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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SHAKESPEARE IN THE STOCK TANK, Chapter Three: Enter Sugar Plum, Stage Left
Dress rehearsal in Fort Stockton was a bit like a baptism in a dry creek—mostly dust, a little water, and somebody was bound to end up in their underwear. Hairless B29 had hoped for something resembling cohesion, or at least memorization, but the only thing consistent was how creatively his cast found ways to mess…
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SHAKESPEARE IN THE STOCK TANK, Chapter Two: The Rust Beneath the Rouge
It was the kind of morning Fort Stockton hadn’t seen since the last time the chili cook-off ended in food poisoning and a conga line. The sun was doing its best impression of judgment, the wind was more suggestion than breeze, and over by the Almost United Methodist Church, Sister Thelma stood in a folding…
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SHAKESPEARE IN THE STOCK TANK, Chapter One: The Curtain Rises on the Pecos
Hairless B29 wasn’t anybody’s first choice to direct Fort Stockton’s first-ever outdoor Shakespeare production, least of all his own. But he was the only one with a degree in English, a booming voice that carried over diesel engines, and the kind of presence that made even Pastor Peterson hesitate before offering unsolicited notes. He’d earned…
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FIREBOLT IN THE DESERT
Fort Stockton, Texas – Summer, 1962 The first thing anyone ever noticed about the new Polara 500 was how it looked like it was already going 80 miles an hour just sittin’ still. Shell Beige with blue interior, bucket seats up front like a rocket cockpit, and the sort of tail end that’d make a…
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A DIAMOND IN THE RUST, Part III
A happy ending? Ain’t we all lookin’ for one? Here’s Part III. Keep your fingers crossed. Cooper Conroe hadn’t planned to be up early, but something about the light coming in through the thin fabric of the Naughty Pine’s curtains felt final. It painted patterns across his chest like he was being readied for judgment.…
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A DIAMOND IN THE RUST, Part II
Cooper is still in town. Lookin’ for something, or someone. Love is blind. The first time Cooper saw her again, she was hunched behind the glass at the DMV, smacking a stack of expired registration stickers against the counter like they’d personally wronged her. Time had filled her out in the hips, arms, and attitude.…
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A DIAMOND IN THE RUST, Part I
Some stories just need to be told. This is one that’ll take three days to do it. The 1969 Ford F-100 Ranger rolled into Fort Stockton on a Wednesday morning, the kind of morning where the sun hadn’t quite decided whether to rise or give up. The truck moved like a promise kept too long,…
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THE LOW BELL OF PECOS COUNTY
The 1963 Chevrolet Bel Air had been the pride of Pecos County for three straight years—not because it was the fastest, prettiest, or best-handling car around, but because it was the only vehicle to ever win both the Ground for Divorce Christmas Invitational Folgers & Fenders and place third in the Boys’ Choir Christmas Parade the…
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CHROME & CONSEQUENCES
The heat had already settled in by nine a.m., thick and unmoving like cotton batting stuffed in your lungs. Even the flies were too lazy to bother buzzing. Downtown, Main Street hadn’t quite woken up, save for the thrum of a swamp cooler over at the Rex Hall Pharmacy and the faint click of Lucinda…
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TOP DOWN, HEART OPEN
They called her Birdie Ligon, though no one quite remembered why. She wasn’t small or especially flighty—just a stout, sharp-tongued woman of sixty-two who’d been widowed for seven years and liked her iced tea with a lemon slice and a splash of Wild Turkey. She lived alone in a modest stucco house with a chain-link…