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 LARK, THE LADY, AND THE TRAVELODGE
By the spring of 1965, Fort Stockton had mostly forgiven Owen Oakley for the Lucky Lady bar. Not entirely. Forgiveness in Fort Stockton was never a full pardon. It was more like letting a man back into the Dairy Twin while still remembering what he’d done to the napkin dispenser. The carved Lady remained behind…
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THE LARK AND THE LADY ON THE BAR
By the summer of 1959, Fort Stockton had already learned two immutable truths about Owen Oakley. First, he could sharpen a plane blade so finely it would shave the hair off your forearm without drawing blood. Second, if you tried to get cute in his wood shop class at Jim Bowie High School, Home of…
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AMERICA’S DAD
By the summer of 1953, Fort Stockton was still a town that believed in ordinary miracles. Nobody would have called them miracles, of course. People simply called them life. A man went to work every day. Children played outside until supper. Church bells rang on Sunday mornings. Somebody always knew whose dog had gotten loose,…
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MOVIE REVIEW: 11.22.63
By Jimmy Don Ventura Movie Critic, Stockton Telegram-DispatchGuest Reviewer — CMC Blog I usually don’t review mini-series. That’s mostly because I come from an era where if a television story lasted longer than three nights, somebody eventually got amnesia, possessed by the devil, or trapped in a grain silo during sweeps week. I’m a movie…
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ANSWERS IN THE ALLEY
The alley behind the old Ben Franklin building in Fort Stockton had a way of collecting things people wanted forgotten. Broken Pearl beer bottles. Bald tires. Stray dogs with one eye and opinions about everything. Election signs from men who’d already been indicted. And sometimes, answers. The problem was that answers in Fort Stockton usually…
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PARK AVENUE ASPIRATIONS, METHODIST MANNERS
The Pontiac wagon had served the family well. Never shirked its duty despite Dorothy Hardin’s tendency to kiss curbs like they were distant cousins at a family reunion, despite little Julie throwing up in the third-row seat every time the family crossed county lines, and despite Hank Hardin’s stubborn refusal to stop and ask directions…
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WHEN TIME GLOWED
The first thing folks noticed about the girls from The Facility was that they laughed louder than other women in Fort Stockton. The second thing they noticed was that they glowed. Not enough to light a room. Nothing theatrical like in the moving pictures. But on warm desert evenings, when the girls rode in the…
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DAZED AND CONFUSED
The cold woke Rusty before the fear did. Not all at once, either. First came the ache in his shoulders, sharp and electric like somebody had tried to crank-start his arms with jumper cables. Then came the realization that his hands were somewhere above his head and he couldn’t feel three of his fingers. Then…
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MARCHING ORDERS
They filed in the way men do when hierarchy has already decided the order of their footsteps. Not by name. Not by title. By gravity. The senior vice presidents entered first, carrying with them the quiet authority of men who had survived more product cycles than marriages. Then the mid-tier operators, the ones who still…
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TESTIGO DEL ASESINATO, Part II
Rusty walked back over to the bar and lowered himself onto the same stool he’d been sitting on when he realized the bartender was Parker McHale. The jukebox still glowed softly in the corner like it had been waiting years for this exact conversation. Outside, somewhere beyond the dark windows, the Arkansas River kept sliding…