Marilyn and I both love light, flaky biscuits served with butter and jelly - my favorite is red plum.  Marilyn’s mother Joy cooked the best biscuits in the world.  There are few differences in most biscuit recipes but the best cooks obviously have a secret.  Perhaps it is the brand, or type of flour they use, or the deftness they employ when mixing the ingredients.

Whatever her “secret,” Joy’s biscuits were always the best you ever ate.  Here is a list of the ingredients and the directions for combining and cooking them but to end up with biscuits as good as those Joy made you may have to close your eyes, wish on a star and hope she hears you.

Joy’s Southern Buttermilk Biscuits

2 cups flour                                          2 ½ tsps baking powder

¼ tsp baking soda                                1 tsp salt

¼ cup shortening, chilled                       2 tbsp butter, chilled

¾ cup buttermilk

In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Cut in chilled shortening and butter. Make a hole in center and pour in buttermilk. Gently blend dry ingredients into the buttermilk until mixture begins to clump, adding a few more teaspoons of buttermilk if needed.

Pour dough on lightly floured board and then shape it into a pie about ½ inch thick.

Use a 3 inch biscuit cutter and place shaped dough on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake on center oven pre-heated to 450 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes, or until tops are browned.

Makes about 10 biscuits

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Marilyn and I like to collect old cookbooks and she recently purchased a batch of three from eBay.  When the books arrived, they included an unexpected gift – some person’s lifelong collection of personal recipes.

All the recipes were loose leaf and bundled together in a badly worn, cardboard, MASH 4077 presentation folder.  Many of the recipes were clipped from the pages of the New Orleans Time Picayune, and others entire pages from the Public Service Company of New Orleans apparently included with the monthly utility bill.

From the dates I found on the newspaper recipes I could see most were collected between the late seventies and early nineties.  I was soon mesmerized as I glanced through the thick stack of neatly clipped recipes.  This woman’s life - I presume the collection belonged to a woman although I have no way of knowing - was revealed to me as I read through her recipes.

She liked desserts, especially chocolate desserts.  Shrimp was her favorite seafood as she had more shrimp recipes than any human could ever prepare in a lifetime.  She also had several recipes for elderberry wine and ginger beer, and many desserts containing rum or whiskey.  In my fiction-writer’s mind, I imagine she and her deceased husband were both teetotalers and that they had never graced the inside of a liquor store.  Still, I feel strongly that she brewed and tried the elderberry wine, drinking every drop of the alcoholic concoction herself.

I had mixed emotions as I flipped through the recipes.  I was happy because I could feel the pleasure that collecting and preparing the recipes the faceless woman must have felt.  It also made me sad that no one in her family (if she had a family) realized that their mother, or grandmother, or aunt’s old recipe collection was quite possibly the most precious thing she owned.

I only have a few of my Mom’s recipes and I would never throw them away.  Perhaps the person that sent us the books discovered the tattered recipe collection at a garage sale.  They must have realized their intrinsic value because they bundled and sent them to a complete stranger, hoping that a person that liked old cookbooks might also value the combined memories of someone’s culinary life history.

Eric’s Web

My grandparents had a giant pecan tree in their back yard and every year they would share its bounty with anyone that asked.  My mother always got a few bags of pecans and would use them to make her famous pecan pie on special occasions.  Her recipe is simple, its preparation easy but take my word there is nothing much better tasting in the world!

Mama’s Pecan Pie

1 cup brown sugar                    1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup dark corn syrup               ½ teaspoon salt

3 eggs, whole                           pastry for one pie

1 cup pecans, broken

Beat sugar and eggs until thick.  Add corn syrup, pecans, vanilla and salt.  Mix well and then pour into a pastry-lined pie pan.  Bake at 300 degrees for about an hour or until filling is firm.  Wonderful when served hot with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top.

Eric’s Website

I met fellow geologist Dave Beatty in 1976 and I’m proud to say that he is still my good friend.  Dave and I both worked at Texas Oil & Gas in Oklahoma City and I have written about our adventures (and misadventures) more than once.  What I didn’t know about Dave is his extraordinary ability as story teller and photographer.

Living now in Livingston, Louisiana, Dave sees (and documents) more of life’s truths - many occurring right under our noses - than anyone I know.  Here is his latest observation:

This picture is of (hard to tell which is which) a mother turkey and her two babies that have survived a summer of roving dogs, two hurricanes and whatever nature brings.  I do put out feed corn and bird feed for her, her babies and all the birds in the area.

The babies were hatched in the woods just behind my house and I have watched them grow all summer.  They were several more babies to start with, but nature can be a cruel mistress.

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I remember spending the night at my grandmother’s house in east Texas.  Nights were always dark because her house had no electricity until I was almost a teenager.  After dark, she burned coal oil lamps until we could no longer tolerate the reek of soot and fumes.

That was a long time ago, in the fifties, when wolves still roamed the piney woods and howled at the moon all night.  The wonderful aroma of grandma’s biscuits in the morning made it all worthwhile.

Grandma Dale was a good cook but there was one dish she made better than anyone else in the world – chicken and dumplings.  I don’t know her exact recipe, but she would start by kneading dough she made from flour, shortening, baking powder and salt.  She would roll the dough out with an old rolling pin on a wooden cutting block and slice it into the desired size with her butcher knife.

She would boil a chicken, one she had raised, wrung its neck, and then plucked herself.  I remember she used a pressure cooker.  When the meat was falling off the bone, she would put it in a boiling pot of chicken broth, and drop in the dumplings.

The chicken was tender, as were the dumplings, and both seasoned to perfection using only two ingredients – salt and pepper.  Don’t ask me how, but the subtle seasoning combined with tender chicken and succulent dumplings to provide a concoction to die for.  Chicken and dumplings is a universal dish, at least in the south, but I have never had it before or since as tasty as Grandma Dale used to make. 

Many moons have passed since I slept in the piney woods of east Texas.  I barely remember the coal oil lamps or the howling of wolves at night.  Still, I will never forget the sublime flavor of my ol’ east Texas Grandma’s chicken and dumplings and I know in my heart I will never taste it again.

Eric’s Website

I have found New Orleans Recipes, a great old cookbook by Mary Moore Bremer.  The book I have is the Tenth Edition published in 1944.  Unlike most modern cookbooks, this one presents its recipes in a simple way that encourages intuitive cooking.  Here is Bremer’s recipe for Shrimp Arnaud.

Six tablespoons of olive oil, two tablespoons of vinegar and one tablespoon of paprika, one half teaspoon of white pepper, one half teaspoon of salt, four tablespoons of Creole mustard, on half heart of celery, chopped fine, one half white onion, chopped fine, and a little chopped parsley.

Mix well.  Chill; Serve on cold boiled shrimp, about twelve to a serving.

Enthrone on crisp, chopped lettuce.

Eric’s Website

My good friend Dave Beatty of Livingston, Louisiana sent me this story, and the picture of his cat.  No, he doesn’t have a degree in veterinary medicine but he apparently knows how to cure a sick kitty.

Curing the Cat

My cat has allowed me to live with him for the past thirteen years, his whole life.  He’s always been a little eccentric but lately he has taken to lying in the dirt tray I put out for the birds to dust themselves.

About a week ago, he got sick and didn’t eat for three days.  He looked so puny that I really thought he was about to die.  Despite his eccentricity, I really love the cat so to avoid further trauma following his death, I pre-dug a hole for his final resting place in what has become my pet grave yard (several pets from me and my sister reside there).

Maybe he was watching me on his walks around my property (sorry his property), or saw the hole I had dug.  Something must have made him think because from the day I dug the hole, he got progressively better.

Now he is eating again and running around like a kitten, well almost.  Just in case, I haven’t yet covered up the hole and I turn a few spades of dirt every day when I think he is watching.

He’s not only made a miraculous recovery, he’s also been a pretty good cat lately - except I just can’t keep him out of the bird’s dirt tray.

Eric’s Website

Gurdon is a little Arkansas town located about halfway between Texarkana and Little Rock, on Interstate 30.  It’s known for three things, logging, the Gurdon Lights and as the place where the International Concatenated Order of Hoo-Hoo was conceived.

Marilyn grew up there and during a discussion about the place, she provided me with an answer to a mystery that has haunted southwest Arkansas for decades – the mystery of the Gurdon Lights.

The railroad runs through Gurdon and residents have reported seeing unexplainable lights on the railroad track for many years.  Many people have seen the phenomena and reported it – too many sightings to easily be discounted.  Some people think it is the ghostly lantern of a man that lost his head in a railroad accident.

Gurdon has twenty-five hundred residents, about sixty-five percent white and thirty-five percent black.  Growing up, Marilyn’s mother Joy had a black assistant named Hattie and when Marilyn was only twelve Hattie conveyed this extraordinary story to her and her sisters.

The story is ghostly, and creepy, but it is plausible.  It is a real mystery, and also perfect Halloween fare.  I’ll reveal the true story of the Gurdon Lights to the world on that day.

Eric’s Website

If this doesn’t make you go out and get your flu shot this year, nothing will.  A frightening story!

http://webinfo2.mls.lib.ok.us/okimages/okimages.asp?WCI=ViewEssay&WCU=000000101

Eric’s Website

My Grandmother's farmhouse in east Texas was five miles from the nearest paved road.  She raised chickens, and had one bantam rooster, her favorite pet.  Realizing the little rooster’s place in my Grandma's hierarchy, my brother Jack set out to cause a disturbance, a way to get a rise between the two.  He started by throwing stones at the banty.

Jack was always my nemesis, two years older, he tormented me any way and any chance he got.  He was mean – at least I thought so - and he had bright red hair to prove it.  He seemed to have a sixth sense about what he needed to do to get under my skin.  I wasn't the only one he bothered.

Jack's plan soon worked, but not quite the way he had planned it.  The rooster, seeing his flame red hair, attacked him, driving his sharp talons into his head.  Within seconds, Jack was screaming like a banshee.  Grandma soon heard the commotion and reacted immediately.

Racing from the kitchen, she grabbed her pet rooster by the neck and twisted.  Nothing happened immediately, at least anything good for my brother.  The headless rooster continued flopping, his claws intact in Jack’s neck.  When the beast finally stopped moving, grandma pried him off my wailing brother’s neck and then clutched him to her ample breast.

That night, we had chicken and dumplings, my grandma's specialty.  Jack never got punished, even though he was to blame, but I will never forget that little red banty rooster working over my mean bro's own red head.  Did I enjoy it?  I’m almost ashamed to say that it was one of the happiest moments of my life.

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Junior’s, in the basement of the Oil Center Building, is one of my favorite Oklahoma City restaurants.  They serve choice steaks and strong drinks.  Brandy Ice, one of their after dinner drinks, is a favorite of mine.  In a recent trip to Junior’s, a waitress gave Marilyn and me their recipe.  It’s simple but wonderful.

1 pint Vanell ice cream

¼ cup dark Crème de Cocoa

1/3 cup brandy

Blend in blender until smooth then serve in a brandy snifter

Eric’s Website

Five years of age sounds sort of young, but I started the first grade, learned to read and shot my first gun when I was five.

During visits to my grandparents in Cass County, Texas, my Dad would often take his shotgun and go hunting. He rarely returned with any game and was probably just trying to get a little peace and quiet. One Sunday, Brother Jack and I raised a ruckus until Dad took us with him. We followed him, single file, into the woods. Feeling confident I began begging him to let me shoot the big gun.

Dad's Uncle Jim had given him the loud old twelve-gauge shotgun that packed quiet a punch.

"You're too little to shoot it," he told me.

"I can do it," I begged.

"Okay," he finally said, handing me the gun that was longer than me. "Hold it tight against your shoulder, point it that way and squeeze the trigger real slow."

I found the shotgun big and heavy, and much too long to wedge its butt against my right armpit. Instead, I had to allow most of the stock to protrude behind my back. When I jerked the trigger, things happened faster than I could handle.  The blast blew the gun out of my grasp after hitting me in the face and bloodying my nose.

My old man could hardly stop laughing, along with Brother Jack. He finally yanked me up off the ground, wiped my bloody nose with his handkerchief, and then retrieved his gun. I was crying then, but I got the last laugh.

My Dad was an only son, my Grandma adored him. It didn't matter. When we returned to the farmhouse, she saw the blood caked on my face and shirt, and my rapidly swelling eye, and began giving old Dad pure Holy Hell. My mother, hearing the ruckus, quickly joined the fray.

The rest of the day, I basked in the attention heaped upon me by Mother and Grandma. Maybe I felt just a wee bit guilty at the abuse heaped on Dad, but I didn't feel a whit bad about my jealous brother. The attention I reveled in quickly wore off, and I was soon again just little Eric. It didn't matter. I had shot Dad's gun before big brother had.  To this day, that moment of elation has never left me.

Eric’s Website

Junior’s is a restaurant in the basement of the Oil Center Building.  Junior’s was opened by legendary Oklahoma City restaurateur Junior Simon in 1973.  It soon became an oily hangout and more oil deals were likely consummated there than in any boardroom.

I ate at Junior’s for the first time in 1978, shortly after meeting my second wife Anne.  Anne was the accountant for a little oil company that had an office in the Oil Center.  She had once worked for Carl Swan, one of Junior’s original partners.

Junior’s, at the time, was a private club as Oklahoma had yet to pass a liquor-by-the-drink law.  You were supposed to have your own bottle (with your name on it!) to get a drink at a bar.  It was rarely required and you could get a strong drink almost anyplace, at least if someone there knew you.  The practice was known as liquor-by-the-wink.  You could also get a “roadie” (an alcoholic drink in a plastic go-cup) to tide you over on your trip home.

Junior not only knew every one of his clientele by their first names, he knew the names of their kids, friends, employers or employees.  I don’t recall ever seeing him without a smile on his face.

Since Junior’s was a club, Junior billed his members once a month.  I had a medium-sized oil company and often took clients there for drinks, and dinner and my monthly bill almost always ran into the thousands.  When my oil company went belly up, I owed Junior more than three thousand dollars.

“I’m broke,” I told him.  “But I’ll pay you a little every month until I get it whittled down.”

Junior smiled and put an understanding hand on my shoulder.  “Eric, I know you will.  Just do your best and I’ll understand.”

It took me more than two years to finish paying my Junior’s debt and I felt like a giant weight have been lifted off my soul when Anne and I finally did.  Junior didn’t make a big deal about it.  He just smiled, nodded and patted me on the shoulder.

I was in Junior’s the night Penn Square Bank went under, just one of my many memories of the super club that would fill a small book.  Mostly, I remember Junior Simon – the best restaurateur the State of Oklahoma has ever seen, and a fine gentleman to boot.

Eric’s Website

If you’re exploring Route 66 and stop for lunch at a café in some small Oklahoma town, you are apt to learn that chicken-fried steak is the specialty of the house.  Since you are on the “Mother Road” you’re already looking for adventure, so point to the picture on the plastic menu and tell the homey waitress that you’re having the chicken fry.

When I returned home from work, I learned Marilyn had prepared chicken-fried steak for me.  It was, she said, the first time she had cooked chicken fries in more than twenty years.  The meal was delicious, served with mashed potatoes and cream gravy.

“Just the way my mother Joy used to do it,” she said.  “Well, almost.  Mama would buy a round steak big enough to feed eight of us and then she’d pound it out with a hammer until it was tender.  I did it the easy way and had the butcher do the trimming and tenderizing for me.”

Here is Joy and Marilyn’s method of cooking a yummy chicken-fried steak:

Take two pans.  Combine an egg and a little buttermilk in one of the pans.  Put some flour in the other pan and add salt and pepper to taste.  Salt and pepper the meat and then, using tongs, dredge both sides of the steak in the flour.  Dip the floured steak into the egg and buttermilk mixture and coat both sides.  Coat the steak a second time in the flour.

Heat about half an inch of oil in a frying pan (Joy always used a cast-iron skillet) and place the floured steaks into the pan once the oil is hot.  Cook until the bottom and edges are golden brown then turn the steak to finish browning.  Blot additional oil with paper towels after both sides finish cooking.

That’s how you do it.  Try it sometime if you can’t actually make it to that little roadside café in Oklahoma.

Eric’s Website

I became an independent oil man during the late seventies, just as Oklahoma City began urban renewal of its downtown area.  My partner John and I had an office on the eighth floor of the Park Harvey Center and we watched and listened as construction went on across the street.  We soon heard rumors that the crews had discovered a maze of underground rooms, halls and passageways dug by former Chinese residents of the city.

The rumors were true.  People of Chinese origin began arriving in Oklahoma City shortly after the Land Run.  The Daily Oklahoman reported in 1969 that Underground Chinatown extended from the North Canadian River to Northwest 17^th and Classen.  If this is true, the “City” encompassed an area of several square miles.

According to eyewitness accounts, the tunnel system had a low ceiling and connected both large community rooms to tiny apartments where the residents of the underground city lived.  Chinese writing covered the walls, including the words, “come gamble” at the entrance of one of the community rooms.

The underground city lay below restaurants and establishments owned by legal Chinese-Americans that likely took advantage of the cheap labor available from the illegal Chinese immigrants, afraid of deportation.  Oklahoma City Fathers elected not to save the underground city and it was bulldozed in the name of Urban Renewal.

Like many of the historic Oklahoma City buildings destroyed during Urban Renewal, Underground Chinatown is now little more than a memory; all that remains are a few eyewitness accounts and the ghostly reek of opium often whiffed late at night in downtown OKC.

Eric’s Web

Today is the beginning of the latest OU, Texas weekend.  Both teams are undefeated and anticipation has already reached a fevered pitch here in Oklahoma.  I have never attended an OU-Texas game in Dallas but I have seen OU play many times in Norman, and I well remember one game in particular.

There are many details about that game I can no longer remember (like OU’s opponent and the outcome of the game, etc.) but I remember vividly many of the day’s events.  Lan (an Oklahoma State graduate), Kat (an Oklahoma graduate), Anne (an Oklahoma graduate) and I headed for Norman around nine in the morning.  We steeled ourselves against the early hour with a gallon of bloody Marys, completely consumed before we reached the Norman city limits.

We soon found a parking space and made our way through about a million students and football fans to a bar near the stadium named O’Connell’s.  Hundreds of fans congregated outside the Irish bar, drinking beer and conversing about how we were about to annihilate our opponent.  Lan, Kat, Anne and I joined in.

The game started around 11:30 am and to say that we were drunk by that time wouldn’t be the total truth.  We were snockered, but had sobered up by half time.  OU was so far ahead that half the occupants of the stadium poured out and returned to O’Connell’s.

Lan and Kat married later, as did Anne and I, but none of us were even betrothed at the time – a situation both Lan and I rued before the day ended.  It began when we reached O’Connell’s.

Anne and Kat went inside to use the facilities while Lan and I remained outside to kibbutz with the fans, many of whom we knew, and consume more beer.  It soon became apparent to both Lan and me, despite our alcoholic proclivities that Kat and Anne had been inside O’Connell’s for a lengthy time without rejoining us.  Excusing ourselves from our group of friends, we pushed through the crowded fray blocking the door of the Irish bar. We soon found Anne and Kat.

They were sitting in a booth with a couple of obviously enamored college boys.  Lan and I practically had to start a fight – to the delight of both Kat and Anne – to get them to abandon the two college boys and rejoin us.

We didn’t bother returning to the stadium.  When OU is rolling, no one can beat them, and that’s a fact.  Like many occasions, this particular game was a runaway.  It was getting dark when, feeling somewhat sober, we headed toward Oklahoma City.

We weren’t done yet and decided to have dinner at Junior’s, a restaurant in the basement of the Oil Center Building.  Junior’s is an institution in OKC with its flocked red wallpaper and red carpeting that gives it the look and feel of a French whorehouse.  We ordered strong drinks (that goes without saying at Junior’s!) and a chicken liver appetizer.  After ordering our main course, Lan didn’t make it much longer.

“I’m feeling a little sick,” he said.  “I’m going to lie down in the car.”

Kat, Anne and I ate our dinners – after many more drinks - and had Lan’s packed to go.  Lan slept in the back seat all the way back to his house without awakening, farting every thirty seconds or so along the way.  Despite the gas attack, we all survived and, some twelve hours after leaving home, Anne and I dropped Lan and Kat safely at their house.

We had, amazingly, gotten drunk and sobered up at least three times that day.  Yes, I know driving and drinking is wrong and I don’t do it any more (though it took a little time in County Jail to convince me).  Still, as the OU-Texas weekend approaches, I remember portions of that particular football weekend well and am glad to lie on my sofa and watch OU-Texas on TV.

Eric’s Website

If you’re interested in the 80s oil bust in Oklahoma City, I recommend this site.  As I read through the many threads, old memories poured forth, some bad but many that reminded me what a colorful era I had lived through.

Any Penn Square Bank War Stories? Patterson, Jennings,Carl Swan,Hefner etc - OU Insider Forums.

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During basic training at Fort Polk, the saying was “Your mind is your own but your butt belongs to the U.S. Army.”  That was true as our drill sergeants told us when to eat, smoke, sleep and take a toilet break for six weeks.  We were also poked and prodded by doctors and dentists, and had so many injections during that time that my arms felt like pin cushions.

With large numbers of soldiers passing through the facility, it was easy to contract various diseases from the troops.  Mostly it was just colds and sore throats but often enough it was killer meningitis.

The injections usually occurred early in the morning, right after breakfast, leaving lots of daylight to deal with bad reactions to the various serums.  Once, after a Plague injection, ninety percent of my Company had severe reactions that included vomiting and passing out.  We were standing in formation when the troops began dropping in their tracks

Marilyn asked me today if I’d ever had an injection to protect against meningitis.

“I don’t have a clue,” I answered.  “We often had multiple shots at the same time and they usually didn’t bother telling us what they were for.”

The doctors and nurses giving the injections would often form a gauntlet, three or four on each side, all carrying pneumatic needles that looked like air pistols.  The drill sergeants would line us up in single file, have us roll up both sleeves, and then parade us through the gauntlet.  The result was often bloody and painful.

You never wanted to be last in line.  Those going first would trot past us, moaning in mostly faked pain as blood streamed down both their arms.  It didn’t matter much because there were many more injections in our future.  Next time, they might be standing last in line and it would be our turn to cause them mental grief as they awaited their fate.

Eric’s Website

Perhaps the notion of the crossroads is the most powerful concept in the observance of voodoo.  Vodoun practitioners believe there are two worlds - the one we inhabitant and the spirit world.  The crossroads is where these two worlds meet, and literally every voodoo act is an attempt to reach this destination.

To reach the crossroads in Vodoun is the ability to communicate with, and to convince the various spirits and deities to intercede for the living with respect to healing, casting spells, or any other outcome desired by a practicing mambo or houngan.

The practice of voodoo is a dominant element in my murder mystery Big Easy.  The murderer practices voodoo, his every action motivated by it.  Mama Mulate, a voodoo mambo, uses her considerable powers to fight the murderer’s evil at every juncture.

Both characters are seeking the crossroads, and both, in their own ways, find it, as does Wyatt Thomas, the book’s primary character, and Lieutenant Nicosia, a pivotal personality in the plot that takes a definite twist near its conclusion.

Eric’s Website

When I moved to Oklahoma City in 1973, the downtown area was already a victim of urban sprawl.  Many stores and businesses had moved out of the City’s original area for the more affluent outlying neighborhoods.  Downtown OKC had long since fallen into disarray and disrepair.  There was no new construction, no new businesses and little sentiment to revive this crumbling portion of Oklahoma City.

Like other cities, OKC had its skid row.  In the seventies, and to a large extent today, beggars, panhandlers, winos, prostitutes and runaways congregated in an area near the downtown bus station.  Hotels, many built shortly after the beginning of the city, remained along the Reno Avenue corridor.  Most were run down, shabby, and homes for gamblers and prostitutes.  One of these hotels was the Tivoli Inn on W. Sheridan Avenue.

The Tivoli was built in 1922 as a grand hotel.  It went through several transformations but in October of 1972 it had degenerated into little more than a flophouse for transients taking a detour off I-40, one of the interstate highways that bisect the city.  On October 13, 1972, the desk clerk of the hotel met her untimely death.

I hadn’t yet moved to Oklahoma in 1972 but I remember hearing about the murder of Phyllis Jean Daves.  Daves, age 49, was the desk clerk at the Tivoli Inn the night of her death.  According to accounts in the Daily Oklahoman, she was beaten, robbed and strangled to death.

On October 13, 1972 (yes, it was Friday) she was dragged into the elevator and apparently still fighting for her life when she and her attacker reached the sixth floor.  Her nude body was found under a bed in room 607 and rape was likely attempted but never consummated.  Two former employees of the Tivoli Inn were suspected but later cleared of the crime when they failed to provide a match to bloody hand prints held as evidence.

I remember hearing stories of blood covering the lobby walls from the horrific struggle that ensued.  The crime remains cold, never solved.  Urban renewal of downtown Oklahoma City began in earnest during the latter seventies, the Tivoli Inn razed in 1979 to make room for the Myriad Gardens.

Nothing remains today of the old Tivoli Inn but memories and some old photographs. Most Oklahomans don’t even remember it, nor does anyone remember Phyllis Jean Daves, or worry much about who killed her, or why.

Eric’s Web

Oklahoma set an all-time record this year for August rainfall.  Everything was day and I took this picture of a fairy circle in my neighbor’s front yard.  The pic was taken with a Nikon S210 and enhanced slightly with Microsoft’s Digital Image Suite.

Eric’s Website

A very interesting article about prehistoric Louisiana mound builders.

Ouachita River Mounds: A Five Millennium Mystery.

Eric’s Website

This Country’s present financial crisis should strike fear in my heart because, in 1984, the day before Thanksgiving, my little oil company was placed into involuntary bankruptcy.  The bankruptcy was cleared after several years but there was nothing left of the company but an empty shell.  There is no fear in my heart because of today’s financial – quite the contrary.

My wife Anne and I lost everything we owned in the eighties bankruptcy and it could have been our ultimate undoing.  It wasn’t.  Before the bankruptcy I was suffering from stress, overweight and probably on my way to a heart attack, or stroke.  When I finally accepted my fate and the stress lifted off my shoulders, I began jogging and eventually returned to my former good health.

I also began writing again after a hiatus of more than a decade.

I am a much older person now and will probably never be as rich as I was in my thirties – well, at least money-wise.  Money doesn’t make people happy; they can only achieve that for themselves, in their own minds.  My life isn’t perfect – far from it, but there is no doubt that I am a richer person now than I ever was then.

In John Lennon’s words, “Life is what happens to you while you’re making plans.”

Eric’s Website

Before the written word, there was only word of mouth. Unfortunately, oral history is often lost forever, or else progresses beyond the bounds of reality to enter the realm of lore and legend. It is absolutely true that many important circumstances occurred that were never recorded.

Often, only mysterious artifacts remain that possibly foretell significant historical events. Oklahoma has such a mysterious artifact. It is located in eastern Oklahoma, close to the Arkansas border, near the tiny mountain town of Heavener and it is now know as the Heavener Runestone.

Discovered in 1874, the Heavener Runestone is a large slab of rock that bears eight letters identified as Norse Runes. There is little controversy as to the origin of the runes. According to popular conjecture, Vikings visited Oklahoma around 700 A.D. to 1000 A.D. A Danish scholar has translated the Heavener Runestone as a land claim by a man named Glome. Four other runestones have since been located in Oklahoma.

What does all this mean? The facts are so sparse, that perhaps they lend themselves only to the dangerous imagination of a dedicated (or possibly demented) fiction writer. Since I fall into at least one of those categories, I’m presenting my picture (albeit fictional) of the Runestone’s origin:

By 874 A.D., people of Norse origin had begun colonizing Iceland. Continuing their westward quest, they reached Greenland in 984 A.D. Still hungry for colonization, these people wanted more. Sometime after 984 A.D., a lone Viking longboat powered by oar and sail headed south.

These fifteen, or so, explorers soon encountered the east coast of what would eventually be known as the United States. They continued sailing south, stopping only periodically to gather food and water. They didn’t stop for long because they were looking for something.

They were looking for a large estuary of fiord because the shallow draught of a longboat almost perfectly lent itself to the exploration of shallow and narrow waterways. It needed no harbor, and was light enough to pull ashore and be carried overland, should the need occur. The Norse explorers finally found this estuary at the mouth of the Mississippi River, some 5,000 miles from where they had embarked. Their trip to that point had taken three months.

The explorers continued up the Mississippi River until they reached the confluence with the Red River. They continued their journey up the smaller waterway instead of continuing north on the Mississippi because the narrowing river signaled to these ancient mariners that, like their faraway homes in Norway and Denmark, they were possibly nearing a settlement.

The Norsemen continued up the Red, a journey taking another month, until they reached what is now southeast Oklahoma. There they stopped because the gnarly, highly dissected Ouachita Mountains reminded them of their own Nordic homeland. Also, it was probably as far as their longboat could take them. By now it was fall. Exhausted from their arduous journey, the explorers established a base camp, intent on weathering the coming winter.

These early Norse explorers were a hardy lot, used to long sea journeys. This trip, though, had taken its toll, possibly because of periodic contact with inhospitable Native Americans. This is likely because many tribes, many of them hostile, settled along the waterways traversed by the explorers. When they finally reached southeast Oklahoma, only ten Norsemen remained.

Somewhere in the wilds of southeast Oklahoma the remnants of a Norse settlement remain, still waiting to be found. When spring finally arrived, there weren’t enough men left to crew the longboat on its trip back to Greenland. Six men decided to try anyway and abandoned their settlement. After saying their final farewells, they started their trip downstream, toward the mouth of the mighty Mississippi River.

Three men remained, one of them named Glome. They headed due north, looking for that elusive Viking settlement they hoped in their hearts might exist. Although they never found the settlement, they soon found the peaceful valley where the tiny town of Heavener is now located. On a flat spot on the way to the top of Heavener Mountain, they rested. From this vantage, they could see the entire valley below. There was game in the mountains and fish in the streams. They felt safe and established a base camp.

Two of the men finally departed, continuing their quest, while Glome waited behind on his mountain-top vantage point. During his time alone, he marked his stay with what is now the Heavener Runestone. His two companions never returned, but marked other rocks along the way to mark their journey.

All six Norse explorers that left in the longboat made it to the mouth of the Mississippi River, into the Gulf of Mexico where a seasonal hurricane forever ended their journey. Glome and the other two Vikings lived out their lives in eastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas. Did they prosper, or were their lives fraught with danger? No one can say, but next time you see a person with bronzed skin, high cheekbones and blue eyes, I hope that it gives you cause to ponder the question.

Eric’s Website

My Mother died in 2006 and Marilyn and I haven’t had any moonflowers since then.   We have both blamed her for the absence of the gorgeous flowers.  Today, Marilyn said, “I’m not planting any moonflowers next year.  I don’t think they’re ever coming back.”

“Maybe I’ll try,” I said.  “Surely Mom will forgive me for whatever it is she thinks I did.”

“You think you have a better green thumb than me?” Marilyn asked.

“No, but maybe it has nothing to do with having a green thumb.”

I got a resounding “Hmph!” from Marilyn.

When I noticed a new flowering vine today and pointed it out to Marilyn.  “Do you have a clue what it is?”

 “There’s one like it on the front fence,” she said.  “Want to see it?”

I followed her out the door, to the fence surrounding the dog pen.  We found the pretty little pentagonal bloom known as a Cardinal Vine plant, but we also found something else - a beautiful moonflower in full blossom.

Yes, it is the mystical season of autumn, the time when moonflowers are supposed to bloom.  Maybe my Mother has finally forgiven whatever transgression she thought Marilyn and I may have committed and is once again blessing our gardens.  Maybe!  At least it’s what I like to think.

Eric’s Website

During the almost six months that I spent in the boonies of Vietnam, I ate many C-Ration meals.  Most of the foods, contained in small, Army green tin cans, were very forgettable.  There were only two entrées that could even remotely be described as “good” - the peaches and the pound cake.  Unfortunately, they were in short supply and never came in the same box.

I still love both peaches and pound cake and recently found a wonderful recipe that includes one of these ingredients.  It’s in a cookbook called Recipes from an Old New Orleans Kitchen by Suzanne Ormond, published in 1988 by Pelican Publishing Company, Inc.  Here is Suzanne’s recipe for Peaches in Champagne.

6 large fresh peaches                            24 whole cloves

1 cup sugar                                           1 bottle chilled champagne

Water                                                   6 sherbet glasses

½ cup Napoleon Brandy

Peel peaches and leave them whole.  Press 4 cloves into each peach.  Place peaches in a large saucepan.  Pour sugar over them and cover them with water.  Bring peaches to a boil.  Add brandy.  Lower heat and simmer until peaches are tender to a fork.  Drain peaches and remove cloves.  Put peaches in covered bowl and refrigerate for 4 to 6 hours.  Place peaches in a sherbet glass and fill glass with chilled champagne.  Serve with cookies.  Serves 6.

Eric’s Website 

I may have already told this tale but that’s okay.  A story is never really complete until it’s been embellished and retold at least twice.

This story happened during the time I spent in the boonies with the First Cav.  We were patrolling the Jolly Trail System near the Cambodian border when we happened upon a freshly deserted North Vietnamese bunker complex.  After a nervous couple of hours deciding if the NVA were truly gone, or set up to ambush us, we decided on the former and established a base camp, sending out several patrols to see if we could find out which direction the enemy had gone.  I was one of the lucky ones that remained at the base camp.

I have always been enamored by buried treasure and soon I had myself and everyone else convinced that there was probably a fortune in gold buried somewhere within the perimeter of the bunker complex.  This was not such a far-fetched idea as the NVA were known to carry large amounts of money and gold to trade with the locals.

Since they had abandoned the complex in such a hurry, perhaps they had forgotten to take the treasure.  Before long, practically everyone left at the base camp was poking around with trenching devices (military shovels).  As luck would have it, I was the first one to find something.

“It’s here,” I said, beginning to dig feverishly over a spot of loose earth.

I was quickly joined by others and we soon had a large hole in the ground.  I soon became apparent that what we had found was not a treasure trove – well, unless you were a maggot.  The bunker complex, it seemed, was a well-established stop along the trail from North Vietnam, our covered treasure no more than a buried latrine.  The other soldiers were soon shaking their heads and looking at me as if I were freshly escaped from a loony bin.

“Hey, I’ll bet the treasure’s in the latrine.  No one would think to look there.”

The other men didn’t buy my argument and, since I couldn’t convince anyone else to poke around in the smelly remains of an NVA latrine, I decided that even if there were treasure a few feet from where I stood that it wasn’t worth digging through the sh-t for.

No, I didn’t find any buried treasure during my tour of Vietnam.  Come to think of it, I don’t recall ever seeing a single rock during the entire time I was there.  As a geologist, you’d think I would have noticed.

Eric’s Website

As a geology student at what was then Northeast Louisiana State College, I concentrated on partying as much as I did “cracking the books.”  Being a small department, all the professors and students knew each other and we all looked forward to the geology picnic held every spring at a camp on Lake Cheniere - hot dogs, hamburgers and a keg or two of beer provided the usual fare.

One memory I have of these seasonal events is witnessing a geology professor – goaded by several grad students – attempting to drink the last gallon from the keg.  He didn’t make it, and thank goodness final grades for the year were already posted.

The camp on Lake Cheniere was near a large gravel pit, a strip mining operation that had already removed tons of gravel for construction and road building.  The pit was a favorite with geology students because it was a virtual endless repository of what we called gravel fossils.  What kind of fossils?  Silicified, Paleozoic fossils of the marine variety – brachs, corals, bryozoans, cephalopods, etc.  Well, you get the picture.

How did these three hundred to five hundred million year old fossils end up populating geologically young Louisiana alluvium?  In the case of the gravel pits near Monroe, they were eroded and washed down dip from Paleozoic deposits in the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas.

There were rumors that alluvial diamonds were also sometimes found in the gravel – rumors because I never talked to anyone that had actually found a diamond, or knew anyone that had.  Still, the possibility is legitimate since Murfreesboro in the Ouachita Mountains is the location of a known diamond deposit, with diamonds exposed at the surface of the earth there.

Is it possible that a large, undiscovered alluvial diamond deposit exists in north Louisiana?  Consider this – such a deposit is very real in South Africa where alluvial diamonds are found in gravel deposits, much like those in Louisiana.  From 1926 to 1984 over 667,000 carats were produced from this part of South Africa known as the Ventersdorp Alluvial Diamond District. 

Where would you look if you wanted to find this elusive north Louisiana diamond deposit?  That gravel pit near Lake Cheniere might be a good place to start.  Hey, and invite me along as I would love to find one of those elusive glitterers.

Eric’s Website