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 AEROVAULT ARRIVED BEFORE NOON
By nine-thirty the Grounds for Divorce was buzzing like a cicada caught in a fan belt. Out front, parked nose-first against the curb, sat a gleaming white spaceship of a trailer. Curved like a fighter jet, rivets neat as pearls, it looked like it could outrun the wind standing still. Folks craned necks at it…
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THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO TRAVCO
If Fort Stockton ever needed a patron saint of bad ideas on wheels, it found one in 1966—the year Delbert “Del” Murtaugh rolled into town behind the wheel of a two-tone red-and-cream Dodge Travco that looked like the lovechild of a Greyhound bus and a lipstick tube. Nobody knew where Del came from exactly. Rumor…
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THE SUBSTITUTE, Part II
Part two of a two part story. The Chalk Line By the time third period rolled around that Monday, the room already felt different. The air had that restless kind of quiet that follows gossip too vague to sit on. Then he was just—there. Standing at the board, sleeves rolled, chalk in hand, as though…
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THE SUBSTITUTE, Part I
Part one of a two-part story. By the fall of 1964, Jim Bowie High School—“Home of the Fightin’ Knives”—was running on chalk dust and cafeteria gravy. The football team practiced behind the bleachers, the band practiced in front of them, and somewhere in between was Mr. Schroeder, the only man alive who could make the…
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WHEN WAGONS WORE WOOD
You could hear the Buick before you saw it—low, steady rumble like a baritone singer with a cold. Then it rolled into Fort Stockton, slow and wide as a cattle drive, with more faux wood than a church fellowship hall on potluck night. A green 1979 Buick Estate Wagon, fresh from a long haul. The…
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THE LAST CIGAR FOR DeSOTO
The African mahogany conference table stretched the length of Chrysler’s boardroom in Highland Park, polished to a shine that looked wet. On most days that table was a launching pad—men with new-model smiles sending ideas into orbit. Today it felt like a pew after a funeral. The ice clinked like teeth. The cigars tasted like…
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THE CADDY THAT SIZZLES
Hector Hemphill had been in Fort Stockton so long folks used him as a unit of time. “Back when Hector tried to sell us on solar water heaters,” they’d say, or, “Before Hector’s cousin ran the fireworks stand out by the stock tank.” He was equal parts squeak and hinge—always there, seldom welcome, somehow necessary…
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“We’ll Take You to the Other Side”
By the fall of 1939, Fort Stockton had three things in endless supply: wind, opinions, and trouble looking for boys. The wind came whistling off the Davis Mountains and carried grit fine enough to season a stew. The opinions stacked higher than cotton bales, shouted across the square until somebody claimed victory or ran out…
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THE PRICE IS RIGHT — Part II: Come On Down, Mamá
Part II of a two part story. Los Angeles had a way of looking like a promise from far off and a price tag up close. Carmen learned that in the first week, and then the city politely re-taught her every month for years. She found a room in a stucco box three blocks from…
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THE PRICE IS RIGHT — Part I: The Road to California
Part I of a two part story. By the time the sun cleared the courthouse dome, Fort Stockton was already sweating through its shirt. The Riveras’ stucco house held the night’s cool like a secret it refused to share, but out back the caliche yard was beginning to glow. The Chrysler sat where the grass…