her I hug them.”
“Then do that,” she told him.
“If the kids need something, the teacher says, ‘Go see Grandpa Bud.’ I’ve been doing it for four years, and now the children from the first year come up to me in the hallway to greet me and sometimes give a hug,” Spillar said.
“I’m a firm believer in kids.”
He has long since happily given up the desert around El Paso for the ponderosa pines of the Basin and especially around his home in Keno.
“In El Paso, we didn’t have trees like these,” Spillar said. “There are some small Chinese elms, mulberry bushes, sagebrush and mesquite. It’s the most miserable part of the world.”
Those pines would eventually become the way he earned a living for many years, but his work life started as a sheriff’s deputy in El Paso.
After studying business and public relations at Texas College of Mines and Metalurgy, he became a motorcycle cop.
“I had friends who worked in the department, so I joined,” he said. “I was 20. We had to buy our own motorcycles. It cost $495, and that was a lot of money. Now you couldn’t touch one for $25,000.”
In the kitchen
His love of cooking developed while he was in high school.
“I was one of the first males to take home economics in my high school class in El Paso. I loved it.”
For two years while he was working with his uncle at Hillis Refrigeration, from 1964 to 1966, Spillar and his first wife started a restaurant, Old El Paso, at the Merrill/Lakeview junction of Highways 140 and 39.
“There was only one other Mexican restaurant in town at the time — Davila’s.”
He convinced his second wife, Ruth, that they should open a restaurant serving Mexican food in Keno, in 1980, while he was still at Weyerhaeuser. It opened as Maria’s of Keno in a rented building that had previously been a restaurant, El Gringo’s. The schedule they kept was exhausting, as Ruth described:
“He would get up at 5 a.m. to cook stuff, go to work, then he’d come home at 4-4:30 p.m., and he’d cook the evening stuff. I would run the restaurant during the day. At the time, we were serving breakfast, lunch and dinner.”
Spillar agreed they were long days, “but the time went by fast.”
Memorable times
Not long after they opened, in November 1980 on election night, when Reagan was running for president, they remembered people were just coming in for dinner. Suddenly, five squad cars and a SWAT team pulled up and pointed guns at the house across the street. They hurried people inside and made them stay away from the front wall of the restaurant until the scene calmed down.
Much good-natured joshing went on between the two as they remembered those days, with Ruth teasing about how she would be cooking and he would be out schmoozing with the customers.
“We’ve had a lot of fun doing it, haven’t we?” he said to Ruth.
Their love for cooking, especially chili, led to entering chili cookoffs. He was emphatic when he said, “Real chili does not have beans in it.”
They met a lot of people and had a lot of fun entering competitions, but perhaps the funniest thing they did at one was the gimmick they used at the 1983 Northwest Championship Chili Cookoff.
“We sold chances on a number. We had scoured the outskirts of Portland until we found and bought a chicken. The chicken walked around during the competition, and whichever number on the ground the chicken pooped on, the person with that number won the money.”
With a smile, Spillar recalled the “saddest moment in a cookoff was when Ruth beat me.”
Volunteering
He retired from Weyerhaeuser in 1985. He and Ruth retired from the restaurant business after subletting Maria’s of Keno and running a sister restaurant in Klamath Falls until 2001.
Spillar has been active in Keno Lions since 1978, was formerly active in the Elks Lodge. He is a Shriner and served as Master in the Masonic Lodge. Recently, he cooked at the concession stand for the Shrine Circus.
After the restaurant closed, he began volunteering at the Klamath County Sheriff’s Office.
“We would go out on patrol doing vacation house checks, or taking cars down to be serviced,” he said. “Anything we could do to relieve a deputy to do what was necessary.”
He now assists there only during the summers, because he volunteers from 7:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at Fairhaven Elementary School.
“That’s my life now. So many kids come from broken homes or foster homes,” Spillar said.
He was concerned about the children coming up to him and hugging him, and he spoke to Debbie Chapman, who was coordinator of the Foster Grandparent Program, asking what he should do about it.
“She asked me, ‘What do you do to your grandkids?’ ”
“I told her I hug them.”
“Then do that,” she told him.
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