Category: Every car is a story.
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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…
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THE GRAND INTRODUCTION
It all began with an inauspicious statement. “Ford Division confirmed today that it will introduce a new line of cars this spring,” said the press release issued February 6, 1964, by Lee Iacocca, vice president of Ford Motor Company. “The new line of cars will be called the Mustang. No further details on the new…
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THE MAN WHO KNEW EVERYBODY’S NAME
By the time most people in Fort Stockton began thinking of Walter Finch as part of the town itself, he had already spent forty-two years working in a room where nearly everything important arrived as sound. The Texas & Pacific depot stood east of downtown in a place where coal smoke, creosote, dust, and hot…
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UNDER THE RADAR
Fort Stockton, Texas Spring, 1971 There are two kinds of people who move to Fort Stockton. The first kind arrive because they intended to. They found work with the railroad, the schools, the oil companies, the county, or one of the ranches that stretched toward the horizon until they finally surrendered to New Mexico. They…
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ONE OF SEVENTY-SIX
The mistake arrived in Fort Stockton on the upper deck of a Ford transport truck during the first week of November 1959, black paint gleaming beneath a thin coat of road dust and a red-and-white interior bright enough to be seen from the courthouse steps. It was a 1960 Edsel Ranger convertible, one of the…