Category: Every car is a story.
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THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO TRAVCO
If Fort Stockton ever needed a patron saint of bad ideas on wheels, it found one in 1966—the year Delbert “Del” Murtaugh rolled into town behind the wheel of a two-tone red-and-cream Dodge Travco that looked like the lovechild of a Greyhound bus and a lipstick tube. Nobody knew where Del came from exactly. Rumor…
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WHEN WAGONS WORE WOOD
You could hear the Buick before you saw it—low, steady rumble like a baritone singer with a cold. Then it rolled into Fort Stockton, slow and wide as a cattle drive, with more faux wood than a church fellowship hall on potluck night. A green 1979 Buick Estate Wagon, fresh from a long haul. The…
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THE LAST CIGAR FOR DeSOTO
The African mahogany conference table stretched the length of Chrysler’s boardroom in Highland Park, polished to a shine that looked wet. On most days that table was a launching pad—men with new-model smiles sending ideas into orbit. Today it felt like a pew after a funeral. The ice clinked like teeth. The cigars tasted like…
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THE CADDY THAT SIZZLES
Hector Hemphill had been in Fort Stockton so long folks used him as a unit of time. “Back when Hector tried to sell us on solar water heaters,” they’d say, or, “Before Hector’s cousin ran the fireworks stand out by the stock tank.” He was equal parts squeak and hinge—always there, seldom welcome, somehow necessary…
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“We’ll Take You to the Other Side”
By the fall of 1939, Fort Stockton had three things in endless supply: wind, opinions, and trouble looking for boys. The wind came whistling off the Davis Mountains and carried grit fine enough to season a stew. The opinions stacked higher than cotton bales, shouted across the square until somebody claimed victory or ran out…
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MANY THANKS FROM THE FORT
Fall had finally arrived in Fort Stockton, that brief and glorious window between “too hot to think” and “hope the pipes don’t freeze.” The courthouse lawn was littered with brown mesquite leaves, the air smelled faintly of diesel and cinnamon, and somewhere, someone was frying something that didn’t strictly need to be fried. Over at…
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THE GREAT TEACHER RETIREMENT BAIL-OUT
Fort Stockton had seen stranger weeks, but not by much. It all started when it came to light that Mayor Goodman—acting under what he later called “a visionary investment strategy”—had lost most of the Fort Stockton Independent School District’s Teacher Retirement Fund. The scheme involved wagering heavily on the outcome of the Carrera Panamericana, a…
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A GROUNDSWELL AT THE GFD
The bell above the door of Grounds for Divorce gave a half-hearted jingle, as if even it was feeling lazy this morning. The regulars—Rusty Hammer, Rex Hall, Pastor Peterson, Sister Thelma, and New Guy—were huddled around the big round table near the window. Mugs half-empty, conversation half-baked. Rusty tapped his spoon against his cup like…
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HOG HEAVEN ON FOUR WHEELS
Only in Fort Stockton would a Depression-era Dodge converted into a Hawaiian beach cruiser wind up as the centerpiece of an economic development plan. And only under the watchful squint of Mayor Goodman could it have happened with federal grant money, a loan from the Optimistic Rotarians, and a mysterious stack of seed cash funneled…
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THE LAST SLOW LAP
They rolled the old Ford out of the barn like pallbearers who’d lost their way to the church. The barn stood outside town where the mesquites thicken and the wind starts practicing for October. Dust had drifted inside through a century of nail holes and settled on the car in dunes. When the doors opened,…