When they saw this, everyone in Fort Stockton thought this was the Continental Mark II out near the back row of Earl’s Salvage Yard and Formalwear.  That damn thing is legendary.

Folks had pretty much forgotten about it the last decade or two, but for ever and a day it was known as “Larry Ludlow’s Continental of Contrition”.

Back in the fall of ’56, Larry Ludlow was caught red-handed cheating with Becky Crocker, the Home-Ec teacher at Jim Bowie High School.  By red-handed, I mean both figuratively and literally.  Becky’d just had Trixie over at the Klip-N-Dye do her hair that morning.  She chose Clairol Red Dye #7 because it looked just like the color Lucy used, based on what she could see in the movie magazines.

Anyway, everyone was out at the Fall Festival in the parking lot of the National Guard Armory when Astrid, Larry’s wife, walked in the ticket booth for the Tilt-A-Whirl and caught Larry and Becky doing the bow-chick-a-bow-wow, unaware that the booth flap had come untied and there was more judging taking place than over at the jams and jellies competition.

Becky was not long for teaching in Fort Stockton.  Larry was attempting to determine just how hot the water was he’d found himself in.  Astrid was mortified.  She’d bore Larry three children, Larryamber, Larryalice, and Larryann, and put up with his unpleasant peccadillos for longer than anyone figured she would when they got married.  Catching him with Becky doing the four-legged foxtrot was the final straw.

Larry, knowing the depth of the doo-doo he was in, hightailed it to Frontier Ford and special ordered a brand new Continental Mark II, writing a ten-thousand dollar check for full sticker and paying extra to get it faster than normal.  It was burgundy over tan leather with air conditioning, the only option.  When it showed up six weeks later, Larry could see it pull into the driveway from the guest bedroom where he’d taken up residence since the Festival.

Beckoning Astrid to the driveway to hand over the keys to the Continental, his wife could not have been any less impressed.  “I ordered it special, jest fer yew,” Larry drawled, just as Trixie pulled into the driveway to pick Astrid up and take her into town.

Walking into Frontier Ford with a pocketbook full of ‘mad money’ she kept for just such an event, she bought her own ’56 Thunderbird. “Damned if I’ll ever step foot in that ol’ Continental,” she told the salesman. “Don’t care what the ol’ coot paid for it.”

Right there in the driveway is where it sat, too.  For decades.  Only 17 miles on the odometer.  Neither Larry nor Astrid ever turned the key in the ignition, him out of guilt, her out of stubbornness.  Larry didn’t move out of the guest room till he was diagnosed with testicular cancer.  “Kind of ironic, huh?” Astrid said to people when they saw her in the Piggly Wiggly.

It’d spread by the time they caught it and he moved from the guest room to Fort Stockton Hospice Care and Pool Hall.  Astrid had Homer at the ESSO station send a wrecker over to pick up the Continental Mark II and park it right outside Larry’s window.  “I want that car to be the last thing he sees before he meets the Devil,” she told friends.  

“Hell hath no fury . . .” they say.

Later, she wanted Larry stuffed in the trunk and dropped off at Bridges Funeral Parlor as they hauled the Mark II out to Earl’s, but there are some things money can’t buy.