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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SALT & SOIL, CHAPTER ONE: LAST RIDE, FIRST LIE
Chapter One of Seven. Cutter Bridges had always trusted the dead more than the living. The dead didn’t lie, didn’t cheat at cards, and they didn’t put IOUs on his counter before walking out the door. They just lay there, silent and patient, waiting for him to finish his work. The living, though—they were nothing…
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PLAZA SUITE
It rolled into Fort Stockton one Friday afternoon, a pale white and blue Plymouth Plaza that looked like it had just driven out of a time capsule. The car was a sedan—plainspoken, four doors, the sort of thing a working man in 1958 might have bought because it was the cheapest way into fins. But…
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THUNDERBIRD ON THE BIG SCREEN
A Fort Stockton Story In Fort Stockton, cars had always been more than transportation. They were shorthand for ambition, swagger, heartbreak, and luck. A good truck could make you useful; a Cadillac could make you somebody. But a turquoise 1966 Ford Thunderbird convertible that drifted into town one June afternoon was destined to be something…
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THE RANCHERO THAT HAULED MEMORIES
Jesse Mae Bartlett leaned against the low stone wall, sweeping her gaze across the dusty lot where her father’s old Ranchero once—long ago—stood under the blistering West Texas sun. The scent of mesquite and creosote drifted in the late afternoon breeze, and memories, warm as a fresh pot of coffee, bubbled up as vivid as…
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THREE PEDALS, ONE FOOT FOR EACH
The Arrival By the early 1960s, Fort Stockton had already seen its share of curiosities: Baptists staging tent revivals that looked more like carnival rides, rusted oil derricks left standing in people’s yards “just in case the price went up,” and Delgado’s stubborn mule that survived three different lightning strikes and one collision with a…
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FOURTH AND LONG
They still keep the 1954 championship photo in the trophy case at Our Lady of Immeasurable Concern—middle shelf, fluorescent hum, glass smudged by generations of noses. Father Fulshear looks thin as baling wire, one hand on the shoulder of a boy with a helmet dented in two places like punctuation. State Champions—Six-Man, 1954 says the…
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MYSTERY SOLVED
The lunch rush at Grounds for Divorce had thinned to the faithful: Rusty Hammer with his elbows planted like fence posts; Sister Thelma (today just “Thelma,” because her temper and the humidity agreed to a ceasefire); Angus Hopper with his hat shoved back, listening the way a hawk watches a field. Out the window, the…
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HEARTS AND OTHER ORGANS
In Fort Stockton, when folks whispered about marriages gone sour, they usually meant adultery at the Lucky Lady Lounge or somebody getting caught inflating their cattle count before the bank appraisal. Rarely did it come down to organs. That was until the case of Richard and Dawnell Batista—he a man with an overdeveloped sense of…
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MOVIE REVIEW: “TUCKER: The Man and His Dream”
A tale of tail lights, ambition, and corporate varmints By Jimmy-Don Ventura, Special Contributor to the CMC Blog I’ll tell you right now, Tucker: The Man and His Dream is the only movie I’ve ever watched that made me think Detroit could’ve used a little more Fort Stockton in it. Preston Tucker was a man…
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IT’S A BIRD, IT’S A PLANE… CHAPTER 5: “All’s Well That Ends in Fort Stockton”
THE FINAL CHAPTER OF A FIVE PART SERIES In the most unexpected twist of the whole absurd ordeal, the three main characters—Ben C. Padilla, John M. Mutantu, and the bartender, Amahle Melokuh-le—became the first bi-racial throuple in Fort Stockton’s history. Their unconventional relationship raised eyebrows at first, with whispers and sideways glances following them around…