Category: Every car is a story.
-
GOVERNOR JESTER’S LEGACY
Beauford Halbert Jester was the only Texas Governor to have the temerity to die in office. Born in Corsicana and educated at the University of Texas, Beauford cut a mean figure on his way up the ladder of Texas politics. A relatively young man when elected governor in 1947, he made for a handsome politician…
-
TALES OF A SEQUOIA
Fort Stockton has had its share of circuses come to town; not necessarily all of them had tents and tigers, if you know what I mean. Most folks take it all in stride as long as it doesn’t affect the price of cattle or oil. That was the case back in late ’48 when a…
-
MONTANA GETS RELIGION
This was from an era when trucks were work horses for those who made a living off the land rather than being tailored to dandies with dreams of glory but a job in a cubicle. Funny this one is in Montana. Back in the day there was a young cowpoke and his bride that moved…
-
THE GRADUATE
Dax Shaddock was lost. It wasn’t that he didn’t know where he was. It was that he had no idea where he was going. He’d taken a “gap year” after graduating from Our Lady of Immeasurable Concern, but he’d fallen into the “gap” and couldn’t seem to find his way out. Most of his friends…
-
RIDING IN A WALKER
There’s a theory that men aren’t nearly as apt to make friendships with other men as women are with other women. That can be chalked up to the sheer number of words women say every day, 20,000, compared to the number men do, 7,000. Maybe men can’t get a word in edgewise. Maybe they are…
-
THE GRASS IS ALWAYS GREENER
Miss Betsy could occasionally be seen tooling around Fort Stockton, always by herself, usually with a smile on her face in a rusty old Chevy Greenbrier just like this one. Her husband had purchased it as a project decades ago. She kept it after his departure, mostly as a reminder of things he had promised…
-
GOOD OLD DAYS
Looks like summer’s here in Fort Stockton. It was inevitable, I guess, but spring seemed like just a hiccup between the bleak scenery of winter and the scorched earth of summer. A little depressing, but nothing a trip to The Grounds for Divorce can’t fix, so that’s where I headed. Plenty of other folks felt…
-
THORNTON GOODNIGHT’S IMPERIAL
Southwest of Fort Stockton, Thornton Goodnight owned a spread that most said was second only to the King Ranch in size. Folks may have been exaggerating when they said it stretched almost all the way to Ozona, but it was a fair-sized piece of real estate that yielded cotton and cattle and some sizable legends…
-
CONTINENTAL CONTRITION
When they saw this, everyone in Fort Stockton thought this was the Continental Mark II out near the back row of Earl’s Salvage Yard and Formalwear. That damn thing is legendary. Folks had pretty much forgotten about it the last decade or two, but for ever and a day it was known as “Larry Ludlow’s…
-
WE REGRET TO INFORM YOU
Hardly ever is a certified letter from an attorney you’ve never heard of a sign of good things to come. “We regret to inform you of the passing of your great uncle, Buford Ludlow, earlier this year . . .” the letter started. Luke Bynum was not immediately filled with any emotion other than mystery…