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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LOCKE, STOCKS, AND BARREL
They said the car was coming from back East, which in Fort Stockton meant somewhere beyond the Pecos where men wore hats for shade instead of reputation and money moved faster than cattle. By the time word reached the courthouse square, it had already grown legs. “A Lincoln,” someone said, leaning back in a chair…
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IT HAD A CERTAIN SHEEN TO IT
They heard it before they saw it, which is how most things worth remembering arrive in Fort Stockton, and how most things worth regretting do, too. It started as a vibration more than a sound, something that got into the glass of the courthouse windows and made them hum like a tuning fork struck by…
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STRIKING OUT
Rusty Hammer’s oldest boy, Rusty Hammer III, took one look at the name stitched across his future and decided he’d rather not spend his life sounding like a tool left out in the rain. So he went by Trey. Fort Stockton, being Fort Stockton, respected that decision about as much as it respects a stop…
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HOW IN THE WORLD?
The bell over the door at Grounds for Divorce gave its usual half-hearted jingle, like it had opinions about who came in but lacked the energy to share them. Mid-morning light leaned through the front windows and stretched itself across the big round table—the one that had seen more truth, lies, and half-baked theories than…
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THE CONFESSION BOOTH
There are days in Fort Stockton when the wind behaves itself, the coffee stays hot, and the conversation at the big corner booth at Grounds for Divorce keeps to respectable lanes. This was not one of those days. It started sideways the moment Sister Thelma and Pastor Peterson didn’t show. Now, nobody ever says it…
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THE COLOR OF MONEY (AND OTHER THINGS YOU DON’T THROW AWAY)
If you drove west down Travis Trail in the early 1970s, just past where the pavement still believed in itself, you’d find a neat row of houses in RoadRunner Estates. Three bedrooms, two baths, two-car garages, and just enough ambition poured into each slab to make a man feel like he’d arrived. That’s where Herb…
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BREWED, SCREWED, AND TATTOOED
If Fort Stockton had a smell, it would’ve been a blend of burnt coffee, sunbaked asphalt, and decisions that sounded better after the third drink than they ever did the next morning. And on this particular Tuesday, the smell had a meeting. Hank was behind the bar at the Lucky Lady Lounge, polishing a glass…
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GET OFF MY LAWN
Morning in Fort Stockton doesn’t so much arrive as it seeps in through the cracks like dust under a screen door. By the time the sun gets serious about it, the regulars at the big round table inside Grounds for Divorce have already claimed their territory like a pack of aging coyotes with bad knees…
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MOVIE REVIEW: DEATH PROOF
By Jimmy Don Ventura Movie Critic, Stockton Telegram-DispatchGuest Reviewer — CMC Blog There are movies where cars are props.There are movies where cars are characters. And then there’s Death Proof, where the cars are both executioners and confession booths, rolling down the asphalt like they’ve got something to settle with God and the guardrail. Now…
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PRESIDENTIAL COURTESY
It arrived just past noon, when the sun in Fort Stockton doesn’t shine so much as it presses down—flat-palmed and patient, like it’s waiting for something to admit what it’s done. The first thing folks noticed wasn’t the car. It was what the car refused to do. It didn’t rattle.Didn’t tick.Didn’t drag a tail of…