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.
-
GOLD DUST WOMAN
“If you’ve got a dollar and you spend 29 cents on a loaf of bread, you’ve got 71 cents left. But if you’ve got seventeen grand and you spend 29 cents on a loaf of bread, you’ve still got seventeen grand. There’s a math lesson for you.” That’s what the kid’s grandmother said to him from…
-
DRAWN TO FORT STOCKTON
Nobody in Fort Stockton had seen one of these in years. Then, out of the blue, one shows up in town the same day one shows up on Bring a Trailer. You can’t chalk that up to just coincidence. Didn’t take the owner long to make his way to the Grounds for Divorce. He introduced himself to everyone in the…
-
FIRST AND LAST
Those of a certain age will argue that Ford and Chevy were at their respective bests in the early sixties. Count me in that camp. Chevys usually won the sales race in most of those years, but there were other competitions going on that were equally exciting. The Chevy Impala won the NASCAR Cup Series from 1960-1964. In 1960…
-
COLD FACTS
Trish Terrell worked in the meat packing plant that was part of The Facility out north of town. The plant wasn’t as large as the big packaging houses of Armor, or Hormel who ran three shifts around the clock. The plant processed the animals that were raised at The Facility to test animal production methods, vaccines, cosmetics,…
-
FROM THE BACK OF THE BERMUDA, 12/8/2024
The turkey leftovers are all gone and we’re in the full throes of the Christmas Season. It’s a shorter season this year than most, what with Thanksgiving having fallen so late in November. Seems like my email In-Box is filling up with “Last Minute Gift Suggestions” before I’ve even begun thinking about shopping. Lucinda, who doesn’t normally…
-
THE LAST PEARL IN THE HARBOR
Picture this Ford in not quite the perfect condition it is now, but instead a fantastic four year old car used as the personal chariot of Captain Thomas St. James. Parked outside the Bachelor Officers Quarters, the top was rarely ever raised as the weather on Pearl Harbor hardly ever required it. St. James purchased…
-
GREASED LIGHTNING
You never know where the conversation is going to lead when the regulars get together at the Grounds for Divorce and the Folgers is flowing. Yeah, it’s usually always auto-related, but that can mean so many things to so many different people. The other day there was a pretty big group assembled at the big roundtable…
-
PUTTY IN HIS HANDS
Back during Dubya Dubya Deuce, Uncle Sam was looking for some kind of rubber substitute for the war effort. Because profits drive democracy and sometimes both profits and democracy are threatened at the same time, big corporations strive to be the first to give the government what it needs. Everybody wins. Well, not everybody. Generally just the first to…
-
MUGS & JUGS
Women are the most glorious and complex creatures on earth. They defy explanation. Their abilities are exceeded only by their compassion and ability to nurture. They bring life into the world and risk everything they have to assure it survives at all costs. Men? Not so much. We’re involved in the new life equation, as well. But mostly as bystanders who…
-
THE BEE KEEPER
“I guess they’re gonna cut up the whole god-damned state and sell it off to outsiders, five acres at a time.” Phylis over at the Pecos County Courthouse was in a mood. Because the glass was thick and the hole for sound to come through was small and Phylis tended to mutter her words, the young couple…