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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TOO BIG TO FAIL
In the spring of 1995, General Motors occupied the sort of executive boardroom where it was possible to spend an entire morning discussing the future of the automobile business without ever getting close enough to an actual automobile to smell one. The carpeting was thick, the table was mahogany, the chairs were leather, and coffee…
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IT WAS THE BEST OF TIMES….
Fort Stockton, TexasMarch 1959 Milton Kessler had been in Fort Stockton for less than six minutes when his automobile drew a larger crowd than he had managed to attract during three days at the American International Toy Fair in New York. This bothered him slightly because Milt sold toys for a living. He had spent…
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IN DEFENSE OF THE FOUR-DOOR SEDAN
The argument began on a Tuesday morning at the Grounds for Divorce, which was when most arguments began there, Tuesday being far enough removed from Sunday for Christian restraint to have worn off and still too early in the week for anyone to have accomplished enough to feel charitable. Lucinda was behind the counter with…
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WHAT COULD GO WRONG?
New Guy announced that he was moving to Washington, D.C., at nine-seventeen on a Thursday morning, which was precisely the sort of hour when a person might say almost anything at the Grounds for Divorce and still have a reasonable chance of being forgiven. The first rush was over, the second pot of coffee was…
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THE LAST GOOD BAD IDEA
By the closing months of 1973, there were mornings when the executives of American Motors Corporation suspected that the only thing keeping the company alive was the fact that the Grim Reaper couldn’t quite remember where Kenosha was. It certainly wasn’t because they possessed General Motors’ limitless resources, Ford’s sprawling dealer network, or Chrysler’s ability…
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THE PEOPLE’S PARADE CAR
Mayor Goodman first learned about the ZIS-110B because Rusty Hammer showed it to him on his telephone at the Grounds for Divorce, which was an innocent enough act at the time and one Rusty would later regret. Rusty had discovered the automobile on Bring a Trailer while looking for something entirely different, and by the…
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MOVIE REVIEW: GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER
By: Jimmy Don Ventura, Movie Reviewer for the Stockton Telegram-Dispatch and Guest Contributor for the CMC Blog. Every month the Stockton Telegram-Dispatch and the Grounds for Divorce sponsor a Classic Film in their continuing effort to advance the cultural development of Fort Stockton, which so far has produced mixed results. The movies have improved considerably.…
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HOW THE HELL DID THIS HAPPEN?
By the third week of April 1964, the Ford Mustang had become the most dangerous object in Detroit that did not contain enriched uranium. Ford introduced it to the public at the New York World’s Fair on April 17, then bought commercial time on all three television networks the same evening. More than twenty-nine million…
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SIMPLE KIND OF MAN
The Ford Falcon that Lorraine Nolan bought in September of 1969 was not the automobile her seventeen-year-old son would have selected if Ford Motor Company had suddenly appointed him purchasing agent for the family. Danny Nolan had opinions about automobiles, as most seventeen-year-old boys did, but Danny’s opinions tended to arrive fully formed and equipped…
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FORT STOCKTON UNDER COVER
In the spring of 1942, the United States Army became convinced that Fort Stockton, Texas, might be destroyed by the Japanese, which came as something of a surprise to Fort Stockton because most people in Fort Stockton had spent the previous eighty years trying to convince anybody at all that it was worth finding. The…