Happy Halloween!
One of the quintessential restaurants of the French Quarter in New Orleans is Antoine's. Here is their recipe, from their website, for Creole Gumbo, a New Orleans staple.
The Bouillabaisse of Louisiana appears in many forms. Ours is the classic Creole seafood gumbo.
Ingredients:
- 3/4 stick butter
- 2 cups chopped green onions
- 2 cups sliced okra
- 1 cup chopped white onions
- 2 cups raw peeled shrimp
- 2 cups raw oysters
- 1 cup chopped tomato pulp
- 2 cups tomato juice
- 1 1/2 quarts Fish Stock
- 3 crabs (top shell discard, cut into 4 pieces)
- 3 tablespoons flour
- 1 tablespoon File (sassafras)
- 3 cups cooked rice
- salt, pepper, and cayenne
Directions:Melt the butter and sauté the green onions, okra, white onions and crabs. In a separate pot put the shrimp, oysters, tomatoes and tomato juice with 1 1/2 quarts of Fish Stock and bring to a boil. Let boil for a minute, then add to the first pot.
In a small skillet, cook the butter and flour together until brown. Blend this brown roux with the File and some of the gumbo liquid and add to the gumbo. Add salt, pepper, and cayenne to taste. Simmer for 1 1/2 hours.To serve, pour 1 1/2 cups of gumbo into each bowl over 1/2 cup rice. Serves 6.
Louisiana Mystery Writer
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Friday, October 30, 2009
A Breath of Evil
Ed is a well site geologist that offices with me. We were discussing ghosts and he conveyed this ghost story to me. It happened in southwest Kansas.
There aren’t many cities in southwest Kansas and most of the towns small. Drilling wells are often located miles from the nearest town. The primary roads are blacktopped, but narrow. The side roads are often impassible when the weather turns bad.
Ed was sitting a well miles from the nearest town. Early winter snow had melted, leaving dirt roads that were all but impassible. After driving fifty miles for dinner, Ed and the tool pusher were returning to the rig, finding the road into the location too muddy to traverse in their truck. Parking on the blacktop, they began the quarter-mile hike to the location.
Ed and the tool pusher had a lone flashlight that cut a narrow swath of dim light through the misty darkness. About halfway to the rig, they both smelled something that Ed described as putrid and ugly. The temperature dropped, perhaps twenty degrees.
“Did you just feel something?” Ed asked.
“Yes, did you?”
“I think we just passed through something evil.”
“Amen to that,” the tool pusher said.
The experience unnerved both men. When Ed returned to his truck the next day, he felt the same sense of dread as he passed the spot where he and the tool pusher first sensed the presence of evil.
“It was so far from town, I couldn’t imagine what was haunting the hollow we crossed on the way to the rig. Maybe it was an Indian spirit. I don’t know. It was evil, whatever it was. That I know.”
Gondwana
There aren’t many cities in southwest Kansas and most of the towns small. Drilling wells are often located miles from the nearest town. The primary roads are blacktopped, but narrow. The side roads are often impassible when the weather turns bad.
Ed was sitting a well miles from the nearest town. Early winter snow had melted, leaving dirt roads that were all but impassible. After driving fifty miles for dinner, Ed and the tool pusher were returning to the rig, finding the road into the location too muddy to traverse in their truck. Parking on the blacktop, they began the quarter-mile hike to the location.
Ed and the tool pusher had a lone flashlight that cut a narrow swath of dim light through the misty darkness. About halfway to the rig, they both smelled something that Ed described as putrid and ugly. The temperature dropped, perhaps twenty degrees.
“Did you just feel something?” Ed asked.
“Yes, did you?”
“I think we just passed through something evil.”
“Amen to that,” the tool pusher said.
The experience unnerved both men. When Ed returned to his truck the next day, he felt the same sense of dread as he passed the spot where he and the tool pusher first sensed the presence of evil.
“It was so far from town, I couldn’t imagine what was haunting the hollow we crossed on the way to the rig. Maybe it was an Indian spirit. I don’t know. It was evil, whatever it was. That I know.”
Gondwana
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
A Cold Misty Rain
Misty rain fell as I walked through the neighborhood tonight. It reminded me of a similar rainy night that I spent during basic training at Fort Polk in Louisiana.
I spent years trying to forget my tour of duty in the Army. Now that I’m older, I sometimes have trouble remembering exact details of things that happened in the past. No problem! I’m a fiction writer. If I can’t remember the exact details of an event - Well, you get the picture.
This event took place during the last week of basic training. Despite an aging brain and attempts to forget this period of my life, it remains branded in my memory with blazing detail. There were four of us, Tommy, Robert, Bob and me.
We spent the last week of basic training camping out and undergoing exercises designed to test our resolve. The four of us were a team in a game called “elude and evade,” or at least something to that effect. A truck dropped the four of us off on a Louisiana road deep in the forest.
We had no light, food, water, or compass. Our mission was to make it back to the base camp, a mile or two away, without capture. If the enemy captured us, they would torture and abuse us, the drill sergeants told us. It was raining, a mild drizzle, but still wet.
“No one’s catching me,” Tommy said. “I been huntin’ since I was five and I can get around in the woods like a fox.”
Uh huh! It was dark within the hour, the four of us completely and totally lost, the trees so tall we couldn’t see the stars or the hazy moon. Since we had no watches, we didn’t know the time. We only knew how tired we were and how desperate we felt.
“Shit, my feet hurt!” Robert said. “Maybe we should just give up.”
Tommy shook his head. “You see or hear anyone out there? Who you gonna give up too?”
“Then what are we going to do?” Bob from Wisconsin asked.
“They are patrolling the dirt road. Let’s catch a few hours of sleep. When the sun comes up, we’ll go out to the road and follow it back to the base station. If we hear a truck, we’ll just hide in the trees until it passes.”
With no better plan, my three companions accepted my suggestion. The ground was hard but I was asleep soon after I closed my eyes. It was morning when I opened them again.
“Which way is the road?” Bob asked.
“That’s east because I can see the reflection of the sun,” Tommy said. “Follow me.”
We eventually came out on the dirt road, turned right and followe it. We soon heard an approaching truck and dived back into the forest. Once it passed, we got back on the road, walking for almost an hour until we reached the base camp. No one seemed to notice, or to care as we straggled into camp, going directly to the food line and not caring that a cold misty rain was falling on our aching backs.
No one ever told us, but we were the only team that made it back to base camp intact and not captured. I’m not sure what the moral of this story is, but I guess it’s just that when you have a problem that seems unsolvable, sometimes the best thing you can do is sleep on it.
Fiction South
I spent years trying to forget my tour of duty in the Army. Now that I’m older, I sometimes have trouble remembering exact details of things that happened in the past. No problem! I’m a fiction writer. If I can’t remember the exact details of an event - Well, you get the picture.
This event took place during the last week of basic training. Despite an aging brain and attempts to forget this period of my life, it remains branded in my memory with blazing detail. There were four of us, Tommy, Robert, Bob and me.
We spent the last week of basic training camping out and undergoing exercises designed to test our resolve. The four of us were a team in a game called “elude and evade,” or at least something to that effect. A truck dropped the four of us off on a Louisiana road deep in the forest.
We had no light, food, water, or compass. Our mission was to make it back to the base camp, a mile or two away, without capture. If the enemy captured us, they would torture and abuse us, the drill sergeants told us. It was raining, a mild drizzle, but still wet.
“No one’s catching me,” Tommy said. “I been huntin’ since I was five and I can get around in the woods like a fox.”
Uh huh! It was dark within the hour, the four of us completely and totally lost, the trees so tall we couldn’t see the stars or the hazy moon. Since we had no watches, we didn’t know the time. We only knew how tired we were and how desperate we felt.
“Shit, my feet hurt!” Robert said. “Maybe we should just give up.”
Tommy shook his head. “You see or hear anyone out there? Who you gonna give up too?”
“Then what are we going to do?” Bob from Wisconsin asked.
“They are patrolling the dirt road. Let’s catch a few hours of sleep. When the sun comes up, we’ll go out to the road and follow it back to the base station. If we hear a truck, we’ll just hide in the trees until it passes.”
With no better plan, my three companions accepted my suggestion. The ground was hard but I was asleep soon after I closed my eyes. It was morning when I opened them again.
“Which way is the road?” Bob asked.
“That’s east because I can see the reflection of the sun,” Tommy said. “Follow me.”
We eventually came out on the dirt road, turned right and followe it. We soon heard an approaching truck and dived back into the forest. Once it passed, we got back on the road, walking for almost an hour until we reached the base camp. No one seemed to notice, or to care as we straggled into camp, going directly to the food line and not caring that a cold misty rain was falling on our aching backs.
No one ever told us, but we were the only team that made it back to base camp intact and not captured. I’m not sure what the moral of this story is, but I guess it’s just that when you have a problem that seems unsolvable, sometimes the best thing you can do is sleep on it.
Fiction South
Bullfrogs and Rubber Snakes
Vivian is a small town in northwest Louisiana surrounded by pine forests, rolling hills and swampy bayous. I didn’t visit many museums or art galleries growing up, but I spent hours enjoying the outdoors that dominated my childhood.
My brother Jack and I were Boy Scouts, although neither of us advanced beyond the rank of First Class Scout. It didn’t matter because we did lots of camping and hiking. The parents of Murray, one of our fellow scouts, had a fishing camp on Black Bayou. The place was rustic, the accommodations meager. The weekend our scout troop spent there remains as one of the most frightening events of my life.
Black Bayou is a shallow expanse of dark, almost opaque water, and thus the name. It is the home of snakes, alligators, aquatic birds and every manner of fish. Murray’s little camp was an unpainted, one room structure situated on the bank of Black Bayou, sheltered by pines and cypress trees with bloated trunks that grew out into the water. A wooden dock, several rowboats moored to it, jutted out into the sleepy bayou.
So close to Vivian was the camp that we had no adult supervision that weekend. Joe, the head scout, was in charge but we had no specific agenda except to have fun. The first evening, Joe suggested we go gigging for frogs.
“We paddle out into the bayou until we hear the bullfrogs croaking. When they do, we turn on the flashlight and shine it in their eyes. The light will stun them until we have a chance to gig em.”
There were four of us in the paddleboat, Jack, Joe, Murray and me. Joe was in the back of the boat with our only flashlight and an eight-foot long, three-tined gig. A few stars were out but not much of a moon. An occasional shooting star brightened the sky a bit, but mostly we were just paddling around in the darkness.
“Watch out for the cypress trees. Water moccasins perch on the branches and if they drop into the boat with us, we’ll pretty much be goners.”
Joe’s words gave us little comfort as we soon passed beneath the low-lying branches of a cypress tree, Spanish moss draping almost into the water. Dry cypress needles dropped down the back of my shirt and a spider web wrapped around my face and neck. As I was trying to untangle the mess from my glasses, Joe began yelling and something dropped into my lap that felt suspiciously like a snake.
“Snakes in the boat,” he yelled.
Murray didn’t need another warning, tumbling headfirst into the shallow water. Jack and I were right behind him, swimming away from the boat as fast as our arms and legs could flail. The sound of laughter soon stopped us in our tracks.
“There ain’t no snakes,” Joe said. “Cept rubber ones. I got you guys good.”
Joe had spirited a handful of rubber snakes in his shirt, throwing them on us when we passed beneath the cypress tree. He rolled with laughter, right up to the moment that Jack, Murray and I pulled him into the water with us.
No frogs were gigged that night, just a few gullible Boy Scouts. Still, I’ll never forget the rubber snake that tumbled into my lap, giving me the fright of my life.
Gondwana
My brother Jack and I were Boy Scouts, although neither of us advanced beyond the rank of First Class Scout. It didn’t matter because we did lots of camping and hiking. The parents of Murray, one of our fellow scouts, had a fishing camp on Black Bayou. The place was rustic, the accommodations meager. The weekend our scout troop spent there remains as one of the most frightening events of my life.
Black Bayou is a shallow expanse of dark, almost opaque water, and thus the name. It is the home of snakes, alligators, aquatic birds and every manner of fish. Murray’s little camp was an unpainted, one room structure situated on the bank of Black Bayou, sheltered by pines and cypress trees with bloated trunks that grew out into the water. A wooden dock, several rowboats moored to it, jutted out into the sleepy bayou.
So close to Vivian was the camp that we had no adult supervision that weekend. Joe, the head scout, was in charge but we had no specific agenda except to have fun. The first evening, Joe suggested we go gigging for frogs.
“We paddle out into the bayou until we hear the bullfrogs croaking. When they do, we turn on the flashlight and shine it in their eyes. The light will stun them until we have a chance to gig em.”
There were four of us in the paddleboat, Jack, Joe, Murray and me. Joe was in the back of the boat with our only flashlight and an eight-foot long, three-tined gig. A few stars were out but not much of a moon. An occasional shooting star brightened the sky a bit, but mostly we were just paddling around in the darkness.
“Watch out for the cypress trees. Water moccasins perch on the branches and if they drop into the boat with us, we’ll pretty much be goners.”
Joe’s words gave us little comfort as we soon passed beneath the low-lying branches of a cypress tree, Spanish moss draping almost into the water. Dry cypress needles dropped down the back of my shirt and a spider web wrapped around my face and neck. As I was trying to untangle the mess from my glasses, Joe began yelling and something dropped into my lap that felt suspiciously like a snake.
“Snakes in the boat,” he yelled.
Murray didn’t need another warning, tumbling headfirst into the shallow water. Jack and I were right behind him, swimming away from the boat as fast as our arms and legs could flail. The sound of laughter soon stopped us in our tracks.
“There ain’t no snakes,” Joe said. “Cept rubber ones. I got you guys good.”
Joe had spirited a handful of rubber snakes in his shirt, throwing them on us when we passed beneath the cypress tree. He rolled with laughter, right up to the moment that Jack, Murray and I pulled him into the water with us.
No frogs were gigged that night, just a few gullible Boy Scouts. Still, I’ll never forget the rubber snake that tumbled into my lap, giving me the fright of my life.
Gondwana
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Conscripted Soldiers
During my stay at Fort Polk, I became close friends with a fellow draftee named Tommy Picou. We went through Basic Training, Leadership Preparation and Advanced Infantry Training together. There were only four draftees in my AIT; all the rest were in the National Guard. Because of this, the four of us performed every KP and sh-t duty that came along.
During the summer of 1970 at Fort Polk, draftees were the lowest of the low, at least in the minds of our superiors – literally everyone, even the cooks. Picou and I became best friends because we had many things in common. We were both recently married and both from Louisiana, although I was from north Louisiana and he from south Louisiana.
Picou was of French-Acadian descent and spoke fluent Coon-ass French, a language we both assumed identical to the Mother tongue. A series of events that happened during AIT proved us both wrong.
We were at a rifle range, eating lunch when the MP’s brought a new addition to our training company. The young man, like all of us, was dressed in fatigues. None of us was very happy but this fellow seemed particularly indignant. When we tried to talk to him, he replied only in French.
”What’s he saying?” I asked Picou.
Picou shook his head. “Beat the hell outa me.”
“I thought you speak French.”
Picou grinned. “He damn sure don’t speak the same French I do.”
“Try saying something to him,” I suggested.
Picou rattled off a few questions for which he received only a quizzical look from the Frenchman, a universally understood open palm gesture and a shake of his head covered with thick dark hair.
He seemed to understand when I said, “Want something to eat?”
We got the young man a hot plate of chow and sat with him beneath the trees as he ate. When he finished, he said, in passable English, “My name is Charles and I’m from France.”
Charles just shook his head and grinned when I said, “Tommy’s French. Didn’t you comprehend what he was asking you?”
“Not a word,” he said.
Charles proceeded to tell us how he was a flight attendant for a French airline. On a layover in New York, the U.S. Army conscripted him.
“They have no right to do that,” I said.
“Apparently they do,” he said. “But I won’t stay here for long.”
“What’ll you do?” Picou asked.
“Escape as soon as I can.”
“Then what? They’ll hunt you down.”
“Make it to an airport where my airline flies and catch a flight back to France.”
“But they’ll just come after you,” I said.
“I’m a French citizen. They can’t touch me in France and I don’t intend to serve in your war.”
“We’re not too happy about it either,” Picou said.
“My brother was a soldier in Vietnam. He died at Diem Bien Phu,” Charles said. “My family has already lost too much to that damned country. I swear they won’t kill me too.”
True to his word, Charles was gone the next day. Picou and I both ended up in Vietnam, me in the First Cavalry and he in the 101st Airborne. We both made it home safely and kept in touch for several years.
I don’t know if Charles got back to France or spent years in an Army prison, but I know one thing for a fact – he was a man of resolve and had no intention of ever going to Vietnam and fighting another country’s war. I can’t say as I blame him.
Louisiana Mystery Writer
During the summer of 1970 at Fort Polk, draftees were the lowest of the low, at least in the minds of our superiors – literally everyone, even the cooks. Picou and I became best friends because we had many things in common. We were both recently married and both from Louisiana, although I was from north Louisiana and he from south Louisiana.
Picou was of French-Acadian descent and spoke fluent Coon-ass French, a language we both assumed identical to the Mother tongue. A series of events that happened during AIT proved us both wrong.
We were at a rifle range, eating lunch when the MP’s brought a new addition to our training company. The young man, like all of us, was dressed in fatigues. None of us was very happy but this fellow seemed particularly indignant. When we tried to talk to him, he replied only in French.
”What’s he saying?” I asked Picou.
Picou shook his head. “Beat the hell outa me.”
“I thought you speak French.”
Picou grinned. “He damn sure don’t speak the same French I do.”
“Try saying something to him,” I suggested.
Picou rattled off a few questions for which he received only a quizzical look from the Frenchman, a universally understood open palm gesture and a shake of his head covered with thick dark hair.
He seemed to understand when I said, “Want something to eat?”
We got the young man a hot plate of chow and sat with him beneath the trees as he ate. When he finished, he said, in passable English, “My name is Charles and I’m from France.”
Charles just shook his head and grinned when I said, “Tommy’s French. Didn’t you comprehend what he was asking you?”
“Not a word,” he said.
Charles proceeded to tell us how he was a flight attendant for a French airline. On a layover in New York, the U.S. Army conscripted him.
“They have no right to do that,” I said.
“Apparently they do,” he said. “But I won’t stay here for long.”
“What’ll you do?” Picou asked.
“Escape as soon as I can.”
“Then what? They’ll hunt you down.”
“Make it to an airport where my airline flies and catch a flight back to France.”
“But they’ll just come after you,” I said.
“I’m a French citizen. They can’t touch me in France and I don’t intend to serve in your war.”
“We’re not too happy about it either,” Picou said.
“My brother was a soldier in Vietnam. He died at Diem Bien Phu,” Charles said. “My family has already lost too much to that damned country. I swear they won’t kill me too.”
True to his word, Charles was gone the next day. Picou and I both ended up in Vietnam, me in the First Cavalry and he in the 101st Airborne. We both made it home safely and kept in touch for several years.
I don’t know if Charles got back to France or spent years in an Army prison, but I know one thing for a fact – he was a man of resolve and had no intention of ever going to Vietnam and fighting another country’s war. I can’t say as I blame him.
Louisiana Mystery Writer
Monday, October 26, 2009
Blarney, BS and Old Main
After returning from Vietnam, I entered the master’s program at the University of Arkansas. Gail and I both had part-time jobs; I was on the GI Bill and had a quarter-time assistant-ship.
We raked in well over a thousand dollars a month. Since we had no debt and little overhead, I probably had as much money at that time as I ever have in my life. My quarter-time assistantship consisted of work at the University of Arkansas Museum located then on the fourth floor of the Old Main Building, the oldest building at the University.
When I wasn’t giving guided tours to grades one through three, I was unwrapping rocks, bones and other artifacts. There seemed to be at least ten times more material in the back than there was in the actual museum, most still packed in the same boxes as when it came to the University.
It was sort of creepy working late in the old museum because there were rows and rows of human bones and complete skeletons, mostly stacked unceremoniously on the various shelves. The rock, mineral and ore specimens were wrapped in old newspapers, most very old. I spent half my time, it seems, reading old newspaper stories.
One of the museum’s greatest treasures, at least in my mind, was the giant quartz crystals donated by geologist Hugh D. Miser. Some of the crystals weighed a thousand pounds or more. They are rare and irreplaceable.
I loved leading tours through the little museum and seeing the eyes of the young people, all agog with discovery. It struck me that enthusiasm and desire to absorb knowledge, filled kids of this age. Less than professional teachers often manage to blunt most of this desire and enthusiasm.
Yes, I had a canned story that I used on all age groups. I usually ended at the quartz crystal display where I attributed the collection to Hugh D. Miser, Arkansas’ greatest geologist ever. One day, a group of adults followed along as I conducted my tour. When I concluded, the teachers and kids thanked me and departed. One of the women listening to my conducted tour approached me.
“Excuse me, but you said that a man named Miser was Arkansas’ greatest geologist. I beg to differ. It was my father John Branner.”
I know my mouth must have dropped as this unknown woman invoked the name of the first Arkansas State Geologist. I took a breath and said, “Your Dad was truly a great geologist and did so much for Arkansas. He and Miser were both great men and I was judgmental to say Miser was the greatest. It is only because I’m a mineralogist and he donated those beautiful crystals that I admire so much to the State. I apologize if I offended you because your father was truly a great man.”
The woman must have accepted my apology because she smiled, shook my hand and thanked me. She and her party departed with smiles on their faces, leaving me with a rapidly beating heart and a greater understanding about blanket endorsements.
My thesis advisor, Dr. K almost busted a gut laughing when I told him the story. He shook his head and said, “Wilder, you may never make it as a geologist but you have the best line of bulls—t of any student I’ve ever had.”
Fiction South
We raked in well over a thousand dollars a month. Since we had no debt and little overhead, I probably had as much money at that time as I ever have in my life. My quarter-time assistantship consisted of work at the University of Arkansas Museum located then on the fourth floor of the Old Main Building, the oldest building at the University.
When I wasn’t giving guided tours to grades one through three, I was unwrapping rocks, bones and other artifacts. There seemed to be at least ten times more material in the back than there was in the actual museum, most still packed in the same boxes as when it came to the University.
It was sort of creepy working late in the old museum because there were rows and rows of human bones and complete skeletons, mostly stacked unceremoniously on the various shelves. The rock, mineral and ore specimens were wrapped in old newspapers, most very old. I spent half my time, it seems, reading old newspaper stories.
One of the museum’s greatest treasures, at least in my mind, was the giant quartz crystals donated by geologist Hugh D. Miser. Some of the crystals weighed a thousand pounds or more. They are rare and irreplaceable.
I loved leading tours through the little museum and seeing the eyes of the young people, all agog with discovery. It struck me that enthusiasm and desire to absorb knowledge, filled kids of this age. Less than professional teachers often manage to blunt most of this desire and enthusiasm.
Yes, I had a canned story that I used on all age groups. I usually ended at the quartz crystal display where I attributed the collection to Hugh D. Miser, Arkansas’ greatest geologist ever. One day, a group of adults followed along as I conducted my tour. When I concluded, the teachers and kids thanked me and departed. One of the women listening to my conducted tour approached me.
“Excuse me, but you said that a man named Miser was Arkansas’ greatest geologist. I beg to differ. It was my father John Branner.”
I know my mouth must have dropped as this unknown woman invoked the name of the first Arkansas State Geologist. I took a breath and said, “Your Dad was truly a great geologist and did so much for Arkansas. He and Miser were both great men and I was judgmental to say Miser was the greatest. It is only because I’m a mineralogist and he donated those beautiful crystals that I admire so much to the State. I apologize if I offended you because your father was truly a great man.”
The woman must have accepted my apology because she smiled, shook my hand and thanked me. She and her party departed with smiles on their faces, leaving me with a rapidly beating heart and a greater understanding about blanket endorsements.
My thesis advisor, Dr. K almost busted a gut laughing when I told him the story. He shook his head and said, “Wilder, you may never make it as a geologist but you have the best line of bulls—t of any student I’ve ever had.”
Fiction South
Sunday, October 25, 2009
A Halloween to Remember
Born on the day before Halloween, I seem forever connected to that holiday. Anne and I married early in 1980 and decided to host a Halloween party that year. Halloween was on a Friday, but we planned the big bash for Saturday.
Not all of our guests got the message as three revelers showed up for the party Friday night. Jakob, an Israeli expatriate that was doing stonework around our house for us, came as a cowboy. Nancy, a geologist, dressed, strangely enough, as an Indian princess, soon followed. John, a fellow geologist, showed up a little later, his only costume a mask.
Nonplussed, Anne and I broke out the alcohol. There was a championship-boxing match on television that night - Oklahoma City's own Sean O'Grady versus James Watt, a Scottish boxer. The fight took place in Glasgow, Scotland and to say that there was a bit of home cooking going on is but a mild statement. After a few rounds Watt head-butted Sean resulting in a horrible cut over his eye. Watt disserved disqualification and O'Grady the title. Instead, the local judges ruled the cut caused by a punch rather than a head-butt.
Those days there was no rule about excessive bleeding. To say that there was a little blood strewn around the ring would be a true understatement. The ring looked more like the inside of a working slaughterhouse, all the viewers, including myself, in shock. The ref soon called the fight and proclaimed Watt the world champion.
We went on to drink, carouse and to celebrate into the wee hours, neither Anne nor I in much shape for the real party that continued as planned the next day. As it happened, the first Halloween party I ever hosted, an unscheduled party became the one I remember the most.
Gondwana
Not all of our guests got the message as three revelers showed up for the party Friday night. Jakob, an Israeli expatriate that was doing stonework around our house for us, came as a cowboy. Nancy, a geologist, dressed, strangely enough, as an Indian princess, soon followed. John, a fellow geologist, showed up a little later, his only costume a mask.
Nonplussed, Anne and I broke out the alcohol. There was a championship-boxing match on television that night - Oklahoma City's own Sean O'Grady versus James Watt, a Scottish boxer. The fight took place in Glasgow, Scotland and to say that there was a bit of home cooking going on is but a mild statement. After a few rounds Watt head-butted Sean resulting in a horrible cut over his eye. Watt disserved disqualification and O'Grady the title. Instead, the local judges ruled the cut caused by a punch rather than a head-butt.
Those days there was no rule about excessive bleeding. To say that there was a little blood strewn around the ring would be a true understatement. The ring looked more like the inside of a working slaughterhouse, all the viewers, including myself, in shock. The ref soon called the fight and proclaimed Watt the world champion.
We went on to drink, carouse and to celebrate into the wee hours, neither Anne nor I in much shape for the real party that continued as planned the next day. As it happened, the first Halloween party I ever hosted, an unscheduled party became the one I remember the most.
Gondwana
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Fresh Pumpkin Pie - a weekend recipe
Halloween, my favorite holiday is almost upon us and one of the reasons I love this time of year are the tasty pumpkin pies my Mother and Grandmothers used to make. Here is an old yet simple recipe that I hope you enjoy as much as I do.
1 ½ cups fresh pumpkin
¼ tsp nutmeg
¼ tsp cinnamon
1 cup milk
2 eggs, slightly beaten
1 cup sugar
1 tbsp butter
¼ tsp salt
Combine ingredients. Mix thoroughly. Pour into pastry-lined pie pan. Bake in hot oven (425 degrees) for about 25 minutes, or until an inserted knife comes out clean. Serve with whipped cream on top.
Louisiana Mystery Writer
1 ½ cups fresh pumpkin
¼ tsp nutmeg
¼ tsp cinnamon
1 cup milk
2 eggs, slightly beaten
1 cup sugar
1 tbsp butter
¼ tsp salt
Combine ingredients. Mix thoroughly. Pour into pastry-lined pie pan. Bake in hot oven (425 degrees) for about 25 minutes, or until an inserted knife comes out clean. Serve with whipped cream on top.
Louisiana Mystery Writer
Friday, October 23, 2009
Love in a Time of Angst
Most colleges and universities require that geology students complete a summer course in the elements of field geology, i.e. surface mapping, plane table and alidade, and use of Brunton Compass.
I was a sophomore when I took my field course at Northeast Louisiana’s camp near Batesville, Arkansas. For you NASCAR fans, Batesville is the hometown of racer Mark Martin.
I’ve already chronicled many of the adventures – or more likely misadventures – that happened during my time at field camp. This story is neither, more like a sad tale of one of those lifetime opportunities that you somehow let slip through your fingers and have regretted it ever since.
My mapping partner, Russell B. and I were working a quadrangle twenty or so miles out of Batesville. The field camp lay square atop the Ozark Uplift, a wonderfully scenic cluster of gently rolling hills topped with stunning sea green vegetation. The terrain reminded me of the Austrian Alps in the movie, Sound of Music. The setting affected Russell one particular afternoon.
We were finished with our mapping for the day and heading down the road to where Professor D and his field assistant awaited with the vehicles. My partner threw down his mapping board, extended his arms in a Shirley Andrews imitation and began singing the hills are alive with the sound of music, his voice raised in his best basso rendition.
“Russell, you are a scream,” I said, realizing his spontaneous outburst provided us both with a momentary release from the heat, humidity and mosquitoes.
“We’ll both be screaming if we don’t make it back to the cars by three.”
“Dr. D’s never left anyone up here.”
“Not yet,” he said.
He was right. Both of us had already had an encounter with Dr. D, suffering the lecturing attack of his sharp tongue, and threat of an impending zero on this particular portion of field camp. Neither of us wanting to suffer Dr. D’s wrath again, we double-timed our way to the County blacktop – just as a green Ford pickup came tooling down the road. Rather than flying past, the truck braked to a stop in front of us.
It was in the days before serial killers and mass murderers and we’d seen the truck and its driver several times before as it passed us on the blacktop. Russell and I sprinted forward in anticipation of a ride down the road to where Dr. D and the other students awaited, and meeting the driver that had also seen us a time or two as we worked our way down the road.
The driver was a gorgeous young lady, her smile as broad and friendly as she was double gorgeous. “You boys need a ride?” she asked, her words as twangy as a Dobro played with a slide formed from the neck of a Budweiser bottle.
“You bet we do,” I said, tossing my map board in the truck bed and sliding in next to her before Russell had a chance to beat me to it.
Russell followed, his miffed expression telling me how unhappy he was about me beating him out for the front seat. I had no time to worry about his appearance of utter hurt as I was too busy ogling the young woman sitting so close to me that I could feel the warmth of her legs.
Did I already mention that she was gorgeous? She was, with flawless skin wonderfully tanned by a friendly Arkansas sun, big flashing eyes the color of an Irish vale in springtime, and teeth that reminded me of a perfect strand of pearls.
And what a bod! A shapely pair of tanned legs protruded from cutoff blue jeans whose frayed hemline provided little more cover than a bikini bottom, and twice as sexy. My vivid imagination informed me that she was also panty-less. Maybe, but I didn’t care. Her blouse was one of those low-cut, braless strap-arounds so popular at the time. I must have been staring – I know that I was drooling – because Russell elbowed me sharply in the ribs.
“I’m Susan Love,” she said, her coy smile indicating that she hoped I was getting an eyeful. “What’s yours?”
“I’m Russ and this is Eric,” Russell said, reaching across my chest to shake Susan’s hand.
“I’ve seen you two up on the mountain. You’re college boys, aren’t you?”
We both smiled and nodded, Susan’s nuance indicating that she thought our studenthood a good thing.
“There’s an old quarry filled with water up in the hills. I’m going swimming there with some of my girlfriends. You boys want to come along?”
I glanced at my watch. It was a quarter of three. Realizing the consequences of failing to return to the cars by departure time was tantamount to failing the course and I said, “We have to get back to the camp but we’ll be back here tomorrow. Can we go then?”
Susan just shook her pretty head. “Sometimes we go skinny-dipping. Sure you boys can’t make it today?”
By this time, Russell and I were both blubbering. Susan’s smile told us she knew it and fully understood her physical control over us. There were parts of me that craved to go with her. Well, at least one part, but I couldn’t and I knew that Russell felt the same. We had obligations to fulfill, parents to appease.
Russell was begging when he said, “There’s nothing in the world we’d rather do than go swimming with you and your girlfriends but we’ll flunk if we do. Can’t we meet you tomorrow?”
Wielding her power, Susan just grinned and shook her head. “Maybe I’ll see you boys on the road again, or in town at the ice cream place.”
Lovely Susan let us off at the geology cars, our only consolation the envious looks of the other students as we climbed out of the truck. We visited the ice cream place in Batesville several times that summer but we never saw Susan again, either there or on the road.
Years have passed since that summer in Arkansas but I can still feel the palpable warmth of Susan’s thighs next to mine and still remember the unfulfilled promise in her sexy smile. But hey, at least I made a C in field geology.
Fiction South
I was a sophomore when I took my field course at Northeast Louisiana’s camp near Batesville, Arkansas. For you NASCAR fans, Batesville is the hometown of racer Mark Martin.
I’ve already chronicled many of the adventures – or more likely misadventures – that happened during my time at field camp. This story is neither, more like a sad tale of one of those lifetime opportunities that you somehow let slip through your fingers and have regretted it ever since.
My mapping partner, Russell B. and I were working a quadrangle twenty or so miles out of Batesville. The field camp lay square atop the Ozark Uplift, a wonderfully scenic cluster of gently rolling hills topped with stunning sea green vegetation. The terrain reminded me of the Austrian Alps in the movie, Sound of Music. The setting affected Russell one particular afternoon.
We were finished with our mapping for the day and heading down the road to where Professor D and his field assistant awaited with the vehicles. My partner threw down his mapping board, extended his arms in a Shirley Andrews imitation and began singing the hills are alive with the sound of music, his voice raised in his best basso rendition.
“Russell, you are a scream,” I said, realizing his spontaneous outburst provided us both with a momentary release from the heat, humidity and mosquitoes.
“We’ll both be screaming if we don’t make it back to the cars by three.”
“Dr. D’s never left anyone up here.”
“Not yet,” he said.
He was right. Both of us had already had an encounter with Dr. D, suffering the lecturing attack of his sharp tongue, and threat of an impending zero on this particular portion of field camp. Neither of us wanting to suffer Dr. D’s wrath again, we double-timed our way to the County blacktop – just as a green Ford pickup came tooling down the road. Rather than flying past, the truck braked to a stop in front of us.
It was in the days before serial killers and mass murderers and we’d seen the truck and its driver several times before as it passed us on the blacktop. Russell and I sprinted forward in anticipation of a ride down the road to where Dr. D and the other students awaited, and meeting the driver that had also seen us a time or two as we worked our way down the road.
The driver was a gorgeous young lady, her smile as broad and friendly as she was double gorgeous. “You boys need a ride?” she asked, her words as twangy as a Dobro played with a slide formed from the neck of a Budweiser bottle.
“You bet we do,” I said, tossing my map board in the truck bed and sliding in next to her before Russell had a chance to beat me to it.
Russell followed, his miffed expression telling me how unhappy he was about me beating him out for the front seat. I had no time to worry about his appearance of utter hurt as I was too busy ogling the young woman sitting so close to me that I could feel the warmth of her legs.
Did I already mention that she was gorgeous? She was, with flawless skin wonderfully tanned by a friendly Arkansas sun, big flashing eyes the color of an Irish vale in springtime, and teeth that reminded me of a perfect strand of pearls.
And what a bod! A shapely pair of tanned legs protruded from cutoff blue jeans whose frayed hemline provided little more cover than a bikini bottom, and twice as sexy. My vivid imagination informed me that she was also panty-less. Maybe, but I didn’t care. Her blouse was one of those low-cut, braless strap-arounds so popular at the time. I must have been staring – I know that I was drooling – because Russell elbowed me sharply in the ribs.
“I’m Susan Love,” she said, her coy smile indicating that she hoped I was getting an eyeful. “What’s yours?”
“I’m Russ and this is Eric,” Russell said, reaching across my chest to shake Susan’s hand.
“I’ve seen you two up on the mountain. You’re college boys, aren’t you?”
We both smiled and nodded, Susan’s nuance indicating that she thought our studenthood a good thing.
“There’s an old quarry filled with water up in the hills. I’m going swimming there with some of my girlfriends. You boys want to come along?”
I glanced at my watch. It was a quarter of three. Realizing the consequences of failing to return to the cars by departure time was tantamount to failing the course and I said, “We have to get back to the camp but we’ll be back here tomorrow. Can we go then?”
Susan just shook her pretty head. “Sometimes we go skinny-dipping. Sure you boys can’t make it today?”
By this time, Russell and I were both blubbering. Susan’s smile told us she knew it and fully understood her physical control over us. There were parts of me that craved to go with her. Well, at least one part, but I couldn’t and I knew that Russell felt the same. We had obligations to fulfill, parents to appease.
Russell was begging when he said, “There’s nothing in the world we’d rather do than go swimming with you and your girlfriends but we’ll flunk if we do. Can’t we meet you tomorrow?”
Wielding her power, Susan just grinned and shook her head. “Maybe I’ll see you boys on the road again, or in town at the ice cream place.”
Lovely Susan let us off at the geology cars, our only consolation the envious looks of the other students as we climbed out of the truck. We visited the ice cream place in Batesville several times that summer but we never saw Susan again, either there or on the road.
Years have passed since that summer in Arkansas but I can still feel the palpable warmth of Susan’s thighs next to mine and still remember the unfulfilled promise in her sexy smile. But hey, at least I made a C in field geology.
Fiction South
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Big Easy Summer
I’ve chronicled my summer job in New Orleans many times. I worked for a now defunct geophysical company named GTS Corp. They had an office on St. Charles Avenue, near Jackson Circle.
The seedy front door opened into a modern office that employed at least a hundred professionals and technicians. I developed many of the characters in my French Quarter mystery Big Easy during that summer in New Orleans.
I lived in a broken down wood framed building in Arabi, a little town located between the Lower Ninth Ward and Chalmette - all three areas decimated by Hurricane Katrina. My rent was only seventy-five bucks a month but there was no air conditioning and someone should have paid me to stay there.
I lived across the street from a convent of cloistered Catholic nuns and the entire time I never saw a single occupant of the large building. I generally walked the half mile, or so, to St. Bernard Avenue, the road leading to downtown New Orleans, and took the bus to work. I usually slept all the way there and all the way home. This practice got me into trouble on more than one occasion.
The worst situation occurred at the Arabi Station. I awoke to find the bus deserted except for me, the woman sitting next to me, and a desperate-looking man brandishing a pistol. I grabbed the woman’s shoulders and pulled her down behind the seat, the crazy man’s pistol pointed right at us. We held our breaths, hoping that he didn’t shoot in our direction, even though I knew that the ricochet of a single bullet would probably get both of us more than once.
Instead of shooting us, the loony fellow ran out of the bus where police officers quickly apprehended him. Cops are often hard asses but considering the service they perform for the public and the constant danger they are in, I can only commend them for their almost daily acts of bravery that rarely earns them an atta boy.
I didn’t make much money at GTS, even in those days, but I spent what I earned having fun in the Big Easy. All the fun and work left little time for sleep and I –like I said – spent lots of time sleeping on the bus. One way from the bus stop on Canal, next to the old Saenger Theatre, took about forty minutes. More than once, I awoke about two hours after boarding the bus and finding myself in the same spot where I had started. When this happened, I usually felt newly invigorated and simply headed for an evening on Bourbon Street.
Growing up in the little town of Vivian, I was familiar with many poor people but I had never seen the masses of derelict winos such as those that populated St. Charles Avenue. I’ve since seen many others since in Boston, New York, Oklahoma City and even Amarillo but that summer in New Orleans was my first day end, day out experience with humans little more alive than voodoo zombies were. Hmmm! Sounds like the makings of a suspenseful murder mystery novel.
Gondwana
The seedy front door opened into a modern office that employed at least a hundred professionals and technicians. I developed many of the characters in my French Quarter mystery Big Easy during that summer in New Orleans.
I lived in a broken down wood framed building in Arabi, a little town located between the Lower Ninth Ward and Chalmette - all three areas decimated by Hurricane Katrina. My rent was only seventy-five bucks a month but there was no air conditioning and someone should have paid me to stay there.
I lived across the street from a convent of cloistered Catholic nuns and the entire time I never saw a single occupant of the large building. I generally walked the half mile, or so, to St. Bernard Avenue, the road leading to downtown New Orleans, and took the bus to work. I usually slept all the way there and all the way home. This practice got me into trouble on more than one occasion.
The worst situation occurred at the Arabi Station. I awoke to find the bus deserted except for me, the woman sitting next to me, and a desperate-looking man brandishing a pistol. I grabbed the woman’s shoulders and pulled her down behind the seat, the crazy man’s pistol pointed right at us. We held our breaths, hoping that he didn’t shoot in our direction, even though I knew that the ricochet of a single bullet would probably get both of us more than once.
Instead of shooting us, the loony fellow ran out of the bus where police officers quickly apprehended him. Cops are often hard asses but considering the service they perform for the public and the constant danger they are in, I can only commend them for their almost daily acts of bravery that rarely earns them an atta boy.
I didn’t make much money at GTS, even in those days, but I spent what I earned having fun in the Big Easy. All the fun and work left little time for sleep and I –like I said – spent lots of time sleeping on the bus. One way from the bus stop on Canal, next to the old Saenger Theatre, took about forty minutes. More than once, I awoke about two hours after boarding the bus and finding myself in the same spot where I had started. When this happened, I usually felt newly invigorated and simply headed for an evening on Bourbon Street.
Growing up in the little town of Vivian, I was familiar with many poor people but I had never seen the masses of derelict winos such as those that populated St. Charles Avenue. I’ve since seen many others since in Boston, New York, Oklahoma City and even Amarillo but that summer in New Orleans was my first day end, day out experience with humans little more alive than voodoo zombies were. Hmmm! Sounds like the makings of a suspenseful murder mystery novel.
Gondwana
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Free Hot Wings and Half-Priced Beer
Anne and I had little expendable cash following the eighties oil bust. We usually ate dinner at nearby Wyatt’s Cafeteria. Times were tough all over and their food was not only good, it was also inexpensive.
During a visit from Bruce, our close friend and former employee, we let him convince us to visit a seafood restaurant on Northwest Expressway called Harry’s.
“They have free hot wings during happy hour, and half-priced drinks. I’ll even go in Dutch.”
Bruce, a formerly strapping young man, had leukemia. He was looking bad at the time and Anne and I would have spent our last penny to make him happy. The trip, contrary to our doubts, proved fruitful.
There was a new game in town called NTN Trivia. Restaurants belonging to the NTN network have interactive boxes that their patrons use to play various games of trivia. A satellite transmits the network to restaurants all over the United States and Canada and these restaurants compete against each other in real time.
Every Tuesday night, NTN has their premium game called Showdown and rank the top one hundred restaurants and bars following the game based on their top five boxes. Harry’s didn’t finish in the top one hundred that night but Anne, playing as OILIES, finished tenth overall for individuals. We were pleasantly surprised at the end of the game when our waitress presented us with a twenty-five dollar gift certificate.
“We give it every Tuesday to the highest ranked player in the restaurant,” the blonde-haired woman told us.
From then on, Tuesday nights had us hooked. Bruce went with us to Harry’s on Tuesdays until his disease progressed beyond the point where he couldn’t make it every week. If I told you we won the gift certificate every week you will probably think that I am lying, but we won the prize almost every week.
Lil, another close friend, began accompanying us to Harry’s and we played as a team, helping each other with the answers. This went on for nearly a year until Oklahoma’s rapidly waning economy caught up with Harry’s and it went out of business. There were other restaurants still playing trivia and Anne and I soon found one. Along the way, we met other Trivia addicts and began playing together as a coherent team.
I won’t bore you with details except to say that our group included a dozen very smart people and I’m proud to say that Anne and I were part of the fabled Don Serapio’s group that won so many championships.
That was a while back. Bruce is now gone, as is Anne. So is Harry’s and Don Serapio’s in Oklahoma City - though Jimmy and Janie still have a very successful (and quite wonderful) Mexican restaurant in El Reno.
There’s a point to this story: even when the economy is in the dumpster, there’s still a place out there offering free hot wings, half-price drinks and maybe more – sometimes much more. Find it!
Louisiana Mystery Writer
During a visit from Bruce, our close friend and former employee, we let him convince us to visit a seafood restaurant on Northwest Expressway called Harry’s.
“They have free hot wings during happy hour, and half-priced drinks. I’ll even go in Dutch.”
Bruce, a formerly strapping young man, had leukemia. He was looking bad at the time and Anne and I would have spent our last penny to make him happy. The trip, contrary to our doubts, proved fruitful.
There was a new game in town called NTN Trivia. Restaurants belonging to the NTN network have interactive boxes that their patrons use to play various games of trivia. A satellite transmits the network to restaurants all over the United States and Canada and these restaurants compete against each other in real time.
Every Tuesday night, NTN has their premium game called Showdown and rank the top one hundred restaurants and bars following the game based on their top five boxes. Harry’s didn’t finish in the top one hundred that night but Anne, playing as OILIES, finished tenth overall for individuals. We were pleasantly surprised at the end of the game when our waitress presented us with a twenty-five dollar gift certificate.
“We give it every Tuesday to the highest ranked player in the restaurant,” the blonde-haired woman told us.
From then on, Tuesday nights had us hooked. Bruce went with us to Harry’s on Tuesdays until his disease progressed beyond the point where he couldn’t make it every week. If I told you we won the gift certificate every week you will probably think that I am lying, but we won the prize almost every week.
Lil, another close friend, began accompanying us to Harry’s and we played as a team, helping each other with the answers. This went on for nearly a year until Oklahoma’s rapidly waning economy caught up with Harry’s and it went out of business. There were other restaurants still playing trivia and Anne and I soon found one. Along the way, we met other Trivia addicts and began playing together as a coherent team.
I won’t bore you with details except to say that our group included a dozen very smart people and I’m proud to say that Anne and I were part of the fabled Don Serapio’s group that won so many championships.
That was a while back. Bruce is now gone, as is Anne. So is Harry’s and Don Serapio’s in Oklahoma City - though Jimmy and Janie still have a very successful (and quite wonderful) Mexican restaurant in El Reno.
There’s a point to this story: even when the economy is in the dumpster, there’s still a place out there offering free hot wings, half-price drinks and maybe more – sometimes much more. Find it!
Louisiana Mystery Writer
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Taking the Bus
I didn’t get much time off during my stay at Fort Polk, maybe two weekends. One of them I spent in Chalmette, visiting wife Gail and her parents. I traveled there on the bus and the trip was memorable, not in what I saw but in what I felt.
Leesville is the Louisiana town just outside of Fort Polk and one word describes it - seedy. The Leesville bus station fit the bill. I can’t remember how I got there but I probably hitchhiked from the base. The lobby reeked with the vague odor of despair. The station was empty except for the lady that issued my ticket without seeming to see me, and about a half dozen GI’s; like me, they were all privates.
I sat alone in the back of the bus, reveling in the legroom but saddened by its darkened loneliness. We were fifty miles out of town when one of the GI’s began to sing. I wasn’t very old but this kid was younger, probably no more than eighteen.
There was a song out at the time called And When I Die. Laura Nyro wrote it but a group called Blood, Sweat and Tears had a hit with the song. The young man had no accompaniment and sang it much slower even than Nyro’s version. His words tore the heart right out of my chest.
The young man was an Eleven Bravo, I an Eleven Charlie. We were both infantry bullet-stoppers; bound for the human gristmill that was Vietnam.
Like me, he was probably afraid of death. I was afraid of something much worse - the decisive act of taking another human life. I didn’t know if I was up to the task even though I’d had the act of ultimate enactment drummed into the very essence of my brain for the past four months.
The song’s lyrics ripped at my soul but didn’t make me cry. I was drenched in the steel resolve of personal survival at the time. I would do what I had to do. I hoped that any act of violence I might perform wouldn’t corrupt my soul – at least not forever.
Fiction South
Leesville is the Louisiana town just outside of Fort Polk and one word describes it - seedy. The Leesville bus station fit the bill. I can’t remember how I got there but I probably hitchhiked from the base. The lobby reeked with the vague odor of despair. The station was empty except for the lady that issued my ticket without seeming to see me, and about a half dozen GI’s; like me, they were all privates.
I sat alone in the back of the bus, reveling in the legroom but saddened by its darkened loneliness. We were fifty miles out of town when one of the GI’s began to sing. I wasn’t very old but this kid was younger, probably no more than eighteen.
There was a song out at the time called And When I Die. Laura Nyro wrote it but a group called Blood, Sweat and Tears had a hit with the song. The young man had no accompaniment and sang it much slower even than Nyro’s version. His words tore the heart right out of my chest.
The young man was an Eleven Bravo, I an Eleven Charlie. We were both infantry bullet-stoppers; bound for the human gristmill that was Vietnam.
Like me, he was probably afraid of death. I was afraid of something much worse - the decisive act of taking another human life. I didn’t know if I was up to the task even though I’d had the act of ultimate enactment drummed into the very essence of my brain for the past four months.
The song’s lyrics ripped at my soul but didn’t make me cry. I was drenched in the steel resolve of personal survival at the time. I would do what I had to do. I hoped that any act of violence I might perform wouldn’t corrupt my soul – at least not forever.
Fiction South
Monday, October 19, 2009
Ghosts on St. Charles Avenue
While a geology student at Northeast Louisiana (now University of Louisiana Monroe), I attended a Geological Society of America convention in New Orleans. The St. Charles Hotel was the convention headquarters. When we arrived, I learned the hotel had lost my reservation.
It was an earlier place and time. Instead of turning me away to seek lodging some other place, they erected a cot for me in a large towel closet (I kid you not!) and I spent the night there. It was only for one night because they found a room for me the next day.
The original St. Charles Hotel burned in 1841, reconstructed and burned again in the 1890’s. I stayed in the third hotel built on the original site, it razed in the 1970’s. It was already a bit seedy when I stayed there but the original St. Charles Hotel was widely accepted as the most regal hotel on earth at the time.
The original St. Charles Hotel was a meeting place for wealthy Americans. The French built the equally regal St. Louis Hotel. Like many historical places, they had their dark sides. Stocks for selling slaves stood inside both hotels. Here is a compelling excerpt from an account of the everyday slave trade as told by Harnett T. Kane in his book Queen New Orleans – City by the River published in 1949 by William Morrow & Company.
The two hotels shared a sight that made certain visitors, Southern as well as Northern, wince. Here stood blocks on which human beings were auctioned. From one point of view it was merely a sale of property, no different from that of a horse or a table. From another – but let us watch such an event as eyewitnesses reported it.
An elderly dark woman, sunken –chested, is helped up to stand on the block. The auctioneer starts briskly: “Now, gentlemen, here’s Mary. Clever house-servant, excellent cook. Only one fault, shamming sick. Nothing wrong with her any more than with me. Put her up, gentlemen. A hundred dollars to begin?”
Several men reach over and prod Mary in the ribs. “Are you well?” one asks.
“No, very sick.” The words are strained. “Bad cough, pain in my side, suh.”
The auctioneer interrupts: “Gentlemen, I told you she’s a shammer. Damn her humbug! Give her a touch or two of the cowhide, and she’ll do your work. Speak, gentlemen. Seventy dollars only? Going, going, gone!”
Nobody is much interested. “Lots of skin and bone,” a younger man comments, and his neighbor chuckles loudly: “Guess that ‘ere woman will soon be food for the land crabs.” Amid general laughter, the sick slave is led away.
A bright-eyed youth steps up. The auctioneer praises his intelligence. Neither he nor any of the others would be for sale, the man says, if their master were not in financial trouble. Several growers escort the boy to a side room to strip him for sores or other imperfections. A high price. Next!
A smile on her lips, a pert mulattress glides over. A stout man opens her mouth to examine the gums. He and several others make a motion to the auctioneer and take her away, as in the previous case, for private examination. A yet higher bid, a lively raising of it while the girl’s smile widens proudly. Sold!
A middle-aged woman takes the block, her eyes somber, in her arms a sleeping child. “How much/” The auctioneer describes her training at length. Not once does she raise her eyes from her baby. He tells of her experience, what her masters have said of her dependability. She still stares down. Sold! Next –
The planters stroll about, bored. “Not much left, eh?”
“Have to hurry home, anyway.”
They throw on their top coats. Tonight they will be back, a few feet from this spot, sipping wine, dancing. And the cadence of the music will rise where Negro men and women have been whispering together, and the dancers’ feet will slide across a polished floor where slave people shuffled to the block and off it again.”
There are still many compelling stories about New Orleans but there were no slave blocks in the lobby when I stayed at the hotel, only friendly people trying hard to accommodate a young geologist wannabe. Still, I felt the specter of the slaves as they dragged their shackles down the hall - that night long ago spent in the towel closet of the St. Charles Hotel.
Gondwana
It was an earlier place and time. Instead of turning me away to seek lodging some other place, they erected a cot for me in a large towel closet (I kid you not!) and I spent the night there. It was only for one night because they found a room for me the next day.
The original St. Charles Hotel burned in 1841, reconstructed and burned again in the 1890’s. I stayed in the third hotel built on the original site, it razed in the 1970’s. It was already a bit seedy when I stayed there but the original St. Charles Hotel was widely accepted as the most regal hotel on earth at the time.
The original St. Charles Hotel was a meeting place for wealthy Americans. The French built the equally regal St. Louis Hotel. Like many historical places, they had their dark sides. Stocks for selling slaves stood inside both hotels. Here is a compelling excerpt from an account of the everyday slave trade as told by Harnett T. Kane in his book Queen New Orleans – City by the River published in 1949 by William Morrow & Company.
The two hotels shared a sight that made certain visitors, Southern as well as Northern, wince. Here stood blocks on which human beings were auctioned. From one point of view it was merely a sale of property, no different from that of a horse or a table. From another – but let us watch such an event as eyewitnesses reported it.
An elderly dark woman, sunken –chested, is helped up to stand on the block. The auctioneer starts briskly: “Now, gentlemen, here’s Mary. Clever house-servant, excellent cook. Only one fault, shamming sick. Nothing wrong with her any more than with me. Put her up, gentlemen. A hundred dollars to begin?”
Several men reach over and prod Mary in the ribs. “Are you well?” one asks.
“No, very sick.” The words are strained. “Bad cough, pain in my side, suh.”
The auctioneer interrupts: “Gentlemen, I told you she’s a shammer. Damn her humbug! Give her a touch or two of the cowhide, and she’ll do your work. Speak, gentlemen. Seventy dollars only? Going, going, gone!”
Nobody is much interested. “Lots of skin and bone,” a younger man comments, and his neighbor chuckles loudly: “Guess that ‘ere woman will soon be food for the land crabs.” Amid general laughter, the sick slave is led away.
A bright-eyed youth steps up. The auctioneer praises his intelligence. Neither he nor any of the others would be for sale, the man says, if their master were not in financial trouble. Several growers escort the boy to a side room to strip him for sores or other imperfections. A high price. Next!
A smile on her lips, a pert mulattress glides over. A stout man opens her mouth to examine the gums. He and several others make a motion to the auctioneer and take her away, as in the previous case, for private examination. A yet higher bid, a lively raising of it while the girl’s smile widens proudly. Sold!
A middle-aged woman takes the block, her eyes somber, in her arms a sleeping child. “How much/” The auctioneer describes her training at length. Not once does she raise her eyes from her baby. He tells of her experience, what her masters have said of her dependability. She still stares down. Sold! Next –
The planters stroll about, bored. “Not much left, eh?”
“Have to hurry home, anyway.”
They throw on their top coats. Tonight they will be back, a few feet from this spot, sipping wine, dancing. And the cadence of the music will rise where Negro men and women have been whispering together, and the dancers’ feet will slide across a polished floor where slave people shuffled to the block and off it again.”
There are still many compelling stories about New Orleans but there were no slave blocks in the lobby when I stayed at the hotel, only friendly people trying hard to accommodate a young geologist wannabe. Still, I felt the specter of the slaves as they dragged their shackles down the hall - that night long ago spent in the towel closet of the St. Charles Hotel.
Gondwana
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Drinking With the Locals
After spreading Anne’s ashes, Angela and I stayed another night on Cape Cod before returning to Boston. We stopped for dinner in Salem, Massachusetts (at least I think it was Salem. I wasn’t very coherent at the time) and met some very friendly folks.
I don’t remember the name of the restaurant but it was in a two-storied wood-framed building that overlooked the bay. Angela and I went upstairs to a room that featured a large picture window affording a wonderful view of the boats moored in the marina. The bar wrapped around in a 360-degree oval, manned by a friendly waiter that introduced himself as Matt. Affable darkness draped the room with comforting shadows.
At least twenty-five feet long, the bar was expansive enough to seat fifty patrons. It was nearly empty but we weren’t alone. I ordered a Sam Adams when Matt asked us what we wanted.
“I don’t usually drink beer but I think I might like one tonight,” Angela said. “Do you have a suggestion, Matthew?”
Angela is an attractive woman and she instantly enamored Matt with the flash of her eyes and tone of her voice. “Why don’t I let you taste some samples,” he said.
Matt, a slender young man with wavy brown hair was youthful enough to be Angela’s son. It didn’t matter because Angela exercises, watches what she eats and usually passes as someone at least twenty years younger than she is. In addition to her youthful good looks and expressive eyes, she has the wonderful resonating voice of a radio talk show host (which she was at the time).
Matt proceeded to open a selection of different beers and then pour small samples into shot glasses. Angela sipped each proffered selection, turning her nose up at all of them. Matt didn’t seem to mind. He just kept smiling and pouring. She finally decided on a glass of chardonnay instead of beer.
Matt gave me what she didn’t drink and I was soon feeling eerily loose. Never at a loss for words, I asked, “Where is everybody?”
“We don’t get many tourists after Labor Day,” the man across the bar answered.
“We’re not from around here but we’re not tourists,” I said, already tipsy enough to explain our mission on the Cape to the stranger.
The couple introduced themselves as Beth and Dutch. After my story, they became immediately friendlier. “I could tell by your accent that you aren’t from here,” Beth said.
At first glance the couple looked to be in their fifties but the timbre of their voices suggested they were both much older, Beth’s well coiffed and bouffant hair popular during a decade past. I had the notion that her highlighted brown tresses had cost a bundle at an expensive salon and the big diamond on her finger did nothing to belie my observation. She had shoehorned herself into a low-cut slinky black dress that went perfectly with expensive accessory jewelry adorning her slender bod. I couldn’t see her legs but imagined she was wearing black, fishnet stockings.
Dutch’s hair was also perfect – maybe too perfect. The diamond encrusted Rolex on his wrist clashed with his diamond pinkie ring. The cut of his handmade shirt indicated wealth and my fiction author’s mind surmised he could have attended Harvard with the Kennedy’s.
“Born in Louisiana,” I told her, “But I’ve lived in Oklahoma so long now that I call it home.”
Jay and Linda were sitting to the left of us. A burly man with dark wavy hair, Jay had a small tattoo visible beneath the sleeve of his flowered Hawaiian shirt. He looked younger than he probably was because Linda’s hair had gone totally gray. Their shorts revealed athletic legs that likely took many long walks along the beach.
“I was in Louisiana during Vietnam,” Jay said. “Fort Polk.”
“Me too,” I said.
“Basic training,” he explained. “I was on my way to Nam but blew out a knee. They sent me home after that.
“Where in Oklahoma are you from?” the man sitting to the right of Angela asked.
“Oklahoma City,” I told him, along with a brief description of my past twenty years.
His name was Ray, his wife’s Sandra. They wore shorts, and matching tee shirts featuring a procession of ships sailing into New York harbor. The caption said “Tall Ships.” They were drinking draw beers and eating bowls of chowder. Ray had a Wyatt Earp moustache that drooped to his chin. Sandra was a blonde-haired woman whose blue eyes twinkled when she smiled, even in the interminable darkness of the bar.
Matt had implanted himself in front of Angela, his elbows on the bar and his chin resting in the palms of his hand as he hung on every word she uttered.
“This is wonderful,” she said. “The view is gorgeous. I wish I lived here.”
“Its hell until after Labor Day,” Dutch said. “We rarely get out during tourist season.”
The three couples had lived in Salem their entire lives. They knew each other and all hated tourists. Angela and I dined on lobster thermidor, drank more beer and wine than needed, and continued to kibbutz with the locals.
Before the evening ended, it seemed as if we had known each other all our lives. I invited them to visit me in Oklahoma and they asked Angela and me to call them next time we were in the area. Finally, it was time to leave.
Matt held Angela’s hand, beseeching her to stay until he got off work.
“I’m married,” she said, showing him her wedding ring.
I have never returned to Salem since that night and Angela now lives in California. Still, I’m grateful to the wonderful folks we met in the bar that night because for a while they took my mind off Anne’s passing.
Driving as if unimpaired, Angela returned us to Boston. I sat in moody silence, battling without success as aching melancholy crept slowly back into my soul.
Fiction South
I don’t remember the name of the restaurant but it was in a two-storied wood-framed building that overlooked the bay. Angela and I went upstairs to a room that featured a large picture window affording a wonderful view of the boats moored in the marina. The bar wrapped around in a 360-degree oval, manned by a friendly waiter that introduced himself as Matt. Affable darkness draped the room with comforting shadows.
At least twenty-five feet long, the bar was expansive enough to seat fifty patrons. It was nearly empty but we weren’t alone. I ordered a Sam Adams when Matt asked us what we wanted.
“I don’t usually drink beer but I think I might like one tonight,” Angela said. “Do you have a suggestion, Matthew?”
Angela is an attractive woman and she instantly enamored Matt with the flash of her eyes and tone of her voice. “Why don’t I let you taste some samples,” he said.
Matt, a slender young man with wavy brown hair was youthful enough to be Angela’s son. It didn’t matter because Angela exercises, watches what she eats and usually passes as someone at least twenty years younger than she is. In addition to her youthful good looks and expressive eyes, she has the wonderful resonating voice of a radio talk show host (which she was at the time).
Matt proceeded to open a selection of different beers and then pour small samples into shot glasses. Angela sipped each proffered selection, turning her nose up at all of them. Matt didn’t seem to mind. He just kept smiling and pouring. She finally decided on a glass of chardonnay instead of beer.
Matt gave me what she didn’t drink and I was soon feeling eerily loose. Never at a loss for words, I asked, “Where is everybody?”
“We don’t get many tourists after Labor Day,” the man across the bar answered.
“We’re not from around here but we’re not tourists,” I said, already tipsy enough to explain our mission on the Cape to the stranger.
The couple introduced themselves as Beth and Dutch. After my story, they became immediately friendlier. “I could tell by your accent that you aren’t from here,” Beth said.
At first glance the couple looked to be in their fifties but the timbre of their voices suggested they were both much older, Beth’s well coiffed and bouffant hair popular during a decade past. I had the notion that her highlighted brown tresses had cost a bundle at an expensive salon and the big diamond on her finger did nothing to belie my observation. She had shoehorned herself into a low-cut slinky black dress that went perfectly with expensive accessory jewelry adorning her slender bod. I couldn’t see her legs but imagined she was wearing black, fishnet stockings.
Dutch’s hair was also perfect – maybe too perfect. The diamond encrusted Rolex on his wrist clashed with his diamond pinkie ring. The cut of his handmade shirt indicated wealth and my fiction author’s mind surmised he could have attended Harvard with the Kennedy’s.
“Born in Louisiana,” I told her, “But I’ve lived in Oklahoma so long now that I call it home.”
Jay and Linda were sitting to the left of us. A burly man with dark wavy hair, Jay had a small tattoo visible beneath the sleeve of his flowered Hawaiian shirt. He looked younger than he probably was because Linda’s hair had gone totally gray. Their shorts revealed athletic legs that likely took many long walks along the beach.
“I was in Louisiana during Vietnam,” Jay said. “Fort Polk.”
“Me too,” I said.
“Basic training,” he explained. “I was on my way to Nam but blew out a knee. They sent me home after that.
“Where in Oklahoma are you from?” the man sitting to the right of Angela asked.
“Oklahoma City,” I told him, along with a brief description of my past twenty years.
His name was Ray, his wife’s Sandra. They wore shorts, and matching tee shirts featuring a procession of ships sailing into New York harbor. The caption said “Tall Ships.” They were drinking draw beers and eating bowls of chowder. Ray had a Wyatt Earp moustache that drooped to his chin. Sandra was a blonde-haired woman whose blue eyes twinkled when she smiled, even in the interminable darkness of the bar.
Matt had implanted himself in front of Angela, his elbows on the bar and his chin resting in the palms of his hand as he hung on every word she uttered.
“This is wonderful,” she said. “The view is gorgeous. I wish I lived here.”
“Its hell until after Labor Day,” Dutch said. “We rarely get out during tourist season.”
The three couples had lived in Salem their entire lives. They knew each other and all hated tourists. Angela and I dined on lobster thermidor, drank more beer and wine than needed, and continued to kibbutz with the locals.
Before the evening ended, it seemed as if we had known each other all our lives. I invited them to visit me in Oklahoma and they asked Angela and me to call them next time we were in the area. Finally, it was time to leave.
Matt held Angela’s hand, beseeching her to stay until he got off work.
“I’m married,” she said, showing him her wedding ring.
I have never returned to Salem since that night and Angela now lives in California. Still, I’m grateful to the wonderful folks we met in the bar that night because for a while they took my mind off Anne’s passing.
Driving as if unimpaired, Angela returned us to Boston. I sat in moody silence, battling without success as aching melancholy crept slowly back into my soul.
Fiction South
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Crabmeat Dressing ala Mulate's - a weekend recipe
There is a wealth of wonderful restaurants in New Orleans, every one vying for customers grown used to only the best food and entertainment in the world. One of those is Mulate's Cajun Restaurant, known for its Cajun dance floor. Here is one of their recipes from their website. The restaurant’s name was the inspiration for the character Mama Mulate in my novel Big Easy.
Crabmeat Stuffing
Ingredients:
- 1 ½ sticks butter or margarine
- 2 medium bell peppers
- chopped
- 3 large onions
- chopped
- 3 stalks celery
- chopped
- 1 tsp. salt
- 1 tsp. cayenne pepper
- 2 cups bread crumbs
- 1 tbsp. Flour
- 3 eggs
- 1 handful chopped parsley
- ¾ - 1 lb. claw crabmeat
- (suit to taste)
(Pick all of the shells out.)
Directions:
Melt butter or margarine.
Sauté vegetables (bell peppers, onions, and celery) on medium heat until translucent - approximately 15 minutes.
Salt and cayenne pepper, season to taste.
Mix all ingredients except crabmeat.
Add vegetable mixture you've already cooked.
Mix well.
Fold in crabmeat.
To Fry:
Batter with egg.
Cover with breadcrumbs.
Fry until golden brown.
To Bake:
Heat oven to 350 degrees.
Cook approximately 20 to 30 minutes.
You can use this stuffing in Stuffed Mushrooms, Stuffed Bell Peppers, and Stuffed Crabs.
Eric'sWeb
Crabmeat Stuffing
Ingredients:
- 1 ½ sticks butter or margarine
- 2 medium bell peppers
- chopped
- 3 large onions
- chopped
- 3 stalks celery
- chopped
- 1 tsp. salt
- 1 tsp. cayenne pepper
- 2 cups bread crumbs
- 1 tbsp. Flour
- 3 eggs
- 1 handful chopped parsley
- ¾ - 1 lb. claw crabmeat
- (suit to taste)
(Pick all of the shells out.)
Directions:
Melt butter or margarine.
Sauté vegetables (bell peppers, onions, and celery) on medium heat until translucent - approximately 15 minutes.
Salt and cayenne pepper, season to taste.
Mix all ingredients except crabmeat.
Add vegetable mixture you've already cooked.
Mix well.
Fold in crabmeat.
To Fry:
Batter with egg.
Cover with breadcrumbs.
Fry until golden brown.
To Bake:
Heat oven to 350 degrees.
Cook approximately 20 to 30 minutes.
You can use this stuffing in Stuffed Mushrooms, Stuffed Bell Peppers, and Stuffed Crabs.
Eric'sWeb
Friday, October 16, 2009
Halloween Memories
Halloween was my favorite holiday when I was young in Vivian, Louisiana. No one had yet heard of predators preying on unsuspecting kids, so my parents, and everyone else’s parents would let us go trick-or-treating as soon as it got dark. What’s more, no one expected us home anytime soon.
I couldn’t have been much more than five when I began staying out until the wee hours, dressed as a ghost or goblin, with my big brother Jack and close friend Wiley. Most people quit answering their doors at ten but that didn’t keep us from knocking, or turning over their trash cans if no one answered and rewarded us with candy.
The only thing I can remember that was slightly unsavory was that someone gave us weevil bread – cornbread with boll weevils cooked into it. We all decided that we had gotten the weevil bread from the mayor’s house.
I grew up in a different time, not better, just different, but I’ll never forget the feeling I had that I was somehow invisible, and that the darkness was where I was destined to be.
Gondwana
I couldn’t have been much more than five when I began staying out until the wee hours, dressed as a ghost or goblin, with my big brother Jack and close friend Wiley. Most people quit answering their doors at ten but that didn’t keep us from knocking, or turning over their trash cans if no one answered and rewarded us with candy.
The only thing I can remember that was slightly unsavory was that someone gave us weevil bread – cornbread with boll weevils cooked into it. We all decided that we had gotten the weevil bread from the mayor’s house.
I grew up in a different time, not better, just different, but I’ll never forget the feeling I had that I was somehow invisible, and that the darkness was where I was destined to be.
Gondwana
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Nita's Eyes
A few years ago, I took a mineral lease not far from Lake Arcadia, Edmond’s water supply. I wanted to get an oil well drilled at a location about two miles south of Route 66. I became friends with Carroll L, the mineral owner and one day, just before lunch, he showed up at my office.
“Let’s go to lunch,” he said. “I’m buying.”
I had no other plans so we piled into his truck. Instead of taking me to lunch, though, he had other plans. We soon pulled up outside a house in Edmond.
“There’s someone here I want you to meet. Her name is Nita. She’s a seer and I’m going to have her read your cards.”
Nita was apparently expecting us, quickly ushering us to a back room complete with a table and deck of Tarot cards. She smiled and basked in the accolades as Carroll explained all the missing persons she had found for the police.
“I have a talent,” she admitted.
Nita was an attractive Oklahoma woman that in no way looked like a witch doctor or soothsayer, but she had a confident manner about her that caused me to trust her instantly.
Carroll, apparently, was more interested in learning if she thought there was oil and gas under his property than in listening to my fortune. Listen, though, he did because Nita dealt my cards and proceeded to predict my fate. I don’t remember everything she said. One thing I do.
“You ride a motorcycle, don’t you?” she asked. When I admitted that I did and had two motorcycles, a grave expression appeared on her face. Her next statement caused me concern. “You’re going to have a motorcycle accident and you’re going to lose a leg.”
I was still reeling from Nita’s prediction when Carroll changed the subject to his minerals. Nita thinks there’s a wealth of oil and gas beneath my property, don’t you Nita?
There was a moment’s hesitation between Nita’s answer and the look of doubt in her eyes. I knew right away that no matter what her lips professed about how much oil and gas we were going to find, her eyes were telling the truth that she believed.
We never made it to lunch that day, Carroll returning me to my office, confident that he would soon have a wonderful well drilled on his land. After our meeting with Nita the seer, I was not so sure. The meeting unnerved me to the point that I have never again ridden a motorcycle (well, okay, just once maybe.)
Nita’s eyes did not persuade me that there was no oil or gas under Carroll’s property and it took the drilling of two dry holes to convince me otherwise. While I don’t believe that Nita knew anymore about the oil and gas (or lack thereof) beneath Carroll’s property than I did, I’m still not going to run out and buy a new Harley.
Fiction South
“Let’s go to lunch,” he said. “I’m buying.”
I had no other plans so we piled into his truck. Instead of taking me to lunch, though, he had other plans. We soon pulled up outside a house in Edmond.
“There’s someone here I want you to meet. Her name is Nita. She’s a seer and I’m going to have her read your cards.”
Nita was apparently expecting us, quickly ushering us to a back room complete with a table and deck of Tarot cards. She smiled and basked in the accolades as Carroll explained all the missing persons she had found for the police.
“I have a talent,” she admitted.
Nita was an attractive Oklahoma woman that in no way looked like a witch doctor or soothsayer, but she had a confident manner about her that caused me to trust her instantly.
Carroll, apparently, was more interested in learning if she thought there was oil and gas under his property than in listening to my fortune. Listen, though, he did because Nita dealt my cards and proceeded to predict my fate. I don’t remember everything she said. One thing I do.
“You ride a motorcycle, don’t you?” she asked. When I admitted that I did and had two motorcycles, a grave expression appeared on her face. Her next statement caused me concern. “You’re going to have a motorcycle accident and you’re going to lose a leg.”
I was still reeling from Nita’s prediction when Carroll changed the subject to his minerals. Nita thinks there’s a wealth of oil and gas beneath my property, don’t you Nita?
There was a moment’s hesitation between Nita’s answer and the look of doubt in her eyes. I knew right away that no matter what her lips professed about how much oil and gas we were going to find, her eyes were telling the truth that she believed.
We never made it to lunch that day, Carroll returning me to my office, confident that he would soon have a wonderful well drilled on his land. After our meeting with Nita the seer, I was not so sure. The meeting unnerved me to the point that I have never again ridden a motorcycle (well, okay, just once maybe.)
Nita’s eyes did not persuade me that there was no oil or gas under Carroll’s property and it took the drilling of two dry holes to convince me otherwise. While I don’t believe that Nita knew anymore about the oil and gas (or lack thereof) beneath Carroll’s property than I did, I’m still not going to run out and buy a new Harley.
Fiction South
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Monster of the Mist
September saw temperatures reach a hundred degrees here in central Oklahoma but when October arrived, it was if someone had pulled a temperature switch. We have already experienced fifties and even forties, and day after day of drizzly weather. Today was no different.
After work, as I set out on my walk, a misty haze cloaked south Edmond. Walking is good exercise and great stress relief. It must also increase the blood flow to the brain because I always seem to solve my toughest dilemmas, or remember something from my veiled past whenever I walk. Tonight, I remembered something that had occurred many years ago. How I forgot this incident, I will never know because it was one of the most singularly frightening moments of my life.
I was a freshman in college at what is now the University of Louisiana at Monroe. My brother Jack had started there the prior year and convinced me to join an ROTC precision drill team called the Fusileers. I did, enjoying the camaraderie immensely. Toward the end of the first semester, we underwent an initiation called Hell Week.
During Hell Week, we initiates had to go to class everyday in full dress uniform, and then hang around the student union in case a senior Fusileer wanted to make us do push-ups, or recite the memorized, rhyming answer to specific military questions. I can’t remember a single rhyme, but I knew them all by heart during Hell Week.
Hell Week culminated with Hell Night. There is a giant, mostly abandoned gravel quarry on the outskirts of Monroe. During Hell Night, the initiated Fusileers dropped off us uninitiated in the darkness to try to find our way to the entrance. Along the way, the upperclassmen would ambush us with firecrackers, cherry bombs and M-80’s - legal fireworks at the time. The night was dark and hazy and we had no flashlights. During a particularly frenetic ambush, I somehow got separated from the group.
I must have walked a mile without calling out because I didn’t want the upperclassmen to capture me – having heard about the dire consequences the entire week. I soon realized that I was lost and began calling out.
The gravel pit was like the surface of Mars, rugged, rolling and completely barren of vegetation. Hazy rain had soaked my fatigues, my socks and boots wet from running through pooled water. When I stopped to listen for the other Fusileers, I heard something quite different and unexpected. It was the whumph of some large animal, coughing to get the attention of anyone near it. I didn’t know what it was, but it scared me. Not having a good grasp of what direction I was moving toward, I started away from the sound.
There was no moon or stars, only darkness and a persistent mist rising up from the broken gravel beneath my feet. I called out, “help.” No one answered.
I heard the whumph again and realized it was not my imagination. My heart began racing as I also realized that the sound was drawing ever closer. I tried moving faster which resulted in a face-first plunge into a cold pool of water. Another chill ran up my spine as I heard a low growl on the hill directly behind me. Unable to get away, I lifted myself into a sitting position and turned to face whatever was stalking me.
On the rocky hill above me, I could just make out the moving shadow of some dark, four-legged beast. With my heart racing wildly, I prepared for its attack, something that never occurred. Over the hill behind me appeared the old World War II Jeep the head Fusileers used to move about the rock quarry. I could see its lights coming up from behind. When it topped the hill, the lights flashed briefly on the beast at the top of the hill.
All I ever saw was the red demon eyes of some misty apparition. Lights from the Jeep blinded me when I turned around, the beast gone when I glanced away into the darkness.
“Wilder, where the hell have you been?”
“Lost, Sir,” I said.
Major Pfrimmer glanced at his watch. “Damn good thing for you it’s after midnight or I would have had to wash you out. You may be a sorry sack of shit, but you’re a Fusileer now, so get in the damn Jeep.
I crawled into the open vehicle, regaling in the smiles, handshakes and shoulder slaps from my fellow initiates that had also survived Hell Night. Someone passed around a bottle of cheap whiskey and I imbibed forgetting about the monster of the mist with glowing red eyes until forty years had passed, during my walk through a hazy Edmond neighborhood.
Fiction South
After work, as I set out on my walk, a misty haze cloaked south Edmond. Walking is good exercise and great stress relief. It must also increase the blood flow to the brain because I always seem to solve my toughest dilemmas, or remember something from my veiled past whenever I walk. Tonight, I remembered something that had occurred many years ago. How I forgot this incident, I will never know because it was one of the most singularly frightening moments of my life.
I was a freshman in college at what is now the University of Louisiana at Monroe. My brother Jack had started there the prior year and convinced me to join an ROTC precision drill team called the Fusileers. I did, enjoying the camaraderie immensely. Toward the end of the first semester, we underwent an initiation called Hell Week.
During Hell Week, we initiates had to go to class everyday in full dress uniform, and then hang around the student union in case a senior Fusileer wanted to make us do push-ups, or recite the memorized, rhyming answer to specific military questions. I can’t remember a single rhyme, but I knew them all by heart during Hell Week.
Hell Week culminated with Hell Night. There is a giant, mostly abandoned gravel quarry on the outskirts of Monroe. During Hell Night, the initiated Fusileers dropped off us uninitiated in the darkness to try to find our way to the entrance. Along the way, the upperclassmen would ambush us with firecrackers, cherry bombs and M-80’s - legal fireworks at the time. The night was dark and hazy and we had no flashlights. During a particularly frenetic ambush, I somehow got separated from the group.
I must have walked a mile without calling out because I didn’t want the upperclassmen to capture me – having heard about the dire consequences the entire week. I soon realized that I was lost and began calling out.
The gravel pit was like the surface of Mars, rugged, rolling and completely barren of vegetation. Hazy rain had soaked my fatigues, my socks and boots wet from running through pooled water. When I stopped to listen for the other Fusileers, I heard something quite different and unexpected. It was the whumph of some large animal, coughing to get the attention of anyone near it. I didn’t know what it was, but it scared me. Not having a good grasp of what direction I was moving toward, I started away from the sound.
There was no moon or stars, only darkness and a persistent mist rising up from the broken gravel beneath my feet. I called out, “help.” No one answered.
I heard the whumph again and realized it was not my imagination. My heart began racing as I also realized that the sound was drawing ever closer. I tried moving faster which resulted in a face-first plunge into a cold pool of water. Another chill ran up my spine as I heard a low growl on the hill directly behind me. Unable to get away, I lifted myself into a sitting position and turned to face whatever was stalking me.
On the rocky hill above me, I could just make out the moving shadow of some dark, four-legged beast. With my heart racing wildly, I prepared for its attack, something that never occurred. Over the hill behind me appeared the old World War II Jeep the head Fusileers used to move about the rock quarry. I could see its lights coming up from behind. When it topped the hill, the lights flashed briefly on the beast at the top of the hill.
All I ever saw was the red demon eyes of some misty apparition. Lights from the Jeep blinded me when I turned around, the beast gone when I glanced away into the darkness.
“Wilder, where the hell have you been?”
“Lost, Sir,” I said.
Major Pfrimmer glanced at his watch. “Damn good thing for you it’s after midnight or I would have had to wash you out. You may be a sorry sack of shit, but you’re a Fusileer now, so get in the damn Jeep.
I crawled into the open vehicle, regaling in the smiles, handshakes and shoulder slaps from my fellow initiates that had also survived Hell Night. Someone passed around a bottle of cheap whiskey and I imbibed forgetting about the monster of the mist with glowing red eyes until forty years had passed, during my walk through a hazy Edmond neighborhood.
Fiction South
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Life is a Marathon
22 year-old Sammy Wanjiru of Kenya won the Chicago Marathon in 2:05:41, the fastest marathon ever recorded on American soil. I was thinking about the feat as I began my walk tonight. Thousands run the marathon every year. Few have covered the more than twenty-six mile distance in one-hundred-twenty-five minutes forty-one seconds – an average of less than five minutes per mile.
I’m too heavy and too old to jog anymore but I can still walk. As I left my house tonight before six, intent on beating the darkness, I thought about the young Kenyan’s feat. My mind, still as nimble as it was at twenty-two, quickly raced to other subjects. My thoughts transformed from running to writing.
The screenplay I am working on, adapted from my book Big Easy, is forty pages too long. I spent much of the day trying to mend the problem with varied success.
It was spitting rain as I commenced my walk tonight. Temperatures have fallen in central Oklahoma recently and we turned on our heaters yesterday. My mind wasn’t on the rain, or the falling temperatures, but Sammy Wanjiru, and which actor should play Lieutenant Tony Nicosia should my book ever result in a movie.
While I will never run a sub-three-hour marathon, I can still walk, and walking- for all you enthusiasts out there - is a great thought catalyst. During my walk, It dawned on me the best person to play Tony Nicosia is John Travolta.
I finished walking in the spitting rain, dreaming of running a world record marathon, and trying to convince Travolta to star in my movie. Hey, maybe I’m a hopeless dreamer, but sometimes dreams are all we have. I also have a feeling 22-year-old Sammy Wanjiru dreamed of running the fastest marathon ever recorded on American soil long before he ever did it.
Louisiana Mystery Writer
I’m too heavy and too old to jog anymore but I can still walk. As I left my house tonight before six, intent on beating the darkness, I thought about the young Kenyan’s feat. My mind, still as nimble as it was at twenty-two, quickly raced to other subjects. My thoughts transformed from running to writing.
The screenplay I am working on, adapted from my book Big Easy, is forty pages too long. I spent much of the day trying to mend the problem with varied success.
It was spitting rain as I commenced my walk tonight. Temperatures have fallen in central Oklahoma recently and we turned on our heaters yesterday. My mind wasn’t on the rain, or the falling temperatures, but Sammy Wanjiru, and which actor should play Lieutenant Tony Nicosia should my book ever result in a movie.
While I will never run a sub-three-hour marathon, I can still walk, and walking- for all you enthusiasts out there - is a great thought catalyst. During my walk, It dawned on me the best person to play Tony Nicosia is John Travolta.
I finished walking in the spitting rain, dreaming of running a world record marathon, and trying to convince Travolta to star in my movie. Hey, maybe I’m a hopeless dreamer, but sometimes dreams are all we have. I also have a feeling 22-year-old Sammy Wanjiru dreamed of running the fastest marathon ever recorded on American soil long before he ever did it.
Louisiana Mystery Writer
Monday, October 12, 2009
Dream Writing
I recently finished the screenplay adaptation for my novel Big Easy. Even though I removed several subplots, I still ended up with one-hundred-sixty pages - forty pages too many.
I called my business and writing partner, r.r. bryan and asked him what I should do. My friend just finished adapting his novel, All the Angels and Saints, for the movies and he knows much more than I do about the intricacies of screenwriting.
“Just cut every fourth page,” he advised.
He was just joking and after he quit laughing, he promised to look at my script and see if he could find a way to fix it. Humbled, I realized that penning a novel doesn’t qualify you as a screenwriter. It also made me realize why so many movies are so very different from the book that originally spawned the story.
It’s a cold night in central Oklahoma so I think I’ll go to bed early. Maybe the solution to my writing problem will come to me in a dream.
Fiction South
I called my business and writing partner, r.r. bryan and asked him what I should do. My friend just finished adapting his novel, All the Angels and Saints, for the movies and he knows much more than I do about the intricacies of screenwriting.
“Just cut every fourth page,” he advised.
He was just joking and after he quit laughing, he promised to look at my script and see if he could find a way to fix it. Humbled, I realized that penning a novel doesn’t qualify you as a screenwriter. It also made me realize why so many movies are so very different from the book that originally spawned the story.
It’s a cold night in central Oklahoma so I think I’ll go to bed early. Maybe the solution to my writing problem will come to me in a dream.
Fiction South
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Voodoo Crossroads
My book Big Easy appeared in print in 2007 and I recently finished adapting it into a screenplay. The screenplay, like the book, occurs mostly in the French Quarter of post-Katrina New Orleans and deals with murder, lust and the practice of voodoo.
Perhaps the notion of the crossroads is the most powerful concept in the observance of voodoo. Vodoun practitioners believe there are two worlds - the one we inhabitant and the spirit world. These worlds meet at the crossroads, and literally, every voodoo act is an attempt to reach this destination.
To reach the crossroads in Vodoun is the ability to communicate with, and to convince the various spirits and deities to intercede for the living with respect to healing, casting spells, or any other outcome desired by a practicing mambo or houngan.
The practice of voodoo is a dominant element in my murder mystery Big Easy. The murderer practices voodoo, his every action motivated by it. Mama Mulate, a voodoo mambo, uses her considerable powers to fight the murderer’s evil at every juncture.
Both characters are seeking the crossroads, and both, in their own ways, find it, as does Wyatt Thomas, the book’s primary character, and Lieutenant Nicosia, a pivotal personality in the plot that takes a definite twist near its conclusion.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Oysters Louisiana - a weekend recipe
You can’t visit New Orleans without trying the oysters. An early-day chef from France began using them, trying to find a substitute for escargot, an almost impossible commodity to procure in the colony.
New Orleans chefs now prepare them a thousand different ways, from fried to raw. Here is a simple but wonderful recipe from the Acme Oyster House on Iberville. As their name implies, they know oysters. Try this recipe and enjoy.
OYSTERS LOUISIANA
Ingredients:
4 oz. butter - melted
1.5 pints oysters - drained
4 green onions - chopped finely
3 cloves garlic - minced
½ lb. fresh lump crabmeat
½ cup bread crumbs
Salt and pepper to taste
Directions:
Melt butter in a skillet. Add oysters and cook until dry. Add onions and garlic and cook slowly for at least 10 minutes. Fold in crabmeat and crumbs. Simmer 5 minutes more. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Gondwana
New Orleans chefs now prepare them a thousand different ways, from fried to raw. Here is a simple but wonderful recipe from the Acme Oyster House on Iberville. As their name implies, they know oysters. Try this recipe and enjoy.
OYSTERS LOUISIANA
Ingredients:
4 oz. butter - melted
1.5 pints oysters - drained
4 green onions - chopped finely
3 cloves garlic - minced
½ lb. fresh lump crabmeat
½ cup bread crumbs
Salt and pepper to taste
Directions:
Melt butter in a skillet. Add oysters and cook until dry. Add onions and garlic and cook slowly for at least 10 minutes. Fold in crabmeat and crumbs. Simmer 5 minutes more. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Gondwana
Friday, October 9, 2009
Spirits of the Dead
We had a torrential rainstorm in central Oklahoma today. When I left my office to meet friends Terry and Debbie at nearby Louie’s Restaurant, red muddy water was gushing from the vacant lot near the office. The rain and incessant dampness caused me to remember something from my past.
It happened almost forty years ago in the hills of Vietnam, near the Cambodian border. I was a machine-gunner for the 1/8 Cavalry (1st Cav). Deep in the jungle, we came on a deserted Montagnard village situated by a stream.
The North Vietnamese hated the Montagnards because they supported the South Vietnamese regime. They killed every Montagnard that they could and I felt certain that some atrocity had occurred at the deserted village we found on the outskirts of the jungle.
It was monsoon season and it rained every day. It didn’t matter much to us grunts because we wore the same clothes until they became as stiff as cardboard. We didn’t worry about dirty underwear. We didn’t have any underwear, dirty or otherwise – well, except for socks.
Like everyone else, I wore jungle boots. I usually kept them on for fifteen days at a time because I didn’t want to have to run through the jungle barefooted in case we came under fire at night. Snakes and scorpions also had a tendency to crawl in your warm smelly boots when you took them off.
My memory is faulty after forty years, but I remember a few desecrated structures made of brush, and a few campfires in the Montagnard encampment. The ground was bare of grass, which told me that someone had lived there for quite a while before vacating the premises, probably in haste. Something that happened later that night told me that they didn’t all make it.
We luxuriated in the stream, washing away days of mud and grime. That night, it rained so hard that the weight of the downpour almost took down the poncho liners Gary Clark and I shared as shelter from the storm. Water gushed through the tiny village, lifting my air mattress and washing me into the rain.
Falling water awoke me immediately, although I wasn’t fully asleep because you never really achieve deep sleep in a free fire zone. Grabbing my air mattress and other possessions that had floated out into the rain, I quickly poked them back under the poncho liners. It was then that I turned and saw something that I will never forget.
It was the villagers, men women and children. They weren’t real, just spirits of the dead, their lives destroyed by several decades of war. They weren’t alone. Behind them were the ghosts of North Vietnamese regulars, Vietnamese villagers and several dozen American soldiers. I stood there in the pouring rain, watching until the vision flickered and disappeared into the darkness.
Forty years have passed since that night so long ago. Tonight, as torrential rain dropped more than three inches of water on central Oklahoma, I remember the looks on the faces of the dead and realize you don’t have to be a genius to know what they wanted to convey.
Fiction South
It happened almost forty years ago in the hills of Vietnam, near the Cambodian border. I was a machine-gunner for the 1/8 Cavalry (1st Cav). Deep in the jungle, we came on a deserted Montagnard village situated by a stream.
The North Vietnamese hated the Montagnards because they supported the South Vietnamese regime. They killed every Montagnard that they could and I felt certain that some atrocity had occurred at the deserted village we found on the outskirts of the jungle.
It was monsoon season and it rained every day. It didn’t matter much to us grunts because we wore the same clothes until they became as stiff as cardboard. We didn’t worry about dirty underwear. We didn’t have any underwear, dirty or otherwise – well, except for socks.
Like everyone else, I wore jungle boots. I usually kept them on for fifteen days at a time because I didn’t want to have to run through the jungle barefooted in case we came under fire at night. Snakes and scorpions also had a tendency to crawl in your warm smelly boots when you took them off.
My memory is faulty after forty years, but I remember a few desecrated structures made of brush, and a few campfires in the Montagnard encampment. The ground was bare of grass, which told me that someone had lived there for quite a while before vacating the premises, probably in haste. Something that happened later that night told me that they didn’t all make it.
We luxuriated in the stream, washing away days of mud and grime. That night, it rained so hard that the weight of the downpour almost took down the poncho liners Gary Clark and I shared as shelter from the storm. Water gushed through the tiny village, lifting my air mattress and washing me into the rain.
Falling water awoke me immediately, although I wasn’t fully asleep because you never really achieve deep sleep in a free fire zone. Grabbing my air mattress and other possessions that had floated out into the rain, I quickly poked them back under the poncho liners. It was then that I turned and saw something that I will never forget.
It was the villagers, men women and children. They weren’t real, just spirits of the dead, their lives destroyed by several decades of war. They weren’t alone. Behind them were the ghosts of North Vietnamese regulars, Vietnamese villagers and several dozen American soldiers. I stood there in the pouring rain, watching until the vision flickered and disappeared into the darkness.
Forty years have passed since that night so long ago. Tonight, as torrential rain dropped more than three inches of water on central Oklahoma, I remember the looks on the faces of the dead and realize you don’t have to be a genius to know what they wanted to convey.
Fiction South
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Gnomes, Ghosts and Other Spirits
Fall has come early this year, the nights in the fifties. I got home from work early, intent on walking before it got dark. I almost made it.
It rained yesterday and today, the gloom palpable as I left my house and began my walk through the neighborhood. My normal course is about five kilometers in length and I usually complete it in around fifty minutes. Tonight, trying to beat the darkness, I was moving at a faster clip.
The area where I live is hilly and dissected by several creeks. A few weeks ago, near the hollow where the creek nearest my house goes beneath the road, I saw what I believe were two spirits of the once-human variety. They carried a dim light and, at the time, I thought they were boys.
I have had lots of time since seeing the two spirits to reflect on what I saw. The hour that I saw them was near darkness. Perhaps my eyes were playing tricks on my mind. Maybe! I have watched for the two spirits every evening when I walk past the creek but have seen nothing – at least until tonight.
It was dusk when I reached the ghost creek. I was thinking about something else when I glanced up, glimpsing as I did the rapidly fading outline of a dark little gnome. I quickly decided that my eyes were again playing tricks.
Almost three miles into my walk, I was breathing through my mouth. The expelled air turned suddenly white, as if the temperature had suddenly dropped twenty degrees. The drop in temperature and white breath disappeared soon as I crossed the creek.
Did I see a spirit, or maybe a ghost? I don’t know. The front door of my house was open as I walked up the slight incline toward it. Call me crazy, but I think I saw the image of the gnome staring at me through the storm door.
Are there ghosts in Edmond, Oklahoma? There are ghosts everywhere but most don’t believe it, even after seeing one with their own eyes.
Eric'sWeb
It rained yesterday and today, the gloom palpable as I left my house and began my walk through the neighborhood. My normal course is about five kilometers in length and I usually complete it in around fifty minutes. Tonight, trying to beat the darkness, I was moving at a faster clip.
The area where I live is hilly and dissected by several creeks. A few weeks ago, near the hollow where the creek nearest my house goes beneath the road, I saw what I believe were two spirits of the once-human variety. They carried a dim light and, at the time, I thought they were boys.
I have had lots of time since seeing the two spirits to reflect on what I saw. The hour that I saw them was near darkness. Perhaps my eyes were playing tricks on my mind. Maybe! I have watched for the two spirits every evening when I walk past the creek but have seen nothing – at least until tonight.
It was dusk when I reached the ghost creek. I was thinking about something else when I glanced up, glimpsing as I did the rapidly fading outline of a dark little gnome. I quickly decided that my eyes were again playing tricks.
Almost three miles into my walk, I was breathing through my mouth. The expelled air turned suddenly white, as if the temperature had suddenly dropped twenty degrees. The drop in temperature and white breath disappeared soon as I crossed the creek.
Did I see a spirit, or maybe a ghost? I don’t know. The front door of my house was open as I walked up the slight incline toward it. Call me crazy, but I think I saw the image of the gnome staring at me through the storm door.
Are there ghosts in Edmond, Oklahoma? There are ghosts everywhere but most don’t believe it, even after seeing one with their own eyes.
Eric'sWeb
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Stealing From the Dead
As I sat out by the pool tonight, playing with my pugs, I recalled something from my past when I glanced up at the full moon partially covered with pregnant clouds.
I have mentioned many times that Halloween is my favorite holiday. There was little or no crime during my childhood in Vivian, Louisiana and the parents allowed us to stay out until the wee hours on Halloween night. Despite the darkness, I can only recall being frightened on one occasion.
Darkness comes early in late October and it was well after dark when Rod, Wiley and I left my house, intent on collecting lots of candy and treats. Parents didn’t accompany their kids when I was young. They didn’t need to. The three of us had hit every house on our block. We were moving east when we first encountered a church group engaged in a scavenger hunt.
“We have to get a flower from the cemetery,” a girl’s voice dressed as a witch told us in passing.
“Let’s get that piece of obsidian from the graveyard,” Rod said. “You’re not scared, are you?”
“Not me,” Wiley said.
“I ain’t scared,” I said. “But we shouldn’t steal from the graveyard just because it’s Halloween.”
“You’re a wus, Eric. You wait here and Wiley and I will get the obsidian.”
“You ain’t going no place without me,” I said. “We’ll see who the wus is.”
Louisiana is always humid. Halloween night had a rare full moon that year, but rapidly moving clouds covered much of the stars and moon. Vivian is hilly, the town cemetery at the top of the highest hill. The pumpkin moon had just disappeared behind a cloud when we reached the top of the hill and headed for the obsidian grave. When we reached it, we found something unexpected.
There is no obsidian in Louisiana, at least not natural obsidian. Someone had placed a large chunk of the rock at the foot of someone’s grave. As an amateur rock hound, I lusted after it. I had talked about it so much that both Rod and Wiley also coveted it. Stealing it from the dead was another matter. I had the big hunk of obsidian in my hand when I noticed someone kneeling in front of the headstone.
The person looked like a witch and at first I thought it was the girl on the scavenger hunt. When the person stood and faced us, I realized that it wasn’t.
I was close enough that I could smell the dank fabric of the dark clothes the woman wore. When she turned to face me, I thought she was wearing a mask. As I stared at her, I realized that she wasn’t.
Rod and Wiley didn’t hang around; they ran away when they realized the person was not a trick-or-treater. I looked at the ugly old woman, my heart racing, still holding the hunk of obsidian in my hands. When she raised her hands over her head and took a step toward me, I screeched at the top of my lungs and started running. I didn’t stop until I was at the bottom of the hill where I found Rod and Wiley.
“Did you get it?” Rod asked.
“No thanks to either of you.”
I kept the hunk of obsidian for two days, but my conscience wouldn’t let me keep it. I returned it to the cemetery, placing it at the foot of the grave where I had found it. I forgot about the old woman until tonight when a full moon cloaked by pregnant clouds reminded me again.
Louisiana Mystery Writer
I have mentioned many times that Halloween is my favorite holiday. There was little or no crime during my childhood in Vivian, Louisiana and the parents allowed us to stay out until the wee hours on Halloween night. Despite the darkness, I can only recall being frightened on one occasion.
Darkness comes early in late October and it was well after dark when Rod, Wiley and I left my house, intent on collecting lots of candy and treats. Parents didn’t accompany their kids when I was young. They didn’t need to. The three of us had hit every house on our block. We were moving east when we first encountered a church group engaged in a scavenger hunt.
“We have to get a flower from the cemetery,” a girl’s voice dressed as a witch told us in passing.
“Let’s get that piece of obsidian from the graveyard,” Rod said. “You’re not scared, are you?”
“Not me,” Wiley said.
“I ain’t scared,” I said. “But we shouldn’t steal from the graveyard just because it’s Halloween.”
“You’re a wus, Eric. You wait here and Wiley and I will get the obsidian.”
“You ain’t going no place without me,” I said. “We’ll see who the wus is.”
Louisiana is always humid. Halloween night had a rare full moon that year, but rapidly moving clouds covered much of the stars and moon. Vivian is hilly, the town cemetery at the top of the highest hill. The pumpkin moon had just disappeared behind a cloud when we reached the top of the hill and headed for the obsidian grave. When we reached it, we found something unexpected.
There is no obsidian in Louisiana, at least not natural obsidian. Someone had placed a large chunk of the rock at the foot of someone’s grave. As an amateur rock hound, I lusted after it. I had talked about it so much that both Rod and Wiley also coveted it. Stealing it from the dead was another matter. I had the big hunk of obsidian in my hand when I noticed someone kneeling in front of the headstone.
The person looked like a witch and at first I thought it was the girl on the scavenger hunt. When the person stood and faced us, I realized that it wasn’t.
I was close enough that I could smell the dank fabric of the dark clothes the woman wore. When she turned to face me, I thought she was wearing a mask. As I stared at her, I realized that she wasn’t.
Rod and Wiley didn’t hang around; they ran away when they realized the person was not a trick-or-treater. I looked at the ugly old woman, my heart racing, still holding the hunk of obsidian in my hands. When she raised her hands over her head and took a step toward me, I screeched at the top of my lungs and started running. I didn’t stop until I was at the bottom of the hill where I found Rod and Wiley.
“Did you get it?” Rod asked.
“No thanks to either of you.”
I kept the hunk of obsidian for two days, but my conscience wouldn’t let me keep it. I returned it to the cemetery, placing it at the foot of the grave where I had found it. I forgot about the old woman until tonight when a full moon cloaked by pregnant clouds reminded me again.
Louisiana Mystery Writer
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
White Coyotes and Other Ghostly Specters
Barely October, central Oklahoma’s weather has already turned chilly and misty – perfect Halloween weather. As a Halloween baby – well, almost, I was born on the 30th – I love this time of year. As a writer, I feel like penning a few ghost stories. No time for a full-blown short story, but I will tell you my inspiration for one when I get around to writing it.
Marilyn and I live on the southeast edge of Edmond, America. Unlike much of Oklahoma, Edmond is hilly and has many large trees. Creeks dissect the hills and many wild animals populate these creeks. The other night, I saw a particular animal outside my front door that you wouldn’t believe, even if I had managed to grab my trust camera and snap a picture before it ran away.
I feed my cats in the front yard and they don’t always finish their food. I know, I know - I can already sense my email heating up with veterinarians and other animal professionals telling me what an idiot that I am. Yes, I know about rabies but I love seeing these wild creatures up close. Last night I saw a wild creature that I didn’t expect.
It was a coyote, yes a coyote and not a fox or a dog. My cat Fang didn’t seem to notice, or to care, as the coyote ate cat food from his dish. Maybe he didn’t notice because the coyote was solid white. The animal either didn’t know that I was observing it through my storm door, or else didn’t care.
Not twenty feet away, I watched as the beast finished the cat food in the bowl, glanced around to see if anyone was near, and then disappeared into the darkness.
Was it a ghost coyote? I don’t think so. I saw it and so did my dogs in their nearby fenced area. They never stopped barking. Still, the coyote was ghostly white.
Barely October, our weather is already chilly and misty, and I am wondering what other specters of the night I will see before Halloween. I can hardly wait.
Gondwana
Marilyn and I live on the southeast edge of Edmond, America. Unlike much of Oklahoma, Edmond is hilly and has many large trees. Creeks dissect the hills and many wild animals populate these creeks. The other night, I saw a particular animal outside my front door that you wouldn’t believe, even if I had managed to grab my trust camera and snap a picture before it ran away.
I feed my cats in the front yard and they don’t always finish their food. I know, I know - I can already sense my email heating up with veterinarians and other animal professionals telling me what an idiot that I am. Yes, I know about rabies but I love seeing these wild creatures up close. Last night I saw a wild creature that I didn’t expect.
It was a coyote, yes a coyote and not a fox or a dog. My cat Fang didn’t seem to notice, or to care, as the coyote ate cat food from his dish. Maybe he didn’t notice because the coyote was solid white. The animal either didn’t know that I was observing it through my storm door, or else didn’t care.
Not twenty feet away, I watched as the beast finished the cat food in the bowl, glanced around to see if anyone was near, and then disappeared into the darkness.
Was it a ghost coyote? I don’t think so. I saw it and so did my dogs in their nearby fenced area. They never stopped barking. Still, the coyote was ghostly white.
Barely October, our weather is already chilly and misty, and I am wondering what other specters of the night I will see before Halloween. I can hardly wait.
Gondwana
Monday, October 5, 2009
Shave and a Haircut
There were two barbershops in Vivian when I was growing up. My friend Rod lived up the street and his dad Coy owned one of them. When I was old enough to start getting my hair cut by myself, I began frequenting Rod’s dad. Before then, I always went with my Dad and his instructions to the barbers were always to cut my hair short – I mean very short.
I had a hybrid crew cut – flattop until I went away to college. It wasn’t even much of a flattop, more of a cowlick just above my forehead. I usually left the barbershop with only about a quarter-inch of hair on the top, hair pointing skyward with the help of a liberal dose of butch wax that was sticky and smelled bad.
College separated me from Dad and I was able to let my hair grow for the first time in my life. For me it was a liberating experience. When I met Anne, she introduced me to Tony, her stylist and one of the best hair cutters in the world. He kept my hair in top shape for years.
Last year, the oil business became so hectic that I had little time to make an appointment for a haircut two weeks in advance so I began dropping in to the local barbershop instead. I went today and the look and feel of the old shop sent waves of nostalgia coursing through my memory.
There were four barber chairs in the place - all antiques - seated firmly amid the floor’s black and white tile. The barber buzzed my hair with his clippers, and then shaved me with a straight razor lubricated by hot foam. He finished by slicking my hair back with a glob of sticky pomade.
My Dad is in a rest home now and they have a professional stylist on staff. Last time I visited, his hair looked like that of a pampered movie star preparing for a possible Oscar-winning role.
My Dad now has a well coiffed head of hair, not a strand out of place. Meanwhile, I’m trying to wash the goop out of my own hair as I wonder what I look like. I guess we’ve come full circle.
Louisiana Mystery Writer
I had a hybrid crew cut – flattop until I went away to college. It wasn’t even much of a flattop, more of a cowlick just above my forehead. I usually left the barbershop with only about a quarter-inch of hair on the top, hair pointing skyward with the help of a liberal dose of butch wax that was sticky and smelled bad.
College separated me from Dad and I was able to let my hair grow for the first time in my life. For me it was a liberating experience. When I met Anne, she introduced me to Tony, her stylist and one of the best hair cutters in the world. He kept my hair in top shape for years.
Last year, the oil business became so hectic that I had little time to make an appointment for a haircut two weeks in advance so I began dropping in to the local barbershop instead. I went today and the look and feel of the old shop sent waves of nostalgia coursing through my memory.
There were four barber chairs in the place - all antiques - seated firmly amid the floor’s black and white tile. The barber buzzed my hair with his clippers, and then shaved me with a straight razor lubricated by hot foam. He finished by slicking my hair back with a glob of sticky pomade.
My Dad is in a rest home now and they have a professional stylist on staff. Last time I visited, his hair looked like that of a pampered movie star preparing for a possible Oscar-winning role.
My Dad now has a well coiffed head of hair, not a strand out of place. Meanwhile, I’m trying to wash the goop out of my own hair as I wonder what I look like. I guess we’ve come full circle.
Louisiana Mystery Writer
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Karmic Highway
I never believed my wife Anne would lose her battle with cancer but she must have had an inkling. “Cremate me and spread my ashes on that beach I liked so much on Cape Cod.” Five or so months after she died, I flew to Boston to do just that.
My Cousin Angela and her then husband Bob accompanied me to Cape Cod. They had a vacation cottage on John’s Pond and we spent the night there, spreading her ashes the following day. Bob had to return to Boston but Angela and I stayed at the cottage.
“There’s a very good movie playing at the theatre. It’s gotten great reviews and I think we should see it. It will take our minds off everything.”
I wasn’t up for a movie but I decided to go anyway because I really wasn’t up for anything. The movie was Smoke Signals and those of you that saw the movie will probably know where I’m going with this story.
The movie received many accolades and was the first film ever created totally by Native Americans. Two young men live on a reservation in Idaho. The drunken, abusive father of one of the men has just died in Phoenix, Arizona and the two heroes set out to return his ashes and belongings to the Rez. Both men are conflicted by their relationships with the older man and the trip becomes a journey of self-discovery.
I won’t ruin the movie for everyone because it is worth seeing. The final scene was unexpected and traumatic for me. The two young men stopped at a river the father always admired. Standing on the rustic bridge, they dumped his ashes into the water. I cannot begin to tell you how the scene affected me.
One of the stages of grief is denial and yes, my mind had latched on firmly to that particular stage and was refusing to let go. As the father’s ashes wafted off the bridge and into the rapidly moving water, the sledgehammer of realization crashed unexpectedly into the back of my head. I began to sob like a baby and I couldn’t shut up, even though every person in the darkened theatre turned to see what fool was causing such an embarrassing scene.
I’m positive that my poor cousin Angela had no idea what was about to occur. Even though the mother of two, she had no frame of reference to deal with the blubbering man beside her. She patted my hand but I know she’d have rather taken a quick trip to the ladies room.
I finally got a grip, just as the credits began scrolling across the screen. Grabbing Angela’s wrist, I said, “I’m not leaving here until everyone is gone.” We finally hurried out of the theatre, my face red with both tears and embarrassment.
Even today, I can’t explain the coincidence of having spread Anne’s ashes the same day I saw the movie Smoke Signals, but I know that it jolted me out of denial and into yet another stage of grief. When tragedy hits you upside the head it often leaves you dazed and mired for months in a muddy ditch beside your life’s path.
Like me, you’ll remain there until something quite unexpected happens – like seeing Smoke Signals - and propels you, once again, down life’s karmic highway.
Fiction South
My Cousin Angela and her then husband Bob accompanied me to Cape Cod. They had a vacation cottage on John’s Pond and we spent the night there, spreading her ashes the following day. Bob had to return to Boston but Angela and I stayed at the cottage.
“There’s a very good movie playing at the theatre. It’s gotten great reviews and I think we should see it. It will take our minds off everything.”
I wasn’t up for a movie but I decided to go anyway because I really wasn’t up for anything. The movie was Smoke Signals and those of you that saw the movie will probably know where I’m going with this story.
The movie received many accolades and was the first film ever created totally by Native Americans. Two young men live on a reservation in Idaho. The drunken, abusive father of one of the men has just died in Phoenix, Arizona and the two heroes set out to return his ashes and belongings to the Rez. Both men are conflicted by their relationships with the older man and the trip becomes a journey of self-discovery.
I won’t ruin the movie for everyone because it is worth seeing. The final scene was unexpected and traumatic for me. The two young men stopped at a river the father always admired. Standing on the rustic bridge, they dumped his ashes into the water. I cannot begin to tell you how the scene affected me.
One of the stages of grief is denial and yes, my mind had latched on firmly to that particular stage and was refusing to let go. As the father’s ashes wafted off the bridge and into the rapidly moving water, the sledgehammer of realization crashed unexpectedly into the back of my head. I began to sob like a baby and I couldn’t shut up, even though every person in the darkened theatre turned to see what fool was causing such an embarrassing scene.
I’m positive that my poor cousin Angela had no idea what was about to occur. Even though the mother of two, she had no frame of reference to deal with the blubbering man beside her. She patted my hand but I know she’d have rather taken a quick trip to the ladies room.
I finally got a grip, just as the credits began scrolling across the screen. Grabbing Angela’s wrist, I said, “I’m not leaving here until everyone is gone.” We finally hurried out of the theatre, my face red with both tears and embarrassment.
Even today, I can’t explain the coincidence of having spread Anne’s ashes the same day I saw the movie Smoke Signals, but I know that it jolted me out of denial and into yet another stage of grief. When tragedy hits you upside the head it often leaves you dazed and mired for months in a muddy ditch beside your life’s path.
Like me, you’ll remain there until something quite unexpected happens – like seeing Smoke Signals - and propels you, once again, down life’s karmic highway.
Fiction South
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Creole Crawfish and Tasso Chowder - a weekend recipe
Located a half block from Bourbon Street, the Bombay Club features spirits, music and nouveau Creole cooking. Here is an original recipe from their website. Try it and enjoy.
Creole Crawfish and Tasso Chowder
Ingredients:
½ c. Salad oil
½ lb. Bacon, diced
1 cup Tasso, finely diced
1 Large Onion, diced
3 Celery stalks, diced
1 large carrot, diced
1 ea. Red and Green Peppers, diced
2 ears Corn, remove kernels from ears
1 Tbs. Tarragon, Thyme, Kosher Salt
1 ½ Tbs. Garlic, minced
2 tsp. Fresh cracked black pepper
1 ea. Bay leaves, 1 pinch Cayenne pepper
½ c. White wine
¼ c. Worcestershire sauce, 2 dashes Tabasco
1/2 gal. Shrimp stock or broth
1 c. Blonde roux
1 qt. Heavy cream
4 c. Crawfish tails, pre-cooked
3 ea. Russet potatoes, cubed and par-boiled
Directions:
Heat oil in a medium stock pot, add bacon, sauté 3 to 5 minutes or until bacon is slightly crispy. Add Tasso, onions, celery, carrots and peppers, sauté for 5 to 7 minutes. Add corn, garlic, herbs, and spices, sauté another 2 to 3 minutes. Deglaze with white wine, Worcestershire, and Tabasco, simmer for 2-3 minutes. Add shrimp stock, bring to a boil then whisk in roux, stirring well, so no lumps form. Turn down heat and simmer for 5 minutes, add heavy cream, crawfish, and strained potatoes. Simmer for 5 to 10 minutes.
Season to taste.
Louisiana Mystery Writer
Creole Crawfish and Tasso Chowder
Ingredients:
½ c. Salad oil
½ lb. Bacon, diced
1 cup Tasso, finely diced
1 Large Onion, diced
3 Celery stalks, diced
1 large carrot, diced
1 ea. Red and Green Peppers, diced
2 ears Corn, remove kernels from ears
1 Tbs. Tarragon, Thyme, Kosher Salt
1 ½ Tbs. Garlic, minced
2 tsp. Fresh cracked black pepper
1 ea. Bay leaves, 1 pinch Cayenne pepper
½ c. White wine
¼ c. Worcestershire sauce, 2 dashes Tabasco
1/2 gal. Shrimp stock or broth
1 c. Blonde roux
1 qt. Heavy cream
4 c. Crawfish tails, pre-cooked
3 ea. Russet potatoes, cubed and par-boiled
Directions:
Heat oil in a medium stock pot, add bacon, sauté 3 to 5 minutes or until bacon is slightly crispy. Add Tasso, onions, celery, carrots and peppers, sauté for 5 to 7 minutes. Add corn, garlic, herbs, and spices, sauté another 2 to 3 minutes. Deglaze with white wine, Worcestershire, and Tabasco, simmer for 2-3 minutes. Add shrimp stock, bring to a boil then whisk in roux, stirring well, so no lumps form. Turn down heat and simmer for 5 minutes, add heavy cream, crawfish, and strained potatoes. Simmer for 5 to 10 minutes.
Season to taste.
Louisiana Mystery Writer
Friday, October 2, 2009
Pinball Geologist
I never had much money when I was pursuing my undergraduate degree. You didn’t really need a lot because the cost of an advanced education in the 60s was far less than it is today. As I remember, tuition, room and board at what was then Northeast Louisiana State College was only seventy-four dollars a month.
We had a wonderful student center complete with snack bar, pool tables and pinball machines. I was never very good at pool but I was a wizard when it came to pinball. The games in those days were mechanical (as opposed to digital - either not invented yet or else too expensive for common use) and cost only a nickel to play (five games for a quarter).
Every college student had an angle and when it came to pinball, the angle was this: a skilled and lucky player might win a hundred games. Four players could play at a time so he would charge his three challengers a total of fifteen cents to punch off four games. If one of the players also won games then he (mostly always a he) would split the take until all the games were played. A skilled pinball player could support his pinball habit while making a few extra spending bucks every day. Yes, pinball was an addiction.
I was a great pinball player but a horrible businessperson and even worse con man (you had to be a little of both to really make money at pinball). I usually ended up sharing my free games with buddies, and my brother Jack who was a needy (and I use the word kindly) pinball player.
During the last oil boom, I was lucky enough to own a couple of analog pinball machines, including Aztec, possibly the greatest pinball machine ever created. Like the oil bust my machines went the way of my money – gone and might as well forgotten. Oh well! It was fun while it lasted.
I somehow managed to graduate from Northeast after four or so years but to this day, I know more about pinball than geology (my college major). What a career move! They don’t even have analog pinball machines now and any self-respecting ten-year-old (male or female) can whip my butt on Wii. Let ‘em try it on Aztec though and I’ll teach the young pups a lesson they’ll never forget.
Fiction South
We had a wonderful student center complete with snack bar, pool tables and pinball machines. I was never very good at pool but I was a wizard when it came to pinball. The games in those days were mechanical (as opposed to digital - either not invented yet or else too expensive for common use) and cost only a nickel to play (five games for a quarter).
Every college student had an angle and when it came to pinball, the angle was this: a skilled and lucky player might win a hundred games. Four players could play at a time so he would charge his three challengers a total of fifteen cents to punch off four games. If one of the players also won games then he (mostly always a he) would split the take until all the games were played. A skilled pinball player could support his pinball habit while making a few extra spending bucks every day. Yes, pinball was an addiction.
I was a great pinball player but a horrible businessperson and even worse con man (you had to be a little of both to really make money at pinball). I usually ended up sharing my free games with buddies, and my brother Jack who was a needy (and I use the word kindly) pinball player.
During the last oil boom, I was lucky enough to own a couple of analog pinball machines, including Aztec, possibly the greatest pinball machine ever created. Like the oil bust my machines went the way of my money – gone and might as well forgotten. Oh well! It was fun while it lasted.
I somehow managed to graduate from Northeast after four or so years but to this day, I know more about pinball than geology (my college major). What a career move! They don’t even have analog pinball machines now and any self-respecting ten-year-old (male or female) can whip my butt on Wii. Let ‘em try it on Aztec though and I’ll teach the young pups a lesson they’ll never forget.
Fiction South
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Old Friends and Ex-Wives
While digging through a box in my garage I found an old photo of ex-wife Gail and myself. With us were three of my four best early friends. I took the picture, using the camera’s timer function, at the Vivian bowling alley, a business defunct for thirty years. A wave of memories swept over me as I gazed at the faded photo causing me to ponder all my friends, ex-wives and ex-lovers.
Gail is long gone; I haven’t seen her in years, but I still stay in touch – although infrequently – with Tim, Rod and Wiley. Although married three times (a fact I would have never dreamed) Gail is my only ex. Anne and I were married twenty years when she died. Marilyn and I are still married. While I only have one ex-wife, I have a slew of ex-lovers. About the only difference is a signed marriage license.
An ex-lover is not simply someone you once had sex with. During the pre-AIDS era one-night stands were commonplace and I had my share of nameless and faceless encounters. An ex-lover is someone you were close to for months, or maybe even years, and someone you remember vividly. I can count my ex-lovers on one hand.
No matter how memorable they were, all my ex-lovers and ex-wives are long gone. It’s different with my friends. As I look at the old photo I realize all my friends - while they may be far away - are all still around.
Gondwana
Gail is long gone; I haven’t seen her in years, but I still stay in touch – although infrequently – with Tim, Rod and Wiley. Although married three times (a fact I would have never dreamed) Gail is my only ex. Anne and I were married twenty years when she died. Marilyn and I are still married. While I only have one ex-wife, I have a slew of ex-lovers. About the only difference is a signed marriage license.
An ex-lover is not simply someone you once had sex with. During the pre-AIDS era one-night stands were commonplace and I had my share of nameless and faceless encounters. An ex-lover is someone you were close to for months, or maybe even years, and someone you remember vividly. I can count my ex-lovers on one hand.
No matter how memorable they were, all my ex-lovers and ex-wives are long gone. It’s different with my friends. As I look at the old photo I realize all my friends - while they may be far away - are all still around.
Gondwana
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