The recent weather in central Oklahoma has been gorgeous and unseasonably cool. Dad and I enjoyed the wonderful weather this past Sunday on the inside patio of the Lakeside Restaurant that abuts scenic Lake Hefner. I was happy we went there, for more than one reason.
My Dad is ninety. Two Mondays ago, my brother Jack and I had to take him to the emergency room because he had fallen during the night. He had a big knot on his forehead and a cut on his nose that required three stitches.
Visiting him later, I noticed he was wearing a pair of shoes with the laces removed. He couldn’t get on his size eight shoes on to his swollen feet so I bought him a new pair, size eleven and a half.
“I’ll have the nurse look at his feet,” the friendly attendant told me.
Brother Jack called the next day. He’d had a lengthy phone conversation with Dad’s geriatric doctor and the prognosis sounded dire.
“He thinks he has congestive heart failure. We may have to hospitalize him. They can keep him alive with drugs but his quality of life will be almost nothing. We’ll have to decide if we want to keep giving him the drugs. We have an appointment at eleven thirty tomorrow.”
Following my conversation with Jack, I felt a horse had kicked me in the head. The doctor’s visit turned out well. Dad’s heart is strong, as are all his vital signs. Doctor K prescribed compression hose for his swelling and told us to check back in six months.
At the Lakeside Sunday, I was happy that my Dad is a healthy ninety-year old. I was also happy because the mild weather had brought out more pretty females than I could shake a stick at. I don’t know if Dad noticed, but I did.
Fiction South
Monday, August 31, 2009
The Same Mistake Twice
Many types of people, both male and female, populate the domestic oil industry but none of them saints. During my tenure in the business, I have met many of its denizens but the most colorful of all was a person named Harold - not his real name.
Harold, an OJT geophysicist that had found a billion (I'm not exaggerating!) barrel oil field in Nigeria for Mobil Oil. He was quite seriously, one of smartest persons I have ever met. Unfortunately, he had a larcenous side.
Anne and I had a company in bankruptcy when Harold showed up on our doorstep, his own oil Company and sixteen-hundred acre Texas ranch in foreclosure. He parked his old Mercury (the only vehicle he had left) in our driveway and proceeded to move into our spare bedroom where he stayed for about two months.
During the time that he lived with us, Harold drank every drop of liquor in the house, became engaged to a woman he somehow met in the interim, and talked to our creditor's committee, telling them we were incompetent and needed replacing as debtors-in-possession. When I heard what he had done, I hung him out the second story window by his heel, threatening to let go.
"I don't really care how you treat people that you don't know, but Anne and I are your friends. You shouldn't treat us like marks."
My actions must have had an effect because Harold never again treated me, or Anne, like a mark. He did talk the owner of an OKC mud company into starting an oil company and hiring him as president. The long-time mud company owner died a pauper after Harold had sucked off every penny he had.
Anyway, I got to thinking about Harold after my story about the Carousel Lounge in Shreveport. Harold, Anne and I had an adventure at the Carousel Lounge in New Orleans, at the Monteleone Hotel - an adventure instigated by Harold. Never drink at a rotating bar, is a rule that I had lived by for years, only to violate it some twenty years later.
Louisiana Mystery Writer
Harold, an OJT geophysicist that had found a billion (I'm not exaggerating!) barrel oil field in Nigeria for Mobil Oil. He was quite seriously, one of smartest persons I have ever met. Unfortunately, he had a larcenous side.
Anne and I had a company in bankruptcy when Harold showed up on our doorstep, his own oil Company and sixteen-hundred acre Texas ranch in foreclosure. He parked his old Mercury (the only vehicle he had left) in our driveway and proceeded to move into our spare bedroom where he stayed for about two months.
During the time that he lived with us, Harold drank every drop of liquor in the house, became engaged to a woman he somehow met in the interim, and talked to our creditor's committee, telling them we were incompetent and needed replacing as debtors-in-possession. When I heard what he had done, I hung him out the second story window by his heel, threatening to let go.
"I don't really care how you treat people that you don't know, but Anne and I are your friends. You shouldn't treat us like marks."
My actions must have had an effect because Harold never again treated me, or Anne, like a mark. He did talk the owner of an OKC mud company into starting an oil company and hiring him as president. The long-time mud company owner died a pauper after Harold had sucked off every penny he had.
Anyway, I got to thinking about Harold after my story about the Carousel Lounge in Shreveport. Harold, Anne and I had an adventure at the Carousel Lounge in New Orleans, at the Monteleone Hotel - an adventure instigated by Harold. Never drink at a rotating bar, is a rule that I had lived by for years, only to violate it some twenty years later.
Louisiana Mystery Writer
Sunday, August 30, 2009
A Big Black Dog Named Chuck
Several years ago when my stepdaughter Shannon was living with Marilyn and me, she brought home a big black Rottweiler. She is a sucker for animals and according to Marilyn, was always bringing home a stray dog or cat, or bird with a broken wing when she was young.
The dog’s name was Chuckie. He was big and black with white and tan markings. He was around ten years old and had belonged to an old woman that was going to a nursing home. There was no one else to take the dog and if Shannon hadn’t come along the only other option was the pound. Shannon moved to other digs shortly after bringing Chuckie home. Even though she dropped by regularly to take care of him, much of the feeding fell upon Marilyn and me.
Chuckie was old but he was an imposing animal, weighing in at well over one hundred pounds. We have a large pen on the north side of our property and Chuckie took to it right away. I was a little afraid of him and we got off on the wrong foot. The first week that he was here, I went into his pen to fill his water bucket with the hose. It was after dark and I’d had a few toddies. After filling his bucket, I turned to leave the pen only to find my way blocked by the big dog, his teeth barred as he emitted a low-throated growl.
I thought that I was a goner but walked slowly toward him and said, “No Chuck, you sit,” as sternly as I could muster.
Chuck didn’t sit but he did stop growling and let me move past him without tearing my arm off. I learned the next day that Rottweilers are territorial, and that before the old woman adopted him, Chuckie had lived with a man that often beat him when he got drunk.
“He doesn’t like men,” Shannon told me the next day as she arranged his food bowl and water bucket closer to the fence so that I didn’t have to go into his pen.
“Thanks for telling me,” I said.
From that point, I was determined to make friends with the giant dog. Every morning when I went for my morning paper, I would stop by his pen and give him treats. Every day when I got home from work, I would take him treats. Soon, he would jump up on the fence and let me rub his ears
The first time it rained after he moved in with us, I looked out the window and saw him standing in his pen, getting soaked. Considering the time that I had spent in the rain, in the boonies of Vietnam, I decided that he needed shelter – the sooner the better. I had a six-foot length of wooden fence in the yard so I lifted it over the fence and made a quick and dirty lean-to. I covered the structure with black plastic sheeting to shield it from the rain. Within minutes, Chuckie got under the lean-to as if he had lived there all his life.
When Shannon visited, she would let him out of the pen and allow him to run around in the back yard. During these times, I improved Chuckie’s lean-to by adding cedar chips. Before winter arrived, I got him a big doghouse and he loved it.
Soon, I was comfortable enough with the big dog to let him out of his pen even when Shannon wasn’t there, and I was happy to learn that he was just a big overgrown puppy. When I sat by the pool, he would rest his large head on my knees and let me rub his ears. He also liked to swim in the pool.
Shannon often took him with her during the day. He loved riding in the back of her truck, hiking with her and swimming in the nearby lake. Chuckie had found a home but that is not the end of his story.
Chuck had lived with us a couple of years when we noticed that he had a tumor on his belly. We watched it for a while and could tell that it was growing. Shannon’s vet finally told her he needed to remove it. He did and Chuckie was in horrible pain for what seemed like hours. He wouldn’t lie down because of the pain in his belly, despite the efforts of Shannon and Marilyn to soothe him. Finally the pain killers kicked in and he fell into an exhausted sleep.
The operation worked, at least for a while. Chuckie was more energetic and responsive during this time and I have little doubt that it was the best days of his life. The tumor stayed gone for around two years before recurring. This time it was much worse, Chuckie had grown quite old for a Rottweiler and suffered from hip problems (a common genetic trait of Rottweilers).
Chuckie’s health soon began degenerating at a rapid pace and it was obvious that he was in constant pain. One day, Shannon took him for his last ride in the back of her truck to their favorite hiking trail by the lake. The old dog could barely walk but it enjoyed lying in the shallow water one last time. Finally, she took him to the vet, gave him one last ear scratch and had him put to sleep.
My big Lab Lucky is also getting old, now eleven. He lives in a large pen (quarter acre) on our property with Velvet and Patch. Marilyn and I were considering putting him in Chuckie’s old pen so we had it cleaned out last week and reseeded with grass. Yesterday, I strolled through the enclosure with my Pug Princess.
The pen is large – twenty by thirty feet, at least. Several large trees provide plenty of shade, although there is enough sun to lie beneath on a chilly day. One side faces the road and honeysuckle vines cover the chain link fence. What I found at the end of the pen was a very healthy clematis plant with eight purple blossoms growing amid the honeysuckle. The essence of their beauty reminded me what a wonderful dog that Chuckie was and what a pleasure he was.
The big black dog was an abused castoff, neglected most of his life. He was intelligent, had a wonderful personality and had probably dreamed doggie dreams of having a real friend someday. I am so thankful for Shannon and her soft streak. Because of her, he got his wish.
Even though Chuck and I got off to a rocky start, I came to love that big black scary-looking dog, and I miss him now.
Louisiana Mystery Writer
The dog’s name was Chuckie. He was big and black with white and tan markings. He was around ten years old and had belonged to an old woman that was going to a nursing home. There was no one else to take the dog and if Shannon hadn’t come along the only other option was the pound. Shannon moved to other digs shortly after bringing Chuckie home. Even though she dropped by regularly to take care of him, much of the feeding fell upon Marilyn and me.
Chuckie was old but he was an imposing animal, weighing in at well over one hundred pounds. We have a large pen on the north side of our property and Chuckie took to it right away. I was a little afraid of him and we got off on the wrong foot. The first week that he was here, I went into his pen to fill his water bucket with the hose. It was after dark and I’d had a few toddies. After filling his bucket, I turned to leave the pen only to find my way blocked by the big dog, his teeth barred as he emitted a low-throated growl.
I thought that I was a goner but walked slowly toward him and said, “No Chuck, you sit,” as sternly as I could muster.
Chuck didn’t sit but he did stop growling and let me move past him without tearing my arm off. I learned the next day that Rottweilers are territorial, and that before the old woman adopted him, Chuckie had lived with a man that often beat him when he got drunk.
“He doesn’t like men,” Shannon told me the next day as she arranged his food bowl and water bucket closer to the fence so that I didn’t have to go into his pen.
“Thanks for telling me,” I said.
From that point, I was determined to make friends with the giant dog. Every morning when I went for my morning paper, I would stop by his pen and give him treats. Every day when I got home from work, I would take him treats. Soon, he would jump up on the fence and let me rub his ears
The first time it rained after he moved in with us, I looked out the window and saw him standing in his pen, getting soaked. Considering the time that I had spent in the rain, in the boonies of Vietnam, I decided that he needed shelter – the sooner the better. I had a six-foot length of wooden fence in the yard so I lifted it over the fence and made a quick and dirty lean-to. I covered the structure with black plastic sheeting to shield it from the rain. Within minutes, Chuckie got under the lean-to as if he had lived there all his life.
When Shannon visited, she would let him out of the pen and allow him to run around in the back yard. During these times, I improved Chuckie’s lean-to by adding cedar chips. Before winter arrived, I got him a big doghouse and he loved it.
Soon, I was comfortable enough with the big dog to let him out of his pen even when Shannon wasn’t there, and I was happy to learn that he was just a big overgrown puppy. When I sat by the pool, he would rest his large head on my knees and let me rub his ears. He also liked to swim in the pool.
Shannon often took him with her during the day. He loved riding in the back of her truck, hiking with her and swimming in the nearby lake. Chuckie had found a home but that is not the end of his story.
Chuck had lived with us a couple of years when we noticed that he had a tumor on his belly. We watched it for a while and could tell that it was growing. Shannon’s vet finally told her he needed to remove it. He did and Chuckie was in horrible pain for what seemed like hours. He wouldn’t lie down because of the pain in his belly, despite the efforts of Shannon and Marilyn to soothe him. Finally the pain killers kicked in and he fell into an exhausted sleep.
The operation worked, at least for a while. Chuckie was more energetic and responsive during this time and I have little doubt that it was the best days of his life. The tumor stayed gone for around two years before recurring. This time it was much worse, Chuckie had grown quite old for a Rottweiler and suffered from hip problems (a common genetic trait of Rottweilers).
Chuckie’s health soon began degenerating at a rapid pace and it was obvious that he was in constant pain. One day, Shannon took him for his last ride in the back of her truck to their favorite hiking trail by the lake. The old dog could barely walk but it enjoyed lying in the shallow water one last time. Finally, she took him to the vet, gave him one last ear scratch and had him put to sleep.
My big Lab Lucky is also getting old, now eleven. He lives in a large pen (quarter acre) on our property with Velvet and Patch. Marilyn and I were considering putting him in Chuckie’s old pen so we had it cleaned out last week and reseeded with grass. Yesterday, I strolled through the enclosure with my Pug Princess.
The pen is large – twenty by thirty feet, at least. Several large trees provide plenty of shade, although there is enough sun to lie beneath on a chilly day. One side faces the road and honeysuckle vines cover the chain link fence. What I found at the end of the pen was a very healthy clematis plant with eight purple blossoms growing amid the honeysuckle. The essence of their beauty reminded me what a wonderful dog that Chuckie was and what a pleasure he was.
The big black dog was an abused castoff, neglected most of his life. He was intelligent, had a wonderful personality and had probably dreamed doggie dreams of having a real friend someday. I am so thankful for Shannon and her soft streak. Because of her, he got his wish.
Even though Chuck and I got off to a rocky start, I came to love that big black scary-looking dog, and I miss him now.
Louisiana Mystery Writer
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Mr. B's Gumbo YaYa - a weekend recipe
My second wife Anne and I ate at Mr. B’s on Royal Street for the first time shortly after its opening in 1979. The B in Mr. B’s stands for Brennan, a name synonymous with fine dining. I love the restaurant and I featured it in a scene in my novel A Gathering of Diamonds. Here is a recipe for their version of gumbo (oh yes, it is very good!) from their website.
Mr. B’s Gumbo Ya Ya
Making a roux is tricky business. Some pointers to keep in mind: cook your roux over moderately low heat because too high heat will cause the roux to speckle and if that happens you’ll have to throw it away and start over; add the flour gradually to the butter or oil; you must stir the roux constantly with a wooden spoon, your arm will get a workout; and never, but never leave your roux unattended.
This recipe makes a lot of gumbo, 6 quarts, so you’ll have enough for a big party or you can freeze some for later.
1 lb. (4 sticks) unsalted butter
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 red bell peppers, in medium dice
2 green bell peppers, in medium dice
2 medium onions, in medium dice
2 celery stalks, in medium dice
1 1/4 gallon (20 cups) chicken stock
2 tablespoons Creole seasoning
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon dried hot red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
2 bay leaves
2 tablespoons kosher salt
1 lb. andouille sausage, cut into 1/4 inch-thick slices
3 1/2 lb. chicken, roasted and boned
hot sauce to taste
boiled rice as accompaniment
In a 12-quart stockpot, melt butter over moderately low heat. Gradually add a third of the flour, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, and cook, stirring constantly, 30 seconds. Add a third more flour and stir constantly 30 seconds. Add remaining third of flour and stir constantly 30 seconds. Continue to cook roux, stirring constantly, until it is the color of dark mahogany, about 45 minutes to 1 hour.
Add bell peppers and stir constantly 30 seconds. Add onions and celery and stir constantly 30 seconds. Add the stock to roux, stirring constantly to prevent lumps. Add all remaining ingredients except chicken, rice, and hot sauce and bring to a boil. Simmer gumbo, uncovered, 45 minutes, skimming off any fat and stirring occasionally. Add chicken and simmer 15 minutes. Adjust seasoning with hot sauce. Serve over rice.
Yield: about 6 quarts
CREOLE SEASONING
1 1/2 cups paprika
3/4 cup ground black pepper
1/2 cup kosher salt
1/3 cup granulated garlic
1/3 cup dried thyme
1/3 cup dried oregano
1/3 cup dried basil
1/4 cup granulated onion
1/4 cup cayenne
In a bowl, combine all ingredients. Store in an airtight container
Yield: 4 cups
Mr. B’s Gumbo Ya Ya
Making a roux is tricky business. Some pointers to keep in mind: cook your roux over moderately low heat because too high heat will cause the roux to speckle and if that happens you’ll have to throw it away and start over; add the flour gradually to the butter or oil; you must stir the roux constantly with a wooden spoon, your arm will get a workout; and never, but never leave your roux unattended.
This recipe makes a lot of gumbo, 6 quarts, so you’ll have enough for a big party or you can freeze some for later.
1 lb. (4 sticks) unsalted butter
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 red bell peppers, in medium dice
2 green bell peppers, in medium dice
2 medium onions, in medium dice
2 celery stalks, in medium dice
1 1/4 gallon (20 cups) chicken stock
2 tablespoons Creole seasoning
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon dried hot red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
2 bay leaves
2 tablespoons kosher salt
1 lb. andouille sausage, cut into 1/4 inch-thick slices
3 1/2 lb. chicken, roasted and boned
hot sauce to taste
boiled rice as accompaniment
In a 12-quart stockpot, melt butter over moderately low heat. Gradually add a third of the flour, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, and cook, stirring constantly, 30 seconds. Add a third more flour and stir constantly 30 seconds. Add remaining third of flour and stir constantly 30 seconds. Continue to cook roux, stirring constantly, until it is the color of dark mahogany, about 45 minutes to 1 hour.
Add bell peppers and stir constantly 30 seconds. Add onions and celery and stir constantly 30 seconds. Add the stock to roux, stirring constantly to prevent lumps. Add all remaining ingredients except chicken, rice, and hot sauce and bring to a boil. Simmer gumbo, uncovered, 45 minutes, skimming off any fat and stirring occasionally. Add chicken and simmer 15 minutes. Adjust seasoning with hot sauce. Serve over rice.
Yield: about 6 quarts
CREOLE SEASONING
1 1/2 cups paprika
3/4 cup ground black pepper
1/2 cup kosher salt
1/3 cup granulated garlic
1/3 cup dried thyme
1/3 cup dried oregano
1/3 cup dried basil
1/4 cup granulated onion
1/4 cup cayenne
In a bowl, combine all ingredients. Store in an airtight container
Yield: 4 cups
Friday, August 28, 2009
Lost in East Texas
My paternal grandparents lived on a forty-acre east Texas farm. Cass County is the most northeastern county in Texas and its border is only a few miles from where I lived in northwest Louisiana.
My real paternal grandfather abandoned Grandmother Dale before my dad was born. Dad never met his father and I feel that he was extra protective of his mother because of this. Living only about thirty miles from the Cass County farm, we visited almost every weekend. Sitting around the farmhouse and chatting was usually too boring for me so I would often hike in the woods. Grandma Rood always had a big friendly dog that would accompany me on my treks.
The east Texas countryside of Cass County rolls and is heavily wooded. I would crawl through the barbwire fence surrounding the farmhouse, Grandma’s dog not far behind, and take off down the hill, into the woods. One particular trip turned out more eventful than the others did.
It was summer, east Texas weather hot, humid and uncomfortable. I crossed the little creek near the end of Grandma Dale’s forty and decided to explore the terrain over the back fence. Even the big yellow dog was a little reluctant but he followed when he saw me disappear up the hill, into a thick stand of pines.
I learned later that it’s difficult maintaining your sense of direction when you are walking amid closely spaced trees. At the time I didn’t know any better. I was climbing a particularly high hill and anxious to discover what was on top.
Big Dog and I soon reached a clearing near the hilltop, many sandstone boulders protruding from the earth. Seeing a particularly large boulder, I climbed up on it for a better look.
Pine trees in east Texas are thick and they hampered my view beyond fifty feet, or so. I did see something else: an inscription carved in the boulder. The initials E.W. and the year 1872 were still visible beneath the greenish lichen covering much of the boulder.
Big Dog and I spent the next hour exploring the hill and looking for more inscriptions on the other boulders. We didn’t find any and finally took off down the hill, not realizing that we had gone in the wrong direction. When we reached the base of the hill, I began following an indistinct trail that I found. Big Dog wouldn’t follow and I soon learned why.
I found myself locked in the grasp of a large briar patch that jutted from the ground almost to my face. Soon, I didn’t know which way I had come or where I should go, sweat beading down my arms and mingling with blood from briar scratches that were becoming increasingly more numerous.
Movement through the briar patch was slow and painful. When I finally clawed my way to the edge of the patch, I emerged with a wild yelp of accomplishment. My momentary elation ended quickly when I realized that I was alone, Big Dog no where around.
I was late in the afternoon when I reached a dirt road with no idea which direction to take. Deciding it didn’t really matter, I walked to the right. Fifteen minutes later I heard the rumble of a car’s engine in the distance and I still remember how relieved I was when the hood of my parent’s blue and white Chevy finally appeared in front of me. It was my Mother and Brother. My Dad had taken my grandparent’s car and was looking for me in another direction.
My Brother Jack was a Boy Scout and used some obscure scouting rule to figure out where I was. We weren’t far from the house as the crow flies, but more than five miles away by country road. My Grandmother just shook her head when I told her about the carved inscription on the boulder.
“Maybe it was one of your long-lost relatives,” she said.
Big Dog had already made it home but sometime later he disappeared and never returned. Grandma said that probably either a bobcat got him or else he fell in a hole. I don’t think so and I always felt a little guilty about it. Maybe I had instilled the wanderlust in him. Maybe, but in the back of my mind I like to believe there was another place he needed to be and I just gave him the okay to go there.
Louisiana Mystery Writer
My real paternal grandfather abandoned Grandmother Dale before my dad was born. Dad never met his father and I feel that he was extra protective of his mother because of this. Living only about thirty miles from the Cass County farm, we visited almost every weekend. Sitting around the farmhouse and chatting was usually too boring for me so I would often hike in the woods. Grandma Rood always had a big friendly dog that would accompany me on my treks.
The east Texas countryside of Cass County rolls and is heavily wooded. I would crawl through the barbwire fence surrounding the farmhouse, Grandma’s dog not far behind, and take off down the hill, into the woods. One particular trip turned out more eventful than the others did.
It was summer, east Texas weather hot, humid and uncomfortable. I crossed the little creek near the end of Grandma Dale’s forty and decided to explore the terrain over the back fence. Even the big yellow dog was a little reluctant but he followed when he saw me disappear up the hill, into a thick stand of pines.
I learned later that it’s difficult maintaining your sense of direction when you are walking amid closely spaced trees. At the time I didn’t know any better. I was climbing a particularly high hill and anxious to discover what was on top.
Big Dog and I soon reached a clearing near the hilltop, many sandstone boulders protruding from the earth. Seeing a particularly large boulder, I climbed up on it for a better look.
Pine trees in east Texas are thick and they hampered my view beyond fifty feet, or so. I did see something else: an inscription carved in the boulder. The initials E.W. and the year 1872 were still visible beneath the greenish lichen covering much of the boulder.
Big Dog and I spent the next hour exploring the hill and looking for more inscriptions on the other boulders. We didn’t find any and finally took off down the hill, not realizing that we had gone in the wrong direction. When we reached the base of the hill, I began following an indistinct trail that I found. Big Dog wouldn’t follow and I soon learned why.
I found myself locked in the grasp of a large briar patch that jutted from the ground almost to my face. Soon, I didn’t know which way I had come or where I should go, sweat beading down my arms and mingling with blood from briar scratches that were becoming increasingly more numerous.
Movement through the briar patch was slow and painful. When I finally clawed my way to the edge of the patch, I emerged with a wild yelp of accomplishment. My momentary elation ended quickly when I realized that I was alone, Big Dog no where around.
I was late in the afternoon when I reached a dirt road with no idea which direction to take. Deciding it didn’t really matter, I walked to the right. Fifteen minutes later I heard the rumble of a car’s engine in the distance and I still remember how relieved I was when the hood of my parent’s blue and white Chevy finally appeared in front of me. It was my Mother and Brother. My Dad had taken my grandparent’s car and was looking for me in another direction.
My Brother Jack was a Boy Scout and used some obscure scouting rule to figure out where I was. We weren’t far from the house as the crow flies, but more than five miles away by country road. My Grandmother just shook her head when I told her about the carved inscription on the boulder.
“Maybe it was one of your long-lost relatives,” she said.
Big Dog had already made it home but sometime later he disappeared and never returned. Grandma said that probably either a bobcat got him or else he fell in a hole. I don’t think so and I always felt a little guilty about it. Maybe I had instilled the wanderlust in him. Maybe, but in the back of my mind I like to believe there was another place he needed to be and I just gave him the okay to go there.
Louisiana Mystery Writer
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Heart of a Lion
I hate to try to imitate Will Rogers, always talking about politics and the weather, but as I keyboard this story, yet another rainstorm has passed the house. I’m not keeping score, but this is the rainiest August that I have experienced in central Oklahoma.
My backyard cants toward my back door. When it rains, water runs on to my porch. I have a drain, but when the drain is falling exceptionally hard, I have to operate a broom to prevent water from flooding into my living room as it did during the “Great Flood” of 2007.
I recently saw a lightning strike map of the United States and noticed that central Oklahoma has about as many air-to-ground strikes as any place in the Country. Tonight, I can attest to the number of lightning strikes that occurred near my house.
My two pugs, Princess and Scooter live on the back porch. Princess doesn’t like noisy storms but little Scooter is a warrior. Nothing scares him and he stood close to me, defiantly barking at the thunder as I used the broom to combat falling water. Nothing much scares me either, but a nearby lightning strike caused me to yell, and scare both dogs, reminding me of my time in a Vietnamese free-fire zone, so many years ago.
This is the rainiest Oklahoma August that I can ever remember, but it finally abated tonight, moving east as it always does. Smiling before I returned to my computer, I petted Princess and Scooter, still marveling at my tiny dog with the heart of a lion.
Louisiana Mystery Writer
My backyard cants toward my back door. When it rains, water runs on to my porch. I have a drain, but when the drain is falling exceptionally hard, I have to operate a broom to prevent water from flooding into my living room as it did during the “Great Flood” of 2007.
I recently saw a lightning strike map of the United States and noticed that central Oklahoma has about as many air-to-ground strikes as any place in the Country. Tonight, I can attest to the number of lightning strikes that occurred near my house.
My two pugs, Princess and Scooter live on the back porch. Princess doesn’t like noisy storms but little Scooter is a warrior. Nothing scares him and he stood close to me, defiantly barking at the thunder as I used the broom to combat falling water. Nothing much scares me either, but a nearby lightning strike caused me to yell, and scare both dogs, reminding me of my time in a Vietnamese free-fire zone, so many years ago.
This is the rainiest Oklahoma August that I can ever remember, but it finally abated tonight, moving east as it always does. Smiling before I returned to my computer, I petted Princess and Scooter, still marveling at my tiny dog with the heart of a lion.
Louisiana Mystery Writer
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Floating the Boonies
The recent rain in Oklahoma and resultant gloom reminds me of a similar night many years ago in Vietnam.
I was in the Army with the First Cavalry, humping the boonies near the Cambodian border. We came upon a Montagnard village beside a stream in the jungle. It was late when we found it and we decided to stay there for the night.
The village was tiny, only a few destroyed huts. The North Vietnamese hated Montagnards and always killed them - men, women, children and animals - and razed their villages whenever they encountered them. We were in a free fire zone and sort of hoped they would try the same on us.
It was monsoon season. Every night, as the sun went down, it would rain. It was the height of the season and heavy rain sometimes continued throughout the night. My best friend was Gary Clark from Seattle Washington.
He was a polysci graduate from either the University of Washington or Washington State. I can’t remember which. I do remember that he was a political junkie and that his favorite beer was Olympia, unfortunate because the only kind we got in the boonies was Black Label in steel cans, usually rusted by the time we drank the contents.
Many of us had air mattresses. We would blow them up at night and make a makeshift shelter by attaching two poncho liners. Clark and I had gone into the jungle the same day, from the same helicopter, and had started sharing such a shelter.
It was perpetually wet and humid in the jungle so we kept our letters and personal belongings in M-60 ammo containers. The containers were waterproof and there were always extras whenever rear support re-supplied us with food and bullets.
That night, it rained harder than usual – much harder than usual. Water in my face awoke me from a Technicolor dream. I was still lying on the air mattress but I was out in the rain, quickly floating away from the makeshift tent. If I hadn’t awakened, I would have ended up in the nearby stream, swollen up to its banks.
The scene was so surreal that I didn’t know whether to curse or to laugh. I think I did both. The next morning I learned that the ammo containers weren’t perfectly waterproof as all my personal belongings inside were now damp, or worse.
Shortly after that rainy episode, I bought a hammock from a group of Vietnamese and spent the rest of my nights in the jungle hanging safely – well, at least out of the water – off the ground.
I lost touch with Gary Clark, much like everyone else I knew while I was in the Army. I hope he’s safe and dry somewhere, keeping an eye on politics and drinking an Olympia, or two.
Fiction South
I was in the Army with the First Cavalry, humping the boonies near the Cambodian border. We came upon a Montagnard village beside a stream in the jungle. It was late when we found it and we decided to stay there for the night.
The village was tiny, only a few destroyed huts. The North Vietnamese hated Montagnards and always killed them - men, women, children and animals - and razed their villages whenever they encountered them. We were in a free fire zone and sort of hoped they would try the same on us.
It was monsoon season. Every night, as the sun went down, it would rain. It was the height of the season and heavy rain sometimes continued throughout the night. My best friend was Gary Clark from Seattle Washington.
He was a polysci graduate from either the University of Washington or Washington State. I can’t remember which. I do remember that he was a political junkie and that his favorite beer was Olympia, unfortunate because the only kind we got in the boonies was Black Label in steel cans, usually rusted by the time we drank the contents.
Many of us had air mattresses. We would blow them up at night and make a makeshift shelter by attaching two poncho liners. Clark and I had gone into the jungle the same day, from the same helicopter, and had started sharing such a shelter.
It was perpetually wet and humid in the jungle so we kept our letters and personal belongings in M-60 ammo containers. The containers were waterproof and there were always extras whenever rear support re-supplied us with food and bullets.
That night, it rained harder than usual – much harder than usual. Water in my face awoke me from a Technicolor dream. I was still lying on the air mattress but I was out in the rain, quickly floating away from the makeshift tent. If I hadn’t awakened, I would have ended up in the nearby stream, swollen up to its banks.
The scene was so surreal that I didn’t know whether to curse or to laugh. I think I did both. The next morning I learned that the ammo containers weren’t perfectly waterproof as all my personal belongings inside were now damp, or worse.
Shortly after that rainy episode, I bought a hammock from a group of Vietnamese and spent the rest of my nights in the jungle hanging safely – well, at least out of the water – off the ground.
I lost touch with Gary Clark, much like everyone else I knew while I was in the Army. I hope he’s safe and dry somewhere, keeping an eye on politics and drinking an Olympia, or two.
Fiction South
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Give Me a Bite
We all have benchmarks in our lives that we recognize as signs of our moving in a positive direction. For me, it has always been owning, or at least leasing, a hot tub. I bought my first redwood hot tub in 1979, just before marrying Anne. Since then, I’ve had four more, including the one that I have now.
Following the oil bust in the early eighties, the fortunes of Anne and I took an abrupt downward turn. We lost out house on Ski Island and our three rent houses (yes, I know, we were over-consumers at the time).
The hardest part of curbing your lifestyle is finding a quick way of halting your monthly expenditures. I’m talking about the house payment on your mansion and monthly car payments for your Mercedes and Jaguar (I know, I’m not eliciting much sympathy here!).
Anne and I reined in our lifestyle, still managing to maintain a comfortable existence until 1995. The oil biz was hurting. No one was buying prospects or drilling wells. We found a little rent house and had just enough money left after the first month’s rent, deposits and everything to rent a U-Haul truck.
My nephew Kevin helped me move and we single-handedly transported years of our lives from a five thousand square foot house to a fifteen hundred foot house. Well, not totally alone. Later that night, I finally called my Brother Jack and Anne’s brother David to help us with the last load. To say we were exhausted is an understatement. To this day, I don’t think Kevin knows how much he helped me.
Anne and I lived in the rent house for two years - past the time we learned that she had lung cancer. I finally sold a prospect and made a down payment with it on the house I still live in. Anne died about six months later.
The house had a swimming pool but no hot tub. The oil business dragged on for several more years and I scrapped by, making the house payments, buying groceries and little else. I still wanted a hot tub and the entire time I plotted how I might acquire one.
Three years after Anne passed away, I saw an ad for an eight-foot octagonal hot tub in the Daily Oklahoman. The party was asking two hundred and twenty five dollars. I had the money, called and purchased the shell. Three days later, the owner brought it to me and dumped it unceremoniously in my back yard. It remained in the same spot, through more hard times in the oil biz, for three more years.
I did figure out where I wanted to put it and I began digging a hole in the ground, beside the oak tree where I had buried my nineteen year old cat Chani when she finally died. The hole was long dug, half filled with rain water, and I still didn’t have the money to set the hot tub, much less get it plumbed and ready to use.
Two years ago, my financial fortunes took a turn for the better and I finally got the hot tub plumbed and working. I took my first dip on the night of my birthday and surely it was a birthday present from someone that had gone before me.
My step-son Shane built a gazebo to enclose the outdoor hot tub and I mucked it out after a winter of non-use. This house is my little piece of Eden, Marilyn and I its Adam and Eve. If there’s a snake out there with an apple, well, hey, give me a bite.
Gondwana
Following the oil bust in the early eighties, the fortunes of Anne and I took an abrupt downward turn. We lost out house on Ski Island and our three rent houses (yes, I know, we were over-consumers at the time).
The hardest part of curbing your lifestyle is finding a quick way of halting your monthly expenditures. I’m talking about the house payment on your mansion and monthly car payments for your Mercedes and Jaguar (I know, I’m not eliciting much sympathy here!).
Anne and I reined in our lifestyle, still managing to maintain a comfortable existence until 1995. The oil biz was hurting. No one was buying prospects or drilling wells. We found a little rent house and had just enough money left after the first month’s rent, deposits and everything to rent a U-Haul truck.
My nephew Kevin helped me move and we single-handedly transported years of our lives from a five thousand square foot house to a fifteen hundred foot house. Well, not totally alone. Later that night, I finally called my Brother Jack and Anne’s brother David to help us with the last load. To say we were exhausted is an understatement. To this day, I don’t think Kevin knows how much he helped me.
Anne and I lived in the rent house for two years - past the time we learned that she had lung cancer. I finally sold a prospect and made a down payment with it on the house I still live in. Anne died about six months later.
The house had a swimming pool but no hot tub. The oil business dragged on for several more years and I scrapped by, making the house payments, buying groceries and little else. I still wanted a hot tub and the entire time I plotted how I might acquire one.
Three years after Anne passed away, I saw an ad for an eight-foot octagonal hot tub in the Daily Oklahoman. The party was asking two hundred and twenty five dollars. I had the money, called and purchased the shell. Three days later, the owner brought it to me and dumped it unceremoniously in my back yard. It remained in the same spot, through more hard times in the oil biz, for three more years.
I did figure out where I wanted to put it and I began digging a hole in the ground, beside the oak tree where I had buried my nineteen year old cat Chani when she finally died. The hole was long dug, half filled with rain water, and I still didn’t have the money to set the hot tub, much less get it plumbed and ready to use.
Two years ago, my financial fortunes took a turn for the better and I finally got the hot tub plumbed and working. I took my first dip on the night of my birthday and surely it was a birthday present from someone that had gone before me.
My step-son Shane built a gazebo to enclose the outdoor hot tub and I mucked it out after a winter of non-use. This house is my little piece of Eden, Marilyn and I its Adam and Eve. If there’s a snake out there with an apple, well, hey, give me a bite.
Gondwana
Monday, August 24, 2009
Skiing Gunbarrel
When I was much younger and still married to Anne, we took a ski trip to Tahoe with our close friends Darryl and Mary. Mary didn’t like to ski but she liked to gamble. Anne, Darryl and I liked to do both.
Tahoe is a scenic little town near the banks of the world’s most gorgeous lake. The gaming strip was also pretty spectacular and we stayed in fancy suites at Caesar’s Palace. Too late to ski the day we arrived, we began gambling instead.
The next morning Anne, Darryl and I took the bus to the Neveda side of the Heavenly Ski Resort, the largest ski resort in the United States. Darryl was athletic and a born skier. Anne was also good, at least better than me. Anne and I were fair intermediate skiers, Darryl almost a pro.
We sooned settled into a comfortable, if very tiring routine and it went something like this: we would gamble until two or three in the morning, and then sleep until sixish. Around seven we would meet in the coffee shop, eat breakfast and play keno until the ski bus arrived. Anne, Darryl and I would ski unti around five and then return to Caesar’s. After showering and donning clean duds we would meet for dinner around seven or eight. After dinner we would begin gambling again until two or three in the morning.
The California side of Heavenly has a black diamond run called Gunbarrel. It is steep, the moguls deep. Every evening Anne and I would take the lift down the slope and meet Darryl at the bottom. He always skied down Gunbarrel.
Every day when we met Darryl at the base of Gunbarrel he would say, “Eric, if you don’t ski down Gunbarrel at least once, you don’t have a hair on your ass.”
After the first day we discovered that Caesar’s has an excellent exercise facility (not that we needed it) that included a huge hot spa that doubled as a hidden grotto. Darryl and I soon learned that many of the showgirls participated in a dancercise class, dressed appropriately in skimpy exercise outfits. We would relax in the hot water, soothing our tormented muscles as we watched two dozen or so gorgeous showgirls practice their steps – at least until Anne and Mary found out about our secret show. Yes, they put the kibosh on our short-lived pasttime.
Our last day on the mountain, I finally took Darryl’s dare. Mary had ridden up the lift to join us and Anne rode down with her, but not before chiding me.
“You’re going to kill yourself,” she said. “You better ride down with Mary and me.”
When I stared over the precipice, saw how steep it was and how deep the moguls were, I almost acquiesed.
“You can do it,” Darryl shouted from down the slope. “Come on. I’ll meet you in the bar.”
When I nosed my skis over the ledge there was no going back. I was committed. I finally made it to the base of the slope, bruised, beat up, sweating despite the cold, but feeling every bit like the king of the world. I found Anne, Mary and Darryl waiting for me at the bar.
“You crazy SOB, you made it,” Darryl said, giving me a hug.
Anne and Mary weren’t as impressed, rolling their eyes and shaking their heads as if I had truly lost my mind. It didn’t matter. I ordered a whiskey and both Darryl and I got fairly lit by the time we took the bus back to Caesar’s.
Anne and Mary soon gave up the slot machines and went to their rooms but not before Anne reminded me that we had to pack and be ready to leave by seven the next morning. I wasn’t listening and Darryl and I were still going strong at five the next morning. I finally put all my money on the table, betting it all on one spin of the roulette wheel, praying that I would lose so that I could go to bed. Thankfully (I guess) I did.
“If you go to sleep now you’ll never get up in time to make the bus,” he warned.
“Can’t help it,” I said. “I’m done for.”
I stumbled back to our room and passed out on the bed, barely closing my eyes before Anne shook me to wake up.
“Get up,” she said. “We have to pack.”
“I can’t move,” I said. “You’ll have to leave me here.”
Anne and I never had many fights during our marriage, at least real fights. This one had to be our worst. Soon, she gave up and stalked out the door, slamming it on the way out. She went straight to Darryl and Mary’s room, returning with Darryl.
I failed to mention that Darryl had been a drill sergeant in the Army. He quickly rousted me out of bed in a command voice I remembered and still feared from my days at Fort Polk in Louisiana.
“Wilder, roll out of that damn bed. Now!”
As I dragged out of bed he was throwing my suitcase on top of it. Ripping my clothes out of the closet, he tossed them on the bed. I don’t know how we did it but we all managed to make the bus that was headed to the Reno Airport.
As we waited for our plane to arrive, we played the slots, Mary hitting the dollar jackpot just as the last boarding call was announced.
“Dammit, Mary! Come on. We’re going to get left here,” Darryl admonished.
“I’m not leaving without this money,” she said. “Get me something to put it in.”
Darryl rushed into the plane and found a couple of barf bags, the only thing he could think of on the spur of the moment. The plane waited, just barely, until Mary and Darryl squeezed through, her windfall intact.
Except for the fact that I felt like pure hell, the flight home went well and Anne was once again speaking to me by the time we touched down in Oklahoma City. It took me about two weeks to recuperate fully from that vacation. Having forgotten most of the bad parts of the trip we repeated it the following year. This time I was a year older and a little bit wiser. When it became time to leave, I was the first one packed.
Louisiana Mystery Writer
Tahoe is a scenic little town near the banks of the world’s most gorgeous lake. The gaming strip was also pretty spectacular and we stayed in fancy suites at Caesar’s Palace. Too late to ski the day we arrived, we began gambling instead.
The next morning Anne, Darryl and I took the bus to the Neveda side of the Heavenly Ski Resort, the largest ski resort in the United States. Darryl was athletic and a born skier. Anne was also good, at least better than me. Anne and I were fair intermediate skiers, Darryl almost a pro.
We sooned settled into a comfortable, if very tiring routine and it went something like this: we would gamble until two or three in the morning, and then sleep until sixish. Around seven we would meet in the coffee shop, eat breakfast and play keno until the ski bus arrived. Anne, Darryl and I would ski unti around five and then return to Caesar’s. After showering and donning clean duds we would meet for dinner around seven or eight. After dinner we would begin gambling again until two or three in the morning.
The California side of Heavenly has a black diamond run called Gunbarrel. It is steep, the moguls deep. Every evening Anne and I would take the lift down the slope and meet Darryl at the bottom. He always skied down Gunbarrel.
Every day when we met Darryl at the base of Gunbarrel he would say, “Eric, if you don’t ski down Gunbarrel at least once, you don’t have a hair on your ass.”
After the first day we discovered that Caesar’s has an excellent exercise facility (not that we needed it) that included a huge hot spa that doubled as a hidden grotto. Darryl and I soon learned that many of the showgirls participated in a dancercise class, dressed appropriately in skimpy exercise outfits. We would relax in the hot water, soothing our tormented muscles as we watched two dozen or so gorgeous showgirls practice their steps – at least until Anne and Mary found out about our secret show. Yes, they put the kibosh on our short-lived pasttime.
Our last day on the mountain, I finally took Darryl’s dare. Mary had ridden up the lift to join us and Anne rode down with her, but not before chiding me.
“You’re going to kill yourself,” she said. “You better ride down with Mary and me.”
When I stared over the precipice, saw how steep it was and how deep the moguls were, I almost acquiesed.
“You can do it,” Darryl shouted from down the slope. “Come on. I’ll meet you in the bar.”
When I nosed my skis over the ledge there was no going back. I was committed. I finally made it to the base of the slope, bruised, beat up, sweating despite the cold, but feeling every bit like the king of the world. I found Anne, Mary and Darryl waiting for me at the bar.
“You crazy SOB, you made it,” Darryl said, giving me a hug.
Anne and Mary weren’t as impressed, rolling their eyes and shaking their heads as if I had truly lost my mind. It didn’t matter. I ordered a whiskey and both Darryl and I got fairly lit by the time we took the bus back to Caesar’s.
Anne and Mary soon gave up the slot machines and went to their rooms but not before Anne reminded me that we had to pack and be ready to leave by seven the next morning. I wasn’t listening and Darryl and I were still going strong at five the next morning. I finally put all my money on the table, betting it all on one spin of the roulette wheel, praying that I would lose so that I could go to bed. Thankfully (I guess) I did.
“If you go to sleep now you’ll never get up in time to make the bus,” he warned.
“Can’t help it,” I said. “I’m done for.”
I stumbled back to our room and passed out on the bed, barely closing my eyes before Anne shook me to wake up.
“Get up,” she said. “We have to pack.”
“I can’t move,” I said. “You’ll have to leave me here.”
Anne and I never had many fights during our marriage, at least real fights. This one had to be our worst. Soon, she gave up and stalked out the door, slamming it on the way out. She went straight to Darryl and Mary’s room, returning with Darryl.
I failed to mention that Darryl had been a drill sergeant in the Army. He quickly rousted me out of bed in a command voice I remembered and still feared from my days at Fort Polk in Louisiana.
“Wilder, roll out of that damn bed. Now!”
As I dragged out of bed he was throwing my suitcase on top of it. Ripping my clothes out of the closet, he tossed them on the bed. I don’t know how we did it but we all managed to make the bus that was headed to the Reno Airport.
As we waited for our plane to arrive, we played the slots, Mary hitting the dollar jackpot just as the last boarding call was announced.
“Dammit, Mary! Come on. We’re going to get left here,” Darryl admonished.
“I’m not leaving without this money,” she said. “Get me something to put it in.”
Darryl rushed into the plane and found a couple of barf bags, the only thing he could think of on the spur of the moment. The plane waited, just barely, until Mary and Darryl squeezed through, her windfall intact.
Except for the fact that I felt like pure hell, the flight home went well and Anne was once again speaking to me by the time we touched down in Oklahoma City. It took me about two weeks to recuperate fully from that vacation. Having forgotten most of the bad parts of the trip we repeated it the following year. This time I was a year older and a little bit wiser. When it became time to leave, I was the first one packed.
Louisiana Mystery Writer
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Vivian's Jones Pond
While growing up in Louisiana, I came face-to-face with water moccasins on several occasions. My closest encounter remains vivid in my memory.
My friend Barry lived near a pond that resided deep in the woods behind his house. Jones Pond had the best visibility in north Louisiana - about six feet. This is significant because the water in nearby Caddo Lake is so opaque that you can barely see your hand in front of your facemask.
Barry and I, both snorkeling enthusiasts, would often trek through the thickly forested area to go swimming. The pond was small, covering no more than an acre or so. It was also shallow - less than twelve deep.
Thick vegetation grew all the way to the pond's edge and fallen branches and brush littered its bottom. We often saw snakes, squirrels, armadillos, etc., that lived near the pond. It didn't stop us from swimming there because the water was clear - oh so very clear.
One warm summer day, I was swimming in the pond. After taking a deep breath, I dove to the bottom of the pool and began swimming through felled branches - north Louisiana's version of a coral reef, at least in my imagination. Many fish lived in the pond and I was nose to nose with a small bream.
Suddenly, out of the submerged brush, a large viperous head, complete with slanted eyes and large fangs set against a white background, appeared. The head was attached to the heavy body of a reptile. I knew in a moment that it was a cottonmouth.
Thankfully, the snake wasn't interested in me and I saw him grab the bream in his mouth. I didn't wait around to watch him swallow it, flipping around and stroking as fast as I could for shore.
I didn't wait for Barry to come up for air. "What's the matter with you?" he asked when he came out of the woods and found me in his back yard.
"You wouldn't believe it if I told you," I said, barely mustering a grin.
Gondwana
My friend Barry lived near a pond that resided deep in the woods behind his house. Jones Pond had the best visibility in north Louisiana - about six feet. This is significant because the water in nearby Caddo Lake is so opaque that you can barely see your hand in front of your facemask.
Barry and I, both snorkeling enthusiasts, would often trek through the thickly forested area to go swimming. The pond was small, covering no more than an acre or so. It was also shallow - less than twelve deep.
Thick vegetation grew all the way to the pond's edge and fallen branches and brush littered its bottom. We often saw snakes, squirrels, armadillos, etc., that lived near the pond. It didn't stop us from swimming there because the water was clear - oh so very clear.
One warm summer day, I was swimming in the pond. After taking a deep breath, I dove to the bottom of the pool and began swimming through felled branches - north Louisiana's version of a coral reef, at least in my imagination. Many fish lived in the pond and I was nose to nose with a small bream.
Suddenly, out of the submerged brush, a large viperous head, complete with slanted eyes and large fangs set against a white background, appeared. The head was attached to the heavy body of a reptile. I knew in a moment that it was a cottonmouth.
Thankfully, the snake wasn't interested in me and I saw him grab the bream in his mouth. I didn't wait around to watch him swallow it, flipping around and stroking as fast as I could for shore.
I didn't wait for Barry to come up for air. "What's the matter with you?" he asked when he came out of the woods and found me in his back yard.
"You wouldn't believe it if I told you," I said, barely mustering a grin.
Gondwana
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Brennan's Bananas Foster
Brennan’s in New Orleans is famous for many dishes, including their brunch, but their signature dessert is Bananas Foster. I found this recipe on their website and they explain that New Orleans was once the primary destination for Central and South American bananas. This is one of those desserts you need to put on your bucket list.
Brennan’s Bananas Foster
¼ cup (½ stick) butter
1 cup brown sugar
½ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ cup banana liqueur
4 bananas, cut in half lengthwise, then halved
¼ cup dark rum
4 scoops vanilla ice cream
Combine the butter, sugar, and cinnamon in a flambé pan or skillet. Place the pan over low heat either on an alcohol burner or on top of the stove, and cook, stirring, until the sugar dissolves. Stir in the banana liqueur, and then place the bananas in the pan. When the banana sections soften and begin to brown, carefully add the rum.
Continue to cook the sauce until the rum is hot, and then tip the pan slightly to ignite the rum. When the flames subside, lift the bananas out of the pan and place four pieces over each portion of ice cream. Generously spoon warm sauce over the top of the ice cream and serve immediately.
Louisiana Mystery Writer
Brennan’s Bananas Foster
¼ cup (½ stick) butter
1 cup brown sugar
½ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ cup banana liqueur
4 bananas, cut in half lengthwise, then halved
¼ cup dark rum
4 scoops vanilla ice cream
Combine the butter, sugar, and cinnamon in a flambé pan or skillet. Place the pan over low heat either on an alcohol burner or on top of the stove, and cook, stirring, until the sugar dissolves. Stir in the banana liqueur, and then place the bananas in the pan. When the banana sections soften and begin to brown, carefully add the rum.
Continue to cook the sauce until the rum is hot, and then tip the pan slightly to ignite the rum. When the flames subside, lift the bananas out of the pan and place four pieces over each portion of ice cream. Generously spoon warm sauce over the top of the ice cream and serve immediately.
Louisiana Mystery Writer
Friday, August 21, 2009
Ghosts, Spider Webs and Blood-Warm Water
As I walked to the swimming pool last night, a spider web caught in my hair and shoulders. It didn’t scare me but it reminded me of a section in my novel Ghost of a Chance. Buck McDivit is lost on eerie Caddo Lake at night near the place where he has recently seen a ghost. Here is a short excerpt from Ghost of a Chance.
Ghost Excerpt
The friendliest of country roads can become creepy as a carnival ghost house after dark. The road to Deception proved no exception. Thick fog wisped up from hot blacktop and danced across the roadway as Buck swerved to miss a darting rabbit. The frightened animal scurried into the forest, oblivious to its near demise.
Ghost Excerpt
The friendliest of country roads can become creepy as a carnival ghost house after dark. The road to Deception proved no exception. Thick fog wisped up from hot blacktop and danced across the roadway as Buck swerved to miss a darting rabbit. The frightened animal scurried into the forest, oblivious to its near demise.
Buck bypassed downtown Deception and found the boat waiting where he’d left it. The motor cranked on the first pull and sent a swirl of vapor curling up from the surface of the lake. Foggy haze continued to thicken as he adjusted the bow light and motored away from shore.
Heavy fog began rolling in as Buck neared the center of the lake. The boat's tiny light provided scant illumination, even on a clear night. Now it was all but useless. He quickly lost sight of land but, thanks to the continued effects of Richardson's brandy, wasn't immediately bothered by the lack of visibility. His blithe oblivion didn't last long.
Within minutes he'd lost all notion of direction and rocked the fuel tank to reassure him that he had plenty of gas. The heft of a half-empty tank only added to his growing concern. As marauding mosquitoes buzzed his head, a distant rumble interrupted the chorus of crickets and frogs - a non-muffled engine. Another boat was on the lake and Buck couldn't tell if it was approaching him or moving away.
"Hello out there," he called, his cry eliciting no response except for silence in the creatures of the lake.
As Buck listened for a reply his boat struck something in the darkness. The collision sent him sprawling. As he pulled himself off the bottom of the boat, he realized he'd rammed one of the old wood-framed drilling platforms. Luckily, he'd struck it at an angle. When he grabbed for a plank, a sharp splinter pierced his hand causing him to recoil and bang his head against the platform. Worse yet, red eyes glared up from the darkness beneath the platform.
When Buck gunned the throttle the motor raced, along with his heart, but the boat remained in place. The impact had thrown the engine out of gear, sticking the boat in brush trapped beneath the musty old platform. Now the boat rocked precariously amid dank odor of stagnate water and dry rot.
As Buck's little craft floated in a circle beneath the platform, it passed through elastic strands of a large spider web. Claustrophobia chilled his neck as the web encircled his face. Forgetting the racing engine, he grabbed the platform and yanked the boat out from under the planking. With hand and head throbbing he slammed the boat into gear, motoring blindly into what he hoped was open water. Again he heard the high-pitched whine of another boat.
Buck threw the engine into neutral, fear of striking a cypress tree or another platform in the thick fog fresh in his mind. After raking the spider web from his face he called for help again and listened for an answer. No help arrived as he felt something crawling down his shirt.
"Hey out there! Can anyone hear me?"
Buck's cry faded as a powerful light penetrated milky fog. It was attached to a fast boat powering straight toward him. Standing, he began waving and yelling.
"Here I am!"
The boat's approaching wail sounded vaguely familiar to Buck but it was too late to worry about it. As it streaked past, its wake lifted his boat almost out of the water. The little craft remained afloat but rocked dangerously. Then he heard the other boat turning for another pass.
Buck held on, waiting for the swell to subside. The wake had swamped the motor, stalling it. When the boat stopped rocking he yanked the starter cord but the motor only sputtered and died with a sick sounding thump. He had little time to worry about the stalled engine.
The marauding boat's headlight blazed through the fog, powering directly toward him. With little time to react he abandoned ship, diving overboard before the speeding boat plowed into his own craft with a tremendous crash and an ensuing explosion of wood.
The wake of the collision sucked him to the bottom of the shallow lake, pinioning him in the murky ooze for a long, terrifying moment. When the wake passed, releasing the suction, he tried to kick toward the surface, his arms flailing against swirling muck and slimy vegetation. But something had his foot in its clammy grasp and refused to let go.
The crooked branch of a submerged tree, part of the rotting mass of vegetation at the bottom of the lake, had trapped Buck's foot. He struggled but his futile attempt served only to deplete what little oxygen was left in his lungs. Despite his efforts, he gained no leverage against the algae-covered stump.
Buck's eyes bulged, his head threatening to explode, his lungs desperate to gasp something, even blood-warm water, into them. Just before losing consciousness he felt icy fingers encircle his ankle. Ephemeral hands freed his ankle from the sunken tree and pushed him toward the lake’s surface. Stroking upward in near panic, he belched foul liquid from his lungs as he burst from the black water.
The first cognizant sound Buck recognized was the boat returning at high speed for another pass. Ducking beneath the water, he plunged back to the bottom of the lake just as the boat passed directly overhead. This time no sunken vegetation entrapped him and he bobbed to the surface, coughing up water but in no imminent danger of drowning.
Fog cloaking the lake showed signs of lifting and moonlight illuminated the silky sheath with a pulsating glow. It left Buck with the sensation of being trapped in a giant Lava Lamp. Having no better plan, he dog-paddled toward what he hoped was the shore. It wasn't. Only rotting vegetation impeded his forward motion, tangling him in scummy tentacles. Tearing loose, he back-stroked into open water.
A dozen or so strokes brought him to the edge of the lake where his feet finally touched shallow bottom. Neck deep in lily pads, he remained in stagnate water until he'd caught his breath, his thoughts turning to poisonous snakes and prehistoric fish with mouths full of razor-sharp teeth swimming around him.
A breeze began blowing fog off the lake and the moon soon poked a small hole in its gossamer shroud. What he saw frightened him more than the thought of an alligator swimming between his legs. Through the underbrush, not more than twenty feet from where he stood, were Humpback and Deacon John floating silently in their boat. Both carried automatic weapons.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Dancing at the Scorpio
While rummaging through my closet, I found a tee shirt that evoked a treasure of old memories. The tee sported a poorly drawn picture of a scorpion and bore the name of the establishment from where I purchased it – Scorpio. Under the name were the words - dancers, pool and cold beer, 3416 N. May, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
The original Scorpio was an old two-storied building located at Villa and N.W. 23rd, across the street from the Shepherd Mall. The bottom floor had a bar, several pool tables and a dance floor – a wooden structure raised about three feet off the floor. Music played while the mostly male customers shot pool, drank beer and watched the dancers perform on the raised structure.
The female dancers all wore the equivalent of a bikini with no exposed nipples, buttocks or pubic hair. That was downstairs, the action upstairs quite different – at least I had heard. Not everyone was allowed to go there. Nudity in Oklahoma City, at the time, was banned and rule breakers treated harshly by the authorities.
Most of the young men frequenting the bar were baby-boomers. Many had survived the dirty war in Southeast Asia, partaken of the many illegal drugs so readily available there, and had visited the nightlife of Saigon and the brothels of Bangkok. Oil exploration was turning the City into a boom town, the young men of Oklahoma, and those pouring into the State because of the boomtown prosperity, an adventurous bunch and ready for a change from the ways their fathers did things. The Scorpio was there to provide that change.
I remember the first time the stairway guard allowed me and my friend Mick to go upstairs. I tingled with excitement and to say that electricity filled the darkened room would be stating a stale cliché that didn’t come close to expressing the pure sexual exhilaration constricting my chest and shortening my breath. A Bob Seger ballad wailed through the darkness as a pretty blonde girl gyrated, totally naked on the stage, both exposed and swathed by the reds, blues and greens of a dancing strobe.
Upstairs was a clone to the downstairs with one essential difference – the dancers performed totally nude. Each young woman danced to the music of three songs. They performed their first song, like the downstairs dancers, in bikini-like costume. They would remove their top toward the beginning of the second song, and their bottoms during the beginning of the third song to the captivated attention of every young man in the place.
About this time, the Supreme Court ruled that nude dancing is not pornographic. After having their hands rapped by several adverse court decisions, the City removed its ban on nudity. Nude dancing soon became common in clubs around Oklahoma City, the Scorpio moving to a new location on north May.
Totally nude dancing continued in Oklahoma City until the Supreme Court ruled that cities could regulate activities that the majority of the people did not approve of. I don’t think a vote to regulate nudity ever occurred but the local police began operating as if it had. Oil prices had begun to collapse, ending the oil boom and Oklahoma City’s boomtown mentality. Baby boomers were older and most, by this time had their own children. No one much protested the end of an era.
The Scorpio no longer exists, but the building that housed it remains. Ironically, it is now the home of a Vietnamese pool hall and domino parlor. I smiled as I pulled on the old tee shirt, a little too small for me now, but still in good shape. Yes, an era has ended but I still have my memory of the first time I climbed the stairs at the old Scorpio, not knowing what to expect, but spellbound with youthful anticipation.
Gondwana
The original Scorpio was an old two-storied building located at Villa and N.W. 23rd, across the street from the Shepherd Mall. The bottom floor had a bar, several pool tables and a dance floor – a wooden structure raised about three feet off the floor. Music played while the mostly male customers shot pool, drank beer and watched the dancers perform on the raised structure.
The female dancers all wore the equivalent of a bikini with no exposed nipples, buttocks or pubic hair. That was downstairs, the action upstairs quite different – at least I had heard. Not everyone was allowed to go there. Nudity in Oklahoma City, at the time, was banned and rule breakers treated harshly by the authorities.
Most of the young men frequenting the bar were baby-boomers. Many had survived the dirty war in Southeast Asia, partaken of the many illegal drugs so readily available there, and had visited the nightlife of Saigon and the brothels of Bangkok. Oil exploration was turning the City into a boom town, the young men of Oklahoma, and those pouring into the State because of the boomtown prosperity, an adventurous bunch and ready for a change from the ways their fathers did things. The Scorpio was there to provide that change.
I remember the first time the stairway guard allowed me and my friend Mick to go upstairs. I tingled with excitement and to say that electricity filled the darkened room would be stating a stale cliché that didn’t come close to expressing the pure sexual exhilaration constricting my chest and shortening my breath. A Bob Seger ballad wailed through the darkness as a pretty blonde girl gyrated, totally naked on the stage, both exposed and swathed by the reds, blues and greens of a dancing strobe.
Upstairs was a clone to the downstairs with one essential difference – the dancers performed totally nude. Each young woman danced to the music of three songs. They performed their first song, like the downstairs dancers, in bikini-like costume. They would remove their top toward the beginning of the second song, and their bottoms during the beginning of the third song to the captivated attention of every young man in the place.
About this time, the Supreme Court ruled that nude dancing is not pornographic. After having their hands rapped by several adverse court decisions, the City removed its ban on nudity. Nude dancing soon became common in clubs around Oklahoma City, the Scorpio moving to a new location on north May.
Totally nude dancing continued in Oklahoma City until the Supreme Court ruled that cities could regulate activities that the majority of the people did not approve of. I don’t think a vote to regulate nudity ever occurred but the local police began operating as if it had. Oil prices had begun to collapse, ending the oil boom and Oklahoma City’s boomtown mentality. Baby boomers were older and most, by this time had their own children. No one much protested the end of an era.
The Scorpio no longer exists, but the building that housed it remains. Ironically, it is now the home of a Vietnamese pool hall and domino parlor. I smiled as I pulled on the old tee shirt, a little too small for me now, but still in good shape. Yes, an era has ended but I still have my memory of the first time I climbed the stairs at the old Scorpio, not knowing what to expect, but spellbound with youthful anticipation.
Gondwana
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Girls on the Beach
During the last oil boom, I did a lot of freelance geology work for a local company that was very active at the time. Ray, an oil man I met had his own company that was closely associated with the one for which I was doing work. My wife Anne and I became good friends with his wife Kathy and him.
Ray’s associate Larry also owned an infamous local night spot called Michael’s Plum that was the “in” place to frequent for many years. Michael’s was sponsoring a trip to the Bahamas where Larry owned two yachts. The trip included rooms at the Paradise Island Hotel along with round trip airfare. Several spots came open at the last minute and the four of us headed toward the Caribbean.
We did lots of gambling, drinking, eating and sitting in the sun. One day, the girls were exhausted so Ray and I decided to hit the beach by ourselves. We had barely spread our towels in the sand when two good-looking women dressed in tiny bikinis joined us. They both had very proper English accents – at least they sounded proper to two Okie oilies.
The two young women were very friendly – overly friendly, it seemed to both of us. They were soon practically sitting in our laps before Ray and I realized they were “working girls.” As it turned out, we didn’t have a chance to get into trouble.
Our rooms were on the third floor of the resort with balconies that overlooked the sea. Anne and Kathy, it seemed, trusted neither of us very much and were keeping an eye out to see where we were. Espying the two scantily-clad British women sitting with us, they quickly sprinted across the hundred yards of sand, joining us and making it quite clear that Ray and I didn’t need extra company.
Dinner was a bit strained that night, even though Ray and I never did anything.
“Because we didn’t give you a chance,” Anne said, above our protests.
Kathy’s next comment caused us all to laugh and succeeded in breaking the tension – restoring the trip to near normalcy. Well, almost!
“Never trust a horny man on hot sand,” she said.
Gondwana Press
Ray’s associate Larry also owned an infamous local night spot called Michael’s Plum that was the “in” place to frequent for many years. Michael’s was sponsoring a trip to the Bahamas where Larry owned two yachts. The trip included rooms at the Paradise Island Hotel along with round trip airfare. Several spots came open at the last minute and the four of us headed toward the Caribbean.
We did lots of gambling, drinking, eating and sitting in the sun. One day, the girls were exhausted so Ray and I decided to hit the beach by ourselves. We had barely spread our towels in the sand when two good-looking women dressed in tiny bikinis joined us. They both had very proper English accents – at least they sounded proper to two Okie oilies.
The two young women were very friendly – overly friendly, it seemed to both of us. They were soon practically sitting in our laps before Ray and I realized they were “working girls.” As it turned out, we didn’t have a chance to get into trouble.
Our rooms were on the third floor of the resort with balconies that overlooked the sea. Anne and Kathy, it seemed, trusted neither of us very much and were keeping an eye out to see where we were. Espying the two scantily-clad British women sitting with us, they quickly sprinted across the hundred yards of sand, joining us and making it quite clear that Ray and I didn’t need extra company.
Dinner was a bit strained that night, even though Ray and I never did anything.
“Because we didn’t give you a chance,” Anne said, above our protests.
Kathy’s next comment caused us all to laugh and succeeded in breaking the tension – restoring the trip to near normalcy. Well, almost!
“Never trust a horny man on hot sand,” she said.
Gondwana Press
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Rock Hounds
I retired early last night because I need to be in Dallas before ten this morning. A noisy storm fraught with booming thunder and flashes of lightning that lit my bedroom, awakened me at midnight. Fearing a flood in the living room such that occurred in 2007, I took a broom to the drain hole on my back porch.
The thunder and lightning had frightened my two pugs, Princess and Scooter. Princess had her back against the door, wanting to get into the house. Brave little Scooter, on the other hand, stood beside me, barking defiantly every time thunder boomed or lightning flashed.
My backyard slopes dramatically from the fence to the back of my house. Heavy rain tends to pour down the slope, and off the back roof, flooding the porch if the drain isn’t cleared of leaves, dog hair, etc. Last night’s rain was hard but not of the same epic proportions of 2007. Using my push broom, Scooter and I quickly got the best of the racing water.
There was still water on the porch so I moved the dog’s big bed to the spot by the backdoor that usually stays dry. When I picked it up, I got a surprise. Not only did it contain several of their toys, but also about a half-dozen rocks.
I had noticed rocks by the door and even found some in my bedroom when I let the dogs in to play when I dress in the mornings. I had not connected the fact that Scooter, or Princess was collecting them. I have never, for that matter, known a dog that collects rocks, but these two do – well-rounded rocks that make up more than a mouthful for such a small animals.
The rain slowed to a steady rate so I gave the pups a chicken strip, turned off the lights and returned to bed, hoping to get a few more hours of sleep before my early bird partner knocks on the door at six-thirty. I’ll keep a better eye on the two from now on and try to learn which one of them is the rock hound. I will bet it is Scooter but perhaps it is both. Whichever, eat your hearts out all you other geologists out there!
Fiction South
The thunder and lightning had frightened my two pugs, Princess and Scooter. Princess had her back against the door, wanting to get into the house. Brave little Scooter, on the other hand, stood beside me, barking defiantly every time thunder boomed or lightning flashed.
My backyard slopes dramatically from the fence to the back of my house. Heavy rain tends to pour down the slope, and off the back roof, flooding the porch if the drain isn’t cleared of leaves, dog hair, etc. Last night’s rain was hard but not of the same epic proportions of 2007. Using my push broom, Scooter and I quickly got the best of the racing water.
There was still water on the porch so I moved the dog’s big bed to the spot by the backdoor that usually stays dry. When I picked it up, I got a surprise. Not only did it contain several of their toys, but also about a half-dozen rocks.
I had noticed rocks by the door and even found some in my bedroom when I let the dogs in to play when I dress in the mornings. I had not connected the fact that Scooter, or Princess was collecting them. I have never, for that matter, known a dog that collects rocks, but these two do – well-rounded rocks that make up more than a mouthful for such a small animals.
The rain slowed to a steady rate so I gave the pups a chicken strip, turned off the lights and returned to bed, hoping to get a few more hours of sleep before my early bird partner knocks on the door at six-thirty. I’ll keep a better eye on the two from now on and try to learn which one of them is the rock hound. I will bet it is Scooter but perhaps it is both. Whichever, eat your hearts out all you other geologists out there!
Fiction South
Monday, August 17, 2009
Mama's Gumbo
Those that have read any of my New Orleans short stories know that Bertram Picou is the owner of an eclectic little bar on Chartres Street, in the French Quarter. He cooks some of the world’s best gumbo and always has a pot simmering in back for his regular customers.
Everyone in New Orleans makes gumbo, some tasting better than others. The best gumbo is like ambrosia, a gift from heaven itself. It’s now made all over the world but one thing is sure. You’ll never find better gumbo anywhere in the world that tastes as good as the worst gumbo from New Orleans.
Some say that Bertram’s gumbo is the best in the Big Easy. Don’t believe me? Next time you’re in the French Quarter, stop by his place and give it a try. The bar’s a little hard to find, but keep looking. Below is Bertram’s recipe, told in his own words.
Mama's Gumbo
"First thing is make the roux. Pour some oil in your big cast iron skillet and put it on the fire, medium heat. Add some flour and start stirring. Whatever you do, don’t leave the stove, even to chase Ol’ Shep, until the roux cooks to a pleasing shade of brown, maybe a little darker if you’re taste buds are more Cajun than most. Be careful now. Don’t burn that roux cause it’s the most important part of the gumbo! If it starts to smoke and curdle up, you done screwed up! Throw it out and start over.
Once you got the roux done, its time to make the gumbo. My Mama throws in crawfish, shrimp, chicken, sausage, squirrel, deer, or even fish. "Whatever floats your boat," she used to say.
Fill up your big stock pot with water and set it on the stove. Get it to boiling then add the roux. Mama always uses four tablespoons, more or less, depending on the weather, how dark she had let it cook, and how she feels that particular day. Good cooks don’t read recipes. They just sense how something ought to taste. However many tablespoons she used, her gumbo always tasted damn good!
Keep stirring until the roux and water are mixed, then add a couple of chopped onions, a chopped bell pepper, six minced garlic cloves and your chicken, seafood, or whatever. This is where it gets tricky. You need to add salt, cayenne and black pepper and this must be done to taste. Using too much, or not enough, can make or break the gumbo and, unfortunately, practice is the only way to learn how. You’ll have to do this yourself cause Mama can’t go to everyone’s house.
Cook the gumbo on a medium hot flame and keep stirring until everything starts getting tender. Don’t put a lid on the pot.
Finally, boil up your rice to perfection (just about the hardest thing in the world to get right, but that’s another story). Add parsley and scallions to the gumbo, and, if you like, a little file, then ladle it on the rice and enjoy!"
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Kansas Dirt Cake - a weekend recipe
Here is a recipe I found on the web. The author (unknown) suggests that you serve it in a flower pot complete with gummy worms and artificial flowers. Sounds gummy, I mean yummy!
KANSAS DIRT CAKE
2 pkgs. vanilla instant pudding
2 ½ cups milk
1 8 oz package of cream cheese
½ stick of butter
¾ cup powdered sugar
12 oz. Cool Whip
1 pkg. Oreo Cookies
Mix the vanilla pudding and milk in a medium size-mixing bowl. Refrigerate until ready to use.Mix cream cheese, butter and powdered sugar together in a large mixing bowl. Mix in the vanilla pudding and mix until thoroughly blended. Add the carton of Cool Whip and mix until blended. Line 9 x 13 in. pan with Oreo cookie crumbs. (I use 2 Oreo crusts and mash the crusts up with a fork. You need one crust for the bottom of the pan and one to put over the pudding mixture.) Pour pudding mixture into the pan and spread the rest of the Oreo crumbs on top. Refrigerate until ready to serve.
KANSAS DIRT CAKE
2 pkgs. vanilla instant pudding
2 ½ cups milk
1 8 oz package of cream cheese
½ stick of butter
¾ cup powdered sugar
12 oz. Cool Whip
1 pkg. Oreo Cookies
Mix the vanilla pudding and milk in a medium size-mixing bowl. Refrigerate until ready to use.Mix cream cheese, butter and powdered sugar together in a large mixing bowl. Mix in the vanilla pudding and mix until thoroughly blended. Add the carton of Cool Whip and mix until blended. Line 9 x 13 in. pan with Oreo cookie crumbs. (I use 2 Oreo crusts and mash the crusts up with a fork. You need one crust for the bottom of the pan and one to put over the pudding mixture.) Pour pudding mixture into the pan and spread the rest of the Oreo crumbs on top. Refrigerate until ready to serve.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Woodstock - a montage
The concert that changed the world began forty years ago on the 15th. Not all of us were able to attend. I was sitting a deep wildcat well in east Texas. It was supposedly the summer of love and peace but it was actually the beginning of a world our parents could never have imagined, a world fraught with drugs, war and political intrigue. Here is a peace montage I created to commemorate this seminal event that marked the beginning of a much changed world.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Don't Mess With Mother Nature
When I worked for Cities Service Oil Company my primary duty was sitting (staying on location, describing samples and calling for drill stem tests) drilling wells, mostly in Kansas. After months of learning from other geologists, I was allowed to sit a well in Comanche County, Kansas all alone. My first solo experience was quite traumatic.
The well was a wildcat (more than a mile from established production) scheduled to drill into the Arbuckle Dolomite, a very old carbonate that sometimes produces lots of oil and gas. At Cities, the technique for describing and drilling a prospect was well defined but had many flaws.
The powers-that-be considered Cities a technologically advanced company and would not drill a wildcat without seismic control. The geologist would locate an anomaly by doing subsurface mapping. He would then propose a well and management would either agree or can the prospect. If they agreed, the geophysicists would get involved and have a seismic survey conducted over the prospect. If the geophysics agreed with the geology, then Cities would drill a well there.
When I started working for Cities, the Mid-continent Division had not had a discovery in more than ten years. Part of the reason, I soon learned, is that seismic surveys never work perfectly. My opinion is that they rarely work, at least in Kansas. There are many reasons for this, most too technical to delve into in the space of a few hundred words. I had an inkling of this fact the first well that I sat alone because I had already had discussions with other disillusioned company geologists.
Every well is different and only a trained wellsite specialist can tell you exactly where you are in the hole, and if you are running structurally high (very good) or structurally low (very bad). There is a marker zone, the Heebner Shale, in Kansas that is almost always used to determine how you are running. When we reached the Heebner, I knew exactly where I was in the hole and called my boss to report the information.
“You must be mistaken,” Don W. told me. “If what you say is true you would be running fifty feet low. The seismic map says you should be running fifty feet high so you obviously have a hundred foot error.”
I tried to argue with him, explain that I knew where we were and that we really were running fifty feet low.
“You’ve missed a correlation point. Go up the hole a hundred feet and try again. You’ll find your mistake.”
From that point, my daily report was in La La Land. I knew where we were but my boss was becoming increasing confused to the point that he called me an idiot and threatened to send out a more experienced geologist to correct my obvious mistake. At one point, he almost had me convinced that I didn’t know what I was doing.
We finally reached total depth and when I looked at the electric log I knew that I had been correct all along. By this time we were almost seventy feet low to the nearest correlation point. There was no email in those days or any way to quickly transmit the logs to Oklahoma City for the honchos to view. It was four in the morning when I looked at the last log and realized that we had a dry hole. In a near state of despair, I called Don, my boss.
“Calm down, Eric. Everything will be okay. Is there any possibility that you are miscorrelating the log?”
There wasn’t, but it hurt my feelings that he was still blaming the failure of the well on me – at least that’s the way I felt at the time.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked.
“Bring the logs to the office. We’ll have a meeting first thing in the morning.”
Management cared little about their minions. Another geologist, a close friend of mine, had rear-ended a parked semi on the side of the road as he headed for a remote well site in the wee hours of the morning. He didn’t survive. It didn’t matter that I had been awake for almost twenty-four hours. I had my orders – drive all night and present the logs for management’s inspection the following morning.
I drove into Oklahoma as the sun was arising and made it to the corporate offices before nine the next morning. Three of my bosses studied the logs, frowned and scratched their heads, finally dismissing me without so much as a thank you or well done. Later that day, Fred, the older geologist that had taught me almost everything I knew, came to my office.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s not even your prospect.”
“I just can’t believe that management trusts a tool that almost never works over the word of their geologists.”
A big grin spread over Fred’s face. “Welcome to life as a geologist,” he said. “When you drill a discovery, someone else takes the credit but you get all the blame for every dry hole.”
“But Fred, seismic sucks. How can management continue to believe in it?”
“Eric, a geologist is nothing but a justifier, someone or something that gives the okay for a company to dump millions of dollars into the ground. You don’t really know any more than the seismic tool whether or not there is oil where you are planning to drill. We use the best science we have but once you are a foot below the surface of the earth - and you can take this to the bank - it’s all Mother Nature, and she doesn’t give up her secrets easily.”
Fred was correct. I have drilled many dry holes in my career and I’ve worked with lots of people and many companies that have had their discoveries. And sometimes when I wake up at night and stare into the darkness, I can hear old Mother Nature giggling to herself.
Gondwana Press
The well was a wildcat (more than a mile from established production) scheduled to drill into the Arbuckle Dolomite, a very old carbonate that sometimes produces lots of oil and gas. At Cities, the technique for describing and drilling a prospect was well defined but had many flaws.
The powers-that-be considered Cities a technologically advanced company and would not drill a wildcat without seismic control. The geologist would locate an anomaly by doing subsurface mapping. He would then propose a well and management would either agree or can the prospect. If they agreed, the geophysicists would get involved and have a seismic survey conducted over the prospect. If the geophysics agreed with the geology, then Cities would drill a well there.
When I started working for Cities, the Mid-continent Division had not had a discovery in more than ten years. Part of the reason, I soon learned, is that seismic surveys never work perfectly. My opinion is that they rarely work, at least in Kansas. There are many reasons for this, most too technical to delve into in the space of a few hundred words. I had an inkling of this fact the first well that I sat alone because I had already had discussions with other disillusioned company geologists.
Every well is different and only a trained wellsite specialist can tell you exactly where you are in the hole, and if you are running structurally high (very good) or structurally low (very bad). There is a marker zone, the Heebner Shale, in Kansas that is almost always used to determine how you are running. When we reached the Heebner, I knew exactly where I was in the hole and called my boss to report the information.
“You must be mistaken,” Don W. told me. “If what you say is true you would be running fifty feet low. The seismic map says you should be running fifty feet high so you obviously have a hundred foot error.”
I tried to argue with him, explain that I knew where we were and that we really were running fifty feet low.
“You’ve missed a correlation point. Go up the hole a hundred feet and try again. You’ll find your mistake.”
From that point, my daily report was in La La Land. I knew where we were but my boss was becoming increasing confused to the point that he called me an idiot and threatened to send out a more experienced geologist to correct my obvious mistake. At one point, he almost had me convinced that I didn’t know what I was doing.
We finally reached total depth and when I looked at the electric log I knew that I had been correct all along. By this time we were almost seventy feet low to the nearest correlation point. There was no email in those days or any way to quickly transmit the logs to Oklahoma City for the honchos to view. It was four in the morning when I looked at the last log and realized that we had a dry hole. In a near state of despair, I called Don, my boss.
“Calm down, Eric. Everything will be okay. Is there any possibility that you are miscorrelating the log?”
There wasn’t, but it hurt my feelings that he was still blaming the failure of the well on me – at least that’s the way I felt at the time.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked.
“Bring the logs to the office. We’ll have a meeting first thing in the morning.”
Management cared little about their minions. Another geologist, a close friend of mine, had rear-ended a parked semi on the side of the road as he headed for a remote well site in the wee hours of the morning. He didn’t survive. It didn’t matter that I had been awake for almost twenty-four hours. I had my orders – drive all night and present the logs for management’s inspection the following morning.
I drove into Oklahoma as the sun was arising and made it to the corporate offices before nine the next morning. Three of my bosses studied the logs, frowned and scratched their heads, finally dismissing me without so much as a thank you or well done. Later that day, Fred, the older geologist that had taught me almost everything I knew, came to my office.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s not even your prospect.”
“I just can’t believe that management trusts a tool that almost never works over the word of their geologists.”
A big grin spread over Fred’s face. “Welcome to life as a geologist,” he said. “When you drill a discovery, someone else takes the credit but you get all the blame for every dry hole.”
“But Fred, seismic sucks. How can management continue to believe in it?”
“Eric, a geologist is nothing but a justifier, someone or something that gives the okay for a company to dump millions of dollars into the ground. You don’t really know any more than the seismic tool whether or not there is oil where you are planning to drill. We use the best science we have but once you are a foot below the surface of the earth - and you can take this to the bank - it’s all Mother Nature, and she doesn’t give up her secrets easily.”
Fred was correct. I have drilled many dry holes in my career and I’ve worked with lots of people and many companies that have had their discoveries. And sometimes when I wake up at night and stare into the darkness, I can hear old Mother Nature giggling to herself.
Gondwana Press
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Plotting, Pace, Promotion and Pinching
When I first started writing I didn’t know any other writers and I was eager to meet some and learn their secrets. I don’t know if this is true, but I’ve heard it more than once that Oklahoma has more romance writers than any other state. For the experience of meeting other writers, I signed up for a Saturday romance writer’s conference announced in the Sunday Oklahoman.
The conference was held at a hotel on Meridian Avenue near Will Rogers Airport and I had no idea what to expect when I arrived. Romance writers are mostly females, but not all. Of the two hundred or so attendees, I was one of less than a half dozen males.
My sex didn’t seem to matter and I had a great time listening to the speakers and seeing the displays. Romance writers, I learned, are masters (mistresses?) at self promotion. They all had slick, professionally designed postcards, bookmarks and business cards promoting their latest novel. Promotion is vital in the romance writer’s ranks because the average shelf life (time on a super market’s magazine rack, etc.) is much less than thirty days.
All these women knew each other and they all were extremely supportive, plugging their friends books as well as their own. This is only one reason why romance novels are the most popular genre in writing.
As most of you know, long-haired, bare-chested handsome men grace the covers of many romance novels. Some of the cover models are celebrities, like Fabio, and have a following of their own fans. Five of these professional models had flown in for the conference and the highlight was a male model beauty contest.
I was frankly blown away when the event began. The women writers whooped and hollered like roughnecks or long-haul truckers at the Red Dog, a nearby strip club. I even witnessed a few well timed butt pinches as the men paraded through the crowd of ladies from the back of the auditorium to the little stage in front.
The conference was my first experience meeting actual writers, a few quite famous. I learned a lot about plotting, pace and promotion. That was my first writer’s conference. I’ve attended many others since then but I’ve never met another group that knew as much about the four Ps of writing (with this group I had to include pinching) or that had as much fun while doing it.
Louisiana Mystery Writer
The conference was held at a hotel on Meridian Avenue near Will Rogers Airport and I had no idea what to expect when I arrived. Romance writers are mostly females, but not all. Of the two hundred or so attendees, I was one of less than a half dozen males.
My sex didn’t seem to matter and I had a great time listening to the speakers and seeing the displays. Romance writers, I learned, are masters (mistresses?) at self promotion. They all had slick, professionally designed postcards, bookmarks and business cards promoting their latest novel. Promotion is vital in the romance writer’s ranks because the average shelf life (time on a super market’s magazine rack, etc.) is much less than thirty days.
All these women knew each other and they all were extremely supportive, plugging their friends books as well as their own. This is only one reason why romance novels are the most popular genre in writing.
As most of you know, long-haired, bare-chested handsome men grace the covers of many romance novels. Some of the cover models are celebrities, like Fabio, and have a following of their own fans. Five of these professional models had flown in for the conference and the highlight was a male model beauty contest.
I was frankly blown away when the event began. The women writers whooped and hollered like roughnecks or long-haul truckers at the Red Dog, a nearby strip club. I even witnessed a few well timed butt pinches as the men paraded through the crowd of ladies from the back of the auditorium to the little stage in front.
The conference was my first experience meeting actual writers, a few quite famous. I learned a lot about plotting, pace and promotion. That was my first writer’s conference. I’ve attended many others since then but I’ve never met another group that knew as much about the four Ps of writing (with this group I had to include pinching) or that had as much fun while doing it.
Louisiana Mystery Writer
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Meeting Clive Cussler
I was incensed when my oil company went belly up at the end of the last oil boom. I had never before faced total failure and I felt emasculated, both mentally and physically. Anne and I had an IBM AT, the state-of-the-art personal computer at the time, and an early word processing program called Framework. Unable to save my ailing oil company, I began writing an expose instead to tell the world what we had endured.
Within ninety days I completed a novel of a hundred and twenty thousand words. The book, a total disaster, still resides in my trunk. I’ve read it since and it is still horrible, but it taught me one thing - I truly love to write, even if I never make a penny doing it.
Realizing my shortcomings, I began reading every writer’s magazine I could buy, and every how-to book of writing that I could find, or check out from the library. One day in the Daily Oklahoman I saw an announcement for the annual Oklahoma Writer’s Federation Inc. (OWFI) meeting. Anne and I barely had money for groceries at the time, but she somehow scraped together the money for me to attend.
The first meeting that I attended was at the Lincoln Plaza, defunct for perhaps the last ten years. It was going strong at the time and there were probably two hundred writers in attendance, including Clive Cussler the keynote speaker.
After registering on Saturday, I went to the main hall, like everyone else, to hear the President of the OWFI launch the conference. I found an empty chair at a large table. I was the only man at the table and I got my first lesson in Writing 101, learning that most of the authors in the world are females. The women at my table were all romance writers and they all knew each other. It’s a true but little known fact that there are more romance writers per capita in Oklahoma than any other state in the Union – I’m not making this up!
The ladies at my table were all wonderful. When they asked me what I had written, I had to tell them, “Not much.” It didn’t matter because they had all been there. Everyone has to start somewhere and they were all supportive.
The chair beside me was vacant, perhaps the only vacant seat in the entire large room. As I was talking to the women at my table, someone took the seat beside me, banging into my chair as they did. I turned to see a slender man in a white shirt and blue jeans. He was a good looking man with a trimmed beard and I could instantly see the attraction in the eight sets of female romance writer’s eyes when he spoke.
“Hi, ladies, hope I’m not disturbing anything.”
“Not at all,” the woman next to me said, almost poking out my eye as she reached across me to shake his hand. “I’m Glenda so-and-so,” she said.
“Glad to meet you,” the man answered. “I’m Clive Cussler.”
Every woman at the table practically swooned. I never got a chance to speak but I’m sure that I was Cussler’s biggest fan at the table. Having grown up with Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs and H. Rider Haggard, I had just finished reading Cussler’s wonderful adventure novel Cyclops and I thought that he was the second coming.
Later, when I listened to Cussler’s keynote address, I learned that nothing comes easy in the writing world. He was in his forties before he ever had a book published, and then only after tricking an agent into representing him. When he finally told his agent of many years what he had done, the man was so angry that he walked out of the expensive New York restaurant in a huff.
Cussler was rich and famous when I met him, but you wouldn’t have known it by talking to him. He was humble, courteous and as down-to-earth as any long-haul truck driver. Yes, he was a real gentleman and hey, the romance writers at my table liked him too!
Fiction South
Within ninety days I completed a novel of a hundred and twenty thousand words. The book, a total disaster, still resides in my trunk. I’ve read it since and it is still horrible, but it taught me one thing - I truly love to write, even if I never make a penny doing it.
Realizing my shortcomings, I began reading every writer’s magazine I could buy, and every how-to book of writing that I could find, or check out from the library. One day in the Daily Oklahoman I saw an announcement for the annual Oklahoma Writer’s Federation Inc. (OWFI) meeting. Anne and I barely had money for groceries at the time, but she somehow scraped together the money for me to attend.
The first meeting that I attended was at the Lincoln Plaza, defunct for perhaps the last ten years. It was going strong at the time and there were probably two hundred writers in attendance, including Clive Cussler the keynote speaker.
After registering on Saturday, I went to the main hall, like everyone else, to hear the President of the OWFI launch the conference. I found an empty chair at a large table. I was the only man at the table and I got my first lesson in Writing 101, learning that most of the authors in the world are females. The women at my table were all romance writers and they all knew each other. It’s a true but little known fact that there are more romance writers per capita in Oklahoma than any other state in the Union – I’m not making this up!
The ladies at my table were all wonderful. When they asked me what I had written, I had to tell them, “Not much.” It didn’t matter because they had all been there. Everyone has to start somewhere and they were all supportive.
The chair beside me was vacant, perhaps the only vacant seat in the entire large room. As I was talking to the women at my table, someone took the seat beside me, banging into my chair as they did. I turned to see a slender man in a white shirt and blue jeans. He was a good looking man with a trimmed beard and I could instantly see the attraction in the eight sets of female romance writer’s eyes when he spoke.
“Hi, ladies, hope I’m not disturbing anything.”
“Not at all,” the woman next to me said, almost poking out my eye as she reached across me to shake his hand. “I’m Glenda so-and-so,” she said.
“Glad to meet you,” the man answered. “I’m Clive Cussler.”
Every woman at the table practically swooned. I never got a chance to speak but I’m sure that I was Cussler’s biggest fan at the table. Having grown up with Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs and H. Rider Haggard, I had just finished reading Cussler’s wonderful adventure novel Cyclops and I thought that he was the second coming.
Later, when I listened to Cussler’s keynote address, I learned that nothing comes easy in the writing world. He was in his forties before he ever had a book published, and then only after tricking an agent into representing him. When he finally told his agent of many years what he had done, the man was so angry that he walked out of the expensive New York restaurant in a huff.
Cussler was rich and famous when I met him, but you wouldn’t have known it by talking to him. He was humble, courteous and as down-to-earth as any long-haul truck driver. Yes, he was a real gentleman and hey, the romance writers at my table liked him too!
Fiction South
Monday, August 10, 2009
Clueless in Chalmette
Harvey, my first father-in-law, was a fur buyer. I was just back from Vietnam, scheduled to start graduate school the next spring. Still, Harvey apparently mistrusted my intentions and assumed that I intended to be a perennial student, and somehow on the dole – his dole. The thought was the furthest from my mind, but it seems to be the opinion he and all my other relatives had at the time. He was worried about it enough that he even tried to teach me how to grade fur.
Harvey had a shed where he kept his furs before transporting them downtown to the French Market where he ultimately sold them.
“This is a rat fur,” he said, pointing to a muskrat skin. “I pay a dollar for a regular pelt and a little more for a grade A pelt. Know how I tell the difference?”
I didn’t have a clue. The pelts were turned inside out and he stuck his hand inside one, showing me what to do.
“I pass my hand over the fur to see if there are any bald or thin spots. If there are, the fur isn’t worth as much. I always give at least a dollar a pelt or else the trappers would take their furs some place else. If they bring me a hundred rats, I give them at least a hundred dollars. Everything over that amount is a bonus. You understand?”
I nodded to indicate that I did, but I really didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.
Gail and I had intended to live with Harvey and Lilly for three months, and then three months with my parents before moving to Fayetteville just before the beginning spring semester. It didn’t happen that way. After about a week, they began treating us like bad breath. My sister-in-law even called and offered to pay my way through a real estate course so that Gail and I would stop sponging off their parents. I’m fairly dense, but I was starting to get the hint. That night I had a talk with Gail.
“I can’t take much more of this,” I said. “Your parents obviously don’t want us here.”
“But what will we do?”
“Leave here and spend the rest of the time with my parents. I think they are more understanding.”
Next day we packed and drove to Vivian, Lillie crying but not begging us to stay. After a week at my parent’s house, we got another rude awakening. They too began treating us like, well like blood-sucking leeches. After just a few days, we packed our bags again and left for Fayetteville.
For the first time in my life I learned that families are strange, really strange. The may love you but they don’t want you living with them, or for you to give the rest of the family the impression that you are living off of them.
It was a good lesson but it leaves me with one question – why can’t I get rid of my own kids as easily?
Gondwana
Harvey had a shed where he kept his furs before transporting them downtown to the French Market where he ultimately sold them.
“This is a rat fur,” he said, pointing to a muskrat skin. “I pay a dollar for a regular pelt and a little more for a grade A pelt. Know how I tell the difference?”
I didn’t have a clue. The pelts were turned inside out and he stuck his hand inside one, showing me what to do.
“I pass my hand over the fur to see if there are any bald or thin spots. If there are, the fur isn’t worth as much. I always give at least a dollar a pelt or else the trappers would take their furs some place else. If they bring me a hundred rats, I give them at least a hundred dollars. Everything over that amount is a bonus. You understand?”
I nodded to indicate that I did, but I really didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.
Gail and I had intended to live with Harvey and Lilly for three months, and then three months with my parents before moving to Fayetteville just before the beginning spring semester. It didn’t happen that way. After about a week, they began treating us like bad breath. My sister-in-law even called and offered to pay my way through a real estate course so that Gail and I would stop sponging off their parents. I’m fairly dense, but I was starting to get the hint. That night I had a talk with Gail.
“I can’t take much more of this,” I said. “Your parents obviously don’t want us here.”
“But what will we do?”
“Leave here and spend the rest of the time with my parents. I think they are more understanding.”
Next day we packed and drove to Vivian, Lillie crying but not begging us to stay. After a week at my parent’s house, we got another rude awakening. They too began treating us like, well like blood-sucking leeches. After just a few days, we packed our bags again and left for Fayetteville.
For the first time in my life I learned that families are strange, really strange. The may love you but they don’t want you living with them, or for you to give the rest of the family the impression that you are living off of them.
It was a good lesson but it leaves me with one question – why can’t I get rid of my own kids as easily?
Gondwana
Dust Ghost of Coldwater Kansas - a short story
It's great seeing all the new stories about the filming of the original movie The Exorcist. The film was a masterpiece from the beginning to the climactic final scene. I still get tingly when I hear the song Tubular Bells. In the 70s, I saw my own apparition in the badlands of southwest Kansas.Kansas Dust Ghost
My first wife, Gail, and I saw the movie at the Shepherd Mall in Oklahoma City, and the theater was packed. The cinema both fascinated and repulsed the many theater-goers watching it. So intense were some of the scenes (at least compared to every other movie before 1973) that many of the patrons tossed their own cookies when Linda Blair’s head began rotating on her neck, and she began spitting green goo at the priest attempting to exorcise her demon.
I didn’t throw up, but the young man sitting beside me did – right on my shoe, I kid you not! The movie stopped briefly while unhappy attendants with mops and pails cleaned up the mess. I am not making this up! Anyway, I left Oklahoma City the following day to watch a drilling oil well in Coldwater, Kansas. Yes, there is a Coldwater, Kansas, and I’m not making that up, either.
Located in southwest Kansas, Coldwater was, and still is, a tiny town – only 792 people living there in 2000. I got a room in a four-room motel, stowed my suitcase, and drove to the Wildcat about twelve miles away.
Well-site work in Kansas is challenging. There are so many potentially productive formations up and down the hole that leaving the location for very long is impossible. We had a small company trailer on site, and five days passed before I finally returned to my motel room. When drilling ceased for a time to test a zone, I drove to Coldwater for a much anticipated and needed rest. Before the night ended, my anticipation had turned to dread.
That night, I showered, changed clothes, and then ate a steak at the local café. The motel’s little black-and-white reception was poor, so I turned in early. There are few trees in southwest Kansas. When the wind blows, it tends to howl. No sooner than I turned off the lights, the door and windows began to rattle, then expand and contract like a human lung. Bright lights and neon filtered in through the curtains and cracks around the door. It was almost as if a ghastly presence was joining me inside.
Only a few days after seeing The Exorcist, my imagination began working overtime, playing cruel tricks on a sleep-deprived geologist. I am a Vietnam veteran, so I was not really frightened. Well, okay, a little bit. Dust blew through cracks in the door, fouling the air conditioning and reminding me of an angry apparition swirling around the room. Whatever it was, it didn’t harm me, and I finally fell asleep, probably from exhaustion.
The flashing lights, moaning wind, and veils of dust in my room could have been a ghost, or perhaps just my imagination whetted by the very realistic film I had recently viewed. As events would have it, that was the last night I spent in the Coldwater Motel, not by design or the dust ghost, but because that is how the drilling worked out.
Years have passed since I saw The Exorcist at the Shepherd Mall, and I have not returned to Coldwater, Kansas. It doesn’t matter because I will never forget The Exorcist or the dust ghost I saw and heard that night in the Coldwater Motel.
###
Watching The Well
Fred was already in his fifties when I started work for Cities Service Oil Company. He taught me how to make contour maps, and pick formation tops from electric logs. More importantly, he instructed me on how to find oil and gas. Though important, they were not the only things I learned from him.
Fred was the senior Kansas geologist and no longer had to watch drilling wells. He still liked to go to the field occasionally, but more as an observer than anything else. “A vacation from the office,” he said.
For the first two or three wells that I watched, Dave, another junior Kansas geologist accompanied me, letting me do most of the work but correcting my errors as we went along. When the company finally trusted me enough to watch a well alone, I felt confident that I could do the job. A week had passed when Fred joined me on the well.
He picked me up at the well site the first morning, taking me to a nearby town to a favorite café he remembered for a breakfast of steak and eggs. After breakfast, we spent much of the day driving around the countryside, Fred pointing out wells he had drilled and explaining Cities’ politics, and the local history of every little town we drove through.
After dinner, we found a bar and pool hall where we drank pitcher after pitcher of beer and played game after game of pool. At midnight, when the tavern closed, he drove me back to the location and told me to catch up my samples and descriptions. He would see me in the morning.
The same routine continued for three days, eating, wandering, drinking beer and shooting pool until midnight, and then me burning the midnight oil to bring my well site work up to date, while Fred went to the motel in town. The fourth day, he found me with my head on the trailer’s desk, very much asleep.
“Hey,” he said. “I hope you haven’t missed any shows. We’ll have hell to pay if you did.”
“You kidding me? I’m so tired, I fell asleep staring into the binocular microscope. Both of my eyes are probably black. It would be a relief if you fired me. At least I could get a little rest.”
Fred wasn’t the type that laughed much, but he guffawed a time or two at my words. Patting me on the shoulder, he said, “Go into town and get some sleep. I’ll catch things up for you. You can come get me for dinner.”
I found out later from Dave that Fred had done the same thing to him. “He just wants to see what you are made of,” he said.
Next time Fred joined me on a well and suggested we shoot a game of pool, he actually laughed when I said, “Fine, but if we stay for more than one pitcher, then I’m going to the motel room, and you’ll have to watch the well tonight.”
Louisiana Mystery Writer
Fred was the senior Kansas geologist and no longer had to watch drilling wells. He still liked to go to the field occasionally, but more as an observer than anything else. “A vacation from the office,” he said.
For the first two or three wells that I watched, Dave, another junior Kansas geologist accompanied me, letting me do most of the work but correcting my errors as we went along. When the company finally trusted me enough to watch a well alone, I felt confident that I could do the job. A week had passed when Fred joined me on the well.
He picked me up at the well site the first morning, taking me to a nearby town to a favorite café he remembered for a breakfast of steak and eggs. After breakfast, we spent much of the day driving around the countryside, Fred pointing out wells he had drilled and explaining Cities’ politics, and the local history of every little town we drove through.
After dinner, we found a bar and pool hall where we drank pitcher after pitcher of beer and played game after game of pool. At midnight, when the tavern closed, he drove me back to the location and told me to catch up my samples and descriptions. He would see me in the morning.
The same routine continued for three days, eating, wandering, drinking beer and shooting pool until midnight, and then me burning the midnight oil to bring my well site work up to date, while Fred went to the motel in town. The fourth day, he found me with my head on the trailer’s desk, very much asleep.
“Hey,” he said. “I hope you haven’t missed any shows. We’ll have hell to pay if you did.”
“You kidding me? I’m so tired, I fell asleep staring into the binocular microscope. Both of my eyes are probably black. It would be a relief if you fired me. At least I could get a little rest.”
Fred wasn’t the type that laughed much, but he guffawed a time or two at my words. Patting me on the shoulder, he said, “Go into town and get some sleep. I’ll catch things up for you. You can come get me for dinner.”
I found out later from Dave that Fred had done the same thing to him. “He just wants to see what you are made of,” he said.
Next time Fred joined me on a well and suggested we shoot a game of pool, he actually laughed when I said, “Fine, but if we stay for more than one pitcher, then I’m going to the motel room, and you’ll have to watch the well tonight.”
Louisiana Mystery Writer
Saturday, August 8, 2009
French Quarter Pics - circa 2006
Here are a few NO pics taken in 2006 during my trip to check out the results of Hurricane Katrina.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Red Heads and Banty Roosters
My Grandmother's farmhouse in east Texas was five miles from the nearest paved road. She raised chickens, and had one bantam rooster, her favorite pet. Realizing the little rooster’s place in my Grandma's hierarchy, my brother Jack set out to cause a disturbance, a way to get a rise between the two. He started by throwing stones at the banty.
Jack was always my nemesis, two years older, he tormented me any way and any chance he got. He was mean – at least I thought so - and he had bright red hair to prove it. He seemed to have a sixth sense about what he needed to do to get under my skin. I wasn't the only one he bothered.
Jack's plan soon worked, but not quite the way he had planned it. The rooster, seeing his flame red hair, attacked him, driving his sharp talons into his head. Within seconds, Jack was screaming like a banshee. Grandma soon heard the commotion and reacted immediately.
Racing from the kitchen, she grabbed her pet rooster by the neck and twisted. Nothing happened immediately, at least anything good for my brother. The headless rooster continued flopping, his claws intact in Jack’s neck. When the beast finally stopped moving, grandma pried him off my wailing brother’s neck and then clutched him to her ample breast.
That night, we had chicken and dumplings, my grandma's specialty. Jack never got punished, even though he was to blame, but I will never forget that little red banty rooster working over my mean bro's own red head. Did I enjoy it? I’m almost ashamed to say that it was one of the happiest moments of my life.
Fiction South
Jack was always my nemesis, two years older, he tormented me any way and any chance he got. He was mean – at least I thought so - and he had bright red hair to prove it. He seemed to have a sixth sense about what he needed to do to get under my skin. I wasn't the only one he bothered.
Jack's plan soon worked, but not quite the way he had planned it. The rooster, seeing his flame red hair, attacked him, driving his sharp talons into his head. Within seconds, Jack was screaming like a banshee. Grandma soon heard the commotion and reacted immediately.
Racing from the kitchen, she grabbed her pet rooster by the neck and twisted. Nothing happened immediately, at least anything good for my brother. The headless rooster continued flopping, his claws intact in Jack’s neck. When the beast finally stopped moving, grandma pried him off my wailing brother’s neck and then clutched him to her ample breast.
That night, we had chicken and dumplings, my grandma's specialty. Jack never got punished, even though he was to blame, but I will never forget that little red banty rooster working over my mean bro's own red head. Did I enjoy it? I’m almost ashamed to say that it was one of the happiest moments of my life.
Fiction South
Monday, August 3, 2009
Mortals Such As I
Marilyn and I took my Dad to Pearl’s for brunch recently. He has Alzheimer’s and sometimes has good days, sometimes bad. Hey, it’s real life.
Fall is my favorite season, maybe because I was born in October, the day before Halloween. I was listening to a radio program and the lady announcer said that she and her family love Halloween, but not the supernatural or satanic aspects of it.
There are no satanic aspects of Halloween but there are many supernatural, ghostly and other-worldly facets of the holiday. Like life itself, there are components of the holiday which we can never explain.
My Dad’s Alzheimer’s for instance, while devastating to all involved is something very natural, but something mere mortals, and certainly not I, are ever likely to understand.
Gondwana
Fall is my favorite season, maybe because I was born in October, the day before Halloween. I was listening to a radio program and the lady announcer said that she and her family love Halloween, but not the supernatural or satanic aspects of it.
There are no satanic aspects of Halloween but there are many supernatural, ghostly and other-worldly facets of the holiday. Like life itself, there are components of the holiday which we can never explain.
My Dad’s Alzheimer’s for instance, while devastating to all involved is something very natural, but something mere mortals, and certainly not I, are ever likely to understand.
Gondwana
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Caddo Lake Pics
My novel Ghost of a Chance takes place on a mythical island in Caddo Lake. Fitzgerald Island isn't far from the town of Deception (also mythical). Caddo Lake is very real, mystical, but not mythical. Here are two pics of the scenic lake and a map of Fitzgerald Island.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Old Friends and Ex-Lovers
While digging through a box in my garage I found an old photo of me and ex-wife Gail. With us were three of my four best early friends. The picture was taken 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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