Some History...
In 1915 or so, William Peyton Caldwell moved his family to Sonora, Texas, where he worked the remainder of his life as a carpenter. One of his sons, my grandfather, James Robertson Caldwell, likewise became a builder. Many of the structures they built still stand in this town. There are places where I can go in this county and run my fingers along welds on BBQ grills and fence posts from when I was a teenager and take pride in the fact that I built things before I was old enough to legally drive.
This bit of background is important because in 2018 I left a house I owned in Hutto, Texas, to go out to California for a bit. One weekend I drove from San Francisco, CA to Bend, Oregon to see a friend. During that trip, I drove through small communities that reminded me of Sonora. It started me thinking, and that thinking ultimately led me to return to Texas, spend a year and change in Austin collecting my thoughts, then decide to return to Sonora.
The time I spent growing up in this town was not easy. The kids were cruel, their parents weren't much better. My family was poor, and my only survival mechanism was either to run away and hide or bury myself in the machine shop. Most of the old guys who were kind to me are now dead. I visit their graves. Some were quietly kind like J. C. Surber and his wife Loma. Others did things that influenced how I would treat people in my own professional life, such as Arthur "Bud" Swithart and his wife Mary. Bud and Mary made sure I ate when they knew I hadn't. Bud also taught me to be the sometimes crusty perfectionist I can be at times. He also taught me to take pride in my work. Likewise, Leroy Valliant once decided that if I was going to work on his goat trailer, I should have a decent welding hood. At the time my welding hood was a piece of trash someone had thrown away on an oil field location, and which I had repaired with duct tape to be able to have something. Leroy had heard I was ogling a bright shiny red Forney welding hood at the Woolhouse. I was saving up for that welding hood $0.50/hr at a time (the starting wage working for my dad at the time). Leroy bought that hood one day and drove over to my grandmother's house on Tayloe where my dad and I were building his goat trailer. He called me over and demanded my welding hood, tossed it aside and explained that if I was going to work on his trailer, I needed to have decent equipment. With that, he handed me the welding hood I had wanted and drove off. I doubt Leroy ever knew he started a tradition that day... I've told that story about the welding hood to many interns and junior software engineers over the past few decades after doing whatever was needed at the time to get them to their next level. I also have challenged them to do the same, and I know of at least one case where the person challenged did exactly that.
The Decision To Return
I wish I could say I was drunk when I decided to return to Sonora. At least I could blame Jim Beam, and we could jokingly write this off as future lyrics of a country song. But, alas, that is not who I am or how I work. I am, if anything, horribly methodical. I make decisions with spreadsheets more than whims. I quantify decisions as much as possible. Hell, I have a patent for something along these lines, where I automated service maturity to replace subjective guess work and manual audits with an automated, data-driven perspective.
So, when I returned to Texas after a year and a half in California, I found myself in a condo in Austin with a spreadsheet listing every town in Texas with a population of less than 10,000 people and columns for every required and desired attribute that came to mind. Since I work from home as a software engineer, security engineer or DevOps/SRE depending on what folks need, I can pretty much live and work from anywhere. But with memories of Sonora, Texas as a kid and the intolerant, gossip-driven, and often petty spiteful culture here, I really was not happy when Sonora kept coming to the top of the list.
Everytime I would add another collection of data to the decision spreadsheet, Sonora would be in the top three places. I would get pissed off and add another column and more criteria...and Sonora would still be there. Eventually, in 2020 I drove out here. It was as if I hadn't left. Sure, the swimming pool had been rebuilt. A couple minor features were still around. But Sonora was like the town that time had forgotten. If I had found a walkman and cassette tape to play Def Leppard Hysteria, I would have been convinced I had gone back to 1988.
My girlfriend at the time and her daughter came with me on the next weekend trip. I had reached out to a realtor, and we saw some properties that Saturday. She told me she didn't think it was a good idea, but I was looking at the data. The data told me that Sonora had the potential. Ultimately, the girlfriend went back to Florida. We will skip that story for now. I bought my house, and the realization of what I had not been able to quantify in my data started to emerge. With that came the regret.
The town Sonora could be
Sonora has the kind of fundamentals that should make growth possible. It sits at a crossroad of commerce where Interstate 10 and Hwy 277 (future I-27) intersect. Millions of dollars of goods pass through this town every single day. Each time I go for a walk, I see trucks (and their drivers) passing through this town. It reminds me of something Jimmy Cahill told a bunch of the old guys when I was a kid eating breakfast at the Fiddler. All the old timers back in the 80s were sitting there with their coffee and opinions. They were talking about how people needed to support local businesses. Cahill pointed out that every vehicle that passes through this town is a wallet, and we should be attracting them to stop and spend money. He was right!
Sonora also has an abundance of natural resources from water and natural gas to agriculture and hunting. That part is talked about enough. I'll skip ahead because that alone is not, has never and will not save this town on its own.
What this down does have that is almost always overlooked is the Internet connection. THIS was the must-have for me to move here. I needed a reliable, fast, high-quality Internet connection which would allow me to work from home. I found that here in the form of HCTC, and that one must-have data point is the single variable on my spreadsheet that landed me here in Sonora, Texas rather than in nearby Ozona.
Seriously! The house in Ozona was nicer. But the Internet connection here was a must-have, and that one data point is what landed me here in Sonora. Yet we don't bill that as a selling point because our town operates like it is 1979 still. But I digress.
Sonora has a strong tourism potential as well. Sure, we have Sonora Caverns and hunting. But we also have a lot of rich history, an annual rodeo, and a quiet atmosphere to just relax.
Why, then, does this town fail? Yes, sorry snowflakes...but Sonora is a failure as a town. It's not that we don't try. Our city has some pretty cool people working here to do what they can with what we give them...and we don't give them much. We have failed economically on every level.
Sonora: A Self-Defeating Community
A couple of years ago, three high school seniors were at the Dairy Queen. I was sitting there with my laptop working on something, and one of them asked me what I do for a living. I told him, and we started a conversation about programming, software engineering, penetration testing, and other stuff I do in my professional life. These kids were interested in learning more. I didn't write any code that night, but I did get to answer a lot of questions about what kind of math, science, and other classes I needed to get my career started, etc. When it was my chance to ask a question, I asked one question "What is your plan after high school?"
All three of those young men said the same thing practically at once "Leave!"
Why wouldn't they? What is the alternative? If they stay here, they face a future of multiple part-time jobs struggling to make ends meet with little if any benefits, the perpetual risk of termination if you irritate the powers-that-be, and the limited opportunities to do any better. From what I have seen, full-time jobs around here are hard to find, and employers constantly complain that they cannot find good workers.
It's the cycle that feeds on itself.
Sonora, Texas, incentivizes people to leave, and what remain are those who feel trapped here. Even me. I have the financial means to leave. But I am now saddled with a house I can't sell in a market that isn't buying. If you think I haven't thought of leaving this backward cousin-fucker-run town full of mentally defective dipshits, you haven't had a conversation with me. Yeah, clutch your pearls, folks; I tend to not hold back when it comes to this dysfunctional town. But at least I am free to say what others wish they could say because I earn my money from sources not associated with the aforesaid dipshits of Sutton County.
The problem is not public policy. The problem is not the lack of resources or potential. The problem in Sonora, Texas is the culture. We have signs that talk about Keep Sonora Beautiful in a town where we stab each other in the back then gossip about it. When our neighbor is struggling, we send thoughts and prayers, then gossip like our lives depend on it. We hold others down, denigrate one another, and then go to church on Sunday to listen to the preacher talk about backbiting! We will jump in to help those that fit certain molds and are "acceptable" to our insular standards. But god help you if you need something in Sonora, Texas, and you aren't the model of Sutton County perfection. At that point, you are on your own.
The impact of this is that we often drive away outsiders or people who would contribute to this community.
There was an old man when I was a kid who was an unconventional guy. He didn't do things the way others thought he should do them. He inherited a bit of land and oil-gas money and eventually faded away for the most part. As a kid, I only saw him a handful of times. Not long ago when I was driving out here to plan my return, I stumbled across the old guy out near Ozona. We talked for a bit, and I figured I wouldn't see him again. To my surprise, I ran across him here in town after I returned, and when he left the restaurant, one of our upstanding citizens cautioned me that "you shouldn't be talking to him." That lady was probably trying to be helpful, bless her heart. But that kind of "help" is what is wrong with this town, and it's why people won't invest here.
The Investor and his Wife
I tried starting Asymmetric Effort, LLC, with the goal of creating a cool technology (and some jobs) here. It has not worked out as expected. I didn't think it would be easy. But I didn't expect the level of what could go wrong. The worst of it was a call with someone I was hoping would invest in the business and help me build a decentralized zero-trust networking solution to improve computer security for individuals and businesses.
I had a call scheduled with the prospective investor, and I prepared the night before. The call was going great until the investor's business partner (and wife) heard two words: Sonora, Texas. She's been here, folks! We managed to offend this woman in a way that caused her to just flat-out tell me NO! It has been experiences like this that have led me to the belief that there are three types of people in this world:
- People who have never heard of Sonora, Texas,
- People who have lived here, and
- People who have stopped here.
It's a hard sell when you hit the first group of people. But the further you go down that list, the harder it becomes. The town looks like shit when you drive through was one opinion I heard. After all, many of our buildings are abandoned and falling down due to disrepair. (BTW...Kudos to the folks who knocked down the old abandoned structure next to Sonic. We need to do a bit more of that around here.)
The other problem is that we need to be mindful of how we fucking treat people! First, have some compassion. Second, treat people like you'd want to be treated if YOU were the customer. Seriously. It is embarrassing that as a member of this community, I have to write this publicly to adults who are running businesses. But if you (a) open for business, (b) treat your customers nicely, and (c) offer goods and services they want, then they will give you money.
Sonora, Texas: Are we open for business?
In 2023, I needed an escape. I went out to Big Bend State Park and hid for a couple of days along the Rio Grande to decompress. I ran across only one person (a park ranger), and it was great! It also helped that it was the coldest day of the year, and only a lunatic like me would be out there camping. But there I was finishing my trip and driving back to Sonora, well after dark as I entered Ozona.
It hit me!
Ozona has lights on, representing businesses which are open and ready to take my money! Sonora does not, and a few minutes later, the darkness of Sonora, Texas confirmed what I already knew. We are not very visible from the interstate. All those wallets Jimmy Cahill talked about in the 80s just keep driving because the exits are easy to miss (especially heading westbound from San Antonio). We just miss the opportunity every single time!
Junction is the same way...lights! Businesses are open and willing to take your money. You don't see as many vacant buildings just rotting because folks in Junction and Ozona know that if you want to make money, you have to actually run a business. In Sonora, I assume we just have a lot of people enjoying a tax write-off or something. The only other alternative is that we've been eating lead-paint for breakfast here so long that we don't know how to actually turn a property into revenue. (...and no...selling your land to the county isn't doing business or building the community.)
We have a few folks here in town who seem to get it. The Alsups, Road Ranger, and Love's Truck stop are always open. But you can't carry an entire town off of three businesses!
Pick any Monday in Sonora and go try to buy breakfast! Everyone is closed except River Harvest Catering (and they have really good food and service, btw). But finding them is hard for outsiders. So the average person passing through has the choice between convenience store food, the grocery store, or continuing to the next town. When I was a kid, the Fiddler and the Sutton County Steakhouse were open consistently. But this current generation of folks has shuttered those options. The money just continues to the next town! I often wonder what Preston Love would say if he saw that steakhouse today. Hell, bussing tables there was my first W-2 job, and I cringe when I see that place today.
Conclusion
It saddens me to see this town every day when I go for a walk. This town has so much potential, it is a tragedy to see it becoming more like Eldorado when it could be more like Fredricksberg. Not long ago, I walked down to the cemetery to reflect and visit old guys who used to treat me well. I stop where my great-grandparents and grandparents are buried, and I ask William Peyon Caldwell what he thought Sonora would become when he was building houses and other structures around this town. I wonder if he would be happy to see one of the houses he built still standing (albeit barely). Then I walk away and realize I truly regret returning to this place. Its only redeeming virtue is that it is cheap living here, and I am not tempted to go to any of the non-existent social events. This gives me free time to pursue another college degree (online) and a few more certifications. But is this really how people other than me would want to live?
This town was four times its current size when I was a kid, and it will continue to waste away until three things happen: (1) The 50% of registered voters who didn't vote in 2024 do so, (2) Business owners invest in their people to retain good talent and motivate people to WANT to actually work here, and (3) Folks start to treat one people with more than the veneer of decency. It's going to take a long road to dig ourselves out of the rut we are in, but it could happen if folks just commit.