Tiki Torches and Fireflies

This spring has been absolutely crazy in Oklahoma. It snowed in April, and we’ve had two F5 tornados like the world has never seen before.

Marilyn and I live on an acre of land in the southeast corner of Edmond, Oklahoma. It’s almost rural. From my front porch, I’ve seen deer, coyotes, hawks—well you get the picture. Our house was built in 1975 and our large swimming pool is anything but modern. My hot tub is a fiberglass antique, covered by a gazebo my step-son Shane built. We get our water from a well. The water is wonderful, except it is loaded with calcium. My step-daughter Shannon spent two days this week cleaning the calcium deposits off my hot tub. Tonight, my three dogs and I tried it out.

As I mentioned, the weather has been crazy this spring. I usually take my first dip in the pool in April, sometimes March. Tonight, already late in June, I took my first plunge of the year. The dogs, my two pugs and English bulldog, loved it. They can’t swim but they loved licking pool water off my head, neck, and back. Following Shannon’s labors, the hot tub felt wonderful.

After a stint in the hot water, I plunged back into the pool. Sitting on the steps in shallow water, I soaked in the stars, flame from Tiki torches and fireflies lighting up the night. I couldn’t have been happier when I finally came inside and pulled off my wet swimming trunks decorated with surfboards, sailboats, and paeans to places like Florida and Waikiki Beach.

I’ve been to Florida and Waikiki. Tonight, I wouldn’t have traded either for my backyard pool, hot tub, and three faithful dogs. It made me think. It isn’t where you’ve been in life, it’s where you are right now that counts.

Eric'sWeb

Total Eclipse of the Moon

Thanksgiving circa 1980s,
from left to right: Mavis,
Anne, Jack, Grandma Dale, Isey

When I went outside very early this morning to watch the lunar eclipse, I realized I was in for a mystical treat. A golden moon brightened hazy sky, back dropped by luminous Christmas lights decorating neighbors’ houses. My big tomcat Goldie joined me as I watched the unfolding event.

I had no telescope and only gazed up at the lunar phenomenon with my naked eyes. The realization that I was witnessing a total lunar eclipse the same day as the Winter Solstice, two events that occur on the same day only once every four hundred years, or so, caused me to recall another story recounted many years ago by my Grandmother Dale O’Rear Rood. Grandmother Dale was born October 27, 1891. She was nineteen when she witnessed Halley’s Comet in 1910.

“Halley’s is the only naked-eye comet that a human can witness twice in a lifetime. Mark Twain saw it twice and so did Papa Pink. I’m going to live until it passes one more time.”

Grandmother Dale didn’t quite make it, dying February 27, 1985 at the age of 93, less than a year from the date (February 9, 1986) Halley’s Comet last passed close enough to Earth to be seen with the naked eye. She actually came closer than Papa Pink; despite his boasts to the contrary, John Pickney O’Rear was born September 9, 1837, almost two years after the comet’s passing November 16, 1835.

I thought about Grandma Rood’s story as I watched the moon disappear into darkness, and then reappear the color of burnished bronze. Goldie didn’t seem to care, but shared my moment like a spiritual being that somehow understood the importance of the celestial event.

Marilyn usually leaves the radio in our living room on all the time. I’m not a religious person, but I couldn’t help but reflect on the Christmas song, Oh Little Town of Bethlehem, playing as I opened the front door and cast one last glance at the sky. It caused me to reflect on my own existence. I won’t be around in 2061 when Halley’s Comet appears again, much less in four hundred years.

Giving Goldie, my big tom a last scratch behind the ears, I grinned, deciding not to ponder the thought further as I plodded off to bed.

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

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.

###

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.

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

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

Kevin's Excellent Adventure

Years ago, when my wife Anne and I had a little oil company, we drilled quite a few wells in Garfield County, Oklahoma with another little oil company from Norman. They had a geologist named Kevin and he was a wild man. We learned as much on a Monday after completing a well the previous Friday.

When a well reaches total depth, most oil companies run an electrical survey into the open hole. The survey records a “picture” of the zones intersected and gives a mathematical portrait of the productive potential of each zone penetrated. That Friday, the log indicated we had found a highly productive zone that could make us all wealthy.

Logging, for some unknown reason, rarely takes place during daylight. This well was no exception and it was ten at night when the last log popped out of the hole and we began celebrating. Kevin had an override in the well, a carried interest, and was in line to make lots of money.

Kevin and Bruce, one of our employees that also had an override, had brought along a cooler filled with ice and beer. Already lubricated, they started in on a bottle of Jack Daniel’s after seeing the log. Anne and I went home to Oklahoma City to celebrate in private. Kevin and Bruce headed for the mean streets of Oklahoma City.

Bruce somehow managed to straggle home before dawn. Not so Kevin. He took a taxi to Will Rogers Airport and bought a ticket for Acapulco in Mexico. He arrived the next morning, beginning to sober up and already feeling much like warmed over death. He only wanted to get a room and sleep for twenty-four hours. It was not to be.

Some dignitary, the Queen of England or some such, was also visiting Mexico and there wasn’t a single empty room in the entire resort. He spent the night at the airport, catching a plane back to Oklahoma City where his anxious wife was waiting for him.

No, Kevin didn’t get a divorce. He did get an earful, though. The well came in like gangbusters and we were all happy, and somewhat assuaging his wife’s ire. The next time we logged a well, she accompanied him to the well and didn’t let him out of her sight.

Eric'sWeb

A Bump in the Road

Oklahoma weather is nothing if not crazy. Yesterday, when I took my Dad to the lake, it was seventy-one degrees. Less than twenty-four hours later, it is twenty-three, soon to be seventeen. What’s going on here?

I had a drink with my business and writing partner r.r. Bryan tonight and he told me the first chapter of my new book Bones of Skeleton Creek sucks. Knowing that r.r. would never lie to me, I am already searching for a way to improve the situation.

Maybe he is right. Maybe the first chapter does suck. Okay, I will sleep on it. Criticism is always hard to take but, then again, none of us is perfect. I trust r.r. and if he says my first chapter sucks, well, it probably does. Tomorrow, I will try to fix it.

Louisiana Mystery Writer

A Cold Friday Night in Edmond

The final week of November, this year felt more like early fall, flowers still blooming and butterflies still fluttering the day after Thanksgiving. That has all changed with the beginning of December.

Temperatures dropped into the low twenties last night, steady wind continuing to blow in from the north. My dogs seem to love it, romping more so than when the weather is warmer. My two pugs have a sunny spot where they like to lie when they tire of romping. Patch and Velvet have their own spots.

The cold weather is affecting my walking, making me less likely to do it, that is. Tomorrow is Saturday so maybe I’ll go a sporting goods store and see if I can find an insulated suit. If I don’t find one, I may have to postpone my walking until next spring.

Louisiana Mystery Writer

Death Becomes Us

Here is an article and video about my friend G. Terry Felts. Terry is a death investigator and contributed greatly to my book Bones of Skeleton Creek. He is also a contributing author in the soon-to-be-released Lost on Route 66 - tales of the mother road - Gondwana Press/2009.

"The career of G. Terry Felts has been one of shining light onto the dark areas of life." - The Oklahoman

http://newsok.com/truth-is-top-priority-of-oklahoma-autopsy-provider/article/3420972

Holiday Angst

Marilyn called me today, distraught about a young skunk in our front yard.

“It wobbles, eats grass and then lies on the ground like it’s going to die. I don’t think a car hit it because there is no blood. Maybe someone poisoned it. It was suffering so I called animal control.”

“Be careful,” I told her. “It may have rabies.”

“It’s not foaming at the mouth. I think it is just hurt.”

The conversation put a pall on my anticipation of the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday and caused me to remember some of the sadder holiday seasons I have spent. Many years ago, creditors put my little oil company into bankruptcy the day before Thanksgiving. My second wife Anne and I spend our last Thanksgiving and Christmas together in 1997 and she died three months later. My Mom died a few weeks from Thanksgiving in 2006.

Holidays should be happy occasions. They are too often times when relationships get out of hand, often exasperated by finances. The holidays are a season to give, a catching point for many young couples – and many older couples amid these terrible economic conditions – who find themselves having a hard time coping, much less giving, during the prolonged holiday season.

Tomorrow I am attending a memorial service for a fellow writer and member of the first writer’s group I ever joined – the Writers of the Purple Pages. Bill was an editor for the State of Oklahoma with aspirations of becoming a published novelist. He had worked on a novel for years about the Oklahoma runestones, hoping to entertain while trying to explain the significance of the ancient mysterious symbols carved in stone in eastern Oklahoma. Bill died of brain cancer, never finishing his magnum opus. When I awake tomorrow, I am sure I will find the body of the young skunk somewhere in my front yard.

Welcome to the world of holiday angst. When life is supposed to be the best, it is often the opposite. Here is my advice. People love and lose, and people live and die, but the sun always rises every morning. Bill and that young skunk have already found a better place. Somewhere in the world, a child is born destined to finish Bill’s book, and somewhere a baby skunk lies curled up against its mother’s warm breast, waiting for spring and a chance to experience its own life.

Louisiana Mystery Writer

Dog-Faced Man

Anne and I lived in an Oklahoma subdivision called Summerfield for a while. The house was tiny, but it had a small swimming pool and hot tub. It backed up to a creek alive with wildlife and we loved the place.

Summerfield was originally part of the Gaylord dairy farm, a pristine area just north of what was then Oklahoma City. Gaylord, founder of the Oklahoman, was one of the first Oklahoma millionaires and his family now owns The Grand Ole Opry.

When I lived in Summerfield, I was an avid jogger. I had a three-mile course laid out which I ran practically every day. Part of it was on the west side of Lake Hefner, one of Oklahoma City’s water supplies, and it was then in an unpopulated area of the City.

I know this is strange, but this is true. When I jogged along the river path, I often saw a very strange person. Hair covered his entire face and he looked like Lon Chaney in the Werewolf. I kid you not! I described him to Anne and called him the dog-faced man.

This person was smaller than I was but he still frightened me. Once I encountered him urinating in the bushes. I am not making any of this up!

I do not really know where I am going with this except to say there are strange things around us every day that we often overlook, or never tell anyone else because we will feel like fools and think no one will believe us.

Yes, Virginia, there is a dog-faced man, and he lives in Oklahoma City.

Fiction South

The Place You Are Meant To Be

I plan to winterize the dog’s shed early this year because I think we’re in for a cold winter. I also cranked up my hot tub because it’s always great to sit in it when the wind is blowing and the mosquitoes have disappeared for the season. It all reminds me of an exceptionally cold winter, some years ago.

I’m not sure of the year but I think it loosely coincided with the first Gulf War. Anne and I were at low ebb financially, but we were somehow managing to eke out a living. We were renting a house in an Oklahoma City neighborhood called Summerfield. The house was small but had a small pool and a hot tub.

Our house backed up to a creek with water and many trees. Because of the creek, we had critters visit us every night – skunks, possums, foxes and armadillos. They became so tame that I could open the sliding glass door and actually feed them out of my hand. My vet had a fit when I told him this.

“They could get rabies. You want them to bite your cats?”

I didn’t but I apparently had a better opinion of my cats’ intelligence than did my vet. They would never back up from a fight but, likewise, they weren’t much for starting one either.

A large unfixed stray tom lived in a drainage pipe near our house. He was wilder than the wildest skunk or fox, and he wouldn’t tolerate a human coming near him. Well, at least at first. Soon he was lying on the couch on the back porch and would even let me pet him – once or twice maybe.

The winter grew so cold that I draped plastic sheeting around the back porch to keep out the wind. Big Cat liked it and would lie out on the porch all day, but at night, he would disappear to chase field mouse, squirrels, or whatever. He didn’t bother my other cats and they seemed to feel safer because of his presence.

Leon and Dan, two trivia friends had dropped by one Friday night. A cold front had moved through the previous day and there was ice on the pool. I had the hot tub cranked so that it wouldn’t freeze, and Dan, Leon and I decided to take a dip.

When I say it was cold, I mean gray cold, a wind blowing so hard that it would freeze the moisture in your eyebrows.

“I’ll jump in the pool if you two will,” Leon said.

“You’re crazy,” I said.

“I’ll do it,” Dan said. “A quick cold dip will be good for us.”

Dan was smart; a PhD candidate in economics from OU, but it didn’t stop me from raising my frozen eyebrows.

“You’re both crazy as hell,” I said. “You won’t last thirty seconds.”

“We’ll be fine,” Leon said. “Our body temps are elevated because of being in the hot tub. I can’t believe you’re such a pussy about this.”

By this time, it had begun to sleet, the wind whipping like a proverbial banshee, the wooden deck around the spa rapidly growing slick.

“Who is the pussy?” I said, pulling myself out of the hot tub and racing the short distance across the slippery deck, to the pool.

“Geronimo!” I yelled as I hit the icy water.

Dan and Leon followed me into the pool. Dan was correct. Our body temperatures were elevated to the point that contact with the icy pool didn’t cause us to have instant heart attacks. That didn’t mean we could stay in the frigid water for very long. We hurriedly climbed out and immersed our bodies in the hot water of the hot tub.

We repeated the plunge into the pool at least two more times before rushing into the house, toweling off and then sitting in front of a roaring fire for at least half an hour.

I loved the little house but it had a structural defect – its foundation had split in the middle, something we geologists call a down-to-the-basin fault. The prognosis was dire and Anne and I began looking for a new place to live. Like the first Gulf War, winter ended and I somehow managed to sell a prospect, allowing us to move into improved digs.

I couldn’t find Big Cat when it came time to move because I don’t think he wanted me to find him. I did see him one last time. He stood a hundred feet away, looking at me, not coming when I called. He finally turned and walked away - stopping before disappearing into the drainage pipe that he called home. He seemed to dip his big head toward me, as if saying, “We had a good run, but this is where I’m meant to be.”

There’s a warm breeze blowing tonight, a big golden moon in the sky. My dog Lucky died two days ago and I’m missing him, and thinking about that last cold winter and that old big cat. It saddens me, and makes me think that the only real thing we actually have on this old earth is the here and now, and maybe the only place you’ll ever be happy is that drainage pipe in your heart that you call home.

Louisiana Mystery Writer

Free Candy, Beautiful Weather and a Free Hour of Sleep

What a wonderful weekend. Friday was my birthday, Saturday was Halloween and last night we got an extra hour of sleep, thanks to Daylight Savings.

It’s a full moon tonight in central Oklahoma, temperatures reaching the mid-seventies. What an eventful weekend! Friday, I turned thirty-nine for the twenty-fourth time. Marilyn took me to Pepe’s for a chile relleno Friday night. Yesterday, we had gumbo at Pearl’s Graveside with good friend Debbie. Today, I watched NASCAR at Talladega with my Dad (on TV that is).

The radio disk jockey I listen to had it right: Free candy, beautiful weather and an extra hour of sleep – how can you beat it?

Fiction South

A Halloween to Remember

Born on the day before Halloween, I seem forever connected to that holiday. Anne and I married early in 1980 and decided to host a Halloween party that year. Halloween was on a Friday, but we planned the big bash for Saturday.

Not all of our guests got the message as three revelers showed up for the party Friday night. Jakob, an Israeli expatriate that was doing stonework around our house for us, came as a cowboy. Nancy, a geologist, dressed, strangely enough, as an Indian princess, soon followed. John, a fellow geologist, showed up a little later, his only costume a mask.

Nonplussed, Anne and I broke out the alcohol. There was a championship-boxing match on television that night - Oklahoma City's own Sean O'Grady versus James Watt, a Scottish boxer. The fight took place in Glasgow, Scotland and to say that there was a bit of home cooking going on is but a mild statement. After a few rounds Watt head-butted Sean resulting in a horrible cut over his eye. Watt disserved disqualification and O'Grady the title. Instead, the local judges ruled the cut caused by a punch rather than a head-butt.

Those days there was no rule about excessive bleeding. To say that there was a little blood strewn around the ring would be a true understatement. The ring looked more like the inside of a working slaughterhouse, all the viewers, including myself, in shock. The ref soon called the fight and proclaimed Watt the world champion.

We went on to drink, carouse and to celebrate into the wee hours, neither Anne nor I in much shape for the real party that continued as planned the next day. As it happened, the first Halloween party I ever hosted, an unscheduled party became the one I remember the most.

Gondwana

Free Hot Wings and Half-Priced Beer

Anne and I had little expendable cash following the eighties oil bust. We usually ate dinner at nearby Wyatt’s Cafeteria. Times were tough all over and their food was not only good, it was also inexpensive.

During a visit from Bruce, our close friend and former employee, we let him convince us to visit a seafood restaurant on Northwest Expressway called Harry’s.

“They have free hot wings during happy hour, and half-priced drinks. I’ll even go in Dutch.”

Bruce, a formerly strapping young man, had leukemia. He was looking bad at the time and Anne and I would have spent our last penny to make him happy. The trip, contrary to our doubts, proved fruitful.

There was a new game in town called NTN Trivia. Restaurants belonging to the NTN network have interactive boxes that their patrons use to play various games of trivia. A satellite transmits the network to restaurants all over the United States and Canada and these restaurants compete against each other in real time.

Every Tuesday night, NTN has their premium game called Showdown and rank the top one hundred restaurants and bars following the game based on their top five boxes. Harry’s didn’t finish in the top one hundred that night but Anne, playing as OILIES, finished tenth overall for individuals. We were pleasantly surprised at the end of the game when our waitress presented us with a twenty-five dollar gift certificate.

“We give it every Tuesday to the highest ranked player in the restaurant,” the blonde-haired woman told us.

From then on, Tuesday nights had us hooked. Bruce went with us to Harry’s on Tuesdays until his disease progressed beyond the point where he couldn’t make it every week. If I told you we won the gift certificate every week you will probably think that I am lying, but we won the prize almost every week.

Lil, another close friend, began accompanying us to Harry’s and we played as a team, helping each other with the answers. This went on for nearly a year until Oklahoma’s rapidly waning economy caught up with Harry’s and it went out of business. There were other restaurants still playing trivia and Anne and I soon found one. Along the way, we met other Trivia addicts and began playing together as a coherent team.

I won’t bore you with details except to say that our group included a dozen very smart people and I’m proud to say that Anne and I were part of the fabled Don Serapio’s group that won so many championships.

That was a while back. Bruce is now gone, as is Anne. So is Harry’s and Don Serapio’s in Oklahoma City - though Jimmy and Janie still have a very successful (and quite wonderful) Mexican restaurant in El Reno.

There’s a point to this story: even when the economy is in the dumpster, there’s still a place out there offering free hot wings, half-price drinks and maybe more – sometimes much more. Find it!

Louisiana Mystery Writer

Gnomes, Ghosts and Other Spirits

Fall has come early this year, the nights in the fifties. I got home from work early, intent on walking before it got dark. I almost made it.

It rained yesterday and today, the gloom palpable as I left my house and began my walk through the neighborhood. My normal course is about five kilometers in length and I usually complete it in around fifty minutes. Tonight, trying to beat the darkness, I was moving at a faster clip.

The area where I live is hilly and dissected by several creeks. A few weeks ago, near the hollow where the creek nearest my house goes beneath the road, I saw what I believe were two spirits of the once-human variety. They carried a dim light and, at the time, I thought they were boys.

I have had lots of time since seeing the two spirits to reflect on what I saw. The hour that I saw them was near darkness. Perhaps my eyes were playing tricks on my mind. Maybe! I have watched for the two spirits every evening when I walk past the creek but have seen nothing – at least until tonight.

It was dusk when I reached the ghost creek. I was thinking about something else when I glanced up, glimpsing as I did the rapidly fading outline of a dark little gnome. I quickly decided that my eyes were again playing tricks.

Almost three miles into my walk, I was breathing through my mouth. The expelled air turned suddenly white, as if the temperature had suddenly dropped twenty degrees. The drop in temperature and white breath disappeared soon as I crossed the creek.

Did I see a spirit, or maybe a ghost? I don’t know. The front door of my house was open as I walked up the slight incline toward it. Call me crazy, but I think I saw the image of the gnome staring at me through the storm door.

Are there ghosts in Edmond, Oklahoma? There are ghosts everywhere but most don’t believe it, even after seeing one with their own eyes.

Eric'sWeb

Walking and Writing

Several things have occurred since I began walking regularly in June, all of them beneficial. My blood pressure, blood sugar and heart rate are all lower. Although I haven’t dropped much weight, I feel energized and I am getting more work done lately. My walking has provided another benefit, one I never expected.

I have four writing projects going and recently finished the first draft of my new novel Bones of Skeleton Creek. I had pushed hard to finish the book, not allowing myself to spend much time correcting grammar or spelling. I didn’t even have Word’s grammar and spell checker turned on. When I finished the first draft, I began reading, almost immediately finding passages, paragraphs, and sometimes entire chapters that needed mending.

I try to walk about five kilometers every day, except Thursdays when I have a few beers at the pub with the boys. What I have happily found is that sometime during the course of my walk, ideas for ways to improve my story almost always occur. My writing isn’t the only thing to benefit. I also seem to solve business problems more readily while walking.

For all you writers out there, I have found two writing programs on the web. I am using both programs and I’m happy to report that they are both wonderful. Amazingly, both programs are free. They are yWriter5 and Celtx.

YWriter5 is a novel writing program that will do practically everything except type the book for you. Not quite, but it is very powerful and will assist you in building a story from scratch, or help you make your draft of a novel better.

Celtx is a screenwriting program that will do anything the expensive programs will do. This powerful program even has a storyboard feature. So does yWriter5, by the way. Here are links to Celtx and yWriter5.

I also found a great book for aspiring screenwriters called Save the Cat. The title sounds strange, but the book by screenwriter Blake Snyder is excellent. Get the programs, get the book, and then get to walking and writing.

Louisiana Mystery Writer

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

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