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 MOTHER ROAD, CHAPTER VI — “Flagstaff and the Edge of Things”
THE SIXTH CHAPTER IN A SEVEN PART STORY We left Gallup before the sun had the decency to announce itself. That kind of departure doesn’t feel like travel. It feels like retreat. Like you’ve overstayed somewhere you were never meant to understand in the first place, and you’re hoping the road forgets your name if…
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THE MOTHER ROAD, CHAPTER V — “Gallup, Where the Dust Settles Differently”
THE FIFTH CHAPTER IN A SEVEN PART STORY We didn’t abandon the Expedition so much as we surrendered it. There’s a difference. Abandoning something implies you might come back. That you’ve got a plan, or at least the illusion of one. Surrendering it means you’ve accepted that whatever got you here isn’t getting you out.…
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THE MOTHER ROAD, CHAPTER IV — Albuquerque Afternoon Delays
THE FOURTH CHAPTER OF A SEVEN PART STORY We hit Albuquerque like a watch that had been wound just a little too tight. Not broken. Not yet. But you could feel something inside it straining. The road widened before the city did. That’s the first thing I noticed. Route 66 didn’t so much enter Albuquerque…
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THE MOTHER ROAD, CHAPTER III — Santa Rosa and the Blue Hole Truth
THE THIRD CHAPTER OF A SEVEN PART STORY We didn’t so much arrive in Santa Rosa as we slipped into it. One minute the road out of Tucumcari still carried that neon echo, that soft electric hum that clung to your bones like cigarette smoke in a closed car. The next minute—just like that—it was…
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THE MOTHER ROAD, CHAPTER II — Tucumcari Tonight
THE SECOND CHAPTER OF A SEVEN PART STORY By the time Tucumcari rose up out of the New Mexico dark, it didn’t so much appear as it flickered into existence. One minute we were alone on a ribbon of highway that had more memory than maintenance, the Expedition humming along like it still believed in…
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THE MOTHER ROAD, CHAPTER I — Amarillo by Morning (…and Something Else by Noon)
THE FIRST CHAPTER OF A SEVEN PART STORY There are two kinds of ideas that come out of Fort Stockton. The first kind gets talked about at the big round table at Grounds for Divorce, picked apart between refills of Folgers from the Bunn-O-Matic, and sent out into the world half-finished and overconfident. The second…
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GOLDEN STATE WARRIOR
The first time the old Dodge showed up, Rusty Hammer thought somebody was playing a joke too expensive for Fort Stockton. It was parked crooked in front of Rusty Hammer Hardware just after sunup on a Tuesday, black body dull as stove soot, white roof and front doors looking like they had long since given…
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THE MAGIC BUS
A Sunset Acres Story If you head just a little too far east out of Fort Stockton, past where the pavement starts to second-guess its own commitment, you’ll find Sunset Acres Retirement Village sitting out there like it’s waiting on something that forgot to show up. It’s got a sign out front that was once…
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FLOATING A BAD IDEA
If there’s one thing Fort Stockton has always respected, it’s a man with a plan. If there’s a second thing, it’s knowing when that plan ought to be quietly buried behind Rusty Hammer Hardware between the fertilizer pallets and the broken lawn chairs. This is not a story about the second thing. It started the…
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THE ARRANGEMENT
Nobody at Cactus CHEV-Olds had ordered it. That was the first thing Earl Dean Hollis said about the 1971 Chevrolet C30 Chinook Camper Conversion, standing there with his thumbs hooked into a belt that had seen better days and one divorce already penciled into its future. “It just… arrived,” he said, like it had ridden…