Raised on a ranch in Reagan County out in mid West Texas,  I was a month short of my 8th birthday when the drought of the '50s broke....that was May 1957.    As with most others who lived in this part of the country, that drought, together with the demands of ranch life lived on the fringes of a small West Texas town, shaped my life as I was growing up. In most ways, that unique combination defined who I am today: comfortable with people, but very much a maverick and loner, not prone to shy away from risk. 

In spite of the hardships, life for me on the ranch and in my small community was a true Norman Rockwellian experience.   Like most ranch kids, I knew how to ride horses, rope calves, and shoot a gun before I ever started 1st grade. I milked a cow twice a day while growing up, had the same bus driver for all 12 years of school, and was part of a graduating class of 54 seniors, one of which was my high school sweetheart to whom I married after our first year of college, and to whom I am still married to this day. Even the college friend and confidant who became best man at my wedding has now become my web site designer, fellow philsopher, and sounding board.

A few years later, as a graduate of Texas Tech with a chemistry degree, I managed to see much of the US while working for a number of Fortune 500 companies in chemical sales and marketing, becoming familiar with business plans, time and territory management, 5 star restaurants and hotels, and I came to know and appreciate the difference between Ripple and a good Cabernet.  Then after a span of 13 years, that drought-formed definition of who I really am broke through, and I followed its call by taking my wife and two children and returning home to Big Lake Texas and picked up the life I had left behind nearly twenty years earlier.

Back home in Texas and in Big Lake and running the ranch on which I grew up, I learned for myself one of the lessons my Dad learned during the 50's drought. In agriculture of any kind, it is increasingly difficult to entirely make a living from the land. And so, one quickly learns to do what you must to make ends meet. 

One way I met that challenge was to become a distributor to the two area daily papers, the San Angelo Standard Times and the Odessa American in three of the surrounding towns, Rankin, McCamey and Iraan.  In running the route each morning without a substitute, I became aware that I was a morning person, and I found tremendous freedom in the route and its routine. The early hours were no problem ......exactly the opposite;  I found that I thrived during the isolation in the still-dark morning hours, and did so for eight years.

While running the route I came to know and admire the work of a local woman who ran a successful small bakery out of her home. Her name was Laverne Williams. I knew then I would like to do what she was doing in baking yeast doughs and selling to the local population. I determined that, if she ever gave up her business, I would like to pick up where she left off.  That was when my dream was born.  After LaVerne's sudden death and the subsequent closing of her shop several years ago, my personal circumstances allowed me to do just that. So, I embarked on the completion of my dream, and The NightOwl Bakery & Roastery came into being.

Now, with a great deal of satisfaction in what I do, a great appreciation for the path that brought me here, and a deep gratitude for the woman who showed me what baking success in a small town could be; I rise early each morning, walk the few blocks from our house in town through the early morning darkness and stillness to my shop in an historic, brick-fronted, downtown Big Lake Texas building. The very same storefront where I received my first haircuts.  Now, I begin each new day by applying a formerly little-used chemistry degree to the fascinating world of donuts, breads, rolls, and coffee roasting. I get to do this in my small West Texas home town by baking for a local population, many of whom are those friends with which my wife and I grew up.    And, so, my outside-world broadened life and my small town upbringing have merged into the formation of a local specialty bakery. And, my story continues..........