Category: Every car is a story.
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THE DEVIL’S LAZY SUSAN
The Grounds for Divorce never really opened so much as it resumed consciousness. By the time the sun hit the limestone courthouse and bounced its way down Dickinson Boulevard, the regulars were already assembled at the big round table near the front window—the one with the wobble nobody ever fixed because Rusty Hammer claimed it…
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BAND OF BUICKS, CHAPTER III
CHAPTER III OF A FOUR PART STORY If you happened to be standing on Main Street the morning Lillie Mae rolled into Muleshoe, you might’ve thought you were seeing a movie star who’d gotten lost east of Amarillo. Folks in that part of Texas didn’t see many woodie wagons to begin with, much less one…
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MVC AT THE GFD
“If pigs could vote, the man with the slop bucket would be elected swineherd every time, no matter how much slaughtering he did on the side.” Rusty Hammer was in rare form. Nobody at the Grounds for Divorce had a clue what that had to do with the Most Valuable Commenter Award, but we’ve come…
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LEADERSHIP FOR A NEW DECADE
They said the gym still smelled of victory the morning after the election — floor wax, crepe paper, and whatever passes for hope in West Texas.Under the sagging banner that read HOME OF THE FIGHTIN’ KNIVES, the new mayor stood at center court, tie narrow, smile wide. Jim Kilgore was twenty-nine and looked like he’d…
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HEADED FOR VENEZUELA
The thing had arrived quietly—too quietly for something that looked like it had opinions about borders. Long, black, swollen in places cars weren’t supposed to swell, with odd headlights up front like a jury that hadn’t reached a verdict yet. The engine hummed from the rear, backward and confident, as if it had already decided…
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THE TEENAGER, THE TIGER, AND THE TOWER
Liliana never asked to be the only girl in a family with six brothers, but life rarely asks permission.In 1966, she took what it gave her — a strict daddy, a future planned down to what she’d study in college, and a Sunbeam Tiger in Forest Green so pretty it ought to have been parked…
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BEATNIK KILLERS
Most stories that eventually make their way to Fort Stockton start with a whisper, travel by diner-counter gossip, and end up embroidered into the town quilt whether they belong there or not. Every once in a while, though, a story comes along already soaked in gasoline and sulfur. One that needs no exaggeration from Lucinda…
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AND SO WE MEET AGAIN
If you ever spent time around the Bridges family—any branch of that creaky, funeral-home-bred oak—you eventually learned two things: Fort Stockton knew Cutter Bridges as the present-day face of that dynasty: the man behind Bridges Funeral Home, the only place in Pecos County where you could get embalmed before noon and buried by supper. Cutter…
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TRUNK LIDS AND FILE CABINETS
By the time the transport rig wheezed into Fort Stockton, the sun had already baked Dickinson Boulevard to the color of overdone toast. The driver was a gray-ponytailed guy from Phoenix who smelled faintly of diesel and beef jerky and kept calling everyone “boss.” He backed the trailer up in front of the Lucky Lady…
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ODESSA LUST
The gold ’68 Ford Galaxie 500 sat in its usual spot outside Grounds for Divorce, the paint so faded it looked more like desert sand than Detroit metal. Cal Runnels had owned the car since Nixon’s first term, and he often joked it was the longest relationship he’d ever managed. The hideaway headlights had given…