Discarded Commode

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Traveling west on Route 66, about a quarter of the way between Bethany and Yukon, Oklahoma, you will reach a bridge crossing the North Canadian River. To your left is Lake Overholser, one of Oklahoma City’s manmade lakes that supply water to the people of Oklahoma County. Once, on the south corner of Route 66, just before crossing the bridge, was a place like no other. It was a honky-tonk bar the locals knew as Pauline’s Bait and Tackle Shop.

Pauline, a crusty old woman, and her daughter ran the combination bar, restaurant and bait shop (yes, you could buy minnows outside the restaurant).. The old wood-framed building sat alone in an otherwise vacant lot. On weekends, cars, pickups, Harleys and horses populated the unpaved, often muddy parking lot.

The single-storied building sat on cinder blocks. When you entered, from the front or side door, you were instantly taken aback by bare wooden rafters decorated with stuffed ducks, other birds and animals, all dusty and musty with age. There wasn’t a rug in the place. It was all bare, unpainted wood - old wood, including the floor.

Country swing bands often played live music on weekends, catering to hundreds of sweaty dancers - I don’t recall that Pauline’s had air conditioning. You haven’t lived until you’ve eaten a hamburger and drank a longneck at Pauline’s.

Alas, Pauline’s is gone, razed to make way for a strip center that never materialized. Only memories remain of a place unique in a world Wal-Mart’s, Outback’s and Barnes and Noble’s.

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For every hero or heroine that has won a medal in the service of their country, there are tens of thousands of others that also served and are no less patriotic.  My brother and I were both in the Army during the Vietnam War.  My Dad was in World War II, in Germany and France.  When the war broke out, my Aunt Carmol joined the Marines and served throughout the conflict.  None of us were heroes but we were there and proud to serve.

So many people served their nation without fanfare, often never receiving a single thank you.  Many have never talked about their experiences, even to their family.  Aunt Carmol is dead now, and Dad has Alzheimer’s.  I wonder, how many stories are left untold and how many sacrifices went unheralded, even unnoticed.  To these people, to everyone of you out there, I say THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart.

This is not something that I just thought of.  Here is an excerpt from my novel PRAIRIE SUNSET.  High in the Ouachita Mountains of central Arkansas, an old man with a heart condition is prompted to tell a story about the war that he has kept hidden inside himself his entire life.

EXCERPT FROM PRAIRIE SUNSET

Comforting darkness, piquant chili and pacifying effect of strong beer combined to loosen their tongues. Coaxed by Attie, Lillie Mae and especially Hulk, John told several amusing vignettes from his youth."

            Hulk finally said, "Were you in the war, John?"

            After hesitating a moment, he said, "Yes, I was."

            "Well tell us a war story," Hulk goaded.

            Poignant memories flooded John's mind and he smiled sadly, unconsciously grinding his toe against an empty cardboard carton in front of him.

            Hulk prompted, "We're you in the Battle of the Bulge?"

            Waves of nostalgia crested John's mental bow and he said, "Wasn't supposed to be, but I was."

            "Please, John," Lillie Mae said. "Tell us."

            John did, beginning slowly, and then warming to the tale. "The Bulge was Hitler's last attempt to turn back the advancing Allies," he said. "For a month and a half the Battle lasted, called the 'Bulge' because Germans failed to break through the line, only succeeding in bending it. I was a radioman in the signal corps, too young to serve but I had lied about my age and joined anyway. One night an old colonel appeared at the communications tent, needing to relay a message to Patton. Since we were out of direct radio communication with the main force he decided to deliver it in person. He conscripted me to drive the jeep for him.

            "The night turned bitterly cold. Snow had fallen for days, piled high on both sides of the road. Continuing night and day the line of battle had spread out many miles, constantly moving, like an angry sidewinder. When sun came up the following morning, we realized we had somehow crossed the enemy line.

            "Germans, besides many other things, were excellent soldiers. We found ourselves caught, along with an advancing column of American infantrymen, in a crossfire ambush. Fresh from the States, our boys were young, mostly teenagers, barely out of diapers, and none had ever seen a German, much less been under fire.

            "Finding yourself caught in the middle of a fire fight is like walking a railroad track at night. Hearing the loud blast of a whistle behind you, you turn and stare into the lights of the monstrosity, twenty feet away, and bearing down on you - the remains of your best friend already chewed up beneath its wheels.

            "When the attack began, the noise was frightening and extreme - beyond imagination for the uninitiated. Along with gunfire and violent explosions, steel, dirt and stone whistled randomly around our heads. When our inexperienced boys dropped their rifles and ran for cover, German marksmen began dropping them in their tracks. Blood was running in the ditches, staining the snow crimson, when we reached the center of the column. Unarmed, the old colonel jumped from the jeep and ran directly into the path of the retreating GI's."

            "Thrusting rifle after rifle back into the hands of those child soldiers, he admonished them to hold their ground. Around us, the battlefield was alive with explosions, hot lead and  the mortally wounded, screaming for help. A mortar round exploded near the jeep, spraying me with dirt and shrapnel. When I wiped my face, the blood on my hand was not my own.

            "Any one of a hundred Hun marksmen could have dropped the colonel. None did. Maybe they were awed by his bravery and coolness under fire. Maybe a higher force was protecting him.  With confused soldiers dying all around him, he coursed the length of that bloody road, exhorting them to turn and fight. One-by-one their youth dissolved in a mire of smoke and torn flesh, and they became men in the hot cauldron of battle. They did turn and fight, hanging on until reinforcements arrived."

            John grew silent and Attie squeezed his hand, feeling the intensity of his pain. Finally he chuckled and it drew into a hoarse laugh.

            "Know what's funny?" John's rapt audience shook their head without answering. "I remember the Colonel as old, but he was probably no more than forty. Thirty-five years younger than I am now and I still think of him as an old man. I can't remember his name and I don't suppose you'll ever read about him in any history book, but he did as much as anyone to defeat the Nazis."

            Suddenly aware of frogs, crickets and distant owls, John realized no on had spoken for an interminable period. When she saw he had finished the story, Lillie Mae put her arms around his shoulder like a mother comforting a child. Hulk remained silent, torn by his own conflicting emotions.

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The oil boom and ensuing oil bust of the late 70s and 80s is long past and seems almost like a dream to me now.  I can recount stories about the era for hours, some of them funny and some of them sad and I still chuckle about one that happened to me and my then wife Anne.

Anne was an oil and gas accountant – a damn good oil and gas accountant.  She and I formed a small oil company and began drilling wells.  I love oil business, but Anne was passionate about it.  She poured her heart and soul into our company (and I suppose so did I).

Caught up inextricably in the bust, we both fought with every sinew of our beings to save our floundering company.  We set out on a quest for a “white knight,” or at least a friendly banker.  Alas, we found neither but we had a few adventures along the way.

I have often heard that people that live together for a long time begin to look alike.  If this is true then Anne and I were identical twins.  Why, because we were together twenty-four hours every day.  Hey, and we both had reddish-blonde hair.

Anne and I traveled the country looking for a friendly banker to bow up our company, suddenly needy with Oklahoma banks and companies crashing right and left.  We thought we had found a home with a bank in Los Angeles.  On a trip there, we pitched our company, and our souls.  The banker, a large man with long hippy hair, a longish beard and John Lennon glasses, listened to our impassioned plea with a happy Santa Claus smile on his round face.

“I’m curious,” he said when we finished our presentation.  “How did a brother and sister happen to start an oil company together?”

Neither Anne nor I had a good reply and it didn’t really matter as his inane remark gave us the answer to the question we had just spent an hour asking.

We never found our white knight, or our friendly banker.  Like so many companies during the 80s oil bust, we went belly up.  Yes, the bust is long past and seems almost like a dream to me now.  Some of the stories were funny but many, so many, I keep buried deep in my heart – until moments such as now when they come bubbling up painfully to a surface still frothy with crushed emotion.

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Eric and Anne – 1982

Please check out my new book trailer video.  Thanks, Eric

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e15ePGVK26s

Earlier this year I had the honor to appear on Brent Weber’s Fox 25 morning show to plug my book Big Easy.  Brent is an affable and intelligent man, and put me instantly at ease.  I realized that he is talented but didn’t know that he is also an accomplished actor until I received this recent email:

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There is a new review of Just East of Eden on the website Bookpleasures.com.  There is also and interview with Eric Wilder on the website.  Please check it out.

http://www.bookpleasures.com/Lore2/idx/0/3072/article/Just_East_of_Eden_Tales_From_The_Blog.html

http://www.bookpleasures.com/Lore2/idx/0/3074/article/A_Conversation_With_Eric_Wilder_Author_of_Just_East_of_Eden_Tales_From_The_Blog.html

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Edmond, OK (Gondwana Press) October 19, 2007 -- Gondwana Press LLC announces the release of Eric Wilder’s newest book Just East of Eden.  What do chicken sacrifices, oil wells and black panthers have in common?  They are all storylines from Wilder’s prolific imagination that are highlighted in his latest outing.

Just East of Eden is a hybrid page-turner based on the author’s popular story blog by the same name.  Wilder transports his readers on a rapid-fire journey between misty waterfalls in the Ouachita Mountains, steamy brothels in Vietnam, and a setting sunset amid filigree ironwork in the heart of the French Quarter - the ultimate destination located somewhere between reality and your wildest fantasy.

Author of Big Easy, a murder mystery set in post-Katrina New Orleans, Wilder has also penned Murder Etouffee, Prairie Sunset and A Gathering of Diamonds.  Heather Froeschl of Quilldipper.com says, “The natural course of events is to take the blog and publish parts of it for those who still like to feel the pages turn beneath their fingers and breathe the scent of ink and paper. Eric Wilder has done this with his newest book, “Just East of Eden,” and I am delighted.”

About author

Native of Louisiana, Eric Wilder now lives and writes in Edmond, Oklahoma.  The author of seven other books, he is also a geologist and noted energy expert.

About Gondwana Press

Founded in 2006, Gondwana Press LLC is a regional publisher seeking to expand the bounds of both knowledge and entertainment.

Here is an artistic rendition of rustic Caddo Lake with its algae-green water lying beneath shading cypresses.

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My Tulsa friend Mick is launching a new mag.  Lurid, yes.  Entertaining, absolutely. Here is his first cover.

While it is true that the eighties oil bust adversely affected every oil hub in the United States, Oklahoma City maintains a unique position in the episode because it was the location of the infamous Penn Square Bank debacle.

Penn Square Bank occupied a stand-alone building in the parking lot of the Penn Square Mall, still located in the northwest corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Northwest Expressway.  During the go go days of the last oil boom, officers of this bank began making oil and gas loans, then selling the paper to eager upstream banks like Continental Illinois.  The problem was, many of these loans were secured by little more than a “lick and a promise.”

One story that has circulated for years now involves an oil company that borrowed millions of dollars to purchase drilling rigs.  Auditors, attempting to account for the bank’s collateral after the company went bust, learned that Rig 13 (I don’t know if this is the actual number) was really a Lear Jet.  Clients, supposedly with little or know oil experience, could get a million dollar loan with only a signature and the promise of drilling a few oil wells.

Many nouveau operators purchased jet planes, helicopters, luxury vehicles and lavish offices and lifestyles with the seed money they borrowed from Penn Square Bank, and then parlayed into millions more with money raised from largely unsophisticated investors.  It is safe to say that most of these investors had little more than a “lick or a promise” of ever seeing any return from their investment.

While drilling a well in western Oklahoma, one company encountered a large pocket of natural gas.  The well blew out and the gas ignited in a huge burst of flame.  Instead of worrying about the raging fire and its ensuing consequences, the company chartered a commercial jet and flew a planeload of investors and various company people to the blowout site.  There they had tents erected, catered barbecue and beer, and a band to entertain everyone at an elaborate blowout party, ostensibly to raise even more money. 

Elaborate parties were the norm during the last oil boom.  Christmas parties hosted by operators and service companies boasted hundreds of guests, all enjoying free food, drink and entertainment.  I attended one oil company party where Mel Tillis and the Oakridge Boys were flown in by jet helicopter to entertain for an hour or so.  One of the Penn Square loan officers was there, dressed in an Alpine costume complete with hat, shorts and lederhosen.  The party took place on a farm near Edmond, the cars and party-goers so thick that they blocked the adjacent county road for hours.

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It’s early October, misty rain falling from a darkened sky – a continuation of Oklahoma’s soggiest spring ever.  Summer wasn’t quite as hot this year and there didn’t seem to be as much wind as usual.  There were fewer tornadoes.  One other thing was different.  My magic moonflowers, so prolific these past few years, never bloomed at all.  Last year, I often counted as many as seventy blooms in a single night; but this year, not a single one.

The days are still warm, unseasonably warm.  Still I know that the first freeze is not far away.  The long days of summer will soon give way to long winter nights.  As they do, I will revel in the falling snows, icy rime coating the window panes, and the chilly blast of wintry air when I walk to my car in the morning. 

Yes, I’ll enjoy the change of seasons, but next July I’ll see a magic moonflower bloom again in my garden, even if I have to go to Home Depot and buy one!

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Here is another Caddo Lake pic.

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I don’t like beating dead horses.  Still, if you’re not quite gone and if you’ll stand up to at least a few more swats, I need to say a couple  more words about Dusty Springfield’s gorgeous voice.  I’m listening again to the songs that I downloaded from Yahoo a few days ago.  Hey, I’m blown away!  This woman has the voice of an angel and I’m not exaggerating.  Please check her out, but forget her top ten hits and go for some of her covers.  I’m telling you, you won’t be disappointed.

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Here are some more Caddo Lake pics.

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My Aunt Dot who is a wonderful cook shared this recipe with me.  It originated from my Uncle Bertrand’s mother Anna.

Pork Chops, English Peas & Tomatoes with Steamed Rice 

 By:     Anna Pourteau
Serving Size:     4    

Amount     Measure     Ingredient     Preparation Method
4     each     Pork Chops - Center Cut    
1/4     cup     canola or olive oil    
1     14.5 oz     diced tomatoes    
1     15 oz     Leseur English Peas, undrained    
1     15 oz     chicken broth (fat free)    
1/2     medium     onion     chopped
2     stalks     celery      chopped
2     cloves     garlic     minced
1/2     cup     green bell pepper     chopped
1/2     cup     red bell pepper     chopped
1/2     teaspoon     Sweet Basil    
2     teaspoons     Parsley    
1/2     teaspoon     Oregano    
1/4     teaspoon     Thyme    
1/2     teaspoon     Salt    
1/2     teaspoon     Pepper    
1     tablespoon     Worchestershire sauce    
1/4     teaspoon     Louisiana Red Hot Sauce    
              
          STEAMED  RICE    
1     cup     rice    
2 1/4     cups     water    
1/2     teaspoon     salt    
              

Salt and pepper pork chops.  Put oil in large non-stick skillet.  Get oil medium hot and add pork chops and brown on both sides.  Remove from skillet.  Turn heat down to medium and add onion, celery, bell peppers and garlic.  Cook until limp.  Add tomatoe, chicken broth,  basil, parsley, oregano, thyme, salt, pepper, Worchestire sauce and Louisiana Red Hot Sauce.  Stir, mixing all vegetables well.  Add pork chops back to skillet and cook until tender.  When chops are tender add English peas..  Taste to see if you  need to re-season.  Simmer approximately 10 to 15 minutes.  Cook rice and serve the pork chop with tomatoes and English Peas over the hot Steamed Rice.  Enjoy!!!

NOTE:  Cook rice according to directions.  Serve pork chops, tomatoes and vegetables over hot steamed rice. 
     —————  

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I found this poem on the net.  It was written by Louis Flint Ceci.  As a geologist, it touched my soul, and continues to do so each time I reread it.  For those of you that don’t know, the Afar Triangle, in southern Africa, is a triple-juncture – a spot where three tectonic plates coincide.  I know of no other triple juncture on the face of the earth.  The three places I would like to visit before I die are 1) the Afar Triangle, 2) Iceland and 3) Jamaica.  These three locations are geologically unique on the face of the earth.  Here is the poem:

The Afar Triangle

I do not know the way a planet thinks.
I cannot plunge my hands deep in my own clay
The way a mountain plunges through the crust,
Nor run wild as a glacier through
The temples of the gods, nor sing a single note
That slides along the lips of the caldera. But here
That wisdom thunders through my feet,
    And shows the dance is measured
    By dancers keeping beat,
By those whose only measure is the dance.


June 14, 1999
August 31, 2000

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Today is the second anniversary of the day Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans.  Marilyn and I traveled there six months after the storm and what we saw chilled our souls.  The core of the venerable old city went almost untouched.  Less than ten blocks away, a palpable gloom began surrounding the French Quarter in successive ripples of near total destruction.

Having witnessed in person the 1995 Murrah Building bombing in Oklahoma City, I well remember that the miles of videotape taken of the destruction never came close to portraying the horror done by one extremely large fertilizer bomb detonated from the back of a rental truck.  Katrina was worse.

Marilyn and I drove for miles from the town’s center, literally never seeing plant, human or animal – at least that was alive.  It seemed like no one cared – not the bureaucrats that had set hundreds of porta-potties in Chalmette and then never bothered to ever dump the shit.  The odor was nauseating, but not as bad as the stench coming from our elected officials  we all feel that should support us during any natural disaster, much less one of this magnitude.

On a tour of the French Quarters, we were struck by the City’s indomitable spirit, and the gallows humor so prevalent everywhere we looked.  I won’t forget the tee shirt that said, “FEMA Evacuation Plan – run motherfucker run!!

I’m not laughing.  There is too much truth in those words.

What has happened to New Orleans two years after Katrina?  The ethnicity has changed, the city flooded with hard working Hispanics looking for a job and a home.  In the Lower 9^th Ward, little has changed and it is still largely deserted.  Home owners are fighting a new bureaucracy, one that indiscriminately bulldozes their houses, despite improves and renovations.  Land speculators have run up property values.  Business has moved away, leaving the City only one real industry – tourism.

On the second anniversary of the worst natural disaster ever to occur in modern America, we should all assess in our own minds how we feel about New Orleans.  Is the City expendable?  Should we think of the people there as no better than inhabitants of some third world country, unworthy of our support and charity?  I think not.

We can’t abandon New Orleans any more than we can abandon the entire Gulf Coast, also struck by the disaster of Katrina.  It is the home of too much commerce, refineries, seaports and oil and natural gas production.  Sure, much of the rest of the country maintains a holier-than-thou attitude.  “I can’t soil my pretty little hands with such dirty southern commerce.”

Well here’s a wakeup call.  None of us will survive very long without New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region.  New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are integral, nay essential segments of the American economy.  Cut them off and cast them out and you may as well poke out your own eyes.

Today is the second anniversary of the day Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans.  The city survived, and is surviving.  I can only hope that the rest of this great country will begin to see New Orleans as a valued neighbor and fellow Americans that deserves a helping hand, and not some third world nation located halfway around the world.

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I somehow managed to sleep through a storm Sunday night that can only  be described as Hurricane Oklahoma.  Radar images from the Oklahoma Mesonet revealed a picture of a storm unlike any other that has ever occurred, not just in the United States but anyplace in the world.  Re-enervated Tropical Storm Erin was to blame.  Winds reached near-hurricane proportions and the storm dropped twelve inches of rain, flooding and causing major destruction from Piedmont to Kingfisher.

The yearly rainfall in Oklahoma is already more than twenty inches over average.  Erin preceded Hurricane Dean, the first major storm of the year in the Gulf of Mexico.  Dean, a category five hurricane, is on a direct course to ravish the Yucatan Peninsula within the next few hours.  Following less than two years after the massive destruction of Rita and Katrina, Dean is a but a harbinger of the tremendous climate changes being seen around the world, and during the world-class storm felt Sunday right here in Oklahoma.

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Here are a couple more pics from the gorgeous Eureka Springs, Arkansas area.

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The Crescent Hotel opened in Eureka Springs, Arkansas in 1886.  The luxury hotel was constructed at the cost of just under $300,000.  The hotel transitioned from a hotel into a college for young women, and a rehabilitation hospital.  These days, it is again a hotel and you can sit on the veranda of the third floor bar and watch the sun set over the majestic Ozarks.

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Tonight, I abandoned my short lens digital camera and dug out my trusty Nikon EM 35mm with its long 200 mm telephoto.  Determined to get a hawk picture, I waited as storm clouds passed overhead, turning briefly red before darkness began fading the colors.  Then one of my hawks appeared, landing in the branches of the pinoak tree beside me.  I could not see her through the branches.  Shortly, another bigger hawk landed in full view on the highest branch of my tallest oak.  I pointed the camera and focused the lens.

Alas, the sky had already grown too dark for anything other than a blob of blurry gray.  It didn't matter.  I watched the hawk through my binoculars until it finally dive-bombed at something in my front yard and then disappeared into the darkness.

Tomorrow I try again.

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This evening, just before dusk, Marilyn and I lazed by the pool behind my house, watching the sky as six hawks did an aerial dance in the mid-summer thermals.  The birds are large and gorgeous.  One landed on a high branch in a tree in my front yard.  I tried to record a movie with my digital camera, but quickly realized that my point and shoot Nikon is grossly inadequate for the task.  I'm resigned to buying a digital movie camera with a suitably long, telephoto lens.

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Name of the Game is the opening short story in my first published collection of short stories by the same name.  The book is available at http://www.gondwanapress.com.

                                            NAME OF THE GAME

                                                               by

                                                         Eric Wilder

Rita would wait for me at the door of the building where she worked.  I would drive up close to the door and wait until she came out.  Our routine was always the same.  That day, a powder-blue Mercedes had taken my usual parking spot.  The car's anxious driver, a prepped-out lawyer type with moussed hair, turned halfway around in his bucket seat to watch Rita leave the office complex.

      "Who was that?”  I asked.

      Rita leaned across the seat to plant a sultry kiss full on my lips.  "I didn't see anyone."

            The man in the Mercedes watched us with interest and continued staring as we pulled away from the curb.

            "Today I want it hot and fast," Rita said, turning the rearview mirror and using it to touch up her lipstick.

            "Whatever.  How have you been?"

            Rita crossed her legs, revealing much more than a momentary peek at her shapely thighs.

            "Beyond irritation," she said.  "Russell came home late after leaving me alone with Jessica.  Ever try communicating with a blonde teen-aged cheerleader with tits bigger than her mom's."

            "What happened when Russell got home?"

            "Nothing, absolutely nothing.  I even paraded around in my stretch-lace teddy to show him what he was missing."

            Talk of Rita's husband always made me uncomfortable.  Sensing my discomfort, she leaned across the console and squeezed my leg.  It was late Autumn, a beautiful clear-blue day, and Rita’s grin was wicked when I braked hard to avoid a squirrel scurrying across the road.

            We barely spoke during the short distance to my apartment.  I found the parking lot empty and a spot near the stairs.  Just the way Rita liked it.  She had her arms around my neck almost before I shut the apartment door behind us.

            "Miss me?" she said.

            "You know I did."

            "Miss these?"

She unbuttoned her frocked blouse to the waist and cupped her breasts.  I traced a narrow path up her smooth belly with my fingers but Rita was having none of it.  Grabbing my wrist, she pulled me down the narrow hallway to the bedroom in back.

"Let's not waste it."  Releasing my hand beside the bed, she dropped her dress, slip, and bra in one practiced motion and fell back onto the covers.  "Now, I want it hard and fast."

            I had left the air conditioner on high before leaving for work that morning and the room was dark and cold.  Rita was already hot, immersed in all the foreplay she had needed during our torrid stroll from the front door.  For the next five minutes, she clawed painful Xs in my back, yanked handfuls of hair, moaned loudly, and squirmed like a woman possessed.  When we finished she rolled off the bed, went into the bathroom, and closed the door behind her, returning five minutes later, quite naked but with a can of hair spray in her hand.

            "Hurry," she said.  I have a prospective employee to interview at one."

            "But we just got here."

            "And did what we came to do.  Now be a sweetie.  You know my job is important to me."

            As I got out of bed and pulled on my pants, Rita returned to the bathroom to fix her hair.  This time she emerged looking ready for an important business meeting and tapped her shoe as she waited for me to knot my tie.  Grasping my hand when I finished, she squeezed it tightly and hurried me to the car.

            Because of lunch hour traffic, we found the return trip to her office much slower and Rita remained silent most of the way.  When we were almost there, she said, "I have a question and I need an answer."

            "Something wrong?"

            "Does there have to be?"

            "It's just the sound of your voice."

            Rita ignored my psychoanalysis, folded her arms and turned her knees toward the door.

            "Tell me.  What's the name of the game?"

            "Game?"

            "The one we're playing."

            I did not understand the question and paused before answering, "Infidelity, maybe?"

            Rita closed her eyes.  "This isn't a joke."

            A blaring horn distracted me from the unexpected direction our conversation had taken.  “Have I done something wrong?"

            "You've done everything just right and I've enjoyed every minute of it.  Cool drinks in smoky bars, peanut butter picnics in vacant lots and steamy sex in ways I love.  I'd just like to know what it all means to you."

            "Something exciting and very special.  I can't remember having so much fun since I went skinny dipping with the homecoming queen in the Principal's pool."

            Rita's strained smile flickered briefly.  "Now what?  It's almost winter and the pool is empty."

            "You're shooting over my head.  Is this about Russell?  Are you thinking of divorce?"

            "Russell's not the problem."

            "But isn't Russell part of the equation?  And Jessica?"

            "That's not what we're discussing here," Rita said, her voice rising.

            "Then please tell me what we are discussing."

            By now, Rita's demeanor had diminished from silent composure to barely suppressed rage and I still was not sure why.

            "Just let me off in front of the building," she said.

            I coasted into the slow lane and let several irritated motorists stream past on the left.  "First explain why you're angry with me."

            She had neither a frown nor a smile on her face, only the blank expression of muted frustration as she pointed at the curb in front of her building.

            Sounding deadly serious, she said, "Pull in and let me out.  I never play the game with someone who doesn't understand the rules.  You don't even know we're playing."

            She hurried across the busy street without a backwards glance.  When I phoned to apologize, she refused my call.

            Three days passed, and then a week, without a word from Rita.  Finally, no longer able to contain my curiosity and hurt feelings, I drove to our old rendezvous spot beside her building and parked at the curb.  From there I watched, aware of a sudden wave of deja vu as she walked out the door at exactly our usual time.  I quickly realized why.

            Even though she recognized my car as she hurried across the sidewalk, she did not look my way or acknowledge my presence.  Instead, she focused her smiling attention on a young man in a red Corvette as he opened the passenger door to let her in.  Once inside, she wrapped herself around him and administered a sultry kiss.  As they disappeared down the street, I watched him cast a curious glance in his rear-view mirror.

END

http://www.ericwilder.com

This is the wettest year in Oklahoma history, following on the tail end of a five-year drought.  Yes, we needed the rain but I am ready for a stretch of dry weather.  Yesterday, I put a picture of my house's rain gutter on the blog.  There are seven corn plants growing in the gutter and two of them already have sizeable ears of corn on them.

My dogs have houses but they also have a lean-to that they like lying under.  The cedar shavings beneath it are all soaked and moldy.  I noticed when Lucky and Patch both developed red, runny eyes.  Eyewash has taken care of their optical problems and this weekend, if it stays dry until then, I'm going to rake out the remainder of the shavings (Velvet has already gotten rid of most of it) and replace them with a fresh batch.

All is not bad and I'm looking forward to sinking my teeth into my own homegrown gutter corn.  Eat your heart out, gardeners of the world.

http://www.gondwanapress.com

We are on the way to record yearly rainfall in much of Oklahoma.  The most successive days without rain all year so far is seven, while we had one stretch of twenty straight days of rain.  The grass is green and flowers blooming.  Yesterday, I noticed that everything is so lush around my house that I have corn growing in my rain gutter.  One ear is almost ready to eat.

The corn seeds got into the gutter from the multitude of birds in my backyard.  Marilyn feeds them daily.  Here is a pic of the corn growing in my gutter, in case you don’t believe me.

http://www.ericwilder.com

Please check out my A Gathering of Diamonds book video on YouTube:

I was just updating my website http://www.ericwilder.com when I realized that it is Friday the 13th.  I'm not frightened because how could things get any worse than waking up last Tuesday to a flooded living room?  Today, Oklahoma exceeded it's normal annual rainfall and there is a storm approaching the City as I write this that is reportedly bigger than Tuesday's storm.  Maybe I should find some wood to knock on because, hey, it is Friday the 13th.

Please check out my website’s new video page featuring trailers from my books.  Also, there is a vid I did of the book signing that I had last month at Kang's Asian Bistro.

http://www.gondwanapress.com