An Oxford Cigar Shop Lights Up One Writer’s Routine – Garden & Gun

Oct 29, 2024

Our Kind of Place

Spring Street Cigars fuels just the right blend of camaraderie and solitude

By Michael Farris Smith

October/November 2024

Photo: MADELINE ROSE

Whenever someone asks about my workspace in Oxford, Mississippi, I have two answers. The official answer is it sits a couple of blocks from the Square, inside the Anchorage Building, a small studio amid a labyrinth of hallways and offices that houses a desk, a guitar, an espresso machine, and a few shelves of books and career keepsakes.

The unofficial answer: the cigar shop right across the street from all of that.

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Spring Street Cigars has become as big a part of my Oxford life, and my writing life, as my favorite bartenders and the colorful locals. The shop, a little brick house with hardwood floors and crown molding, nestles in a cluster of shade trees. If you include the walk-in humidor, it covers maybe a thousand square feet. A copper bar greets you inside the front door, and nooks and crannies with cushy leather chairs break up the room. From my favorite seat inside, I can look up and see framed copies of Cigar Aficionado with the likes of JFK, Ernest Hemingway, and Fidel Castro gracing the covers. And considering how large a shadow William Faulkner casts for an Oxford writer, it comes as no surprise that right above my usual seat hangs a sketch of Mr. Bill holding a pipe and thinking very seriously.

When the weather is right—and that’s most of the time under the shelter of the trees—I prefer to sit outside. Depending on who is working, the sounds of Sinatra or Cash or Marley hang in the air. The front patio is as cozy and charming as a place can be among the ever-growing hustle and bustle of South Lamar Boulevard and the busy boutiques and bars and restaurants of the Square. There is a sense of being camouflaged. Detached. Almost secretive.

I like to get to the shop in the morning, right around the time it opens at 10:00 a.m. It’s usually just me and the manager Noah Blanco saying our hellos, and then I make a coffee at the communal machine and settle down with one of my favorite sticks, which right now come from Arturo Fuente, out of the Dominican Republic, or Nicaragua’s My Father. And then I work. Yes, work.

I grew into the habit of writing with a lit cigar toward the end of the summer of 2023. I wasn’t new to the habit of cigars themselves, as I had passed many hours during the pandemic sitting on my back porch with a smoke, killing time counting and recounting the leaves on the trees. But in the project I was working on, the main character kept a couple of cigars on him, and whenever it was time for him to pull one out and light it, I decided it would get me into the spirit of the story better if I did the same. It didn’t matter that it was morning where I was, only what time it was in the story.

I would light one, set it next to my laptop, and let the smell fill the air. Every now and then I would pick it up and draw on it, and I discovered that the tranquility of a cigar serves my creative process. The script was going well, and so I continued with the morning cigar until the end of the project. Then it was time to start a new novel, so I kept on. Everybody knows that when things are working, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Nine months later, and after many mornings under the trees at Spring Street and after many good cigars, I finished Lay Your Armor Down. My eighth—and first cigar-assisted—novel comes out next spring.

Something unexpected happened along the way: A habit birthed from the isolation of creation led me into the friendly community of Oxford cigar smokers. At Spring Street, I smoke alongside professors, doctors, educators, musicians, artists, wine importers, insurance adjusters, and pretty much everyone in between. Ages range from college kids to retirees. It is a diverse crew who all share the same laid-back nature that I have come to find in most cigar smokers. People who understand the importance of sitting and being. Who appreciate both the art of good-natured conversation and the art of solitude. Who find pleasure in having a local place to commune, and who otherwise may never have met.

You never know what interesting conversation you might overhear. You never know what brand of bourbon is going to emerge from the wall of lockers in the back room to be shared. You never know whom you are going to see, and you don’t really care. The smoke will be good with a crowd, and it’ll be good in silence. And the regulars know an unspoken code: When I’m working, I’m treated the same way that teammates treat a pitcher who is throwing a no-hitter. No one approaches when the stick is lit and the laptop is out. Sure, I can get the work done on either side of the street. But there’s something about being on the shop’s patio, in the shade, with a freshly lit cigar, with the blank page, with the comfort that I’m getting exactly what I need in that moment. A good cigar, in a good place, with some good people.

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