Category: Every car is a story.
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TWELVE MINUTES IN
There are days that divide a man’s life so cleanly that everything before them eventually begins to feel as though it happened to somebody else. The clothes are familiar, the photographs prove you were there, and you can still remember what you ate for breakfast if somebody gives you enough time. But the fellow standing…
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OPERATION BEAVER DROP
The trouble with Lake Leon began, as trouble around Fort Stockton often did, when somebody decided to improve it. For years the lake had existed a few miles outside town without asking much from anybody. Calling it a lake required a certain generosity during dry spells, but West Texans have always understood that bodies of…
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THE BED BUG
The first thing Yelena Mazanik learned about powerful men was that they seldom noticed the people who made their beds. By September of 1943, this had become more than an observation. It was something upon which a life could depend. Minsk had been occupied for more than two years, long enough for fear to become…
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IT WAS WHITE WHEN SHE LEFT IT
There were four styling chairs at the Klip-N-Dye, although Trixie had not needed all four at once since sometime during the first Reagan administration, when Fort Stockton women still regarded a weekly appointment at the beauty shop as one of the obligations of citizenship. The chairs were upholstered in red vinyl and mounted on chrome…
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THE SPIRIT OF ’76
There are perhaps six days a year in Fort Stockton when the weather has no complaint to lodge against the people living under it. It is neither hot enough to make a man resent the sun nor cold enough to make him reconsider his relationship with the outdoors. A breeze moves through town without bringing…
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CORRECTING COURSE
By February of 1958, the Edsel had been on sale long enough for everyone at Ford Motor Company to agree on one thing. Nobody wanted to be the first man in the room to say what everyone already knew. The conference room on the upper floors of Ford World Headquarters smelled of cigarette smoke, coffee,…
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THE GREEN GRENADE
Every June, shortly after school let out and before my mother had completely recovered from nine months of having me underfoot only after three o’clock, my parents loaded a suitcase into the car and drove me two hours out of the city to my grandmother’s house. They carried my things inside, drank something cold at…
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BUZZ KILL
The mosquito had been in Fort Stockton considerably longer than Lyle David Goodhue, and if seniority counted for anything, it intended to remain. It had survived drought, flash flood, cattle, sheep, screen doors, rolled newspapers, kerosene, profanity, and generations of West Texans who believed anything small enough to be killed with one hand did not…
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I’LL GET TO IT NEXT SATURDAY
There are automobiles that are preserved deliberately. They are washed with special soap, dried with towels softer than anything in the bathroom, parked beneath fitted covers, and occasionally awakened on Sunday mornings when the humidity is low and there is no chance whatsoever that a bird has recently eaten berries. Then there are automobiles preserved…
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THE LAST TEXACO MAN
There are certain vehicles that arrive in Fort Stockton already carrying a story, whether the story belongs to them or not. A red 1957 Chevrolet 3800 panel truck with TEXACO painted across both sides in letters large enough to be read from the courthouse is one of those vehicles. You don’t park something like that…