STORIES
If our lives are a book, the cars we drive define the chapters.
These are stories featuring cars, trucks, and even RVs that played a role in the lives of the people who owned or drove them. Many are set in Fort Stockton, Texas and involve a cast of characters in and around the dusty southwest Texas town. A lot of the stories are shared around the table at The Grounds for Divorce, where the ‘regulars’ meet.
Pull up a chair and let Lucinda pour you a hot cuppa joe and enjoy.
-
BOONE DANIELS, PART I: Mustangs and Buffaloes
PART I OF A TWO PART STORY “Are you sure we can trust this kid? He sounds like a hayseed.” The question came from the man in the darker blue suit, the one with the heavy watchband and the habit of asking questions only after he already knew the answer. He leaned back in his…
-
FOND MEMORIES OR SCRAP IRON
The big round table at the Grounds for Divorce had the same scar in it it had carried since the late seventies, a cigarette burn the size of a dime that no one remembered making but everyone remembered noticing. Lucinda kept saying she was going to sand it out one day. She never did. The…
-
THE TWISTER AND MISS DOTTY
Fort Stockton had weather with opinions, but tornadoes weren’t usually among them. We had dust storms that showed up sideways and stayed until you apologized. We had heat that leaned on you like it was collecting a debt. We had hail that could rewrite the hood of a Ford in under a minute. But tornadoes…
-
INCOGNITO
Fort Stockton has always had two kinds of arrivals: the ones that bring their own brass band, and the ones that slide in quiet as a possum under a porch. The first kind gets photographed on the courthouse steps. The second kind gets remembered by smell, by weather, by a single detail nobody can explain…
-
MODEL BEHAVIOR
In the early 1950s, Jim Bowie High School, “Home of the Fightin’ Knives,” taught driver’s education the same way Fort Stockton did most things: seriously, methodically, and with the unspoken understanding that whatever you learned here might be totally useless—or one day save your life fifty miles from nowhere. This was not Europe, despite what…
-
SHANKS FOR THE MEMORIES
The Shanks road coach came to Fort Stockton in the spring of 1890, at a moment when the town was still deciding whether it intended to last. It arrived without announcement, which was fitting, because nothing that truly mattered in Fort Stockton ever came with fanfare. There was only the sound first. Iron-rimmed wheels biting…
-
THE ROAD NOT TAKEN
Fort Stockton in December had a way of pretending winter was just a suggestion. Mornings came in sharp enough to wake you up, but by midday the sun leaned in close, warm and familiar, like it was reminding you that this place didn’t really believe in punishment that lasted longer than it had to. It…
-
SAVING GRACE
The summer after graduation has a peculiar smell in Fort Stockton. It’s equal parts hot asphalt, sunburned optimism, and the faint scent of something ending. The air hangs heavy, like it’s waiting to see what you’ll do next. Grace Gaines stood in the gravel lot of Second Baptist with a canvas overnight bag on her…
-
THE SIN OF OMISSION
When I was writing this one last month, Lucinda walked by the table and spilled fresh Folgers all over the keyboard. Somehow WordPress took that short circuit as an instruction to send it out to the masses immediately. So, if you’re a subscriber, you may have already seen this one. Enjoy it again, no extra…
-
TAHITIAN CORAL IN A LIMESTONE TOWN
The first time I saw the Plymouth, it wasn’t on the courthouse square or parked outside the Lucky Lady like it had a warrant and a bedtime. It was on Lucinda’s phone, held up over the counter at Grounds for Divorce like she’d just found proof the rapture was scheduled and somebody had misspelled her…