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.

  • TIS NONE MORE VALIANT

    THE FIFTH IN A SERIES OF SEVEN STORIES. Channing passed through Canyon, where he’d stayed with his aunt and uncle during that summer before he went off to Nebraska to college.  He didn’t stop.  His uncle had long since passed away and he’d seen his aunt at his own father’s funeral two days earlier.  He’d have to explain…

  • LeBARON WASTELAND

    THE FOURTH IN A SERIES OF SEVEN STORIES. As the plane began its final descent into Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport, Corey Channing looked out the window at the bleak landscape below and remembered why he’d left the panhandle of Texas two decades earlier.  At the age of 19 he shook the Texas dust off his…

  • TRUE REST

    THE THIRD IN A SERIES OF SEVEN STORIES. Corey Channing pulled the big black Dodge into the parking lot at Amarillo Community College after class had already started.  He hated being late, but had stopped to help a woman change a tire on his way in from his aunt and uncle’s place in Canyon, 19 miles…

  • POISON DART

    THE SECOND IN A SERIES OF SEVEN STORIES. The old guys that sat around the table all day drinking coffee at the U-Drop Inn used to say, “If ignorance is bliss why aren’t people happier in this town?”  That struck most of the other folks as ironic, as every one of the old guys around the…

  • IMPERIAL REBELLION

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    THE FIRST IN A SERIES OF SEVEN STORIES. Virginia Giddings was in a loveless marriage to someone who had no clue who she was.  Twelve years older, the man she married was looking for someone to replace his first wife and Virginia checked off all the boxes.  Elias Giddings could be charming when he was making a…

  • FROM THE BACK OF THE BERMUDA, 11/17/2024

    So the big news in Fort Stockton this week was about an old Ford, but not a 1960 Fairlane 500.  Binderman’s 1959 Ford Custom 300 Tudor Sedan is just about finished and should be cruising the streets soon. If you’ll recall, he was the lucky winner of the Bring a Trailer auction for the car back in March of…

  • THE END OF AN ERA

    We were at the Grounds for Divorce, all having coffee the other morning.  Nothing really unusual other than the fact that the air was as cooler and more crisp outside than it has been since back in February.  There was the faint smell of burning leaves in the air.  That could only mean one of three things: Inasmuch…

  • AN INTENTIONAL UNCOUPLING

    Lucinda’s next door neighbors took notice when the black Country Sedan backed into her driveway.  That was partly because of the nature of Lucinda’s neighbors and partly because nobody recognized the old Ford wagon. In the spring and fall months, when the weather is perfect and people have their windows open in Fort Stockton, the folks…

  • THREE MEETINGS: Epilogue

    THE FINAL IN A SERIES OF FOUR STORIES Snapshots can only show a split second, not tell a whole story.  The same can be said of meetings, or sales figures.  Taken alone, they only share a little information.  But it takes context and perspective to show what a snapshot really represents. The meetings taking place in and around…

  • THREE MEETINGS: MoPar

    THE THIRD IN A SERIES OF FOUR STORIES If they were tickled with the results of 1957 in Dearborn, they were ecstatic in Highland Park.  The conference table in the Executive Boardroom was American red oak rather than the exotic imported woods at General Motors or Ford.  The liquor served wasn’t the top shelf brands that the…