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I had my first redwood hot tub in the little house I bought after my first failed marriage. The house had two fireplaces and a sunroom that could be viewed from the living room by a floor-to-ceiling picture window. My business partner and I sponsored a slow pitch softball team at the time and I was the pitcher.

There were some pretty fair athletes on the team, but we were in a tough league and didn’t win most of our games. Still, we had lots of fun and would usually go out for beer and pizza, win or lose. There was one team in the league sponsored by the now defunct International Health Spa. The team members were all jocks and they were undefeated – at least until they came up against our team.

Somehow that night the moon and planets were all aligned just right, our luck was running high, and about every other sports cliché you can think of when describing the change in condition of an otherwise underdog competitor. Whatever, we did more than squeak out a victory. We stomped International Health Spa.

Celebrating our victory at Shotgun Sam’s seemed somehow unsuitable after our almost impossible-to-comprehend win. Instead we picked up cases of beer and other imbibeables and descended on my bachelor pad.

Everyone’s personas were soon loosened, both by victory and free-flowing spirits. The players, their wives, girlfriends and significant others began jumping (almost literally) into the hot tub, most still wearing their uniforms. Before long the room was overflowing with bodies and soap suds washed out of the uniforms.

The party continued into the wee hours and next morning there was barely six inches of water left in the hot tub. The rest had gone on the floor and soaked through the wall to my living room, the carpet soggy and reeking of stale beer.

Maybe that was the night that my brain connected hot water with a positive change in human condition. Maybe, but the carpets in my living room might belie that supposition.

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Next Tuesday is Mardi Gras Day, the third since Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city of New Orleans.  This year's celebration returns my memory to a Mardi Gras Day some thirty-five years ago.

I was in my last semester of graduate school at the University of Arkansas and still married to my first wife Gail. Our best friends, Toni and Terrence went with us to Chalmette to celebrate Mardi Gras.  Terrence was an animal husbandry major and we spent a day and night in Ferriday, Louisiana where Gail's father was the foreman of a large cattle ranch.  We enjoyed a personal tour of the ranch and some of Gail's mother's gumbo before heading to Chalmette.

Gail had four sisters and two brothers.  Each regaled us with drinks, dinners and frivolity, all leading up to Mardi Gras Day.  That Tuesday  morning we awoke early and headed downtown.  Drinking on the street was perfectly legal and we began imbibing by ten in the morning.  We watched every parade we could get to, and along the way we continued drinking.

We tried to pace ourselves, eating hot dogs and gumbo from various street vendors.  All we really succeeded in doing was sobering ourselves for an awkward moment before plunging back into the depths of drunkenness.  Somewhere around ten that night we finally stumbled to the car and headed north to Fayetteville.

When we reached Jackson, Mississippi, we stopped at a Denny's for breakfast.  My stomach felt like hell, but still slightly better than my head.  We reached Fayetteville at six the next morning, hardly time for a shower before I had to take a final test at eight.

Don't ask me how, but I aced the test, perhaps the best score I ever had in grad school.  A few months later, Gail and I moved to Oklahoma City and never saw Toni and Terrence again.

I've never really thought much about that Mardi Gras, my lost friendship and failed marriage.  Maybe because youth is a strange encumbrance whose weight you never really feel until long after it's gone.

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Here’s a pic taken a few years back at a motorcycle race in Houston at the Astrodome.  Pictured are Eric Wilder, friend John and a gorgeous model (I believe she is a Denver Bronchos cheerleader).

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My new pup Princess sees ghosts.  I have no doubt that there are ghosts in the house.  Marilyn and I have both seen the evidence.  A few nights ago, Marilyn heard a loud crash.  When she investigated she found nothing.

Neither Marilyn nor I are afraid.  Ghosts are rarely, if ever, harmful beings.  I think they just subsist, alongside of the people that are presently alive.

The house that we live in was built in 1975 and I am aware of only three spirits that might inhabit it – Anne, my wife that died of lung cancer; my mother that died of lymphoma, and Randy, the man that Anne and I bought the house from that killed himself three days later. There could be easily be others.

I admit that I don’t understand the afterlife.  I barely understand the present life!  Still, my pup sees spirits.  When she does, she barks and carries on.  She’s just a baby but even she isn’t really afraid of the other inhabitants of our house.

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I don’t follow most sports but one that I do is car racing.  Like many other little boys I grew up loving cars.  When I was ten or so I remember waiting for the new model year, in rapt anticipation for the body style changes.  As a boy I also liked speed and consequently started following auto racing.

In the fifties, sixties and probably even the seventies, all motor sports were mostly an unorganized mélange of racers, racing enthusiasts and promoters, and Europe was the motherland of racing.  In Vivian, where I grew up, there were mostly Chevrolets and Fords.  In Europe there were Jaguars, Mercedes Benzs, Ferraris and Maseratis.

I loved European cars and I loved European racing, and I had my heroes, the greatest of whom was Stirling Moss.  Moss was the most fantastic racer that ever lived.  He rarely had a car as powerful or as fast as the competition, but he almost always found a way to win anyway.  The cars were just as fast then as they are now but they weren’t nearly as safe.  If you wrecked at speed in the 60s you were likely to die, or at least sustain horrible injury.

Formula 1 was in its infancy and I always rooted for the American racers – Phil Hill, Ritchie Ginther and Dan Gurney.  In 1962, there was a sports car race track in Bossier City, Louisiana called Hilltop Raceway.  I talked my parents into taking me and my best friend Rod to a race there.

I can’t remember the exact month but it was following the 12 hours of Sebring in 1962.  Sports Car Illustrated, my favorite magazine, reported that the Gonzales Brothers, Dan Gurney and Stirling Moss would race at Hilltop the weekend following Sebring.

My all time hero, Stirling Moss didn’t make the race, nor did the Gonzales Brothers but Dan Gurney did.  The race was sanctioned by no one in particular and there was a variety of race cars in the field.  Gurney had a modified formula 1 open-wheeled race car that was the class of the field.  He took one practice lap in a rented Corvair and then proceeded to smash the track record.

There were Porsches, Ferraris and probably even a few Triumphs in the race.  None were as fast as Gurney’s car, even though there were a couple of other open wheelers there, notably Lloyd Ruby and Roger Penske (yes, he was once a very good race car driver).  There were two one hundred mile races and Gurney easily won both of them.  I remember him screaming through the other racing cars, nonchalantly waving to the crowd as he lapped the field over and over.  One of my greatest treasures was Gurney’s autograph that I lost somewhere along the way.

I still love watching fast race cars.  Today I watched the finish of the 24 hours of Daytona, one of the world’s greatest endurance races.  It is always the first major race of the year.  This year it was won by the Chip Ganassi-Felix Sabates racing team with drivers Scott Pruett, Juan Montoya, Memo Rojas and Dario Franchitti.  Pruett, Montoya and Franchitti were all open-wheel racers in the old Champ Car series.

Many of the observers of motor sports in the world say that Formula 1 is the greatest form of racing, and the home of the greatest racing drivers.  To this I say BS!  The old Champ Car series spawned the best racers and the best racing that I have ever seen.  There is rarely a passed car in Formula 1 so how exciting can it be?

Despite the fact that many Europeans say there are no great American racers, I say their racers never raced against Al Unser, Jr. during his prime.  He was unbeatable.  Perhaps the greatest racing driver of all time, Little Al never got his due.  There is little doubt in my mind that he could have waxed the likes of Fernando Alonzo or Michael Schumacher in a head-to-head race.

That’s not to say there aren’t wonderful European race car drivers.  My favorite is Alex Zanardi.  It took the great Italian racer to finally dethrone Little Al.  If you watch the finish of a NASCAR race these days you will undoubtedly see the winner doing a burn-out donuts, a very American thing to do.  Was an American the first to cut celebratory donuts?  I don’t think so.  I think it was the great Alex Zanardi.

I digress.  Today I watched the finish of one of the premier events in motor sports.  Fox and the Speed Channel, to their great credit, aired fifteen hours of the spectacle.  In addition to the millions watching on TV more than 50,000 spectators observed the event from the infield.

The cars of NASCAR champs Jimmy Johnson and Kurt Busch finished 2^nd and 3^rd, a testament to the talent overflowing in what is today the greatest forum for motor sports racing.  Shortly before his death, Dale Earnhardt, himself a consummate race car driver, and his son Dale Jr. finished 3^rd overall driving a GT class Corvette.  I realized then that these Americans can race with anyone on earth, and win.  Three years ago, another wonderful race driver Tony Stewart, came within twenty minutes of winning the 24 hours of Daytona, before his rear suspension disintegrated.

My only regret about NASCAR is that most of the events are held on ovals.  This is a promotional deal because you can get more spectators into the stands and these spectators are never out of sight of the racers.  Problem is they are going so fast that it is hard to tell one car from the next – except on TV, and I guess that is the point.

I missed seeing my hero, Stirling Moss race in person back in 1962.  I did get to see Dan Gurney easily best a field that included Indy champ Lloyd Ruby and racing owner great Roger Penske.  Today I watched as Gurney’s son Alex finished second.  Am I a fan?  Dyed in the wool.

Who is the present greatest race car driver on earth?  I don’t know I like A.J. Almendinger, a racer that can compete in anything on wheels.

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Here is a picture of a bridge on Highway 77 between Mulhaul and Guthrie, Oklahoma.  A pump jack is framed through a bridge over Beaver Creek, a tributary that drains into the Cimarron River.

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Hey, I’m on a roll tonight!  Check this site out. Eric

Shadowlands Haunted Places Index - Oklahoma.

I was looking for information on Skeleton Creek in Logan County, Oklahoma when I came across this very interesting article. Eric Wilder

Okeene, Oklahoma » Zipp Wyatt/Dick Yeager.

Pigs are remarkably adaptable creatures.  Over the years, many domesticated animals were released or escaped into the wilds.  Not only have they survived, they have thrived.  Here are two pictures of feral pigs taken by a wildlife camera in Logan County, Oklahoma.

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I recently discovered a wonderful little cookbook written by Louisiana native Gwen McKee.  All of you afficionados of gumbo know that the key to good gumbo is the roux.  Those of you that have attempted to make a roux from scratch also know that the paucity of ingredients don't comport with the difficulty in creating this absolutely key ingredient to a perfect bowl.

Gwen's recipe for Microwave Roux ably explains how to overcome this difficulty.  This book was published in 1986 but if you can somehow obtain a copy, I would highly recommend it.  The Little Gumbo Book has only twenty-seven recipes but all are outstanding.  Here is one of the recipes.

2/3     cup vegetable oil
2/3     cup flour
2/3     cup chopped onion
2/3     cup chopped celery
2/3     teaspoon minced garlic
2/3     cup chopped bell pepper
2/3     cup chopped green onions (optional)
2/3     cup hot water

Mix oil with flour in a 4-cup glass measuring bowl. Microwave uncovered on HIGH for 6 minutes.  Stir and cook another 30-60 seconds on HIGH for 6 minutes.  Stir and cook another 30-60 seconds on HIGH till the color of mahogany.

Now you can add your chopped vegetables, stir well, and "saute" them on HIGH for another 5 minutes till soft but not brown.

Now before stirring, pour oil off top.  Add hot tap water, stirring till smooth.  Beautiful! And it freezes for later use.

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I'm watching the LSU - Ohio State championship football game.  As I watch, I think of two things:  the game is in the Superdome of New Orleans.  My thoughts return to 2005, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.  Geraldo Rivera is reporting from outside the Superdome.  The building resembles a giant sarcophagus, the gray people in the background little more than eerie wraiths all but devoid of life.

My second thought goes further back, to the fifties.  When I was a boy, my family and I would listen to the LSU games on the radio, enraptured by the running of Billy Cannon.  He always somehow found a way to pull victory from the jaws of defeat.  Listenting to our scratchy old radio, I always felt that Billy would break a tackle, put his shoulder down and run for a touchdown.  I was never disappointed.

Seeing the two grand teams playing tonight in the Superdome, I get the same feeling about the people of New Orleans.

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There is a nunnery up Chartre Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans.  NO is known to some as a wide open town, famous for all forms of free expression.  NO, though, is a city with deep religious roots.  The Chartre Street nunnery is but one example.

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2 navel oranges, peeled
1/4 cup sugar
1/8 cup water
1/8 cup warm water

Mix sugar and 1/8 cup water in a heavy saucepan and heat very slowly until dissolved. Do not stir. Continue to cook to a rich caramel color. The water will evaporate and the color will change quickly after about 30 to 45 minutes. Remove from heat and quickly and carefully (there will be a lot of steam) pour in warm water. Return to heat and bring mixture back to a boil, stirring until caramel is completely dissolved. Cool.

Slice each orange crosswise into 4 to 6 parts and reshape, using toothpicks to fasten the slices back together. Pour caramel syrup on top and chill.

For an extra special touch, pare thin strips of orange peel, cook for 5 minutes in boiling water, drain, dry and sprinkle over oranges.

Recipe courtesy of Judy M. Heyman from Louisiana Entertains, a complete menu cookbook.

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Marilyn and I visited New Orleans six months after Hurricane Katrina and parts of the visit are chronicled in my book Murder Etouffe. I came across this picture today while looking at some of the photo files on my computer.  It was taken on a street in the French Quarter, Chartre Street I believe, although I’m not sure.

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