Spring in Oklahoma

The first day of spring was Saturday, coinciding with the vernal equinox, the day when the hours of darkness roughly equal the hours of daylight. The weather was snowy Saturday but mild here now, warm during the day and chilly at night.

All the trees are abloom, as are the perennial flowers. The robins, cardinals and blue jays have returned but not my three ducks from past seasons. The squirrels never left, but they are already out in force, doing their best to eat all the seeds Marilyn puts out every day for the birds.

The season reminds me of a quote from the great Charles Dickens. I don’t know if he ever spent time in Oklahoma and it is hard for me to believe that it if he did, that it did not come from days spent near what is now the historic course of Route 66.

“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold, when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.”

Eric'sWeb

Another Log on the Fire

December proved to be the coldest yearend Oklahoma has experienced in many years. Now, with 2009 barely gone, a new blue norther is bearing down on Oklahoma. It is beginning to precipitate as I take my two pugs for a walk in the backyard. Tomorrow morning’s low is predicted with a wind chill of minus fifteen. It reminds me of a winter I experienced some thirty years ago. As a young geologist for Cities Service Oil Company, I spent almost two years watching wildcat wells as they drilled. The state was Kansas but sometimes seemed like total chaos.

I was sitting a well near Anthony, Kansas when a giant snowstorm blew in. The storm lasted two days. When the snow finally quit falling, it had left fourteen foot drifts on the sides of the road. In the days before cell phones I had to drive to the nearest payphone and give my morning report to the powers-that-be in Oklahoma City before eight in the morning.

I left the rig before seven, heading for a service station about fifteen miles away. Growing up in Louisiana, I had never seen much snowfall. I did get a little taste of it when I attended graduate school at the University of Arkansas, but nothing like I experienced that day in Kansas.

It was snowing so hard, that I experienced a total whiteout. How I stayed on the road I will never know. I never made it to the payphone and will also never know how I made it back to the rig without going in the ditch. I remained on location until it finally stopped snowing before driving to town to file a report. What I saw on the way there was as surreal as a scene from a Kafka novel.

Snowplows had cleared the highway, moving the massive amounts of snow to the side of the road. The drilling well was in the country, cattle ranching comprising the primary source of revenue for the locals. In flat central Kansas there are few trees to break the wind and rows of cattle lay dead, frozen to death, all along the fence line.

When the weather finally went back over the freezing mark, the snow began to melt, turning the location into a mud hole. Long before the days when the EPA began requiring portable toilets on all the drilling rigs, your only option if you had to relieve yourself was to seek whatever cover you could find (hard to do on the barren plains of central Kansas) and just go. I remember stepping out the backdoor of the logging trailer and sinking up to my thighs in mud.

The wildcat well was a dry hole and I got very sick, my throat so sore I could barely swallow. When I returned to Oklahoma City, I hung up my Louisiana jacket for good and ordered a goose down coat from the North Face – a coat I still own.

A blue norther approaches as I keyboard this story but I’m not worrying about it. I don’t have to drive twenty miles tomorrow morning to call in a morning report so I think I’ll just finish this story, mix a little whiskey and water, and then put another log on the fire.

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 distant memory.

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 in November 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?

Lousisiana Mystery Writer

When the Weather Turns Cold

As a young geologist working for Texas Oil & Gas, I generated many prospects and experienced the late seventies oil boom first hand. One prospect a week was the company mantra. We drilled mostly developmental wells – those close to existing production. Texas Oil & Gas was the king of corner shooters, drillers that edged as close as possible to the wells of other operators. Although much reviled, we found lots of oil and gas.

I can’t remember exactly how many geologists we had at the old Midland Center in downtown Oklahoma City, but it is safe to say we had a dozen or so. During this time, Texas Oil & Gas was drilling more wells than any company in the country was. The Oklahoma City office of TXO was drilling the most wells of any TXO office, and I was generating the most wells in the Oklahoma City office.

It worked this way: I would drag into work about nine-fifteen on Monday. After a few cups of coffee, I would stare at a color-coded production map until I focused on a potential prospect. I would then map the geology, or trash the idea and start on another. By Friday, I would have a viable drilling prospect that I would show at the weekly meeting.

About a dozen people sat in on every Friday meeting, chief engineers, geologists and landmen. If they liked my prospect, they would approve it and put it on the drilling agenda. When I left the meeting, I would go to lunch. I rarely returned.

There was a bar in Oklahoma City at the time called Clementine’s. It was located in the basement of the Penn Square Mall. You could walk down a flight of stairs, or slide down via a sliding board. Once there, you felt as if you were in another world. Bill, a salesperson for one of the electric logging companies, would always be at Clementine’s after work on Fridays.

Mixed drinks were three for one at the bar and Bill had a standing tab for TXO geologists. I was always there, as were my fellow geologists, and many of the land, engineering and geological secretaries. After one very hectic week, my good friend and fellow TXO geologist Dave and I parked outside, entered the darkened doorway of Clementine’s and slid down the slide to the loud nightclub. It was a cold winter night.

Dave had curly dark hippie hair with a beard and moustache to match. His lips were always smiling and his dark eyes had a twinkle that somehow masked an ache in his heart he never explained to me.

Clementine’s had a parquet dance floor with a revolving disco ball overhead and vents for mists of steam that arose during every song. The bodies, both male and female, quickly became hot and steamy, and the crowd resembled pagans dancing in a misty Scottish moor. During the days before AIDS, casual sex was rampant, first names often disregarded, last names never discussed. Considering only the moment, we never thought about tomorrow.

How I survived my two years at TXO I will never know. That night, Dave melded into the darkness with some luscious honey he had met on the dance floor. After more Wild Turkey’s than I could count, I was ready to fall on my face. In the days before the cell phone, I somehow managed to find a pay phone and call my geologic secretary Gayle, asking her to join me. Gayle had two young sons - ages five and seven. It was her weekend to keep them.

Gayle was as tall as I am, with black hair that draped to her shoulders. Her dark hair and eyes contrasted with her light complexion. She looked like a goddess but had the gentle touch of a trusted friend.

“Stay there,” she said. “I’ll be there as fast as I can.”

I wasn’t going anywhere. I couldn’t climb the stairs by myself without falling on my face. I was leaning against the wall when Gayle found me through the crowd. Putting her arms around me, she walked me up the stairs, and then to her car where her two sons awaited.

My ex-wife Gail and I still owned a house that we were trying to sell. Gayle dropped me off, bestowing a wonderful kiss before she and her two boys drove away, leaving me alone in the darkness. She and I soon became a number.

Gayle and I dated for the best part of the next two years. My mother loved her and she kept telling me to marry her. I also loved Gayle and I think she loved me, but it was not to be. Too insecure in my own sexuality, I was too busy pursuing yet another one-night-stand to hook up with just one woman, no matter how gorgeous and intelligent she might be.

Years later, I still remember the go-go years at Texas Oil & Gas. I can’t remember the countless obscure faces of my many drunken one-night-stands, but I do remember Disco Dave and my other fellow geologic toilers, and when the weather is cold, like it is tonight, I remember lovely Miss Gayle.

Gondwana

Naomi Sees a Ghost

Our accountant Naomi asked me if Anne, my deceased wife, had ever visited me in a dream. She nodded knowingly when I admitted that she had. Today, she told me about the ghost of her father.

Naomi (real name Shuchen) is from Taiwan. “In Taiwan, we believe the ghost of the deceased returns after seven days. This gives closure to both the dead and the living.

“I was in Oklahoma when my father died and did not get to Taiwan for three days. On the seventh day after his death, we spread ashes at the front door. That night, I was sleeping on a tatami bed in my Mother’s room. My Mother was beside me, asleep and snoring, and I was asleep when I heard the bedroom door slide open.

“I was afraid to open my eyes when I heard someone cross the room and stop at the foot of the tatami. I was too frightened to open my eyes, but could sense that someone was looking at me. I wanted to say something but found that I could not speak.

“I had the strong feeling that it was the spirit of my Father, and that he was looking at me because I had not seen him in more than three years. He finally walked away, leaving the bedroom and closing the door behind him.

“My Father had a metal cup that he ate his soup in. From the kitchen, I began hearing the clang, clang, clang of the metal cup struck repeatedly against the table. Finally it stopped.

“Next morning my little brother and sister-in-law said that they had also heard the cup, both thinking it was my Father, but neither brave enough to get up and look. We found my Father’s footprints in the ashes. Yes, they were his.”

Brakes squealed outside as Naomi told her story and she jumped as if shot. That was not all: a strong gust of wind suddenly blew the front door of our office closed with a slam. Outside, the day was calm and beautiful with no wind blowing.

We have all probably seen ghosts, or at least sensed their presences. Even if you have not, yet, I assure you that you will - someday.

Gondwana

Mom's Fruitcake

I recently read a quote from someone whose name I cannot remember. They said that if the world keeps trending in the same direction, there would soon be nothing left except rats, cockroaches and fruitcakes. That is not the exact quote, but it is the gist of it.

The thought brought a smile to my face this holiday season. My Father and Brother are big fruitcake fans but neither could hold a candle to my Mother. She made one about this time every year and she never gave up trying to get me to eat a slice.

Well, more than that. I always relented and ate a sliver but I never liked it, and she wanted me, with all her heart, to like it as much as she did. No matter how many slices I ate, or how hard I tried, I have never acquired a taste for fruitcake.

I don’t know when my aversion for fruitcake began, but my stint in Vietnam only served to solidify my dislike. That is because during my six months in the boonies, I ate more than my fair share of C-Rations, and one of the condiments in almost every box was a little tin can packed with fruitcake. About the only thing worse were the barely edible pork slices and, of course, the Tropical Bar.

A Tropical Bar is a piece of chocolate candy manufactured so that it would not melt beneath the high temperatures of the tropics. You could not get the darn thing to dissolve, and stomach acids had little more effect. It was so bad, you could throw it on the ground and even the Vietnamese field rats wouldn’t eat it.

I digress. The Army’s fruitcake was bad, but not as bad as the pork slices and certainly not as horrible as a Tropical Bar. Still, despite my Mother’s best cajoling, I never willingly touched the candied confection to my lips.

My Dad and Brother are still alive but my Mother has passed on. I know that she’s not far away because every year around this time I can feel her presence, and yes, she’s still nagging me to try just one little slice of fruitcake. I love you dearly Mom, but sorry - not this year.

Fiction South

Garden Spirits

Saturday is my friend Terry’s birthday. Tonight, Terry, Jerry, Ed and I had drinks at Louie’s and then all of us except Ed went to my house where Marilyn had baked a birthday cake for Terry. The discussion turned to the topic of ghosts and spirits.

Terry deals with dead people all the time because he runs a private autopsy service. He has never seen a ghost or spirit. My contention is that spirits abound among us, but you must be receptive. Marilyn offered this story while we were talking.

“I was working in the backyard when I turned to see a smiling man.”

“You are doing a great job,” he said.

“I wondered how the man got into the backyard and when I started to ask him, he flashed away, into so many vapors.”

The person she thinks she saw was Randy, the man that had sold the house to me and then had committed suicide three days later.

Terry and Jerry departed after helpings of dinner and chocolate birthday cake, neither convinced of the existence of spirits. Do they exist? Oh, yes.

Fiction South