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 MAN IN THE TURQUOISE LINCOLN, PART III: The Buick From Nowhere
The Buick appeared on the first Monday in May, as if summoned by bad decisions and worse timing. It wasn’t like the others. Not the turquoise Lincoln with its low, slow menace. Not the battered ’59 Ford Custom 300 that kept showing up where it wasn’t welcome. This was different. A 1960 Buick Invicta four-door…
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THE MAN IN THE TURQUOISE LINCOLN, PART II: Men In The Ford
By late April, the town had stopped pretending this was all a coincidence. Strangers still came through Fort Stockton now and then—drillers, surveyors, insurance men—but not like this. Not in groups. Not all wearing the same bad shoes and the same worse haircuts. And not all orbiting around H.R. Cashe like he was the mayor,…
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THE MAN IN THE TURQUOISE LINCOLN, PART I: Arrival With Intent
H.R. Cashe returned to Fort Stockton the way thunderstorms roll in from the Davis Mountains—slow at first, with a low rumble, then sudden enough to make the whole town pause mid-sentence. It was late February 1961, and the sun hung like an overripe peach over the courthouse square. The air smelled like mesquite and unfinished…
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GUNMETAL BLUES
On the morning of his 40th birthday, Dick Struthers took a long look in the mirror and didn’t like what was looking back. His receding hairline had become a peninsula. The love handles had turned into a belt of shame. And the eyes staring back? They were tired. Not the kind of tired that a…
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“No Good Comes from a Car Like This”
Nobody builds a car like this for subtlety. Nobody steps down into a cab this low, surrounded by bare metal and bloodied knuckles, without carrying around a few bad decisions like loose change in a pocket. This isn’t a rat rod. It’s not a hot rod. It’s a rolling middle finger made of shop-floor rage…
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PENALTIES AND PANTIES
It started with a fire drill. A cool Friday morning in early November, just crisp enough that the breath of 700 restless teenagers at Jim Bowie High School rose like low-lying fog across the football practice fields. Mason McCullough stood with his hands stuffed deep in the pockets of his letterman jacket, jaw tight, eyes…
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SIX FEET UNDER, Part III: Digging Up the Past
Cutter Bridges had only been in Fort Worth a few days when his uncle got the call. It wasn’t to prepare someone for burial this time—it was the opposite. They were to dig up the most infamous resident in the cemetery: Lee Harvey Oswald. At first, Cutter thought his uncle was pulling his leg. After…
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SIX FEET UNDER, Part II: Dying for Direction
The summer sun hung heavy over Fort Stockton like it always did—burning through clouds, paint, and whatever plans Cutter Bridges thought he had for his life. He was eighteen, freshly graduated from Jim Bowie High School, where the mascot was a snarling Bowie knife and the football team had a better record than the school…
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SIX FEET UNDER, PART I: A Chip Off the Old Slab
Cutter Bridges was the only boy in town whose childhood bedroom shared a ventilation system with a mortuary prep room. While other kids in Fort Stockton were arguing over who got next on the Atari or sneaking beers from their daddy’s truck cooler, Cutter was helping fold crepe streamers for casket displays and learning to…
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FUTURMATIC
Fred Lancaster’s left shoe was half a size too small, but he wasn’t about to admit it. Not today. Not while America was back on top and the world was cracking open like a fresh pack of Chesterfields. Fred was the kind of man whose clothes always looked like they’d been pressed three days ago…