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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THE LAST GOOD BAD IDEA
By the closing months of 1973, there were mornings when the executives of American Motors Corporation suspected that the only thing keeping the company alive was the fact that the Grim Reaper couldn’t quite remember where Kenosha was. It certainly wasn’t because they possessed General Motors’ limitless resources, Ford’s sprawling dealer network, or Chrysler’s ability…
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THE PEOPLE’S PARADE CAR
Mayor Goodman first learned about the ZIS-110B because Rusty Hammer showed it to him on his telephone at the Grounds for Divorce, which was an innocent enough act at the time and one Rusty would later regret. Rusty had discovered the automobile on Bring a Trailer while looking for something entirely different, and by the…
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MOVIE REVIEW: GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER
By: Jimmy Don Ventura, Movie Reviewer for the Stockton Telegram-Dispatch and Guest Contributor for the CMC Blog. Every month the Stockton Telegram-Dispatch and the Grounds for Divorce sponsor a Classic Film in their continuing effort to advance the cultural development of Fort Stockton, which so far has produced mixed results. The movies have improved considerably.…
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HOW THE HELL DID THIS HAPPEN?
By the third week of April 1964, the Ford Mustang had become the most dangerous object in Detroit that did not contain enriched uranium. Ford introduced it to the public at the New York World’s Fair on April 17, then bought commercial time on all three television networks the same evening. More than twenty-nine million…
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SIMPLE KIND OF MAN
The Ford Falcon that Lorraine Nolan bought in September of 1969 was not the automobile her seventeen-year-old son would have selected if Ford Motor Company had suddenly appointed him purchasing agent for the family. Danny Nolan had opinions about automobiles, as most seventeen-year-old boys did, but Danny’s opinions tended to arrive fully formed and equipped…
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FORT STOCKTON UNDER COVER
In the spring of 1942, the United States Army became convinced that Fort Stockton, Texas, might be destroyed by the Japanese, which came as something of a surprise to Fort Stockton because most people in Fort Stockton had spent the previous eighty years trying to convince anybody at all that it was worth finding. The…
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STRIPPERS
The word stripper does not mean what it used to mean. I came to this conclusion while reading about the 2027 Ford Maverick XL, which is described as the stripped-down version of Ford’s small pickup. The least expensive Maverick now starts at $29,990, including destination charges, and comes only with a hybrid powertrain producing 191…
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THE OFFER
The Mercedes arrived in Fort Stockton on a Tuesday afternoon with the solemn black shine of a hearse that had recently learned diplomacy. It came east on Dickinson Boulevard at a dignified forty-two miles an hour, which was slow enough for people to study it and fast enough to suggest that whoever occupied the back…
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THE LAST CAR SOLD ON A HANDSHAKE
The black 1957 Lincoln Premiere arrived in Fort Stockton on a Tuesday afternoon in late March, riding the last forty miles on a transport truck behind three new Ford pickups and a pale yellow Fairlane that had already been sold to the county extension agent before its tires ever touched Pecos County pavement. The Lincoln…
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KEYS TO THE BEAST
For seventeen years, the Fort Stockton Mud Hens had managed to avoid the Dixie League playoffs with a consistency that, viewed from the proper distance, almost qualified as excellence. Other clubs occasionally collapsed. Other clubs rebuilt. Other clubs endured a bad season or two before some nineteen-year-old shortstop arrived from Venezuela and carried them somewhere…