Our Tumble In neighbor was a young couple living in their 26 foot Jayco travel trailer. They have been living their dream to own their own business in Marfa, TX. At 4 am, she rises to bake. Her scones, cookies, cakes and kolaches are simply amazing. Pure love. At 8 am, he opens the door of the low rent shack in the lumber yard across the street from the Get Go gourmet grocery. Each morning we’d go by to see what delicious creation we would treat ourselves to as we split a cup of coffee.
Split is OK. We already had coffee and breakfast in the Clam back at camp. This stop is just because the baked goods are so good and they are trying so hard. She flips the payment screen around and for once we are eager to add a tip. We want so badly for this couple to make their business, Bitter Sugar, a success. Later, chatting with a long term resident and good friend of the Bitter Sugar couple, we learn that Marfa cannot support a fourth coffee shop that sits off the beaten path. They are slowly going out of business. One yummy scone at a time.
A hair stylist in Washington State, tired of the grunge scene and longing for small down desolation with creative energy vibes moves to Marfa with her partner and two kids. Kids enroll in school and she flies back for a week at a time to service her 17 year clientele. If you’re on her “list,” you get an email with the Marfa dates and the Seattle dates, you book and you get the best haircut of your life. She really is a hair artist, and in a town without another salon. But, the local public school is broken. The two kids are not doing well. The pandemic killed her WA-TX plan. The latest salon location still does not have a sign, or even a house number. Just a robin egg blue front door that you know to look for from the email. There are sketchy plans about a relocation to a $1 house in Sicily for a fresh start. She could kill it in a trendy salon in a big city, if the big city didn’t kill her first.
Later that evening, we attended the Marfa Public Radio screening of “Laundromat, TX” at the Crowley Theater. A young director in boots and a cowboy hat beams in front of an adoring crowd, most of whom were involved in the production of the independent film. It’s admittedly amateurish, but still cute as they quietly snicker at watching themselves on the big screen. The plot of the film is best summed up by the dusty road-weary cowboy who ducked into a laundromat for a bench to sit on and instead found himself watching the town of ne’er-do-well locals live out their day. “West Texas, somewhere between lost and found,” he says to himself. It’s a hokie line, but we kind of wish we had come up with it first.
We saw sculptures in the window at Marfa Studio of the Arts made of Texas barbed wire woven into the shape of a sotol plant that we brought home. The artist, Marc, is hardly an artist. Or maybe he is exactly what an artist strives to be. Marc is a part-time chef, caterer, welder, and pyrotechnician for those times when Marfa needs fireworks. We love the piece not because he will ever be famous, or the piece worth anything, but because the sculpture represents life in west Texas – hard as barbed wire, sweet as a sotol ranch water cocktail, and emblematic of the desert landscape.
For some, life feels more precious when it is closer to the edge. The Tumble In is on the edge of town with just enough traffic to keep it in business. The interior of Big Bend Ranch is on the edge of livable. In Marfa, artists and entrepreneurs chase dreams and live on the edge of making it through the end of the month. We are interlopers. In the end, we are just passing through. But, they need us and others like us to provide just enough outside resources to keep west Texas from becoming a series of ghost towns. It’s a secret place that will be lost paradoxically once it is no longer a secret.
One thousand miles east and one day later, we burn the last of our Texas mesquite at a beautiful campground in the Florida panhandle. The manicured campsite and mild weather are indicative of the comforts that await us tomorrow. We finish the last of our Texas microbrew on our last night under the stars. The taste is bittersweet.
