Lost on Route 66

Step-daughter Katelyn and I edited a new book titled Lost on Route 66, Tales from the Mother Road, published by Gondwana Press of Edmond, Oklahoma. The book is a compendium of short stories, essays and poems about Route 66. I was amazed at the quality of writing. Author r. r. bryan, in the forward, urges the readers to take a look at this book.

Contributors came from many states and three different countries. Almost all of the authors in the book have previous publication credits. Many teach writing. All of the writing was wonderful. Some of it was stupendous.

Lost on Route 66 is presently available only at GondwanaPress.com but can soon be found at Amazon and Barnes andNoble.com. Take r. r. bryan’s advice and get lost on Route 66.

Eric'sWeb

Eric'sWeb

Midnight Fox

It’s almost a full moon tonight and my Maine Coon Rouge is sitting on the porch, staring out at the front yard where her cat bowl lies. Every night for the last week or so, a fox has appeared to eat the left-over cat food. I always know because my two big dogs, Patch and Velvet, begin an incensed interlude of energized barking.

The fox is a beautiful creature. He, or she, is a slender animal with russet hair, a big bushy tail and movement as fast and stealthy as a midnight ghost. He, or she, sees me when I approach the open front door. We have a glass storm door. The fox’s eyes seem to scan every direction as it delicately samples the chicken-flavored morsels my finicky cats left behind.

Rouge and Fang watch the alert animal, seemingly unafraid of its presence. He, or she, pays no attention to them, intent only in feasting on the tasty kitty food left in their bowls. Spooked by my presence, it runs away, but returns in moments to finish its meal.

It is almost a full moon tonight. Finally sated, the beautiful fox licks its lips and disappears, once again, into central Oklahoma darkness. I smile, knowing it will return tomorrow night.

Eric'sWeb

Roast Pork Loin with Red Chile Peanut Mole - a weekend recipe

In my new book, formerly Bones of Skeleton Creek, now titled Pagan Bones, Buck McDivit is involved with a murder investigation, cattle theft and a mysterious shape-shifting black panther. He also becomes the only male participant in a pagan spring revel.

In the book, Buck enlists the help of his best friend, Trey Calderham. Trey is an agent for the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, a private agency that has the authority to make arrests in both Texas and Oklahoma. Yes, there really is such an agency.

Trey’s new lady love, Beth O’Hara, is one of Buck’s old flames. Beth owns a restaurant, the Azure Pendant, in the eclectic Paseo District of Oklahoma City. When Buck pays them a visit, she cooks an amazing New Mexican dinner.

Here is a recipe for the excellent dish that I found on the web at Santa Fe School of Cooking. What is mole? Check out the very interesting website and find out.

Roast Pork Loin with Red Chile Peanut Mole

Serves 8 to 10

2 teaspoons black peppercorns
2 teaspoons kosher salt
3 bay leaves
2 teaspoons dried Mexican oregano
2 teaspoons freshly toasted cumin seeds
2 teaspoons freshly toasted coriander seeds

4 to 5 pound boneless, center-cut pork loin
3 tablespoons olive oil

Grind all spices in a spice grinder or with a mortar and pestle. Rub the spice mixture over the surface of the pork loin. Wrap the loin in plastic and refrigerate for 24 to 48 hours.
1. Preheat the oven to 375°.
2. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high. Sear the pork on all sides until browned. Transfer to a foil-lined baking sheet and roast in the oven until the internal temperature reads 160°, about 1-1/2 hours. Allow the pork to rest for 15 to 20 minutes before slicing.

Red Chile-Peanut Mole

12 dried Ancho chiles
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
6 unpeeled garlic cloves, roasted, then peeled
4 large, ripe tomatoes, roasted, then peeled
3/4 cup dry roasted peanuts
1/3 cup toasted sliced almonds
1/3 cup toasted sesame seeds, ground to a powder in a spice grinder
1 or 2 teaspoons espresso powder, or to taste
1 to 2 teaspoons each freshly ground cumin, coriander, canela and allspice, or to taste
4 tablespoons lard or olive oil
Salt to taste
Chipotle chile powder to taste

1. In a preheated skillet over medium, press the chiles, 3 or 4 at a time, onto the bottom of the pan until fragrant and pliable. Be careful not to burn them. Remove the stems and tear the softened flesh into large pieces, removing the seeds that stick to the flesh. Soak the chile pieces in hot water for 30 minutes, until softened.

2. In the meantime, heat the olive oil in a small skillet and sauté the onion until softened. Place the sautéed onion, the garlic cloves and the tomatoes in a blender and puree. Pour mixture into a bowl and set aside. Return 1 cup of this mixture to the blender and add the peanuts, almonds and sesame seed powder. Puree, adding a little of the tomato liquid, if necessary. Combine the puréed tomato mixture and the peanut mixture, and add the espresso powder and spices.

3. Drain the chiles, reserving the soaking liquid. Place the chile pieces in a blender and add 1/2 cup of the soaking liquid, or more if needed. Puree until thoroughly blended. Add the chile puree to the other purees and stir to combine thoroughly.

4. In a large saucepan, heat the lard. When it is hot, add the puree all at once. You may want to use the lid of the pan as a shield, as the liquid will splatter. Bring the mixture to a boil, reduce the heat, season with salt and chipotle chile powder, and simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until you have a sauce with the consistency of thick cream.

Eric'sWeb

Digging for Treasure

I may have already told this tale but that’s okay. A story is never really complete until it’s been embellished and retold at least twice.

This story happened during the time I spent in the boonies with the First Cav. We were patrolling the Jolly Trail System near the Cambodian border when we happened upon a freshly deserted North Vietnamese bunker complex. After a nervous couple of hours deciding if the NVA were truly gone, or set up to ambush us, we decided on the former and established a base camp, sending out several patrols to see if we could find out which direction the enemy had gone. I was one of the lucky ones that remained at the base camp.

I have always been enamored by buried treasure and soon I had myself and everyone else convinced that there was probably a fortune in gold buried somewhere within the perimeter of the bunker complex. This was not such a far-fetched idea as the NVA were known to carry large amounts of money and gold to trade with the locals.

Since they had abandoned the complex in such a hurry, perhaps they had forgotten to take the treasure. Before long, practically everyone left at the base camp was poking around with trenching devices (military shovels). As luck would have it, I was the first one to find something.

“It’s here,” I said, beginning to dig feverishly over a spot of loose earth.

I was quickly joined by others and we soon had a large hole in the ground. I soon became apparent that what we had found was not a treasure trove – well, unless you were a maggot. The bunker complex, it seemed, was a well-established stop along the trail from North Vietnam, our covered treasure no more than a buried latrine. The other soldiers were soon shaking their heads and looking at me as if I were freshly escaped from a loony bin.

“Hey, I’ll bet the treasure’s in the latrine. No one would think to look there.”

The other men didn’t buy my argument and, since I couldn’t convince anyone else to poke around in the smelly remains of an NVA latrine, I decided that even if there were treasure a few feet from where I stood that it wasn’t worth digging through the sh-t for.

No, I didn’t find any buried treasure during my tour of Vietnam. Come to think of it, I don’t recall ever seeing a single rock during the entire time I was there. As a geologist, you’d think I would have noticed.

Eric'sWeb

Days of Disco - a short story

During the 70s, I worked for an oil company named Texas Oil & Gas in downtown Oklahoma City. Though the 80s oil boom had yet to begin, TXO was drilling more oil wells than any company in the Country. The Oklahoma City office of TXO was drilling the most oil wells of any of its branches, and most of the wells we were drilling were generated by me. I know. In the Green New Universe, drilling oil wells is no longer copasetic. We were ignorant in the 80s and knew little about Climate Change.

My Dad was a carpenter and pipefitter. He was a good man and a good provider. Though my parents never had much money, we never missed any meals. Things changed when I went to work for TXO.

I had an expense account and a company car. I was apprehensive when my boss called me into his office to discuss my expense account.

"Shut the door, Eric," he said. "We need to discuss your expense account."

Larry smiled and held up a palm when I said. "I've been watching what I spend."

"That's the problem," he said. "You're making everyone in Geology look bad. From now on, I want you to spend at least four grand a month on your expense account."

"How will I do that?" I asked.

"Take three or four secretaries to lunch every day. Use your expense account for everything. Got it?"

"Yes, sir," I said.

Complying with my boss's request was more complicated than it sounded because all the major service companies were vying for TXO's business. One of the companies took all the geologists and all the secretaries to a disco in Oklahoma City called Clementine's every Friday after work. Every Friday, Clementine's had 3 for 1 mixed drinks. It didn't take long to become inebriated, even if you paid for the drinks. We didn't.

I somehow survived the two years I worked for TXO. Barely! Here is one of the stories from my whiskey-soaked life in 1977.

DAYS OF DISCO

In 1977, I was freshly divorced and working in a high-stress job as a geologist—"A new drilling prospect every week or you’re fired!" Nights would find me in a disco called Clementine’s, located in the basement of Oklahoma City’s Penn Square Mall. The place was dark, the music loud, the drinks and women loose. I was usually inebriated or well on my way to getting there.

Yes, it was in the post-Vietnam, pre-AIDS era. Practically every night, I would spend many hours line dancing to the anthems of Gloria Gaynor, Donna Summer, KC, and the Sunshine Band. Nineteen-seventy-seven was the year I first saw the movie Saturday Night Fever and fell in love with the music of the BeeGees.

There were two ways to enter Clementine’s. You could walk down a narrow flight of stairs or slide down a chute. Either way, you’d wind up in a vast open room that was illuminated only by a rotating disco ball, colored strobe lights that warped your reality even if you weren’t drunk or stoned, and a few discreetly placed floor lamps that provided little more than a dim haze. Most of all, there was a pressing multitude of warm bodies and disco sounds, belting the message of freedom, expression, and free love.

A vast bar extended across the front of the room, where three bartenders served drinks as fast as they could pour them. The dance floor of diamond-shaped black and white tiles was rarely empty; the occasional cooling fingers of vapor rising from grids in the floor made the swaying dancers seem like uninhibited creatures from Hell’s nether regions.

The dance floor was like hypnosis, insanity, and blasting sound. Bodies crushed together amid the beat of drums as ancient as Africa. Once, across the crowded dance floor, I saw a beautiful young woman staring at me. Our eyes locked. We danced toward each other. She passed me a note with her phone number and invited me for spaghetti at her apartment when I called her the next day. I showed up with flowers and a bottle of wine.

Marti was her name. A single mother, she had a five-year-old son named Chris. We ate our spaghetti and drank wine by candlelight. When we finished, I helped her with the dishes, and then she put Chris to bed. Afterward, we made love in her bedroom.

"I want to thank you so much," was her unexpected reply as we lay beside each other in her little bed.

"My pleasure," I said.

"You don’t understand," she explained, sensing the flippant tone of my voice. "I’m in remission from cervical cancer. You are the first man I’ve slept with. I’ve been so worried that I would never have the feelings of a woman ever again. Thank you, you proved to me tonight that I’m okay."

Confused and too young or stupid to understand Marti’s feelings, I contributed little more than small talk before saying goodbye and disappearing into the night. I never saw her again, and I don’t think she needed me to.

Those were the days of disco, my days of disco, for whatever that means. Some people have even suggested that disco isn’t fantastic and people who liked it were less intelligent. I don’t think so. We were all as young, human, and vulnerable as anyone today.

And I do know this. Whenever I hear Gloria Gaynor, Donna Summer, or the BeeGees, I find myself back on that same dark dance floor with wisps of vapor cooling the sweat dripping down my neck and forehead as I pulsate to a hypnotic beat and message of love and coming together. And when I do, it makes me feel young again.

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Born near Black Bayou in the little Louisiana town of Vivian, Eric Wilder grew up listening to his grandmother’s tales of politics, corruption, and ghosts that haunt the night. He now lives in Oklahoma, where he continues to pen mysteries and short stories with a southern accent. He authored the French Quarter Mystery Series set in New Orleans, the Paranormal Cowboy Series, and the Oyster Bay Mystery Series. Please check it out on his Amazon author page. You might also like checking out his Facebook page.

Baby Killer

Americans don’t always support the wars we are in, but they support the troops. That wasn’t always the case. During the time of Vietnam, returning soldiers were often regarded as maniacal baby killers. I soon learned as much upon coming home, fresh from the war in Southeast Asia.

I was an infantry foot soldier, a machine-gunner in the 1st Cav, so I guess I was suspect. My first night home in Chalmette, my drunken brother-in-law demanded to know how many baby sans I had killed and how many mama sans I had raped. I was drunk too, and just held my tongue.

Gail and I soon left Chalmette. After a few days on the beaches in Florida, we drove to Vivian in north Louisiana to spend a little time with my family. My uncle Grady and his wife Artie had a barbecue for Gail and me. Everyone was happy to see me, but I soon noticed every time I began to say something about Vietnam, everyone would turn away. I quickly learned that no one wanted to hear about my tour of duty.

Uncle Grady sensed my angst and asked me to go squirrel hunting with him the next day. We drove in silence to a wooded area a few miles from town. I had my old .410 shotgun.
“Let’s split up. I’ll go this way,” he said, pointing.

The forest quickly encompassed me and I sat on the ground against a big pine without firing a shot. Grady soon returned and saw me sitting against the tree. He joined me and put his big arm around my shoulder.

“You okay?”

I shook my head and said, “I’m not sure if I’ll ever be okay again.”

“You’re back home now with your family. Whatever happened, you better know you’re family supports you and always will. It’s over now and we are proud of you.”

Grady spoke for the whole family, but everyone else soon let me know that they felt the same way. Still, his words that day lifted a heavy weight from my soul.

I smiled, shook his hand and said, “I’m okay. I’ll make it now.”

My family was one thing, the rest of the world another. I soon learned that all Vietnam vets were considered dope smoking, heroin addicted crazies that could fly off at the drop of a hat and murder people. I quickly learned to keep my Army experiences to myself.

Things have changed for soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan because citizens no longer hold returning soldiers in contempt. No one questions their involvement in foreign wars that few support, or their commitment and patriotism. Still, I bet I know how they really feel.

More than forty years have passed since my own involvement in an unpopular foreign war and no one has ever asked me even a single question about what I did while I was there. Bet if I mentioned the subject, even today, most would still shake their heads and wonder if I am mentally stable.

I'm grinning to myself now and thinking, "Maybe they have a point."

Eric'sWeb

Big Billy's Curry Mango Shrimp Tacos

My good friends Big Billy and Kathy, his significant other, once bought a large sailboat and pulled it on a trailer to Seattle. They were both too young to retire, but neither knew it at the time.

They lived on the sailboat for two years, sometimes sailing miles from shore. Usually, they were docked in Seattle, enjoying their sea-going neighbors and the ambiance of the City.

Big Billy, a former Dallas restauranteur, was a wonderful cook. Despite the fantastic fare in the Seattle area, he couldn’t help but cook with Texas flair. He had a little charcoal grill he kept on deck and quite often prepared world-class meals for him and Kathy before they ventured out for the night to drink the local beer and listen to music in the clubs. Here is a simple recipe for one of their favorite dishes.

Big Billy’s Curry Mango Shrimp Tacos

Ingredients

• ½ lb. shrimp, large, peeled and de-veined
• ¼ cup mango chutney
• 2 Tbsp. fresh lime juice
• 1 Tbsp. olive oil
• 1 Tbsp. fresh grated ginger
• ½ tsp. curry powder
• 1 avocado, large, cubed
• corn tortillas

Directions

Combine mango chutney, lime juice, olive oil, ginger and curry powder in a mixing bowl. Grill shrimp over the white hot coals on the grill while heating the soft corn tortillas in a pan (don’t overcook the shrimp and just warm the tortillas). Wrap the shrimp in tortillas and drizzle mango mixture over them. Top with cubes of avocado. Enjoy.

Good with a nice Riesling, but Big Billy much preferred Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.

Eric'sWeb

Another Revolution

A rainy mid-April night in Edmond, Oklahoma, I noticed my cats staring into the house though the storm door. With full matted coats resulting from an extra-cold winter, they both seemed in need of a little maintenance. Grabbing my trusty scissors, I proceeded to try and remedy the situation.

Fang is not really my cat. He belongs to a family down the street. Still, he likes my Maine Coon Rouge. They are almost inseparable. When she comes to the front door, he is usually following her. I enjoyed sitting on the damp front porch tonight with the two kitties, watching their tails twitch a bit as I cut off several large hunks of dead hair.

Oh, and the two ducks that come every year about this time are here again, but living about a block west, near a little creek. I saw them during a walk the other evening, and again a few days later. Marilyn scoffed at me, saying “How do you know they are the same two ducks?”

I just know. It’s spring once again, and the world has made another full revolution.

Eric'sWeb

Chuckie and Lucky Tangle

When Chuckie, my big black Rottweiler was alive, I had two other dogs—Lucky, a chocolate Lab and Velvet, a shepherd mix. Chuckie had his own pen while Lucky and Velvet had the run of the fenced backyard. To say that Chuckie and Lucky, both unfixed males, despised each other would be a gross understatement.

Velvet liked both Lucky and Chuckie. She was only half grown at the time and could easily squeeze through the fence and get into Chuckie’s pen. She spent half her time there, much to Lucky’s displeasure, and the other half in the backyard, much to Chuckie’s dislike.

Lucky was a very large Labrador retriever. He weighed well over a hundred-ten pounds, his paws the size of small saucers. Chuckie was no slouch himself, easily topping the scales at one-twenty with not an ounce of fat on his sturdy frame.

Marilyn and I got a call from Tulsa friends Mick and Gin as Thanksgiving neared. After an argument with her mother, Gin had decided to spend the holiday in Oklahoma City. They showed up Thanksgiving Day with a frozen turkey and a box of Stovetop Stuffing. Marilyn just shook her head.

“I cooked until late last night,” she said. “The turkey and dressing is already cooked, along with five pies.”

We put Gin’s turkey in our freezer and proceeded to start sampling the whiskey and eggnog.

Mick and Gin’s two kids, Will and Ashley, accompanied them. They both are now attending Oklahoma State University but were still in high school at the time. I shortly excused myself to go to the little writer’s room, my trip interrupted long before planned. Marilyn banged on the door and yelled at me.

“Hurry, Chuckie and Lucky are killing each other.”

I put down the crossword I was working on and hurried out the door, quickly learning everyone had exited the kitchen, watching the two big dogs battling on the ground.

Both of the old boys were all but exhausted when I grabbed Chuckie’s collar and pulled him off of Lucky. It didn’t take much effort.

“That’s it. Break it up, you two,” I said, leading Chuckie back to his pen.

He entered with no resistance, apparently happy about my intervention. Lucky got off the ground, wagging his tail. His neck was wet from Chuckie’s slobber, but neither had a single cut, or drop of blood on them.

I smiled as we returned to the kitchen, Gin still wringing her hands.

“They were killing each other,” she said.

Will, it seems, had opened the gate to Chuckie’s pen. When the big Rottweiler quickly exited and attacked Lucky, the Willster went running into the house.

After Marilyn’s Thanksgiving feast, Gin rounded up her crew and headed for the door.

“Why don’t you stay awhile?” Marilyn asked.

“Gotta get back,” she said. “Things to do.”

Marilyn tried to give them their frozen turkey and Stovetop Stuffing back but Gin was having none of it. She wouldn’t even let Mick and the kids take a couple of her famous homemade pies.

Chuckie and Lucky were fine. They never liked each other, but they never fought again after that Thanksgiving Day. I am positive they were both happy that I broke it up as they were both tired and ready to take a nap.

This memory wasn’t firmly fixed in my mind, but I remembered it with blazing recall the other day, grinning when I looked in Marilyn’s storage closet and saw the unopened box of Gin’s Stovetop Stuffing.

Eric'sWeb

Grave Markings

Much like kissing the Blarney Stone, marking the grave of famous voodoo practitioner Marie Laveau with an X and leaving an offering of flowers or fruit is said to bring good luck.

Laveau, likely a composite of a mother and one of her fifteen daughters, practiced Voodoo, casting and removing spells, in New Orleans until her (their) death(s) around 1881. Voodoo, or the homegrown version hoodoo, is a composite of many religions, including African Vodoun, Catholicism and Protestant.

Laveau had a large following when she was alive and led frenzied revels on the banks of St. John’s Bayou on the night of St. John’s Eve. St. John’s Eve coincides loosely with the first day of summer and Marie’s voodoo practice derived from ancient pagan rituals held on the same night. St. John the Baptist is revered by practitioners of Vodoun as well as Catholics.

During her lifetime Laveau was well known in New Orleans, around the world and was both revered and feared. No one is positive where Laveau is buried, but many believe it is somewhere in the St. Louis Cemetery #1, perhaps at the tomb most often credited as hers. Tourists and followers continue to visit the grave, leaving offerings and X marks, even in the face of stiff fines if caught.

Some say Marie's supposed tomb is the second-most visited gravesite in the country, behind only Elvis Presley's. From the red exes marked all over the grave, this is likely a true statement.

I had my own voodoo priestess in novel Big Easy. Mama Mulate practices voodoo, has a doctorate in English Literature and teaches at Tulane. Marie Laveau was thought to be able to transform herself into a crow and the front cover of Big Easy shows a crow flying away from Laveau’s grave as a young woman watches.

Whatever Marie Laveau’s powers while alive, her legend continues and thrives today. If you’re still interested in voodoo and the French Quarter, read Big Easy for a double dose of both.

Eric'sWeb

Lily's Crab Balls - a weekend recipe

Lily, my former Chalmette mother-in-law, loved to cook and also loved to entertain. Here is an appetizer she liked to serve, and one I enjoyed eating.

Lily’s Crab Balls

Ingredients
• 14 oz. crabmeat
• 2 cups bread crumbs, dry
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice, fresh
• 2 tablespoons onion, finely minced
• 1 tablespoon mustard, dry
• ½ cup white wine, dry
• 1 lb. bacon

Directions
remove shell and cartilage from crab meat. In medium bowl, combine crabmeat, bread crumbs, lemon juice, minced onion, mustard, and enough wine to moisten the mixture. Mix thoroughly and shape into quarter-sized balls. Wrap crabmeat balls in a half slice of bacon, covering crab mixture completely. Secure with toothpicks. Place in oven and broil for about 15 minutes, turning frequently, until bacon is crispy on all sides.

Eric'sWeb

Getting No Place Fast

It’s late afternoon and as I glance out the back window at the thermometer I see it is almost eighty degrees. This has been a strange year in central Oklahoma because we had snow on the ground less than a month ago.

Marilyn likes winter and having a fire in the fireplace. This past winter we burned nearly seven ricks of wood, not really for the heat but because a crackling flame warms the emotions and puts you in a mellow frame of mind.

Flowers have bloomed here since the last snow and today the irises, perhaps the last perennial of spring, began blooming. Since Marilyn feeds the birds, our backyard looks like an aviary. The wild ducks that lived here well into the summer last year have not returned. This is the first time in three years but I can hear ducks when I go outside so perhaps they are staying down the block.

The hummingbird vines and clematises are almost ready to bloom, the clematises cloaked in royal blue and the hummingbird vines in bursts of hundreds of trumpet-shaped flowers. This is a signal that it won’t be long before our hummingbirds reappear.

Last night, I sat out by the pool with my two pugs, Princess and Scooter. It was dark and I only had the faint glow of a fluorescent lamp for light. We weren’t alone. An ephemeral light danced across the surface the entire time we sat there. I could pass my hand through the light but I couldn’t touch it or make it disappear. When I went back to the house, I kept hearing a mechanical noise coming from the living room.

I decided that the dancing light was a spirit enjoying spring, rebirth, and the glorious warm night with me and the pugs. The mechanical whir is a different story. I finally dug out Princesses’ favorite motorized rat from beneath her blanket. Marilyn had turned it on earlier and that’s where it ended up. It was still running, but like me sometimes - getting no place fast.

Eric'sWeb

Life's Lessons

It's likely true that the lessons you learn as a teenager do as much to cement the real values in your life as anything else. That said, I spent many of my teenage years attending college in Monroe, Louisiana.

Majoring in geology, I took many science courses but I also dabbled in English and the arts. Probably the most important course that I took at Northeast Louisiana was a lesson in life - a lesson in how to cope in a world filled with no family and mostly strangers.

When I attended Northeast, a gallon of gas cost thirty cents, or less. A Coke was a nickel and you could buy a pitcher of beer for a dollar. My favorite watering hole, along with that of most of the male population of the college was the Trianon. I wrote about the Trianon in my short story A Talk with Henry. Henry was a real person and I took much of the dialogue for the story from actual conversations.

I started college during summer school, at the tender age of seventeen. My Brother Jack and close friend Elwin also attended summer school the same year. The year was 1964. There was an air show at the airport that summer and a local pilot offered plane rides in his Beechcraft Bonanza for a penny a pound. Jack, Elwin and I all took our first ride in an airplane for a cost of less than five dollars.

There is a Bayou that runs through the campus of what is now the University of Louisiana at Monroe. During summer, Bayou DeSiard is a hot spot for students. While not quite Florida, sun bathing students line the beach and it was, and is, a great place to meet members of the opposite sex. Jack, Elwin and I went swimming every day that semester and even light-skinned Eric had a tan before the end of summer.

At night, Jack, Elwin and I would haunt the Trianon. There were gambling machines, the walls black, lighting dim and music loud. We chugged lots of beer and discussed every important world issue there was. At summer's end, Jack and Elwin both flunked out, unable to return the next semester because of poor grades. I made it, passing, but barely.

Today, I can't remember a single course that I took that summer. Grade-wise I almost flunked my first semester in college, but now it doesn't seem so important. Looking back, I think that I probably aced the part of my life that was most significant at the time.

Eric'sWeb

What a Difference a Day Makes

We had a late March snowstorm in Oklahoma. This was after temperatures so mild that the trees began to bud and the flowers to bloom. Here are two pics of Edmond daffodils - just after the late snowstorm, and then again a day or so later.

Eric'sWeb

Blackened Catfish Burritos - a weekend recipe

Here is a San Francisco-style burrito with a Cajun twist. It has my comfort food guarantee.

BLACKENED CATFISH BURRITOS

Ingredients
• 4 catfish filets
• 8 large flour tortillas, steamed
• rice, cooked
• red beans, cooked
• Cajun spice
• 1 cup butter
• Avocado, chopped
• Tomato, chopped
• Lettuce, shredded
• Tabasco Sauce, to taste

Directions

Heat a cast-iron skillet at least ten minutes, the hotter the better. Dip catfish in butter, coating both sides liberally. Sprinkle Cajun spice evenly on both sides of the fish. Cook quickly over high heat until the underside forms a crust, and then flip the filet, letting it cook and form a crust. This doesn’t take long so be careful not to burn the fillets. Slice each filet down the middle, into eight pieces.

Drain your ingredients. You don’t want a soggy burrito. Build your burrito by adding ingredients to a large flour tortilla in this order: rice, beans, lettuce, avocado, and tomato. Add blackened catfish last, along with Tabasco Sauce to taste, and then roll that puppy up. Wrap the burrito in foil to give it structure. Serve on a festive plate along with chips and salsa on the side. Enjoy.

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Born near Black Bayou in the little Louisiana town of Vivian, Eric Wilder grew up listening to his grandmother’s tales of politics, corruption, and ghosts that haunt the night. He now lives in Oklahoma where he continues to pen mysteries and short stories with a southern accent. He is the author of the French Quarter Mystery Series set in New Orleans and the Paranormal Cowboy Series. Please check it out on his Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo and iBook author pages. You might also like to check out his website.