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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INTEREST COMPOUNDED, Chapter 2: The Expansion
By 1947, Fort Stockton was buzzing with post-war optimism. GI loans flowed like cheap whiskey, homes were sprouting up like weeds, and cattle deals were moving faster than you could count your blessings. Clifton Brewster Sr. had a hand in all of it—he wasn’t just a banker; he was the town’s financial backbone. And of…
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INTEREST COMPOUNDED, Chapter 1: In the Beginning
Before the vault, before the limestone building, before Fort Stockton even had numbered addresses, there came the sound of a deep mechanical cough rising out of the dust like a preacher finding his voice. Then came the glint of brass, the churn of spoked wheels, and the Pope-Hartford Model W, gleaming green and striped with…
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JUST ANOTHER MORNING AT THE GFD
There’s a certain kind of hum that settles over a Formica table when you get the right folks circled around it. Not the kind you hear so much as feel in your molars. It’s the weight of caffeine, contradiction, and the distinct possibility someone’s about to say something either wise or wildly off course. That’s…
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A STRANGER THIS WAY COMES, Part III
It wasn’t the first time something strange turned up in a stock tank outside Fort Stockton, but it was the first time it had chrome step rails and a mural of a scantily dressed devil riding a diesel piston. The yellow Ford F-650—Santo Mendez’s garish, God-help-us-all pickup—was found half-submerged in muddy water, cab tilted like…
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A STRANGER THIS WAY COMES, Part II
By the time the sun dipped low over Fort Stockton on Friday, you could already hear the gossip getting its boots laced up. Santo Mendez had been in town less than a week, and already he was rewriting the rules, the roads, and the unspoken dress code of the Scuttlebutt Gentleman’s Club. And then came…
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A STRANGER THIS WAY COMES, Part I
Fort Stockton, Texas. Population: Not ready. It was just past nine when the stranger walked into the Grounds for Divorce. Not strutted, not shuffled—walked, like he had no need to prove a damn thing to anyone, and if you didn’t like that, you could go find a quieter part of Texas to misunderstand him in.…
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THE BLONDE IN ROOM #3 EPILOGUE: 5th Avenue Redemption
Leon didn’t so much return to Fort Stockton as he eased back in like a man trying not to wake a sleeping dog. His homecoming was quiet, unannounced, and uncelebrated, unless you counted the pigeon that crapped on the “No Vacancy” sign just as he pulled into the Naughty Pine’s lot. The Mustang—that Mustang—was long…
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WU BE UNTO YOU, Part III: And on the 7th day, they returned
The first thing Wu saw of Fort Stockton was a jackrabbit the size of a border collie hopping across the two-lane as they crested the ridge near the welcome sign. The second thing was the 1969 Plymouth Satellite sedan they were now riding in, which had been borrowed—unofficially—from a retired reenactor who had once portrayed…
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WU BE UNTO YOU, Part II: Wu Tangled Up in Amarillo
By dawn, the school bus had developed a new noise—a chirping rattle that only surfaced while accelerating and reciting the Rosary. Angus said it was the transmission. Thelma said it was probably a demon. Either way, they limped the final few miles into Amarillo and parked behind a Cracker Barrel, where the Chariot of Fire…
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WU BE UNTO YOU, Part I: And Lo, There Was a Mix-Up
It began, as these things often do, with an unexpected call and a cup of lukewarm Sanka. Sister Thelma had just finished leading morning devotions in the parish hall of Our Lady of Immeasurable Concern, where the air always smelled like Lemon Pledge and a crisis waiting to happen. She was stacking leftover donut holes…