Category: Every car is a story.
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THE SLOWEST CHASE IN TEXAS
There are at least two reliable ways for an automobile to become famous. The first is to be genuinely extraordinary. Build enough horsepower into it, win enough races, appear in enough magazines, or carry someone sufficiently important, and history will eventually remember it. The second way is considerably less predictable. Simply be standing in the…
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THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FENCE
In the summer of 1956, General Motors was not particularly worried about the future. This was understandable. General Motors owned most of it. Nearly one out of every two new automobiles sold in the United States came from one of its five passenger-car divisions. Chevrolet was Chevrolet. Pontiac was moving upward. Oldsmobile had horsepower and…
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SECOND BANANA BECOMES APPEALING
Vice Principal Lutz had spent most of his life standing immediately to the right of somebody more important. It had begun with his older brother, Everett, who had been born three years earlier and apparently used the extra time to claim everything worth having. Everett had been the first to ride a bicycle, the first…
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THE AUTOMOTIVE MULLET
Here’s the thing about having a trunk that has been refurbished to the point that it actually looks better than it did when it left the Ford factory. Eventually, it makes the rest of the car look bad. I mean, imagine parking at the next Folgers and Fenders that Lucinda hosts, lifting the rear deck…
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LE BREAK DE LA DOUCE COLETTE
There was a brief period in the early 1990s when a person could become fabulously wealthy without anybody, including the person becoming fabulously wealthy, being entirely certain why. Computers were beginning to talk to one another. The Internet was still something most people in Fort Stockton vaguely associated with universities, the Pentagon and teenage boys…
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“TAKE THE BOSS’S CAR”
The first cold breeze of autumn came off Nantucket Sound before sunrise on Tuesday, October 16, 1962, carrying the smell of salt water, wet rope, and the faint remains of yesterday’s fish. It moved through Hyannis Port with the confidence of something that had crossed the Atlantic without asking permission, rattling the windows of the…
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A STAR WAR IS BORN
By the time the house lights went down at Our Lady of Immeasurable Concern, three hundred respectable citizens of Fort Stockton were already packed into a parish auditorium rated for considerably fewer, two fire exits had been partially blocked by folding chairs, Delgado had sold enough Bantha Burgers to put the GFD Airstream food truck…
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A NIGHT TO REMEMBER
There are certain honors a writer secretly hopes to receive in his lifetime. The Pulitzer Prize is one. The National Book Award would be nice. A Presidential Medal of Freedom would probably look good hanging on the wall, although in Fort Stockton accepting one would immediately cause half the people at the Grounds for Divorce…
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SOMETIMES IT’S BETTER BY HAND
After completing the recent rejuvenation of the trunk of the Fairlane 500, I did something I hadn’t done in far too long. I backed the old Ford out of the garage, parked it squarely in the middle of the driveway, uncoiled the garden hose, and washed it by hand from top to bottom. The original…
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WELCOME ABOARD
Bruce Borger had spent twenty-three years learning that the secret to advancement in corporate accounting was preparation. Preparation could overcome almost anything. A weak quarterly report could be prepared for. An acquisition could be prepared for. An audit could be prepared for. A hostile board member could be prepared for. Even a meeting in which…