Texan known as award-winning braider is self-taught professional
COMANCHE, Texas—Being in the spotlight really isn't Billy Albin's scene.
The Abilene Reporter-News reports now that he's been recognized as Braider of the Year by the Academy of Western Artists, the light has arrived.
"Being famous or recognized, that isn't my big deal," he said. "I don't care; the less publicity I get the better off I think I am."
A friend in Florida, Domingo Hernandez, had nominated Billy for his AWA award, sending them pictures of Billy's work. It's a safe bet Billy wouldn't have done it himself.
In fact, when Billy's daughter Lauri was asked about a reporter interviewing him, she thought it unlikely but she would ask him anyhow. No one was more surprised than she when he agreed.
"Well, I'm just being nice," he admitted, chuckling.
Don't get the wrong idea. It's not that he's antisocial, it's just that Billy feels more comfortable working alone than in a crowd.
"I'm a 'by-my-self' person," he said, chuckling. "Because most of the years, most of my work has been by myself."
His three favorite pastimes are braiding, looking for arrowheads and gathering a wild cow by himself.
"I can get a cow to respond to my method of gathering, whereas when someone is with me I can't get it done," he said. "They might be a little out of place, or a little too fast, or a little too something."
Billy lives with his wife Glenda off a country road south of town several miles. They've been there 40 years, and looking out his workshop's single window, he points to ridge about a quarter-mile to the east.
"I was raised just past those trees," he said. "I've been here all my life."
Glenda said that it's not unusual for his pickup to sit in the same spot for two or three weeks, unused. That's not to say he hasn't left, however.
"I feed some cows for a lady over here three days a week by riding my horse when I go, and they've got a feed truck over there," he said, laughing. "So I don't leave the place unless it's on horseback."
For most of his life Billy's been making quirts, hackamores, and other tack items. Quirts are a leather-wrapped stick used for encouraging livestock into a pen or down a chute. A hackamore is sort of like a bridle but without the bit in the horse's mouth.
He taught himself how to do it. A cowboy learns what lasts and what will turn to trash too soon.
"I haven't had five jobs in my life, and none of them lasted very long," he said. "I day-worked for a long, long time."
What's day-work? Listening to Billy, it's all the stuff cowboys do in the movies.
A rancher usually has a regular number of hands permanently employed for work, but sometimes there's a need to temporarily hire a few more.
"They hire extra help when they brand, wean or anything else," Billy said. "You might go one day, you might go for a month.
"All you're involved with is the fun part of ranching, you don't get to have to do the dirty work in-between," he continued, chuckling again. "Building a fence, checking waters, and feeding; you don't do any of that. You just go brand the calves and wean them."
It's fun, but it's also physical. Around about age 50, Billy started thinking about tapering off.
"Glenda said I ought to do this fulltime," he said, gesturing to several quirts drying on a rack by the door. "But my answer was I would just sell it to all my friends and then that would be it."
Twenty years later, it's worked out a little too well.
"Now, it's overwhelming," Glenda quipped.
"As a matter of fact," he said, "I'm trying to quit."
Billy doesn't make anything that isn't already sold. He doesn't advertise and the only show he goes to is at Abilene's Western Heritage Classic which will be May 11-14 at the Taylor County Expo Center. Billy and Glenda set their table up in the Round Building, just to the left as you enter.
Everything that he will bring is already sold and he said he likely won't be taking any more orders.
"Selling is not my priority, I'm not making it to sell, I'm making it to make; and then I want to sell it so that I can go make something else," he said.
But he's not giving up, he just wants to push himself in a different direction.
"I want to retire so I can stay in here and braid all the time, but braid what I want to braid," he explained. "I just want to make things that are challenging; I'm a habitual experimenter, I guess."