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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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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THE SANDS OF TIME
Mayor Goodman had kind of a running competition with his wife’s cousin going all the way back to their high school days. Always attempting to one-up each other. Going out to dinner with them and their wives was difficult, each trying to get the upper hand on the other with just about any topic that…
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A SUNBURN IN MONTEREY
When Connie-Jean was asked to travel to Denver in order to attend training on a new punch-card system for the DMV office, she was reluctant to go. She’d barely ever left Fort Stockton, much less the state of Texas. But, being the only female in the office, she felt a pressure to perform. Besides, a…
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UNCLE LOWELL’S IMPALA
Hard to look at this and not see it through the filter of yellowed Kodachrome, parked in the shade of the driveway in front of the grandparent’s bungalow. Uncle Lowell had bought it brand new off the showroom floor of Longhorn Chevrolet in Wichita Falls just a couple days before heading back home to Fort…
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A SPARTAN ROYAL VALENTINE
When Mac Woodling returned from WW II the only thing on his mind was marrying Alma, his high school sweetheart from Jim Bowie High School (“Home of the Fightin’ Knives”). Once that mission was accomplished, he set about trying to find his life’s calling. He’d inherited 80 acres off Highway 285 and eventually he and…
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ON A LARK
“If the world was made up of only people who drove Fords and Chevys it would be a pretty boring place.” That’s what Huck Delmont used to say anytime someone made a comment about him driving a Studebaker. No one could deny that Huck’s ’62 Lark wasn’t a looker. The Poly Brown Metallic convertible was…
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BEYOND THE GALAXIE
I swear this Ford has been stirring up trouble in Fort Stockton for longer than anyone can remember, going all the way back to the day it came off the auto hauler in 1965. Much like Mayberry, Fort Stockton was a firm believer that Law & Order was best preserved from behind the wheel of…