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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TROUBLE IN PARADISE, CHAPTER IV: Measured Justice
CHAPTER IV OF A SEVEN PART STORY His name was Daniel Mercer, though in Fort Stockton he quickly became “Danny” whether he liked it or not. He was thirty-four years old, which in West Texas is that delicate age where you are either “a promising young man” or “a boy who hasn’t learned better yet.”…
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TROUBLE IN PARADISE, CHAPTER III: The Reckoning
CHAPTER III OF A SEVEN PART STORY Folks in Fort Stockton got used to seeing Howie Hermleigh around town in a brand-new Lincoln Continental. That didn’t mean they didn’t talk about it and speculate like amateur weathermen predicting a storm blowing in over the Davis Mountains. Amateur weathermen, it should be noted, are hardly ever…
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TROUBLE IN PARADISE, CHAPTER II: The Undertaker
CHAPTER II OF A SEVEN PART STORY Folks in Fort Stockton are mostly cut from a conservative cloth. They believe in Jesus and John Wayne, generally in that order, though there are days when the order gets quietly reversed without anyone filing a complaint. They consider the right to bear arms biblical, the right to…
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TROUBLE IN PARADISE, Chapter I: The Widow
CHAPTER I OF A SEVEN PART STORY Melba Lambert was born the oldest of three girls in a white-painted frame house about four miles past what Fort Stockton at that time dared to call its city limits. The house sat low against the wind, not for comfort but for survival, the way an old dog…
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CAME FOR GAS, LEFT WITH INSPIRATION: A Sunday Morning at Eggs & Ammo
Sunday mornings in Fort Stockton have a particular stillness to them. Not the polite quiet of a library or the reverent hush of a church service. No, this is the kind of quiet that happens when the town collectively decides it is going to take one more slow sip of coffee before facing the day.…
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MOVIE REVIEW: It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
By Jimmy Don Ventura Movie Critic, Stockton Telegram-DispatchGuest Reviewer — CMC Blog Every month the Captain pays me to moonlight away from the Stockton Telegram-Dispatch and gives me about two thousand words and a loose set of instructions that can best be summarized as, “Jimmy Don, talk about cars and try not to insult the…
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JESUS, JOHN, DALE, AND RUSTY
Rusty Hammer had always believed there were four forces that held the American universe together. Jesus.John Wayne.Dale Earnhardt.And a man minding his own damn business. The first three were eternal. The fourth one was under constant attack from city government. Rusty had arrived at this conclusion after forty years of running Rusty Hammer Hardware Store…
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OUI THE PEOPLE
You know it’s a slow day at the Grounds for Divorce when it’s just Hairless and me holding down the fort, rattling around in that big room like two loose nickels in a Folgers can. Lucinda’s got nothing else to do but keep our cups topped off and pretend she isn’t listening, which is her…
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THE PIG HITS THE ROAD
Fort Stockton had always treated new ideas the way it treated new restaurants: with suspicion, side-eye, and a firm belief that if something truly needed to exist, it would survive without encouragement. The town preferred ideas that arrived on their own, dusty and apologetic, already half-broken. Anything that showed up shiny and confident usually got…
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THE WAGON WITH A SAY IN THE MATTER
In the summer of 1964, when Fort Stockton still believed tomorrow would behave itself, a man walked into Frontier Ford, Home of the Straight Shootin’ Deal, and bought a Country Sedan. Not a Galaxie. Not a Thunderbird. Not anything with pretensions. A wagon. Not even a Country Squire. That alone narrowed the suspect list. His…