The sun had come up clear and bright and the sky was only streaked with condensation trails from jets heading east or west and no clouds. Pigeons flew overhead, jumping from the Manor to the Brownwood Hotel and back, and some non-pigeons sat looking down on me from the ubiquitous ugly wires that crisscross and tangle over downtown as if it were Tijuana. The alley was still wet, and the big puddle (that I call Bunker Lake after it rains) was still there. I noticed that the plants that normally would have died off by early January – my peppers and some tomato plants – were still alive and some banana peppers were growing and ready to pick. Though the temperatures have dipped below freezing, our little micro-climate and all the concrete and buildings that heat up from the sun were still radiating enough warmth overnight to keep the temperature above freezing for at least a little while.

Last night I rolled cigars over at Pioneer Taphouse, and I’m ceaselessly surprised to hear the great talent on display across the city on any given weekend night. If you think about it, it’s a mind-blower. Brownwood is a good-sized town, but a small city, and when I travel a lot of people have never heard of it… or they confuse it with Brownsville or Brownfield. But think of it… on most weekend nights in this little town, there are at least 5 or 6 places you can go to listen to live music (and there are more coming!) Brownwood is building a huge venue for live performances. In my younger days, going to college in Lubbock (which is world-renowned for the music that comes from there), you could usually count on maybe 2 or 3 places having live music. Think of this, give or take a few, there are about 160 cities in Texas with a population as big as Brownwood or bigger. Not all of those cities have live music as good as Brownwood, but some have four or five times as many live venues. On any given Friday or Saturday night, that means there are thousands of musicians out there doing their thing. The talent pool is phenomenal, and I have a lot of thoughts on that, but that’s not our topic for today.

Do not miss out on the opportunity to visit these live music venues and support these businesses that support these musicians.

Anyway, let’s get to the point. I was set up hand-rolling cigars. Hand-rolling cigars is very much like writing. You have your filler, your binder, and your beautiful wrapper. It’s not for everyone, but even if you don’t enjoy cigars, it’s not something you get to see get made very often. There aren’t that many of us doing it live, busking on a weekend night rolling cigars. Certainly, not in a city the size of Brownwood. There are cigar rollers you can hire out of Austin and other big cities who will come do your wedding or event – and it’ll cost you quite a bit. I mean, a lot.

My friend Matt came by, pulled up a chair and said, “tell me about the art of this,” which was a wonderful thing to say. Not many young people today are that aware of what art is and can be. Not many people can see the art in a hand-manufactured product made from pure, unpredictable, and uneven plant leaves. There is art in rolling artisan quality cigars and in writing too. A strong writing culture and system is more valuable to revitalization and the future of tourism and business in a town than all of the other arts (the ones that get supported,) and I can prove that historically any day.

Brownwood has a rich writing history that is better than that of most big cities.  Lubbock and Austin are known for their live music and the musicians that came from there, but our area exceeds most cities anywhere in producing writers. I know you’ve heard it from me before, but it is truly a shame that writing is not treated like any other art, because our area is not a place that strangers in other places think about when you talk about music and musicians. But people travel from all over the world to come here, to our little area of Central Texas, because of the writers who’ve written here.

Listen, you can’t expect writers to set up on a street corner with an old manual typewriter and an open typewriter case hoping to get tips by writing short stories… (although I know a guy in Austin who does insta-poetry in public!) But tourism development and performances of locally produced literary works could surely highlight our past and present riches in an art that is the most likely to put our area on the map (even more than it already is) everywhere and for all time.

We are short-sighted – actually blinded – on this, and it’s not even questionable.

As the sun moves up overhead and the bird on the wire who was watching me grows bored and flies away, I figure I’ll go inside and drink my coffee. Maybe I’ll roll a cigar, or maybe I’ll write, but one way or another I’ll make some art today.

Hey… the two things our area has that will still be talked about far into the future:  Our Old West history, and our writing culture – the two things we seem to have lost sight of in our revitalization and business development.

Y’all have a great week.