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Eric’sWeb

In 1974, Marilyn and her two kids, Shane and Shannon, lived in a small apartment near the Edmond college that is now the University of Central Oklahoma (UCO).  Living in an apartment directly across from Marilyn was Karen Silkwood and her roommate Sherri Ellis.

Karen Silkwood was the subject of the 1983 movie Silkwood that starred Meryl Streep, Kurt Russell and Cher.  Silkwood worked in the Cimarron plant that processed plutonium for Kerr-McGee.  Mysteriously contaminated with plutonium, she died shortly after in a single car accident while on her way to give an interview to a New York Times investigative reporter.

Karen, according to Marilyn, had discovered that a large number of the workers at the plant had developed cancer, as had she.  She, along with many others, believed it was because the plant had lax procedures for handling the deadly plutonium.  The plant had de-unionized and she was one of the few remaining members.  As such, she felt it was her responsibility to expose the plant’s dangers.

As a union spark plug, Silkwood became a target, either by workers fearful of losing their high paying jobs, or by Kerr-McGee itself.  More than once, Marilyn observed Silkwood in intense arguments with some man driving a blue pickup, the last argument occurring the day before her death.

Before her death, Kerr-McGee personnel conducted a search of her apartment, finding high degrees of contamination.  They even found an object, clearly marked as radioactive, in Shane’s toys.  The Company maintained that Silkwood had contrived to contaminate herself, and thus implicate Kerr-McGee.

Karen Silkwood swerved off the road on her way to meet the investigative reporter.  The car, when searched after the accident, contained no contaminated evidence, but had blue paint on a rear fender from an accident with another vehicle.

Did Kerr-McGee plant radioactive material in her apartment?  Did Kerr-McGee have Silkwood killed?  Did she have illegal drugs in her body at the time of the crash?  I do not know, but I do know that the resultant lawsuit filed by her family settled out of court for more than a million dollars.

As a geologist, I also know that Kerr-McGee had another plant in Gore, Oklahoma - a place that insiders now consider one of the most contaminated places in the United States.  Carroll, a friend and fellow geologist, once worked for Kerr-McGee Minerals and told me that they would calibrate their helicopter-borne Geiger counters by flying over Gore.

The plant near Crescent still exists, manned daily by a dry watch staff, but hasn’t processed plutonium in decades.

Eric’sWeb

I watched a program on the cable channel Encore about Jimi Hendrix and the Band of Gypsys.  On the show he played a song called Machine Gun and it evoked a memory of Vietnam that I hadn’t thought about in years.

I went to Vietnam in 1970 as an infantry mortar man.  For awhile, in addition to my M16, I humped the base plate of an 81 MM mortar in the mortar platoon of an infantry line company.  I was in Charlie Company, 1^st of the 8^th Cavalry, First Cavalry Air Mobile.  We were operating off a hill bulldozed bald amid a jungle of green that could literally swallow you whole.  The Cav had just made their first sanctioned incursion into Cambodia, formerly off limits, and we had dealt a near-mortal blow to Charlie.  For the following months, Charlie played a game of duck-and-run while we tried desperately, and with little luck, to finish him off.

After several months of fifteen days in the jungle, five days on the firebase, and almost no success in encountering the enemy, Brass devised a new tactic of having us fly around in helicopters until we started taking ground-to-air fire.  Once we did, the choppers would swoop down and drop us off in hopes of making contact – something that rarely happened because of Charlie’s weakened state.

During this time, Brass also decided the 81 MM mortar was too unwieldy for rapid deployment and all of us in the mortar company suddenly became infantry foot soldiers, grunts, 11-bravos, also known as 11-bullet-stoppers.  I was given a twenty-six pound M-60 machine gun to carry since I already had experience toting a twenty-three pound base plate.  I had never shot an M-60, even during basic training at Fort Polk in Louisiana. This is because mortar men weren’t ever supposed to use the gun.

Around this time artillery began shooting sophisticated listening devices into the jungle using specially designed 105 MM rounds.  Intelligence mapped the locations of these devices and we soon had a good idea of where there was movement - of a military nature - in the jungle.  The devices weren’t always correct and we once found a large family of monkeys instead of Viet Cong or North Vietnamese regulars.  This wasn’t always the case.

Reports of intense enemy troop movement in a nearby swamp had the Brass salivating.  My company was soon loaded into choppers, flown to the area and dropped out of the birds – and I mean this literally.  With no LZ cut into the jungle for us, the choppers hovered 10 feet or so above a large swampy pond while we jumped out.  This was no easy feat while carrying 100 pounds of gear.

We soon found ourselves in a maze of trails and something very anomalous – there was movement all around us.  Charlie wasn’t even trying to cover it up.  This could only mean one of two things – either we had caught the enemy very much by surprise, or else they had us outnumbered and knew it.  We were all pretty nervous because one thing we had never really done was surprise Charlie.

Our company had about 100 men divided equally into four platoons.  We set up a camp and then our platoon started out on patrol.  Soon as we were out of sight from the rest of the company we began hearing movement.  After months in the boonies we were all attuned to sounds of the jungle and there was no doubt in my mind that there was a large number of enemy soldiers very close to us, and that they were paralleling our movement through the jungle.  This bothered me and everyone else because we were on Charlie’s home turf – likely smack-dab in the middle of a large enemy camp and staging area.  We could hear movement in every direction and if I told you that I was anything but piss-in-my-pants scared, I’d be lying through my teeth.

Jungle warfare is like no other.  You can be 10 feet from the enemy and never see him.  You have to rely on your nose, your ears and your wits because otherwise you may as well be blind.  My nose, ears and wits told me we were about to have the living shit kicked out of us and I expected, any minute, to be shredded by AK 47 bullets.  The platoon leader decided on a quick ploy.

I was the machine gunner, the “gun.”  When Super Sarge tapped my shoulder and pointed to a slight concave just to the side of the trail, I knew my time had come.  It was an instant ambush.  Charlie was following close behind.  My assistant gunner and I set the M-60’s bi-pod and started stringing every round of ammo we had into the gun’s chamber, locked and loaded, ready to kill – and likely be killed. It didn’t matter that I had never pulled the trigger on an M-60. What mattered was that I was getting ready to.  Just as quickly as the sergeant tapped my shoulder and motioned me what to do, the two of us were left alone on the trail to mow down anyone coming up from behind.  From the sounds we heard, we wouldn’t have long to wait.

I could tell you that we ambushed Charlie, wiped most of them out and set them dropping their weapons and running for cover.  That didn’t happen.  What did happen is almost as strange, but true.  It was monsoon season.  Every day the skies would part and rain would fall in torrents – almost like being under a waterfall.  My finger was on the trigger of the M-60, my heart in my throat, when it began to rain.  My assistant gunner and I lay there on our bellies for an interminable time, rapidly flowing water soaking our fatigues.  When the rain stopped there was no sound.  I mean none.  Charlie had taken the opportunity to clear out and we never heard him again.

That night we camped in the middle of the swamp, mosquitoes and leeches sucking our blood.  It rained so hard that Charlie could have gotten close enough to cut our throats and we wouldn’t have seen him.  The next morning the Captain let me shoot the M-60, for practice, while we waited for the choppers to extract us. We stood single file, knee-deep in a wide pool of stagnate water. With five-hundred rounds locked and loaded, I stood like Rambo, the big gun at my waist, and began mowing down vegetation across the pond. I didn’t take my finger off the trigger until the sound of imminent death finally ceased and the pungent odor of spent rounds wafted up into my nostrils.

It was the first and last time that I ever shot the big gun, but I’ll never forget the sound it made or the power of life and death I felt for as long as I live.  Tonight, while watching the piece on Jimi Hendrix, I remembered that sound and that feeling vividly.

Eric’sWeb

My ex-mother-in-law Lily was a wonderful cook. Not only could she cook Cajun and Creole dishes, she also knew how to prepare traditional southern dishes, famous from Florida to Texas. Meatloaf, without question, is a southern comfort food, and here is Lily’s Creole version of the recipe.

Chalmette Meatloaf

Ingredients

·         2 bay leaves, whole

·         1 tablespoon salt

·         1 teaspoon ground red pepper ( cayenne)

·         1 teaspoon black pepper

·         ½ teaspoon cumin, ground

·         ½ teaspoon nutmeg, ground

·         4 tablespoons butter, unsalted

·         ½ cup of celery, finely chopped

·         ½ cup bell pepper, finely chopped

·         ¼ cup greens onions, chopped

·         12 teaspoons of garlic, minced

·         1 tablespoon Tabasco sauce

·         1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

·         ½ cup milk

·         ½ cup catsup

·         2 pounds beef, ground

·         ½ pound of pork, ground

·         2 eggs lightly beaten

·         1 cup bread crumbs

 Instructions

Combine the seasoning mix ingredients in a small bowl and set aside. Melt the butter in 1 quart saucepan over medium heat. Add the onions, celery, and bell pepper, green onions, garlic, Tabasco, Worcestershire and seasoning mix.

Sauté about 6 minutes, stirring occasionally and scraping the pan bottom well. Stir in the milk and ½ cup catsup. Continue cooking for about 2 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat and allow mixture to cool to room temperature.  Place the ground beef and pork in an ungreased 13 x 9 inch baking pan.

Remove the bay leaves, add the eggs, the cooked vegetable mixture and the bread crumbs. Mix by hand until thoroughly combined in the center of the pan. Shape the mixture into a loaf that is about 1 ½ inches high x 6 inches wide and 12 inches long. Bake uncovered at 350 for 25 minutes, then raise heat to 400 and continue cooking until done, about 35 minutes longer.

Eric’sWeb 

My business partner and fellow writer r.r. bryan, is also from Louisiana. Yesterday, he told me something that both of us found hard to believe.

“Did you know they cancelled a Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans?”

I didn’t know. Mardi Gras parades are never cancelled or postponed. They always go off on schedule, even in a driving New Orleans rainstorm. The cause of the cancellation – Saints mania.

Sunday marks the first Super Bowl appearance for the New Orleans Saints and the city is practically locked-down in anticipation. School is cancelled, jury trials put on hold and some restaurants closing for the first time ever for non-holiday events.

Sunday is a historic day in the Big Easy, a sports-happy city that has patiently awaited this even for more than four decades.

Eric’sWeb

ebooks debate continues.

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Eric’sWeb

   My ninety-year-old Dad was born in Trees City, Louisiana, just after the First World War. An honest-to-God boomtown little remains of the once bustling town. My brother Jack and I are moving my dad, a World War II vet, to the world-class veteran’s facility in Norman, Oklahoma, so I am reprising my story about my last trip to Trees City.

The last time I visited northwest Louisiana, I visited Trees City.  The town was founded by the legendary oil finders Benedum and Trees.  These two wildcatters had moved to north Louisiana after finding large oil fields in Oklahoma.  They discovered the Trees City Field in far Northwest Louisiana.

Trees City quickly became a boomtown, complete with churches, honkytonks and a post office.  During the height of the oil boom, 25,000 people lived there.  Today, it is little more than a memory.

Thick trees, vines and creepers cover most of what was once a thriving city.  Permanent steel towers, constructed on site for the drilling of a single oil well, still peek up through the tall trees.  Even the post office is gone, located now at the Oil Museum in nearby Oil City, Louisiana.

Benedum and Trees sold their interest in the Field to Gulf Oil for a million dollars, an enormous sum of money at the time.  The amount pales compared with the vast riches recovered by Gulf Oil.  It doesn’t matter much now.  Where roughnecks once toiled to recover Mother Nature’s dark liquid bounty, only ghosts wisping silently over Jeems Bayou still remain.

Eric’sWeb

I have cats and this story fascinates me.

http://newsok.com/doctors-book-stars-death-predicting-cat/article/3436120

Eric’sWeb

Many years ago, Anne and I flew to New Orleans with friends Gary and Carroll. It was off-season, somewhere between Mardi Gras and the Jazz Festival, so we got a good rate on a French Quarter hotel. Not much was happening except for the Festival of the Tomato.

Cajuns and Creoles love their tomatoes and use them as ingredients in almost everything. While enjoying the Quarter during the festival, we tasted many wonderful variations of tomato dishes. We quickly learned, when topped with oils and spices, the tomato needs no other ingredients. Here is a standalone tomato recipe I think you will enjoy as much as I do.

Tomatoes Bonaparte

It’s not quite February yet, but Oklahoma finds itself in its first winter storm of the New Year, the second in little more than a month. While I stayed off the road most of the day, this storm reminds me of another that happened many years ago - when I was much younger, much braver and a whole lot dumber.

I was doing well-site geology work for Cities Service Oil Company in central Kansas. I had been on a well for two weeks. When it came time to leave and return to Oklahoma City, the weather was too bad to do so.

Management didn’t care about the weather. In the days before cell phones, email and fax machines the only way to get an electric log from one location to another was to take it in your car.

“Have it in my office by eight tomorrow morning,” my boss had told me. “We need to know what to do with the well.”

I already knew what to do with the well. It was dry as the proverbial bone, not a single show of oil or gas from the surface to total depth. Being a young geologist, nobody believed me and insisted on seeing the electric logs for themselves.

It mattered little that the highway patrol had shut down I-35, closing all the ramps. I left the location at midnight, heading south to Oklahoma City. When I reached a blocked ramp, I got out of the car, moved the obstruction and drove up on the frozen interstate highway.

A thick sheet of ice covered the surface of Interstate 35. It was a good thing that I had a full tank of gas because no stations were open. The trip took more than four hours and I never saw another vehicle the entire time. If I had gone into the ditch, I would likely have remained there until the spring thaw.

Four members of management met me at the door the next morning when I reached my bosses office. They took the electric logs and my geologic report, never asking me a single question. They finally told me that I could go home, never telling me what they intended to do with the wildcat well we had drilled.

When I read Dilbert each morning in the cartoons, I’m reminded of Cities Service Oil Company. The mismanaged company soon sold to another large oil company. I didn’t care because I had already moved on to work for Texas Oil & Gas.

Instead of driving on an off-limits sheet of ice tonight, I am sitting in front of my computer, pecking out this little remembrance while preparing to watch Arkansas play Mississippi State in basketball. Did I learn anything from that little escapade? You bet! I’ve worked for myself now for thirty-two years. Now, when management orders me to do something completely stupid, I have no one to blame but myself.

Eric’sWeb

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Eric’sWeb

During the last oil boom, Christmas parties became monster occasions in downtown Oklahoma City.  Schlumberger, Halliburton, Dresser Atlas and all the large service companies rented massive ballrooms and sated every guest there with food, drink and entertainment.  The oil companies were not far behind, especially those in constant search of investor money.

Single and still young, I once had three women that I was dating show up at the same party.  The ballroom was so large and the crowds so thick, I almost made it without discovery.  Well, almost!

A year or so later, I made the break from Texas Oil & Gas, forming a partnership with a geophysicist friend of mine.  We had an office on the eighth floor of the Park Harvey Center.  The venerable office building had a bank of elevators in the center of the floor.  A hallway wrapped around this center square with the offices on the outside, facing the windows.

In addition to John and me, there was a small oil company, a land (oil leases) company, two lawyers and a couple of independent geologists.  We all knew each other and decided to go together and have a Christmas party on our floor.  We chipped in for the booze and food, and one of the lawyers mentioned that he had a few waitresses as clients that owed him money.  He was sure that they would act as waitresses free in exchange for working off some of their indebtedness to him.

About this time, I had just begun dating Anne and wanted desperately to impress her.  When the night of the party arrived, John and I had a big shock.  The lawyer’s servers were actually strippers and they were dressed only in baby dolls.  Since we were not paying them, they were not afraid of us firing them, and they quickly began sampling the hooch as fast as they dispensed it.

Word soon spread.  Before long, leering geologists packed the hallways along with landmen and engineers.  The girls did not mind, soon doffing their tops, and then their bottoms.

Anne showed up with a friend, a matronly secretary.  After practically fainting, the older woman hurried back to the elevators, leaving the increasingly rowdy crowd for safer climes.  I do not remember a lot after that, having already consumed too much whiskey.

The party continued until all the whiskey was gone, and the girls dressed and departed.  Anne was a good sport about the situation, as was Debbie, John’s future wife that also showed up.  Anne remained sober, had a clear head and drove me home safely.  I awoke to a massive hangover and a ringing phone.  The news of the party had spread and those that had missed it were calling to see if the stories were true.

The following year John and I were drilling oil wells and had several employees.  Instead of the previous year’s drunken debacle, we hosted a sedate wine and cheese party that lasted only until seven.  It did not matter as hundreds of oil industry voyeurs showed up anyway, just in case. 

Those were the go go years of the last oil boom.  Even amid the blurred memories, many things that occurred read almost like fiction.  The events that occurred during that era were true.  Even I couldn’t make this stuff up.

Eric’sWeb

In 1974, Marilyn and her two kids, Shane and Shannon, lived in a small apartment near the Edmond college that is now the University of Central Oklahoma (UCO).  Living in an apartment directly across from Marilyn was Karen Silkwood and her roommate Sherri Ellis.

Karen Silkwood was the subject of the 1983 movie Silkwood that starred Meryl Streep, Kurt Russell and Cher.  Silkwood worked in the Cimarron plant that processed plutonium for Kerr-McGee.  Mysteriously contaminated with plutonium, she died shortly after in a single car accident while on her way to give an interview to a New York Times investigative reporter.

Karen, according to Marilyn, had discovered that a large number of the workers at the plant had developed cancer, as had she.  She, along with many others, believed it was because the plant had lax procedures for handling the deadly plutonium.  The plant had de-unionized and she was one of the few remaining members.  As such, she felt it was her responsibility to expose the plant’s dangers.

As a union spark plug, Silkwood became a target, either by workers fearful of losing their high paying jobs, or by Kerr-McGee itself.  More than once, Marilyn observed Silkwood in intense arguments with some man driving a blue pickup, the last argument occurring the day before her death.

Before her death, Kerr-McGee personnel conducted a search of her apartment, finding high degrees of contamination.  They even found an object, clearly marked as radioactive, in Shane’s toys.  The Company maintained that Silkwood had contrived to contaminate herself, and thus implicate Kerr-McGee.

Karen Silkwood swerved off the road on her way to meet the investigative reporter.  The car, when searched after the accident, contained no contaminated evidence, but had blue paint on a rear fender from an accident with another vehicle.

Did Kerr-McGee plant radioactive material in her apartment?  Did Kerr-McGee have Silkwood killed?  Did she have illegal drugs in her body at the time of the crash?  I do not know, but I do know that the resultant lawsuit filed by her family settled out of court for more than a million dollars.

As a geologist, I also know that Kerr-McGee had another plant in Gore, Oklahoma - a place that insiders now consider one of the most contaminated places in the United States.  Carroll, a friend and fellow geologist, once worked for Kerr-McGee Minerals and told me that they would calibrate their helicopter-borne Geiger counters by flying over Gore.

The plant near Crescent still exists, manned daily by a dry watch staff, but hasn’t processed plutonium in decades.

Eric’sWeb

Growing up in the Deep South, I have memories of many things that cross my mind from time to time.  During the fifties in Vivian, Louisiana, there was no air-conditioning and only primitive television.  By today’s standards, Vivian itself was primitive.

On Friday nights, my parents would take Brother Jack and me for hamburgers at the Rock Café (as in sandstone, not music).  From there we would go to Vivian’s main street, park the car and watch the foot traffic passing on the sidewalk.

All the country folk would come into town Friday afternoon, buy their salt and flour for the week and then stay around to rub elbows and socialize with their neighbors.  One electrical store had an early television in the window.  Friday nights they would leave it running and practically the entire town would crowd around and watch the Friday Night Fights.  That old television was not the only thing black and white in Vivian.

In the fifties, I grew up in a racially segregated town.  The whites lived in their part of town, the blacks theirs, and never the twain shall meet.  Even living in a region where the black population nearly equaled the white’s, I never met a black person until I was eighteen.  This revelation is almost unbelievable, even to me, but it is true.

Unlike many of the small municipalities in east Texas and southwest Arkansas, most rural north Louisiana towns had no square.  We did have a small park, complete with pigeons and benches, and the locals would congregate there on Friday nights, and during special events.  I remember seeing Earl K. Long on a campaign stump give a steamy speech on a hot Louisiana day.  It was really more of a performance than a speech.  Sometime later, I remember that his wife Blanche had him committed to the mental institution in Mandeville.

A charity cakewalk was one of the events sometimes held in the square.  Church members would donate cakes for the event and fifteen or so participants, each having donated a dollar, would walk around in a numbered circle until the music ended.  The person stopping on the correct number would win a cake.  This charity event was the white southern version of a dance created by black southern slaves, the dancers strutting in their best clothes in a parody of their owners.

Like the cakewalk, African slaves greatly influenced white southern society.  Southern mannerisms, mores, speech patterns and culture all benefited and changed because of interaction between the races.  Even southern cooking is black southern cooking.  This interaction between the races ended, for the most part, after the Civil War and this extended isolationist period lasted through much of the nineteen-seventies. 

I was probably no more than ten when I saw my last cakewalk.  Segregation no longer exists in the little town of Vivian and there are no longer any white-only events in the local park.  Moreover, like the end of other woefully dark periods in American history, this is a good thing.

Eric’sWeb

Lily, my former mother-in-law, had eight children. All her kids and their families usually came to her house for Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter. Lily was a Cajun, but like families across the country, she would usually cook the traditional turkey.

Unlike most of the country, she would stuff her bird with Cajun rice dressing. Lily cooked by feel and taste rather than recipe, but this is a close approximation. Try it sometime and enjoy.

Lily’s Rice Dressing

Ingredients:

§  4 cups chicken or turkey stock

§  2 cups rice

§  1 pound chicken gizzards

§  ½ pound chicken livers

§  ½ pound ground beef

§  ½ pound pork

§  ½ cup oil or meat drippings

§  1 large onion, chopped

§  2 stalks celery, chopped

§  1 bell pepper, chopped

§  2 cloves garlic, minced

§  3 tablespoons parsley, chopped

§  1 bunch green onions, chopped

§  Salt, pepper, to taste

Directions:

Bring chicken stock to a boil in a large saucepan. Add rice, reduce heat, cover and simmer until done, about 20 minutes. Set aside. Simmer chicken gizzards in water to cover until fork tender, about 30 minutes, add livers and cook about 10 more minutes until livers are done. Drain and remove the tender meat from the gizzards, discarding the tough gristle. Grind or process gizzard meat and livers together until coarse. Set aside.

In a large pot, brown the ground beef and pork, drain and set aside. In the same pot, heat the oil and sauté onions, celery and bell pepper until soft. Add garlic and sauté briefly. Away from the heat, add rice, meat, green onions, parsley and seasonings, and toss lightly.

Eric’sWeb

I learned to read at an early age, and soon began enjoying books.  We had a tiny, one-room town library in Vivian and Mrs. Files, - I kid you not - was the librarian.  The library had little or no budget but Mrs. Files always found an inexpensive way to keep our interest in reading high.

During the summer, she would mimeograph diagrams of the United States, or some such imaginative illustration.  Whenever we read a book, she would give us a gold star for one of the states.  The person with the most gold stars at the end of the summer got a five-dollar bill, which, I now feel sure, Mrs. Files contributed herself.

I liked mysteries from the time I was very young, books with heroes like Freddy the Pig and Miss Pickerel.  As I grew older, I found I also liked a little adventure tossed in.  I read everything I could find by Jules Verne, H. Rider Haggard and Edgar Rice Burroughs, so it was natural that when I began writing, I wrote stories that combined the two genres.  If you have the need to label everything, I guess you could call them mysventures.

Growing up, I also loved history and have always wondered what happened to the ill-fated colony of Roanoke.  It would seem with all our technology that we should be able to find the answer.  Alas, this is not the case.

I have visited many wild and wooly places in my life but few as wild and remote as the deepest forests hidden in the ancient Ouachita Mountains of central Arkansas.  I realized as much while working on my geological master’s thesis in Sevier County.

I remain entranced by the geologic mystery of the area and feel that central Arkansas is one of the top ten geologic wonders of the world.  To me, it bears the same mystery and intrigue as Haggard’s vision of darkest Africa, or Burrough’s Pellucidar.  Arkansas is also the only place in the United States with diamonds found at their source.

Not only are the Ouachita Mountains lush with mystery, intrigue and danger, their deep valleys and sharp peaks conceal limitless wealth in diamonds and many other valuable minerals.  It seemed a perfect place for a mystery/adventure tale, and became the location for my novel A Gathering of Diamonds.

When I wrote A Gathering of Diamonds, I stole many ideas from masters such as Haggard, Burroughs, and yes-even Cussler.  I also managed to solve the mystery of the disappearance of the Roanoke Colony, at least in my own fictional mind.

Many moons have passed since those days in Vivian’s little library.  Mrs. Files is no longer around to read any of my books.  If she were, I am sure that she would smile, pat me on the shoulder, and give me a gold star.  That thought makes me very happy.

Eric’sWeb

Growing up in northwest Louisiana in the fifties, money was scarce but chickens were cheap. One of the meals my mom prepared at least once a week was southern fried chicken served with fresh-cut fried potatoes. Although I never thought about it at the time, the meal now ranks as my favorite southern comfort food.

My brother Jack and I both liked the wishbone, the piece of the chicken we called the “pulley bone.” He was older and usually ended up with it. Whichever one of us got it we would have a contest, each grabbing an end of the vee-shaped bone and pulling. The one of us ending with the biggest piece of the pulley bone could then make a secret wish guaranteed to come true.

The recipe is simple, with only a few basic ingredients, and the preparation straight forward. Still, no one could fry chicken like my northwest Louisiana mama. If I had a pulley bone wish today, it would be for a bite of her fried chicken and potatoes.

Ingredients:

• 1 chicken, e.g. wings, thighs, etc.
• 1 teaspoon salt
• ¼ teaspoon pepper
• ½ cup flour
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil, divided
• 1 ¼ cups milk  

Preparation:

Combine chicken, salt, pepper, and the flour on large plate; toss lightly to coat. Heat 1 tablespoon oil in large skillet over medium-high heat. Add chicken and cook until golden on all sides, 5 to 8 minutes. Remove chicken, pouring off excess oil.

Return the skillet to the heat and add milk, scraping pan to loosen any brown bits. Add chicken, skin side up. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer until chicken is tender and juices run clear, about 15 to 20 minutes.

Eric’sWeb

I was only four when I took my first dip in Caddo Lake.  Both of my parents loved to fish and they did most of their fishing with worms on a hook dangling from cane poles.  This they did while sitting on a boat dock jutting out into the lake.

The sport was far too passive for Brother Jack and me, and we often wound up playing cowboys and Indians instead.  Jack and I were usually cowboys, as movies in the fifties most often portrayed Indians as villains - Tonto and Little Beaver noted exceptions.  We both had felt cowboy hats, boots, and holsters complete with cap pistols.  Because of our noisiness, the parents were happy to have us wander off to some other place and play.

It was one those hot Louisiana summer days, with not enough wind blowing to ripple the Spanish moss draping from the bloated cypress trees that grew in the shallow water near the bank.  Mom and Dad were concentrating on their red bobbers floating in the coffee-colored water, at the ends of their lines.  Realizing that no one was paying any attention to us, Jack and I went looking for a little shade, and a little fun.

There were boat docks every hundred feet or so, all extending well out into the shallow water.  No one minded much if someone fished, or used them to play cowboys and Indians.  Jack is two years older than I am and we were very close while growing up.  That did not mean that we never had any disagreements.

Jack was always bigger and constantly used his strength to bully or taunt me, whenever he could get away with it.  He was having a grand time snatching my cowboy hat and sailing it into the air.  Jack loved to see my face turn red.  The madder I became, the more he would torment me.  My felt cowboy hat was my prized possession, and I was less than happy seeing it landing in the dirt.

When I finally retrieved my hat, I ran away from Jack, my hands clamped on the brim to keep him from yanking it off again.  I made a strategic error by running onto a ramp extending into the lake; I quickly realized big brother would have me cornered once I reached the end of the dock.

He was almost on me when I spotted an old paddle propped up against the railing.  Grabbing it as I reached the end of the dock, I twirled around to face my brother.  When I took a swing at him with the paddle, he grabbed the other end.  When I yanked, he pushed.

I was at the end of the dock.  Losing my footing, I sailed backwards into the tepid water.  I could not yet swim but it didn’t matter.  Water barely came up to my chest, but I was frightened because Jack started yelling, “Look out, there’s an alligator behind you.”

Jack stopped laughing when I started screaming bloody murder as I attempted in vain to crawl up the algae-slick posts that supported the dock.  My desperate wailing soon got the attention of my Mom and Dad who dropped their poles and came running.

“What in cornbread hell are you two into now?” my Dad yelled as he rushed toward me, just ahead of my Mother.  He quickly reached down and pulled me out of the water.

Jack did not stick around to see the action.  Expecting a whipping, he ran toward the car and hid.  Dad did not bother.  He had a fish on the line, handing me, wet and flopping, to my Mother and then hurrying back to his fishing pole.

Mom fished my hat out of the lake and then took me to the car, stripped off my wet clothes and draped them on the hood of the car to dry.  With only a frown and shake of her head, and not a single word of reprimand, she hurried back to the fishing dock to see what my Dad had caught.

Brother Jack finally came out of the bushes, still laughing but more subdued because of his fear of a whipping.  He also had the good sense to realize how upset that I was, my favorite cowboy hat lying in a misshapen lump on the hood of the brown and white Ford sedan.

My parents never punished Jack for pushing me into the lake and I was not too upset because my Mom somehow managed to reshape my cowboy hat and dry out my boots.  That hot summer day, long ago, was not my first fight with Brother Jack, but it was my first dip in Caddo Lake.

Eric’sWeb

   I have had many cats as pets through the years. My first was King Tut, Anne’s cat, which became part of my family when Anne and I married. Glancing through some old pictures today, I found images of the second and third cat members of my family.

Anne and I were in the oil business. A drilling contractor named John was dating Sheryl, a young woman that worked for Anne and me. He had a little ranch on the west side of Oklahoma City, several horses and a barn. Blessed by many barn cats, he gave two kitties, Buster and Squeaky, to Sheryl. Sheryl kept Buster and gave Squeaky to Anne and me.

Squeaky was the first female cat Anne or I ever owned and neither of us realized how fast cats mature. Because of our oversight, Squeaky became pregnant and soon had a litter of beautiful kittens. We soon found good homes for all the kittens except for one, a calico we kept and named Chani after a character in the Dune series that Anne loved. Squeaky and Chani soon became inseparable.

The oil business soon busted. Anne and I lost our home and moved to a rent house, Chani, Squeaky and Tut moving with us. During the difficult years that ensued, we moved five times. Some of the cats didn’t live that long but Chani made all five moves.

Calicos are three-colored cats and they are always females. Chani was a gorgeous, three-colored cat with a distinctive voice. She always let you know when she was around. She loved affection and would live on your lap, if you would let her. She also liked to drink water from the tap.

Chani died at the age of nineteen, still the queen bee of our cat family until the time of her death. I buried her in the flower bed where she liked to lie, among the flowers, in the spring and summer. Spirits abound around the Wilder household and I’m sure she still holds sway over her departed brothers and sisters. I’m also sure Squeaky is also around and that she and Chani are again inseparable.

Eric’sWeb

        Growing up in the fifties, I had a normal fifties-style relationship with my dad. Simply put, he provided the money to pay the bills but spent little personal time with Brother Jack and me. Times have changed. As he approaches ninety-one, I try to take him somewhere with me at least once a week.

Yesterday, we had chips and dip at Louie’s on Lake Hefner in Oklahoma City. The weather was nice, in the fifties. Joggers, skaters and bicyclists maintained a steady stream of traffic outside the restaurant on the jogging trail that encircles the lake.

The crowd was raucous as they watched the Vikings slaughter the Cowboys in one of the NFL playoff games. Most Oklahomans root for the Cowboys but they have a soft spot for the Vikings because Adrian Peterson, their wonderful running back, played for the Oklahoma Sooners. Here are a few pics from the excursion.

Eric’sWeb

As all of you aspiring authors know, few publishers accept direct submissions from authors anymore. Such direct submissions used to go to a place that editors called the “slush pile.” Readers “mined” these slush piles, hoping to find the next great author. A talent-spotting reader discovered author Philip Roth this way when part of his slush pile submission grew into Goodbye, Columbus.

Because of copyright infringement fears, slush piles are largely gone. Publishers now rely on agents to act as go-betweens. As every author that has ever tried to secure an agent knows, it is all but impossible to do so and the lack of an agent prevents many wonderful writers from ever being published. A new website founded by editors from the publisher Harper Collins seeks to remedy this industry shortcoming.

The new site is Authonomy and it brings together talented, undiscovered writers and avid readers. Authors upload entire books that are free to read and comment on.  Harper Collins has even published some of the books discovered in the site’s “slush pile.”

I uploaded my novel Prairie Sunset to the site. If you are either writer, reader or - like me - both, I urge you to check out the site. While you are there, please take a look at Prairie Sunset.

Eric’sWeb

It’s another cold day in central Oklahoma. With the temperature in single digits, a chill wind whistling threw the shrubs and a darkly overcast sky it is a perfect day for weekend comfort food.

Here is a simple recipe that is sure to provide comfort for your gloomy weekend.

Eric’s Green Pepper Stew

Ingredients

·         1 cup grated cheddar cheese

·         2 lbs. pork

·         2 tsp. salt

·         2 tbsp. oil

·         3 medium potatoes, peeled and cubed

·         ½ cup onion, diced

·         1 large garlic clove, minced

·         6-8 fresh roasted green peppers, skinned and de-seeded

Directions

Cube meat, sprinkle with salt and fry until brown in oil. Add potatoes to browned meat together with onion, garlic, salt, peppers and enough water to cover. Simmer for 1 ½ hours or until potatoes are tender. Serve with cheddar cheese and warm tortillas on the side.

Makes 6 servings

Eric’sWeb

I’ve never run a marathon but I have competed in a half marathon, a 15 K and more 10 Ks than I can count.  I was overweight and out of shape when I ran the half marathon.  I didn’t win the event but I didn’t finish last either, well at least not dead last.

Oklahoma City inaugurated a yearly marathon event several years ago to commemorate the heroism and sacrifice of the people of our City, and others that lent helping hands during the aftermath of the Oklahoma City Bombing.  Before that, there was only the yearly running of the Jim Thorpe Half Marathon around Lake Overholser.

I ran track in junior high and kept up the practice through most of my life.  Even so, I never ran a 10 K until the oil crash of the eighties when my little oil company went belly up.  It was a strange time in my life.  I had a bloated body and a deflated ego.  I needed something to regain my self-esteem and somehow decided that running was the ticket.  Since I was too fat to run I began walking laps through the house.  Soon I was jogging through the neighborhood at what I thought was a healthy clip.  Feeling better than I had in years I entered my first 10 K.

To the uninitiated 10 K is short for ten kilometers, a distance of six-point-two miles.  My first was the Red Bud, a yearly Oklahoma City running event that recently celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary.  It hooked me when I finished the distance in less than sixty minutes.

During my first 10 K, I learned I wasn’t the only busted oilie that had turned to jogging as therapy.  Hell!  Half the oil community was competing, and finding so many kindred spirits only bolstered my desire to continue running.

Many events followed but somewhere along the line, I quit training and did nothing as my weight ballooned back up to one-eighty-five.  I had made excuses for the past three Jim Thorpe’s and decided that I couldn’t live with myself another year without at least attempting the distance of a bit more than thirteen miles.

I arrived for the event late and unregistered.  Only the convincing of some of my oilie brethren got me registered and I was still filling out papers when the starter pistol fired.  It didn’t matter because I hadn’t come to win, only to compete and prove to myself that I still had the goods, even if they had shrunken slightly.

Months had passed since I had entered an event and word began trickling down through my group of friends.  Amazingly, many waited on me, or dropped back in the pack to pat me on the back and offer encouragement.  Before long I felt like a fat Forrest Gump, surrounded by friends determined that they were going to will me to finish the race.

Somewhere near the halfway mark I convinced my friends both male and female to run their race and that I would run mine.  One by one they broke away, disappearing into the distance, leaving me alone in a pack of twenty or so very slow runners.  It was then that I realized that I desperately needed to go to the bathroom.

Lake Overholser is a City Park and I soon spotted a bathroom.  Breaking from the pack I headed straight for it.  When I finished my business there were no runners around and I was, I realized, really bringing up the rear.

I somehow continued trudging forward, although already spent.  A Seven Eleven convenience store marked the three-quarter mark.  Having a few dollar bills stashed in my shorts I stopped for a cold drink but once inside I settled on an ice cold Coors instead.

“Why not?” I told the clerk.  “I’m so far behind that I can do no better than last anyway.”

“No way,” the pretty cashier told me.  “At least ten runners just left here.  They were all drinking beer.”

My dim hopes suddenly bolstered I slammed the Coors, gave the pretty girl a confident wink and hurried out the door.  The potty and beer breaks were what I needed.  I soon saw a group of runners ahead of me and could tell that if I continued my pace I would catch them before the finish line.  With that goal in mind I began moving at a rate I soon realized I couldn’t maintain.

Most of the runners ahead of me continued their pace and when I reached the last turn before the finish line there was only one runner still ahead of me.  I was out of shape but I wasn’t particularly old at the time.  The runner in front of me looked at least ten years older than me and about the same weight.  It didn’t matter because I could see the finish line in the distance and she was somehow managing to pull away.  Closing my eyes tightly, I made a wish, took a deep breath and started to sprint.

Don’t ask me how but by some superhuman effort I managed to overtake the old lady and beat her by a foot or two across the finish line.  My efforts didn’t impress her as she just frowned and shook her head as she walked past me.  Everyone, it seemed, had already gone home and not even the scorers were left to welcome us to the finish line.

I was so sore that I could barely get out of bed the next morning and I had difficulty walking up the stairs.  Still, I had a grin on my face that didn’t disappear for the rest of the weekend.  Maybe I had beat out an old woman just to keep from finishing dead last but at least I had finished, and it came flowing back to me why I had begun running in the first place.

I learned a good lesson in life that day.  No matter how bad you feel just keep putting one foot in front of the other.  Maybe, more importantly, before giving up, stop, slug an ice cold Coors, then regroup and get after it again.

Eric’sWeb

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/twitter/literary_agents_get_personal_on_agentsday_thread_148984.asp?c=rss

Eric’sWeb

I am a big fan of Eric Felten’s weekly column in the Wall Street Journal.  Felten highlights cocktails and rather than just providing his many readers with instructions on how to build the perfect Zombie or Mai Tai, he tells a story that is always interesting and informative.  A recent column caused me to recall one of my own cocktail stories.

During the last oil boom, I began working as a geologist for Texas Oil & Gas, the most aggressive driller at the time and possibly since.  My first day on the job, I had lunch at a downtown restaurant called Over the Counter with the district geologist and another company man.

Having just left Cities Service, a conservative, old-line exploration company, I was used to brown bagging a sandwich washed down with coffee or iced tea.  Because of this, my lunch companion’s choice of beverages gave me a start.

Neither man actually had to order a drink.  Gerlinda, our very German waitress brought Larry a Bacardi and Coke and Roger a Crown and Seven.

“You are a new one,” Gerlinda said.  “What are you drinking?”

“Iced tea,” I answered.

Larry and Roger smiled when Gerlinda shook her head and said, “TXO geologists don’t drink tea.”

“A Coors then,” I said.

“There is no beer at Over the Counter.  What kind of cocktail would you like?”

Larry’s grinning shrug clued me that he expected no argument from me.

“Bourbon and water, I guess.”

“What kind of bourbon?”  It was my turn to shrug, and shake my head.  “TXO geologists don’t drink house liquor and you look like a Wild Turkey man to me,” she said.  “From now on I’ll bring you Wild Turkey and water.”

She did, three of them before we finished eating.

“Everyone drinks at lunch,” Larry informed me as I stumbled back to work.  “Turkey and water suits you, Wildman.”

“Thanks,” I said as I returned to my office and tried not to fall asleep at my desk.

Lunch was the beginning of my indoctrination as a TXO geologist.  I was instructed to put at least three-thousand dollars per month on my company expense account, even if I had to treat friends, cohorts and secretaries every meal.  The Company expected me to create at least one drilling prospect every single week, no mean feat even when you are sober, much less when you can hardly hold your head up off the desk after lunch.

I - or I should say my liver - slowly grew accustomed to the daily consumption of alcoholic beverages that often continued into the wee hours of nearly every night.  It did not seem to matter much as my seven-year marriage was already in shambles.  An underground concourse wove a dark maze beneath downtown Oklahoma City, a pathway populated by restaurants, bars, barbershops and jewelry stores.  The proprietors soon knew my name, and my poison of choice, greeting me happily when I stumbled through their door.

The last oil boom was populated by a cast of almost unbelievable characters – ex-used car salesmen sporting Rolex watches, diamond encrusted belt buckles and gold nugget necklaces, preying on the unwary investor, hungry to participate in the multitude of newfound riches and burning up with incurable cases of oil fever.  I bought my own gold necklace, a half moon with a diamond eye, from an eight-by-ten jewelry store in the concourse that catered to the newly rich.

I managed to survive almost two years with TXO, having almost a hundred of my prospects drilled during that time.  I do no remember if it was I that said uncle, or my liver.  Whichever, I moved down the road with my life.

All this brings me to my cocktail story.  Sometimes when I was simply too drunk to continue drinking Wild Turkey, I would switch to a drink called a Bullshot.  A Bullshot is beef bouillon and vodka.  I never learned the exact recipe although I tasted many varieties during my two years with TXO.  The one I liked best came from an eight-ounce can.  I cannot remember the company that produced it and I do not believe they are still in business.

The last oil boom is long gone, along with Penn Square Bank and thousands of drilling rigs cut up for scrap.  Oklahoma now has liquor by the drink instead of liquor by the wink, and you can no longer leave a bar with a roadie to tide you over until you get home.  Oklahoma City police no longer tolerate drunk drivers, nor should they.

An era of overindulgence died in Oklahoma City, along with the last oil boom.  What survived was a group that could smile when someone said, “Last one to leave the State, cut off the lights.”

That was nearly thirty years ago and the lights in the City are again burning brightly.  It has been nearly that long since I drank my last Bullshot.  Still, the cocktail helped me survive an era every bit as exciting as the Alaskan Gold Rush, and Felten’s column every week reminds me that mixed drinks are more than a bartender’s recipe.  They are an untold story.

Eric’sWeb

While walking to the mailbox, I picked up a circular bit of metal on the street.  It turned out to be a penny that someone had bored a hole through to form part of a necklace.  A good luck charm, I thought, since it was so lucky that I had even glanced down at that exact moment.  As I put it in my pocket and continued up the hill to the mailbox, I remembered the seven good luck charms I carried during the time I served in Vietnam.

Am I crazy or just plain stupid to have carried seven lucky charms?  While I am not sure, consider this.  As an infantry foot soldier, I served in a line company, Charlie Company, 1/8 Cavalry, First Cavalry Division, in a part of Vietnam that was supposedly the hottest area of operation in the country at the time.  Despite this, I survived unscathed.

Yes, I understand my good luck may have had nothing to do with the seven charms I carried.  Common sense and intelligence tells me as much.  Still, I did not want to take the chance that I was wrong, and I continued to carry the charms long after I had returned to the real world.

Over the years, one by one, all seven charms were either lost or permanently misplaced.  I never tried to replace them because I could not remember why I had considered them lucky in the first place.  Today, it does not matter much anymore.  They had already done their job.

What job did my new charm have in store?  Not worrying about it or anything else, I rubbed the penny pendant in my pocket between my fingers and continued up the hill with a smile on my face and a little extra bounce in my step.

Eric’sWeb

http://therooseveltneworleans.com/blog/2009/04/

Eric’sWeb

Growing up in Louisiana, I never drove a car in a hilly area until my first wife Gail and I moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas.  We owned a 1967 Mustang and soon bought a 1962 Ford truck.  Both vehicles had manual transmissions and when winter arrived, I learned that I was not as good a driver as I thought I was.

Nestled in the Ozark Mountains, Fayetteville is a gorgeous place, and was the inspiration for the fictional town of Brannerville in my novel A Gathering of Diamonds.  Spring, summer and fall it is gorgeous.  It is even more gorgeous amid winter snows that fall with regularity – fine for someone from Arkansas but treacherous for a Louisiana flatlander.  I found out as much the first time that it snowed.

Gail had sent me to the store for a loaf of bread.  Snow had begun falling an hour before in cold wet clumps, the narrow street that we lived on already coated with ice and snow as I backed out of our driveway.  I cruised carefully down the street until I reached the first intersection.

Every cross street in Fayetteville, it seems, is either up or down a grade.  When I reached the first one, I had trouble negotiating the gearshift and clutch to get up the grade.  The snow had turned dry and was falling in sheets, making it difficult for the wipers to keep the windshield clear.  The grade was not even that steep but it took me two tries to clear it and turn right onto a busy crossroad.

Arkansas drivers are used to the slush and ice and blared their horns at me as they raced past, oblivious to the near whiteout condition of the weather.  Creeping along, I finally made it to the grocery store, deciding to stock up while there – a lucky thing, as it turned out as we ended up snowed in for two days.

I was only in the store for ten minutes or so, but found the windshield iced over when I returned to the truck.  Having seen little snow during my lifetime, I did not have an ice scrapper in the truck.  At that time, I did not even know such a thing existed.  Thankfully, a Good Samaritan lent me one and showed me how to use it.

Need I mention that I did not have gloves, or heavy coat, either?  By now, the streets were white, as were the trees and all the houses.  Before long, I had one of the front wheels hooked over a curb and try as I might, I could not get it loose.  I was on a side street, away from traffic, and about two miles from my duplex.

Finally giving up trying to free the truck, I left it on the side of the road and hiked home with the two bags of groceries that I had bought in my arms.  Gail stared at me in disbelief when I came in the door, icicles hanging from my hair and eyebrows.

“What happened to you?” she asked.

“Arkansas,” I answered, wondering what the next years had in store for us as I put away the groceries in the kitchen.

Eric’sWeb

Red snapper is perhaps the most popular main entrée at many fine restaurants in New Orleans.  My Cajun ex-mother-in-law always prepared a wonderful version she called, simply, red fish.

Lily always made her signature dish when her little brother Junior brought home red snapper from one of his morning fishing trips.  I don’t have Lili’s recipe (she did everything by memory) but here is a similar one.

• 2 onions, minced
• 1 sprig saffron
• 2 green peppers, minced
• 4 pounds red snapper
• 2 fresh mushrooms, minced
• 1 cup white wine
• 1 clove garlic, crushed
• Salt and pepper
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 tablespoon chopped parsley
• 6 fresh tomatoes, peeled

Cook onions, peppers, mushrooms and garlic in olive oil for a few minutes, add tomatoes and cook for 30 minutes.  Add saffron.  Remove head and middle bone from fish and arrange in a buttered baking dish.  Pour wine over fish and season very lightly with salt and pepper.  Add sauce and cook for 30 minutes in a 350-degree oven.  Garnish with parsley. 

Serves 8 to 10.

Eric’sWeb

Bowlers are a strange bunch. I do not know another group of athletes – if you can call bowlers athletes – as dedicated to their sport as bowlers.  Most would bowl 24-7, if they could. Their average is the most important single number in their lives, even more so than their IQs and the number of times they have sex a week.

I know all about bowling because I had two roommates in college that were avid bowlers, and I worked for about a year in a bowling alley.  I witnessed many strange events during that year, but the most traumatic occurred when I accidentally switched off the power to all the lanes.

League competition is the bread and butter of every bowling alley and most avid bowlers are members of at least two leagues.  Bowlers establish an average in each league, the better bowlers handicapped so that all the teams are more-or-less equal.  This is never the case, as the better bowlers always have the advantage.

At the Monroe, Louisiana bowling alley that I worked at, the biggest league bowled on Wednesday nights.  The bowlers were not all as good as those that bowled on the Friday night scratch league, but many were.  Unlike the Friday night scratch league, the Wednesday league included both men and women.

The bowlers on the Wednesday night league were all serious bowlers.  Most came into the bowling alley and bowled a game or two every day.  One of the couples that bowled on Wednesday night was particularly avid.  Maybe I should say rabid.  I will call them Sam and Bertha because I can’t remember their names.  Sam was an older person, short and with bowed legs.  Bertha was at least twice Sam’s size and everyone called her Big Bertha – at least behind her back.

Big Bertha maintained a one-eighty average and was proud of it.  She and Sam were partners on a team, and they led the Wednesday night league by a small margin.  The particular Wednesday I am thinking of was the last night of the league and she and Sam were playing Lou and Dave for the championship.  The two teams were neck and neck going into the tenth frame.  That is when I made my mistake.

Big Bertha had rolled nine pins.  If she picked up the easy spare, she and Sam would be the league champions.  Someone asked me to reset the pins on a nearby lane, just as she prepared her release.  Hitting the wrong switch, my heart almost stopped when all the lights on the bowling alley lanes went dark.  I flipped it back on immediately but this only had the effect of causing all the lanes to reset the pins.  Bertha’s ball struck the ball block with a resounding thud.

I was stuck behind the alley’s circular control desk, or I would have run for my live.  Instead, I awaiting my impending fate as Big Bertha locked her angry stare on me and charged in my direction.

“You stupid SOB!” she yelled, leaning over the cabinet top.  “You ruined my game, you stupid SOB!”

My inadvertent mistake caused all activity in the noisy bowling alley to come to an abrupt halt.  Joe, the manager of the bowling alley, came out of his office and rushed to the control desk.  Bertha was big but Joe was bigger.  An ex-college tackle, gone only slightly to pot, he stood six-foot-four.  Bertha backed off when Joe got between her and me.

“What happened?” he demanded.

“I’m sorry,” I said in my contrite voice.  “I hit the wrong switch.”

“The stupid SOB did it on purpose!” Bertha said, still shouting.

Joe raised a placating palm.  “I’ll fix it.  We will put everyone back as it was before the outage.”

Joe and my two roommates Trellis and Chuck – the alley engineers – begin restoring the lanes to where they were before my mistake.  I waited, under orders, in Joe’s office.  Once they restored order, Joe joined me in his office.

Joe was big and imposing, but he was also a pussycat.  “Eric, I’m firing you,” he said.  “At least for a couple of weeks.  Big Bertha will have calmed down by then.”

Joe ushered me out the back door.  Chuck and Trellis laughed their proverbial rear ends off when their shifts finally ended and they arrived back at our apartment.

“You dumb SOB!” Chuck said.  “You’re lucky that old bitch didn’t kill you.”

Trellis went to the refrigerator and returned with three cold cans of Schlitz.  “Here’s to you,” he said.  “Seeing the look on that old bitch’s face was worth every bit of the extra work you put us through.”

Eric’sWeb