Sunset at Lake Hefner - a pic

Sunset at Lake Hefner

Here is a pic of the Lake Hefner (Oklahoma City) lighthouse at sunset.

Eric'sWeb

Ghost of a Chance Revisited - a trip to Caddo Lake

  I grew up in the sleepy little northwest Louisiana town of Vivian, a few miles from Caddo Lake. Caddo, as many of you may know, is the largest natural lake in Texas. It also crosses the state line into Louisiana. The lake is, quite simply, one of the most mysterious spots on Earth. Giant cypress trees with bloated trunks and branches draped with Spanish moss, grow in dark water, and the place is alive with garfish, gators and colorful waterfowl. Caddo stretches for miles, through endless canebrakes and hidden pools, so large and winding that even the United States doesn't have an accurate map.
The first offshore oil well was drilled from a wooden platform in Caddo Lake. These tiny structures still dot the water, some converted to duck blinds, while slow moving pumping units occupy others, sipping oil from a subsurface anticline called the Sabine Uplift.

Caddo Indians once occupied the area. Legend has it the lake was formed by a monster earthquake. When the Tribe's powerful chief had a dream, he awoke his people up in the middle of the night, moving them to safety. Next morning, as the story goes, Caddo Lake had formed following the earthquake, possibly the New Madrid Earthquake, the most powerful ever felt in the United States - so powerful, the Mississippi River flowed backwards for two days. I don't know if the old Chief's prophesy was true, but it's a fact that the area is littered with shards of broken pottery, arrowheads and other artifacts.

Caddo Indian's aren't the only history makers at Caddo Lake. Potter's Point was the home of Robert Potter, a Texas hero, along with Sam Houston, and the primary influence for the historical novel Love is a Wild Assault (wonderful! Out of print. Grab a copy if you can find one). Nearby Uncertain, Texas is a great place to visit. The model for my fictional town Deception, Uncertain was an overnight stop for riverboats on their way up from New Orleans.

One of the riverboats that plied the waterways from New Orleans to Jefferson, Texas was the Mittie Stephens. It caught fire and sank one night, reportedly loaded with a fortune in gold to pay Confederate troops stationed in Jefferson. Neither the boat nor the gold has ever been found.

Buck McDivit, my cowboy gumshoe from Oklahoma, comes to east Texas to meet his only known relative. His Aunt Emma is murdered before he gets there. He soon learns he has inherited an island in Caddo Lake, along with a marina and fishing lodge. This is when his troubles begin.

Many things haven't changed in the Old South. Racism still abounds in Deception, led by racist judge Jefferson Travis, and his two skinhead reprobates Humpback and Deacon John. Buck also meets beautiful Lila Richardson and is instantly enamored. Oh, and he gets drunk and sees a ghost his first night in town.

Ghost of a Chance is now available for the first time in ebook form. It's available, complete with new cover and newly edited 71,000 words, at Amazon.com (Kindle version) and Smashwords.com (Nook, Sony Reader, Kindle, etc.) for the ridiculously low price of $1.29.

If you have an e-reader, please check out Ghost of a Chance. If you don't, loosen up and buy one. If you're an avid reader, you'll be glad you did.
Eric'sWeb

Zweibelkuchen ala Choctaw - a weekend recipe

Central Oklahoma has many citizens of German extraction, the language still spoken in Oklahoma households where German cuisine is still proudly served. Choctaw, Oklahoma, and the Old Germany Restaurant have hosted an Oklahoma version of Oktoberfest every September for the last twenty years.

Here is a Germanic recipe with a slight Okie modification. P.S. – this recipe originated in German wine country and, yes, grapes are now grown and wine being produced right here in central Oklahoma. Although great with wine, I can personally attest to the fact that this dish is also great with a cold Beck’s. Yes, southern comfort food sometimes has European origins.

Ingredients

• 16 strips bacon

• 4 large yellow onions, chopped

• 2 jalapeno peppers, roasted, deseeded, finely chopped

• 2 eggs plus 1 yolk

• ¾ cups sour cream

• Salt and pepper to taste

• Caraway seeds

• 2 -8 inch pastry shells half baked at 400 degrees

Directions

Fry bacon until crisp. Drain, crumble and set aside. Fry onions in oil until soft and yellow. Add beaten eggs, and yolk, chopped jalapeno pepper, sour cream, salt and pepper. Add crumbled bacon. Pour mixture into pie shells and sprinkle with caraway seeds. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 to 30 minutes, or until centers are firm. Enjoy.

Eric'sWeb

Dog Story

I have told the story of how I gave my dog Slick to a caring family that apparently loved him more than me. Slick and his adopted family still live nearby. On a walk through the neighborhood a few days ago, they stopped by for a visit.

Slick, a beautiful black Gordon setter, will be thirteen in March. His black hair has turned gray and he walks now instead of runs. When he was my dog, he never stopped running. I was at work when Slick and his adopted parents dropped by, but their visit jogged a memory in my rapidly decaying mind.

I have a tiny little oil and gas company and operate a few shallow gas wells in Noble County, Oklahoma. One summer, many years ago, I took Slick and Lucky with me to check out the wells. Both dogs loved riding in my 1992 Acura Vigor. It was hot, the temperature over 100 degrees when we reached the first well. It was then I made a mistake that I will never again repeat.

I got out of the car to check the gas meter, leaving the car running and the key in the ignition. Slick immediately jumped up to see where I was going and depressed the door lock. When I returned from the meter, I found myself locked out of the car, the two dogs, and their tails wagging, unable to open door.

I quickly learned that it is almost impossible to break out a window of tempered glass. Frustrated, I searched the ditches for a clothes hanger (yeah, sure!) to open the door. Twenty minutes later, a very nice young man drove up in a truck. Amazingly, he had a clothes hanger and we soon managed to open the car. I waved in appreciation as he drove away down the road. I wasn’t even upset when Slick and Lucky bailed out of the car and took off running.

Happy to be back in the air-conditioned Vigor, I simply followed the galloping dogs down the unpaved, section-line road. They ran for almost two miles before I finally corralled them at an abandoned oil lease. Slick and Lucky were pooped but happy when they finally jumped back into the Acura.

Lucky passed away this month after a long and wonderful life. Slick is old, but he has also had a wonderful life. He doesn’t run thirteen miles a day anymore, but then who among us still does?

Gondwana

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

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

Welcome to Never Land

A welcoming sign located south of Billings, Oklahoma.

http://www.ericwilder.com/