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 SUBURBAN STRANGER
He rode into Fort Stockton on the wings of the Great Arctic Blast of ‘25. Used the backroads into town, all of them black with ice. They called him The Suburban Stranger. The paint may have been dark shades of GM and Toyota, but the fins were pure fifties Chrysler. The ‘X’ of Exner marked…
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WEASELS, BEAVERS, AND HOGS, Part III
Lucinda and Delgado’s eyes met and she immediately looked away, thinking of Stevie singing to her in the Wagoneer, warning her that going back to a love gone wrong may be a bad idea. Her gaze fell on an old tractor parked underneath a carport off south the Airstream. “What the hell is that?” she asked.…
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WEASELS, BEAVERS, AND HOGS, Part II
With the money Mr. Miester had saved on not having to rent tuxes for the groom, the best man, the groomsmen, and himself, he sprang for a limo to take the whole motley crew to the church, and then to the Zero Stone Park in town for the reception. He didn’t save enough to go all…
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WEASELS, BEAVERS, AND HOGS, Part I
Earl, from over at Earl’s Salvage Yard and Formalwear, couldn’t even remember where in the world the Studebaker M29C Weasel at the back of the yard came from. “It was one of 10,647 units produced by Studebaker in the mid-1940s for military use,” he told Hank at one point. “It is said to have been in…
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SUNLINERS AND LINGERIE, Chapter VII
This is the final chapter of a Seven Part Series. “It was the damndest thing I ever saw. I’ll tell you that for damn sure.” Heck Haskel was firmly planted on the bar stool in front of Hank at the Lucky Lady Lounge, thinking about what had happened earlier in the day. He was both exhausted and wound…
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SUNLINERS AND LINGERIE, Chapter VI
This is the sixth chapter of a Seven Part Series. Late in the fall of 1960, the trips to Mexico to retrieve shipments of bananas were two, sometimes three times a week. The Piggly Wiggly in Fort Stockton, the Winn-Dixie in Mason, and the Hinkey Dinkey in Marfa all placed standing orders. The Dairy Twin was selling…
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SUNLINERS AND LINGERIE, Chapter V
This is the fifth chapter of a Seven Part Series. The potato business is a hard one to make a go of in Fort Stockton. It certainly was in 1955, anyway. The soil is hard and unforgiving. Russet and his wife Julienne had tried to make it work, despite the forewarnings of just about everyone in town. But they…
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SUNLINERS AND LINGERIE, Chapter IV
This is the fourth chapter of a Seven Part Series. As Mabel heard the deep male voice on the other end of the line explain that she had just won a brand new 1960 Ford Sunliner convertible, any reply she might have offered was stuck in her throat like a chicken bone. “Mrs. Malakoff? Mrs. Malakoff? Are…
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SUNLINERS AND LINGERIE, Chapter III
This is the third chapter in a Seven Part Series. Lorena de la Echeverria was told she was going to live with an uncle, one with vast resources and land holdings that stretched further than she had ever traveled in all her 12 years. Of course, at 12, Lorena didn’t understand that Heriberto Eduardo Zambada was…
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SUNLINERS AND LINGERIE, Chapter II
This is the second chapter in a Seven Part Series. “The only panties that ever really fit me right are the ones I get from the Sears catalog,” Mabel Malakoff told her sister-in-law, Agatha, as they sat in the shade of the old oak tree in between the Youth Building and the Second Baptist of…