Now this is an example of someone thinking ‘outside the box’, both literally and figuratively, and then having the skills to follow it through to make it all come together in the end. Slow golf clap to all involved. It’s good to see one that turned out well, having seen one that, well, let’s just say ‘missed the mark’.

Andy Grubb (I’m guessing no relation) got kicked out of Jim Bowie High School the semester before graduation. The circumstances of his exit were always murky, but most said mushrooms were involved, and not those from the cooking class he was taking for his elective credit.

Anyway, despite the fact that nearly every test he ever took was handed back to him upside down by his teacher, Andy knew his way around a welding machine and was pretty mechanically inclined. With the help of his buxom girlfriend Gracie, Andy undertook a project that, in retrospect, was even more ambitious than this one. (Andy always said he knew Gracie was the one for him when they were working on a car together and he told her to bring him a screwdriver and she replied, “Flathead, Phillips, or Vodka”?)

Long story short, don’t know if it was the vodka or the mushrooms, but Andy decided to weld the back end of a 1949 Spartan Royal Mansion 33’ travel trailer with a 1958 Morris Minor into what he affectionately called ‘The Minor Royal’. Of course, despite the functionality of the bedroom and dinette combo, the thing was radically underpowered until he was trolling for parts over at Earl’s Salvage Yard and Formal Wear and was able to find everything he needed to perform an LS swap, giving his creation all the raw power it could ever need. He was never able to get it on a dynamiter because it wouldn’t fit in the stall over at the ESSO station, but the darn thing made it from the parking lot of the Piggly Wiggly to the Dairy Twin at the edge of town in just under twelve seconds. Even Officer Phil’s Crown Vic with the Interceptor Police Package couldn’t beat that time (something duly noted by every two-bit thief in Fort Stockton).

Andy and Gracie eventually got married and had a whole herd of disheveled little ones running around town. Folks used to call them the ‘Grubb Worms’ due to their talent for finding treasures in just about any dumpster in town.

The Minor Royal saw duty in various different guises around town for a number of years. It was one of the first food trucks put into service. Following the theme of joining two unlikely items together, it was the first place anyone remembers being able to get fried chicken and waffles for breakfast. For a while it was parked out behind the Ben Franklin and used as Fort Stockton’s first Air B&B, until officials caught wind they were renting it by the hour rather than the weekend.

Andy eventually had to sell the Minor Royal to pay the medical bills when Gracie got stung by a bee on the forehead and had to be rushed to the Fort Stockton Memorial ER, her face all swollen and bruised. She nearly died. Luckily Andy had been standing near enough to hit the bee with a shovel before it flew off.

Last anybody at the Grounds for Divorce heard, the Minor Royal had been spotted in Santa Barbara and was being restored back to its former glory. No expense spared. Haven’t seen it, but Lucinda even said there was a Netflix special trending about it.