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.
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PARTS IS PARTS
They don’t call Earl over at Earl’s Salvage Yard & Formalwear the Jeff Bezos of the Wrecking World for nothing. And Earl, being somewhat less than the sharpest screwdriver in the Harbor Freight bargain bin, takes that as a mighty fine compliment. Far as Earl is concerned, Jeff Bezos is just a bald fella who…
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A GATHERING AT THE GFD
The conversation started, as many conversations at Grounds for Divorce do, with something nobody had planned to talk about. I slid my phone across the table. “Tell me that ain’t the most Fort Stockton car you’ve ever seen.” The picture of the blue 1964 Ford Galaxie 500 convertible made a slow lap around the breakfast…
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RIDING SHOTGUN
Rusty Hammer wasn’t sure if it was the smell of breakfast drifting through the campground or Debra Lynn’s ringtone buzzing across the narrow countertop of the Airstream that woke him up first. Either way meant trouble, one just smelled like a better version of it. He stared at the ceiling for half a second trying…
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SMALL WORLD
The first day of Rusty Hammer’s journey toward rediscovering himself went about like a screen door on a submarine. That’s usually how these things start. A man wakes up convinced he needs “space,” “clarity,” or “a fresh perspective,” and before long he’s standing beside a smoking radiator somewhere north of civilization wondering why his lower…
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RADIO FREE FORT STOCKTON
If you were anywhere within a fifty-mile radius of Fort Stockton that week, you didn’t need a radio to know something had gone sideways. The air itself carried it. Not wind exactly, not dust either, but that peculiar hum that shows up when common sense packs a bag and heads for Odessa without leaving a…
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COMING HOME
Trey pulled up in front of his parent’s house the day after Rusty left, the gravel crunching under the tires in a way that sounded exactly like it had when he was sixteen and trying to sneak in past curfew. Some sounds don’t age. They just sit there and wait on you. Debra Lynn wasn’t…
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A FORK IN THE ROAD
Debra Lynn wasn’t surprised to see the 1962 Airstream Trade Wind 24′ Travel Trailer ease its way up in front of the house like it had every right in the world to be there. She had been standing at the kitchen sink, staring out the window without really seeing anything, when the afternoon sun hit…
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THE LAST CONTINENTAL
Out here, where the wind doesn’t so much blow as negotiate with loose dirt, Fort Stockton keeps its stories the way a good banker keeps his best accounts: quiet, protected, and just inconvenient enough to get to that only the serious bother. Some tales sit right out in the open on Dickinson Boulevard, waving neon…
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A HARD STORY TO TELL
Rex Hall didn’t usually take the floor at the big round table unless he had something worth the price of admission. Most mornings, he preferred to sit there like a pharmacist ought to—measured, observant, letting other folks overprescribe their opinions while he kept the dosage low. But this morning, he had that look. The one…