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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TRIXIE’S TALE: CHAPTER ONE: Cherry Stems and Horsepower
CHAPTER ONE OF SIX THAT EXPLAINS WHO TRIXIE REALLY IS. Modern Manors wasn’t so much a mobile home park as it was a sun-baked graveyard of past-due rent and busted dreams. The trailers leaned slightly, as if embarrassed to be seen, their tin siding faded to the color of old chewing gum. Claudia and her…
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IN THE PINK
A 1956 Lincoln Premiere and Nearly 70 Years of Fort Stockton Lore You could walk right past it today and think it’s just a forgotten old Lincoln, one of a thousand cars slowly sinking into the soft belly of the American dream. Pink, scarred, patched, its white roof dulled to chalk. But in Fort Stockton,…
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KEEPING AN EYE ON THINGS
By God’s grace and Ford Motor Company ingenuity Slim Gillespie stood five-foot-nine in his socks, though you’d never know it from the way he squared his shoulders and leaned forward like he was always about to offer an opinion nobody asked for. His hair, once the color of weak coffee, had surrendered to a dignified…
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E-CLASS DREAMS
It was April 1984, and Earl Tisdale stood in the lot at Tumbleweed Chrysler-Plymouth-Dodge, staring at what could only be described as Lee Iacocca’s latest act of desperation disguised as progress: a brand-new 1984 Chrysler E Class. Beige Crystal Coat. Not gold, not tan—beige. The kind of color that looked like it came pre-faded to…
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RED ROCKET IN REVERSE
It started the way most bad ideas in Fort Stockton do—at the Dairy Twin over a cold root beer float and a hotter-than-it-ought-to-be argument about nothing in particular. “You wouldn’t last ten seconds on it,” Lucinda said, folding her arms across her chest, the silver on her bolo catching the fluorescent light like judgment. Rusty…
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THREE INJURED INDIANS
A Triptych of Pontiac Misfortunes and the People Who Shouldn’t Have Owned Them I. The Accordion Chief 1962 Pontiac Catalina Back in 1962, a Pontiac Catalina was the kind of car that whispered class while still offering enough under-hood menace to blow the hair off your scalp. Marlin Dacus bought his brand new—triple black with…
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BLAST OFF
A Mission by Bobby and Hank Lawson, Aged 7 and 9 At exactly 09:02 Earth Standard Time, the launch sequence was initiated. The Retronaut-X Delta Firebird, a two-seat atmospheric-gravitational breacher, sat poised on Launchpad 3B (adjacent to the old cattle guard), steam pluming from its flarion vents. With auxiliary umbilicals detached and the secondary EGR…
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(NO) LABOR DAY CELEBRATION
Well, I did it. I’d talked about it for years. Dropped hints at Christmas, threatened it at tax time, daydreamed about it during every staff meeting that could’ve been an email. Planned it in little fits of confidence, then talked myself out of it when I thought about insurance deductibles or the way retired men…
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STRAIGHT SHOOTIN’ SATURDAY
Scott Williams combed his hair twice that morning—once for practice, the second time for luck. He didn’t know what the inside of a car dealership looked like, but he was sure it held the same weight as a courtroom or church sanctuary. It was where big decisions were made by men in ties and women…
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THE PANTHER ON THE PORCH, Part II
In the summer of 1954, Martin Van Zandt was fourteen years old and learning that the world doesn’t owe you a damn thing. That Schwinn Panther—curved chrome fenders, whitewall tires, gold script promising more than it could deliver—sat in the window at Hobby Town like a trophy you didn’t really win. Mr. and Mrs. Wharton,…