A story from a very interesting Oklahoma cookbook.

http://cafeoklahoma.com/story_wedding.aspx

Eric’s Website

A fun and interesting list.  Writers take note.

Banned words list offers no 'bailout' to offenders - Yahoo! News.

Eric’s Website

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Eric’s Website

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What happened?” he demanded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A most interesting article.

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/publishing/will_amateur_booksellers_kill_publishing_104396.asp?c=rss

Fiction South

Jilted by your lover, or maybe just temporarily lost use of your mojo?  Here's a recipe to reverse your fortune when it comes to amore:

1 cherry, the juice from
3 grapes, the juice from
1/4 cup of banana paste
1 cup of ice chips
1/4 cup basil
1 pinch sage
1 tsp vanilla
1 honeysuckle bloom
Crushed pieces of geode, preferably with amethyst
3 rose petals
Few drops of rainwater - March rainwater is best
2 pine needles
3 spiderweb threads

Mix the potion and add but a few drops to the drink, preferably alcoholic, of the person you wish to desire you.  Use sparingly.

Fiction South

  My stepdaughter Shannon brought us a new puppy.  Marilyn and I need a new dog like we need a hole in the head.  It didn’t matter.  Once we saw the new baby, we were both hooked.

Princess is also hooked.  We now have five dogs in a municipality where three is legal.  Stay tuned.  The local gendarmes may kick our doors down and run us in for having too many pets.  P.S. – the new puppy is named Scooter.

Fiction South

Marilyn and I recently spent the afternoon with a personal injury attorney.  Four years after Marilyn being rear-ended, we finally settled the case today.  Despite an injury, resulting in having three donor bones surgically implanted in her neck, and then a brain aneurysm that almost killed her she wound up with little more than her medical expenses paid.

The problem is Oklahoma.  The reddest state in the Union is ultraconservative and rarely finds for the plaintiff, no matter what the injury.  Despite the lack of satisfaction, we finally received closure, and we were happy to have the episode in our lives finally at an end.  Our very colorful attorney (a very good one, I might add) regaled us with one last legal story.  It is good enough that I need to share.

Seems our attorney’s parents-in-law were rear-ended and he represented them in the resultant lawsuit.  One of the claims was loss of consortium, defined in law as the losing of conjugal services.  Well, you know what I mean.

According to our attorney, in a deposition, the opposing attorney always tries to embarrass the man.  This tactic, he said, can backfire in a trial.  J’s mother-in-law was less than a handsome woman, and he confided that he could barely imagine her even having sex, much less enjoying it.  J, our attorney held his breath as the opposing attorney grilled his father-in-law.

“Sir, I need to know how the wreck affected your sex life.  Since the accident, how many times a week do you and your wife have sex?”

“Once,” J’s father-in-law, a man approaching seventy answered.

J’s mouth dropped when his wife’s dad answered the question about how many times they had sex before the accident.

J’s parent-in-laws were good Oklahoma Baptists, and his father-in-law answered, “Six - everyday except Sunday.”

J and his parent’s-in-law won their case, including the claim for loss of consortium.  Still, considering his own marriage, he couldn’t help but think that he’d been robbed, as he and his wife (the plaintiff’s daughter) had never had sex six times in any week, much less every week.

Musings of a Dangerous Mind

1 qt stale bread, wet and squeezed

2 tbsps butter

1 chopped onion

1 tbsp parsley

1 sprig thyme

1 bay leaf

3 tbsps sage

salt and pepper to taste

Drain the oysters, carefully removing all bits of shell.  Save oyster liquor for stuffing.  Wet stale bread with hot water, squeezing thoroughly.  Mix and season with sage.  Chop fowl’s liver and gizzard finely, and put 1 tbsp butter into frying pan.

Mix in chopped onion, and chopped liver and gizzard in the pan.  As the mixture browns, add the herbs, and then the bread.  Mix well.  Add remaining butter and stir, blending thoroughly.

Add the oyster liquor, and then mix in the oysters.  Stir for several minutes before using it to stuff the fowl.

Eric’s Website 

The approach of every holiday seems to evoke memories for me, more so now than before.  This approaching Christmas caused me to remember an event that happened many years ago when I was a grunt in Vietnam.

My MOS, or Military Occupational Specialty (at least I think this is what it stands for) was 11-C - infantry mortar man.  When we changed areas of operation from the highlands to the flat plains, we got rid of our 81 mm mortar because it was too heavy to hump.  Since I was already used to carrying a twenty-three pound base plate our platoon sergeant chose me to carry the twenty-six pound M-60 machinegun.  The gun was a weapon that I had never even held in my hands, much less shot.

We were in a hot AO (area of operation) and everyone expected contact.  In a clearing, waiting for resupply, I extended the bipod of the gun and pointed it toward the tree line.  I was admiring my handiwork when a voice from behind disturbed my thoughts.

“Better lower the bipod.  If bullets start flying, you want to be as low to the ground as you can get.”

I turned to see a trooper named Denny.  He was white, but had dark black hair and a drooping handlebar moustache.  He was from Michigan, as were many of my fellow boonie rats.  Denny was a veteran of the recent Cambodian campaign and had participated in many firefights with the elusive enemy.

I lowered the bipod and thanked Denny for his sage advice.  Later that night, I could hear the moans of someone suffering horribly.  It was Denny.

“He has malaria,” the First Sergeant told me.  “The Medevac choppers won’t come get him till his temperature reaches a sustained one-oh-four.”

One-oh-four was a number someone in the rear had come up with to prevent troopers from faking illnesses.  The problem was, when a sky trooper’s temperature reached a sustained one-oh-four, he was already almost dead.

The night chopper carried Denny away, and everyone tried to forget that we had ever known him.  It was November, although it seemed more like summer in tropical Vietnam.  Latter that month I left the jungle for good.  I was a college graduate and got a job as a clerk-typist on Firebase Buttons in the rear.  Seems they needed someone that could type more than they needed a soldier that could pull a trigger.

When Christmas neared, the Company Sergeant asked me if I wanted to see the Bob Hope Christmas show.  The gig required spending a night on a forward firebase and none of my fellow clerks wanted to chance being that close to potential combat.  Fresh out of the jungle anyway, I of course said yes.

The night on the forward firebase went without incident, except that a reporter for Newsweek reported that we violated the Christmas truce when everyone on the firebase opened fire for what we called the “mad minute.”

Next day we took a Chinook helicopter to the hospital in Bien Hoa where we would see Bob Hope.  It was there that I saw Denny again.  He was wandering around the grounds in pajamas and a robe.  He did not recognize me.

Denny reminded me of Jack Nicholson in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest – after his full frontal lobotomy, that is.

I didn’t have a good seat and could not see much of the Bob Hope Christmas Show.  It did not matter much because I was thinking of Denny and the masses of other brain and soul-damaged soldiers wandering like wraiths across the grounds of the sprawling hospital.

That Christmas night, I watched the sunset from the back of a departing Chinook, and considered my own mortality.

Happy Holidays Everybody!

Eric’s Website

My Aunt Dot Pourteau is a wonderful person and a wonderful cook. She recently published her second cookbook titled ALL THE FOODS WE'VE LOVED BEFORE that features recipes collected through the years from family, friends and various publications.

I was drooling as I read through the recipes and happy to see that many were provided by my uncles, aunts, cousins, my grandmother and, yes, even my own mother. Here is one of Dot's personal recipes for southern pecan pie. I can't wait to try it!

3 eggs, beaten
2/3 cup sugar
1 dash of salt
1/2 cup white Karo
1/2 cup dark Karo
1/3 cup butter or margarine, melted
1 cup pecans, chopped or whole

Beat 3 eggs throughly with sugar, salt, dark and light Karo, melted butter. Add one cup of pecan halves. Pour into 9" unbaked pie shell. Bake in moderate oven (350 degrees) 50 minutes or until knife inserted halfway between center and edge comes out clean. Cool.

http://www.ericwilder.com

I got this fascinating comment to my article on the meaning of the number 1111.  I am publishing it in its entirety because it contains lots of both interesting and enlightening information that I want to share with everyone.  Thanks, Bing, for your wonderful post.

A Message from an 1111 Lightworker

My name is Bing and I am an 1111 Lightworker. I like the picture of you and your dog. My wife and I are Basset hound lovers. We are currently on Basset Hound number six Chloe. I have a “Google Alert” that searches the web for individuals who are interested in 11:11. If you are curious about the 11:11 time prompts and are looking for more information please follow these links and they will help you immensely.

http://board.1111angels.com/viewtopic.php?t=4
http://board.1111angels.com/viewtopic.php?t=345
http://www.urantia.org/papers/paper77.html
http://new-birth.net/

In a while, you will notice that the prompts will change to include the number of the hour plus 11, 22, 33 and so on. You will start to see the prompts on sales slips, license plates of cars that “just happen” to pull in front of you, and on addresses.

Another topic that you may find interesting is Crystal and Indigo children. These are children born with a raised level of consciousness. Some of them have two extra genes that allow them to see auras and be more psychically in tune. Here are some sites that will provide information on this topic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMhdm6EpLZ4
http://www.starchild.co.za/what.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQAd3FxKVUY
http://www.artakiane.com/home.htm

A book that I would recommend is Angel Numbers by Doreen Virtue.

http://www.angeltherapy.com/.

The links leads to some short inspirational videos that I hope you will enjoy and pass on to others. I have no connection to the authors; I just like the messages.

http://www.hasanyonetoldyou.com/
http://www.youarethelightmovie.com/
http://www.mayyoubeblessedmovie.com/

Here is a link to a site that will help you to focus on the Law of Attraction. I have read these books and they come highly recommended not only by me but by many professional book reviewers and people who have followed their advice. These books will really bring what you want into your life.

http://www.abraham-hicks.com/lawofattractionsource/index.php.

These two links are to great meditation music sites. The first one is a link to the music of Chuck Wild who goes under the artistic name of Liquid Mind. The second is to an online radio station that is free and features 10,000 genres. This particular genre is New Age relaxation music.

http://www.liquidmindmusic.com/video/index.html
http://www.live365.com/stations/jazzmodem.

The following link is to a definition of the word Namaste that I feel should become more commonplace in our vocabularies. Whenever I feel that I am becoming judgmental, I say this word to myself and it puts me back in the right frame of mind. There is no us and them - only “US”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namaste

I hope that this information will help you on your journey to become a better person, and to help raise the level of Life, Light and Love in our world.

Throw some love into the wind

Namaste
Bing

Eric’s Website

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eric’s Website

http://www.lifelinescreening.com/healthupdates/healthy_you/Pages/FoodsToKeepYouYoung.aspx?src=LETT-456

Eric’s Web

  Here is a picture taken in scenic, downtown Eureka Springs, Arkansas.  It shows the Flatiron Building from across the street and beneath an arch of the Basin Hotel.

Eric’s Web

  My good friend David Beatty of Livingston, Louisiana is a Renaissance Man.  He does many things well and is now into baking.  Here is his learned primer on the do's and don'ts of making bread:

I have recently gotten into baking bread, and above are two recent examples of my newly found skill.  In an attempt to be healthier, I have been making whole wheat and sourdoughs.  All who have seen and tasted my early attempts might find it difficult to describe what they ate as bread.  Things have changed. 

Bread making is a science.  It requires a chemical reaction, and thus an exact recipe.  Add the ingredients in the correct amount and bake.  Presto, you have bread.  Well, not exactly.  If you have success at making bread, it may be because you followed the recipe exactly as written.  If you do not, the world as you know it may not be the same.

With the chance of sleet and snow tonight and in the morning, the weather in south Louisiana looks very much like the Christmas season, so it must be bread-making time.  The first whole-wheat loaf I baked was beautiful, and with butter and jam, was something for which you might even pay good money.  That is where my troubles started.

Once I made the first good loaf, I got cocky and began considering myself a real baker.  This loaf tastes so good, I thought, why not improve it by adding a few favorite ingredients - some additional this, and a little extra of that.  Before long, you have the perfect, new and improved loaf of bread.  Well, not exactly.

It could have been the small amount of sourdough starter that I added, or the extra yeast, or that little detail of using instant buttermilk instead of the required milk.  About now, some of you are probably thinking that I added too much beer to the mix, or perhaps drank too much of it myself during the process.  WRONGAMUNDO, ladies and gents!

I refer to the aforementioned pictures of my culinary creations.  The loaf on the right is actually the second loaf I made; the near-perfect loaf on the left included the liberal addition of my favorite beer, not only in the batter, but also in the baker. 

Therefore, the moral to the story is this:  Be very careful when you alter a proven bread recipe, unless, of course, the altering ingredient happens to be your favorite alcoholic beverage.  Then, as you can see, you cannot go wrong.

Eric’s Web

  I remember seeing snow only a few times growing up in Louisiana, and I grew up in north Louisiana.  I didn’t even have a heavy coat when I went to college.  Things have changed!

A winter storm blasted south Louisiana and parts of Alabama and Mississippi the week.  Here is a report from my Livingston, Louisiana friend Dave Beatty.

Beatty’s Weather Report

They had said that it might snow but it would not accumulate - WRONG! - We got almost six inches of the stuff.  I know you people in OKC are not impressed with six inches, but in southeast Louisiana, six inches is a very big deal.  It reminded me so much of my days in OKC.  Glad I got my bread making done in time.

Eric’s Web

An interesting list.

http://features.csmonitor.com/books/2008/12/17/the-top-10-out-of-print-books-in-the-us/

Eric’s Web

  I remember seeing snow only a few times growing up in Louisiana, and I grew up in north Louisiana.  I didn’t even have a heavy coat when I went to college.  Things have changed!

A winter storm blasted south Louisiana and parts of Alabama and Mississippi the week.  Here is a report from my Livingston, Louisiana friend Dave Beatty.

Beatty’s Weather Report

They had said that it might snow but it would not accumulate - WRONG! - We got almost six inches of the stuff.  I know you people in OKC are not impressed with six inches, but in southeast Louisiana, six inches is a very big deal.  It reminded me so much of my days in OKC.  Glad I got my bread making done in time.

Eric’s Web

Marilyn and I recently purchased a new juicer and she is juicing practically every morning.  I began juicing years ago when my second wife Anne and I learned that she had cancer.

The two primary treatments for cancer are radiation and chemotherapy.  Both treatments harm a person’s entire body, as well as the cancer cells, and most patients soon lose their appetites and desire to eat.  Anne used to say that most food tasted like the working end of a ball peen hammer.

An oncologist told me once that many cancer patients die of malnutrition because ice cream and a few cold desserts are the only foods they can tolerate eating.  As Anne’s cancer progressed, this became a problem.

Some friends of ours had juiced for years and suggested that I get a juicer.  My cousin gave me a basic recipe that included soy protein, but it was much too bland and doughy.  I would not eat it myself, so I knew it was a lost cause trying it out on Anne.  I devised my own recipe instead and I began making it for her every morning.  It did not cure her cancer, but I feel strongly that it kept her alive, and with a better quality of life, for at least an extra six months.  Here is the recipe:

The Juice

2 apples, any variety

1 pear, any variety

3 carrots

1 broccoli stalk and crown

I would often add grapes, blackberries, blueberries, red bell peppers, etc.  Try these out for yourself.  I like to experiment, and sometimes the ingredients that I like make others wince.

Other Ingredients

½ cup of soy protein

½ cup of green stuff *

1 banana (a mango, papaya or other similar type fruit can be used instead – be creative)

½ blender of ice

• I think this product is Source of Life, but I cannot really remember.  It came in a large round can with a pop-off top.  The product itself was dry, like flour, and green.  It contained practically every nutrient, enzyme and vitamin known to humanity and was very expensive (about fifty bucks).  The product did not have an appetizing look and I don’t mind telling you that I thought about the movie Soylent Green every time I opened the package.

Put all the ingredients in the blender and then pulse until thoroughly blended.  Makes 2 large shakes.

Along with Anne, I drank variations of this concoction for over a year.  I never got sick during this time, not even a sniffle.  My blood pressure was perfect, as was my cholesterol, my body weight, etc.  I also had exceptional strength, and I believe I could have lifted the front end of a heavy car if I’d had to.

There is no good disease, and in the case of cancer, sometimes the side effects of the attempted cure are almost as horrible.  I am not a juicing spokesperson here, but if you are trying to care for a person with an appetite destroyed by radiation and chemo, try my shake on them.  If you are simply looking for a healthier life, try it yourself.  You might even like it.

Eric’s Web

My stepdaughter Kate lives with her Dad in Texas and she visited Marilyn and me during the Thanksgiving holidays.  She had a headache when she got here and Marilyn quickly did something to rid her of the pain, and put a big grin on Kate’s face.

Marilyn left her daughter lying on her bed and went to the freezer for something cold to put on her forehead.  When Kate saw what Marilyn handed her, she burst into laughter.

“Where did you find this?” she asked.

“I don’t know, but I keep it in the freezer and use it when I have a pain in my head.”

“Mom,” Kate said.  “This is a silicon insert from one of my Victoria’s Secret bras.”

“Well I’ll be damned!” Marilyn said.  “I thought it was a headache thingy from Wal-Mart.  That’s how I’ve been using it for six months now, and it works like a charm.”

When Kate quit laughing, she placed the silicon falsie over her eye, learning a valuable lesson in the process: Almost everything has more than one use.

Eric’s Web

I knew my boys would come out on top!

Which state is the most corrupt—Illinois or Louisiana? - By Jacob Weisberg - Slate Magazine.

Eric’s Web

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

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

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

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

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

“Iced tea,” I answered.

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

“A Coors then,” I said.

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

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

“Bourbon and water, I guess.”

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

She did, three of them before we finished eating.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eric’s Web

The present economic woes of the world cause me to think of something that happened nearly three decades ago.  Despite all my efforts, the company I had formed and fostered had gone “belly up” during the eighties oil bust.  It was an awful time in my life - not the worst, but in the top three.

My second wife Anne was my partner in the company and we spent six months trying to find a “white knight” to bail out the company.  We were not successful. Everyone - except of course the people that make a living in the industry - hates oil companies.  This is because crude oil is the number one commodity in the entire world.  No one can live without it.  When prices get high, for whatever reason, everyone feels the pinch.

Back in the eighties, oil companies began going “belly up” right and left.  Since the main industry in Oklahoma is oil, the state and everyone in it suffered direly.  Drilling rigs that had cost millions to build were first stacked (stored) and then cut up for scrap metal when it became apparent the bust would last longer than expected.  It lasted for more than a decade.

We are now into yet another recession, and the only good thing about it – for the oil industry, that is – is it signaled an end to President-elect Obama’s proposed windfall profits tax designed to punish the evil oil industry.  Well, he was much too young to remember the oil bust of the eighties and the adverse effect it had on thousands of everyday working people, or the fatalist saying, “Last one to leave the State, turn out the lights.”

I digress.  Anne and I were looking for a “white knight” to bail out our company.  A rich oily from Midland, Texas dropped by to hear my story and see if he could help.  He sat across the desk from me, listening to my sad tale when suddenly he got a big grin on his face.

“Did I say something funny?” I asked.

“You’re bringing back memories of when my own oil company went bankrupt.  I know it seems like the world has ended and that you will never recover, but you will.”  The man began grinning again.

“What?” I implored him.

“This is your first time around,” he said.  “You can never really call yourself an oil man until you have been bankrupt at least twice.”

I have yet to go “belly up” a second time but the old oilie informed me of something I probably should already have known.  There is no business on earth as risky as the oil business, and those that engage in it are truly the world’s greatest gamblers.

If you are an oilie, you also need to stand on your own two feet because – unlike Wall Street fat cats - you can bet that no matter how many people in your industry lose their jobs, their homes, their cars, and are unable to afford milk for their babies, Congress will NEVER bail you out.

Eric’s Website

Shortly after a life-changing experience, I began to notice the numerical sequence 1111.  I would suddenly glance at a digital clock, whether in my car or on television, precisely at 11.11.  I know this sounds strange and I thought so too.  It is strange!

Digital dials were not the only place this number would appear.  I began seeing it on license plates, billboards, newspapers, etc.  Well, you get the picture.  I decided to search the internet to see if anyone else had noticed this phenomenon.  To my amazement, the answer is yes.

Like me, many others have noticed the numerical sequence 1111 but no one seems to have a precise explanation for why it appears.  After seeing the sequence for many years now, I have developed a theory of my own.

I am neither physicist nor mathematician but there are things I do know about nature.  Everything in the universe connects with everything else.  Even chaotic events form perfect patterns.  A precise mathematical function can explain almost anything.  Any action by a creature or object, no matter how small, affects the entire universe.  Those of you that have seen the movie Butterfly Effect or have heard about Archimedes Last Breath know what I mean.

The last breath expelled by Archimedes before he died has supposedly mixed and remixed so perfectly that every time anyone on earth takes a breath, that person is breathing at least a single molecule of the same air that Archimedes last breathed.

My thinking is that everything is universally connected (not an original idea) and the universe a giant mathematical function.  The numerical sequence is a sign.  I have become to believe it is a sign from the universe, of which we are all an integral part.  What does 1111 mean?  It means everything is okay in the universe.

Eric’s Web

Memory is transitory.  The older I get, the more I realize it.  Tonight, my visions are aflame and I am going to tell you a story.  I must do it now because tomorrow, what I would like to say will be no more than forgotten daydreams, and I little more than a lump of barely vibrating clay.

I recently downloaded a dozen or so Dusty Springfield songs from an internet service.  Many were covers of other great artists.  As I listened to Dusty, I thought about my dimly lit past.  So dimly lit.  “Tin can at my feet, I think I’ll kick it down the street.  – yes, I think it’s going to rain today.”

The poignant words of Carole Bayer Sager, “I’d rather leave when I’m in love,” as sung by a largely unheralded diva.  Gorgeous is the word that comes to mind.  Dusty had beautiful vocal chords.

Matt, the son of my partner r. r. bryan, brought me something from his father.  “Do you know how to write a screenplay?”

“I have so many thoughts that I need to write down,” he told me.

Matt is twenty-five, just back from Afghanistan.  He looked at me, and then at the darkened sky outside the window.  “This weather drives me crazy.  I like to pull the covers up over my head and just sleep.”

“You must really be my son,” I said.  “I don’t think your dad would understand.”

Matt smiled, but did not comment.  Instead, he glanced around the room as if he had expected more than my lame comment.

“I have a few books,” I quickly added.  “Screenwriting is an art and I’m afraid I have no experience to even point you in the right direction.”

Matt went away, hours have passed, Dusty is singing, “You gotta give me some, give me some of your good, good, loving.”

I am remembering a time in my life.  I am regressing, to two days before my twenty-first birthday.

I am a college student, the Vietnam War raging.   People are dying, mothers are crying, hey, and I am into denying – at least for the moment.

It is an all night drive from Monroe.  I awaken at an early-morning coffee shop in New Orleans.  Funny, I was the driver, a half-dozen graduate and undergrad geologists rubbing their eyes and trying to awaken.  We pushed ahead to Port Sulfur, a tiny town on the coast of south Louisiana.  Later, we arrived in Venus – Louisiana, that is.

“Where are you doing the rest of my life?” Dusty sings.  Her dreamy voice is sublime.  No person has ever had such a voice.

Venus is a little Gulf-side town filled with working men waiting to take crew boats out to offshore drilling rigs.  We take our own crew boat, far out into the Gulf’s blue waters and visit Gulf Oil’s Garden Island Bay Field – Gulf’s fourth largest oil field in the world.  “All the oil that will ever come out of this field will only last the world for ten days,” our tour guide tells us.

We spend the night in Venus, in a crew cabin.  Next day, we head for Biloxi, Mississippi along the Redneck Riviera where we have rooms waiting at the research center.  We reach it after dark.  It is my twenty-first birthday and I accompany the graduate students to a strip joint in old downtown Biloxi.

I wish I could tell you that a beautiful young stripper took a shine to me, took me out back and made passionate love to me behind a sand dune facing the Gulf’s breaking waves.  It did not happen that way.  I got quite drunk as I watched a couple of women with dead eyes move sadly on the tiny stage, until their number finally ended.

Next day, Duncan, a fellow student - and ex-SEAL, fresh from Vietnam - and I took a long hike on Dauphine Island, a long shore island in Alabama.  We found an abandoned hotel, and two college girls that were friendly, and curious.  They stayed with us for a couple of hours.  I can neither remember their names, nor their faces, or much else about the short time we spent together.

“I just don’t know what to do with myself,” Dusty sings.

What a set of pipes! I think as my memories begin dissolving like the dying petals of a summer rose.

I recognize Dusty’s backup on some of the vocals as Laura Nyro.  The two magnificent divas both died of cancer but their music lives on.

Memory is transitory, and I am drunk, but tonight, Dusty’s gorgeous vocals returned me to my twenty-first birthday, and memories and emotions I thought that I had long since forgotten.

Eric’s Web

Disturbing but not surprising information.

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/bookselling/book_sales_drop_at_beginning_of_holiday_season_103129.asp?c=rss

Eric’s Website

Rare indeed!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081211/ap_on_re_us/south_winter_weather

Eric’s Website

Here is a reprise of an article written a while back:

It is only the second week in June and the weather has already changed from persistent daily rain to ninety-degree heat.  Marilyn and I took my dad to dinner tonight and when we returned home, I fed the cats and dogs.  Afterwards I sat on the front porch, trying to coax my kitty cat Rouge to join me as I watched the flashing display of lightning bugs in the neighbor’s yard.

I called my kitty to join me but Rouge was having none of it, wary that I might try to thin her winter-matted hair with my pocketknife.  She knows me too well!  As I sat there, trying to remain as still as possible because of the uncomfortable heat, I thought about my dad.

I had put a phone in his room with two speed dial buttons covered with yellow sticky notes with my name and my brother’s name.  If I do not call him, he calls me every night.

“I’m about to starve to death,” he tells me.  “There’s nobody here.  I’ve been alone all day.”

I do not bother mentioning that I had talked to him an hour earlier, just as he had finished dinner.  Mar and I took him to Bennigan’s, a restaurant just down the street from his assisted living home.  He wanted a hamburger and fries.  When the waiter brought his burger and fries, he picked at them both.

“Golly,” he said.  “I don’t know where I’m going to put all this.”

My dad is from Louisiana and like most people from that superb state, he has never met a person he did not like.  Yes, I know, but I think Will Rogers was really born there instead of here in Oklahoma.  The old man seems okay to see us, although he has a sad look of resignation on his face.

Dad’s fingernails are long, clean, and perfectly shaped.  When I comment on them, he pulls his knife from his pocket and shows it to me.  He also shows me his new good luck charm, a flat piece of silver metal.

“I found it outside in the garden.  I don’t know what it is.”

The metal was polished and had no writing on either side. “Looks like a digital battery,” I said.  “For the life of me I don’t know how it got so shiny.”

Dad stuck it back in his pocket.

“It’s getting kind of late.  Hope someone knows where I’m at.”

“We’re on our way back,” I said, clearing our tab and returning to the car for the return trip to Brighton Gardens.”

Back on the front porch, my thoughts returned to my cat Rouge.  I tried once more to coax her into leaving her cool resting spot in the flowerbed.  She was not budging.  Wiping sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand, I thought about the approaching summer.  I also thought about the summers past, and the winters.  Where had time gone?  Am I the same person I was as a child, also sitting on a front porch somewhere in Louisiana, trying to coax a cat to join me?

As the neighbor’s fireflies continued their nightly dance, I dragged myself off the concrete and retreated inside to the awaiting coolness, realizing I don’t have a clue.

Eric’s Website

How true, how true.

‘The book was better’: Movies that didn’t measure up | csmonitor.com.

Eric’s Web

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What a deal!

Everybody loves the digital library – maybe too much | csmonitor.com.

Eric’s Website

Aunt Dot sent me one of Anna Pourteau’s recipes.  Anna, Dot’s mother-in-law and Uncle Bertrand’s mother, was a wonderful cook.  It sounds great, and Dot - a wonderful cook as well - gives me her personal guarantee that it is.

Pork Chops, English Peas & Tomatoes with Steamed Rice
 4  pork chops, center cut                     ¼ cup canola or olive oil
14.5 oz tomatoes, diced                        15 oz LeSuer English peas, undrained
15 oz chicken broth (fat free)                ½ medium onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped                       2 cloves garlic, minced
½  c green bell pepper, chopped           ½ c red bell pepper, chopped
½ tsp sweet basil                                  2 tsps parsley
½ tsp oregano                                      ¼  tsp thyme  
½ tsp salt                                              ½ tsp pepper
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce                 ¼ tsp Louisiana hot sauce

Steamed Rice
1 c rice
2 ¼ cups water
½ tsp salt
              
Salt and pepper pork chops.  Put oil in large non-stick skillet.  Heat oil to a medium hot temperature, 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 tomatoes, chicken broth, basil, parsley, oregano, thyme, salt, pepper, Worchester sauce and Louisiana 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.  Serves 4.

Eric’s Website

I grew up eating catfish at the many restaurants on Caddo Lake.  It didn’t matter which place you visited, the five courses were always the same: catfish, French fries, Cole slaw, green tomato relish, and hushpuppies.  I’m not saying that I liked the hushpuppies the best, but they are much like potato chips – you can’t eat just one.  Here is a recipe for jalapeno hushpuppies I think you will like.

2 cups cornmeal                                   1 cup flour

2 eggs, beaten                                      3 tsps baking powder

1 ½ tsps salt                                         1 small can cream corn

3 jalapeno peppers, chopped                ¼ bell pepper, chopped

1 small onion, minced                            buttermilk

A pinch of soda

Combine all ingredients using just enough buttermilk to create the consistency of cornbread batter.  Shape and drop into medium-hot oil and cook until golden brown.  Enjoy.

Eric’s Website

What a wonderful article!  Anyone that has ever been part of literary group, or other club, has seen everyone discussed here.  Why can’t everyone else be perfect, like me?

Book Club Trouble Often Has Little to Do With Books - NYTimes.com.

Eric’s Website

Here are a couple of pics taken on a recent outing with my Dad and Marilyn.  One is a picture of Dad’s cat.  Eric’s Website. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What happened to you?” she asked.

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

Eric’s Website

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eric’s Website 

Here’s a nice recipe I found on the web.

http://www.lifelinescreening.com/healthupdates/healthy_you/Pages/PoachedSalmon.aspx?src=LETT-453

Eric’s Website

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

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

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

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

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

Eric’s Website

  Many people believe voodoo is the practice of black magic, but this is only partially true.  Voodoo is a contraction of the word Vodoun, a religion brought to the New World from Africa, primarily by slaves.

Vodoun is a complicated religion that has morphed many times since reaching the New World, adding elements of both Christianity and Native American beliefs.  Priests and priestesses of the religion are houngans and mambos, respectively, and they often practice both magic - black and white - and the healing arts.

In my novel Big Easy, Mama Mulate is a conundrum within the religion.  She is a practicing voodoo mambo, and has a doctorate in English literature, teaching at Tulane University.  Unlike most practitioners of Vodoun Mama uses her talents only for good.  In the novel, she comes up against a vicious serial killer that is the embodiment of voodoo deity Baron Samedi.

A turning point in the novel occurs during a ceremony on the banks of Bayou Rigolettes.  An influential mambo assumes the persona of Lasyrenn, loa of fishes and Queen of the Sea, to instruct a naked initiate.  Homicide detective accompanies Mama Mulate to observe the ceremony, and becomes a possessed and unwitting participant.

I personally think the ceremony scene is one of the hottest, most sexually charged chapters ever to appear in modern mystery fiction.  I invite you to read Big Easy and decide for yourself.

Eric’s Website

My first wife’s family lived in Chalmette, a city south of New Orleans devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Gail and I would often leave work at night from our respective menial jobs and drive to Chalmette for the weekend. We would enter the old wood-framed structure quietly and go to sleep in the empty bedroom in back. At five, our nightly rest always ended with the booming bass voice of a distant cousin named Admiral.

"Hey Harvey, you and Lily gonna sleep all morning?"

Gail’s parents, Lily and Harvey were already awake, although barely, and Lily would let Admiral into the kitchen (he always came in the back door) and start a pot of strong coffee. Lily did not use a modern coffee pot. She made hers in a simple drip pot that she heated on the open natural gas flame of her little stove. Like many Cajuns, she used a blend of coffee and chicory that produced a strong, aromatic brew. I still remember the aroma of Lily’s Cajun coffee.

Admiral’s voice was so deep and booming, it actually shook the walls. At least it felt that way after only four hours of sleep. Soon, Gail and I would succumb to the cacophony, and stories about Fats Domino we had all heard before. She would roll out of bed, put on her robe and tread down the hall to the kitchen. Finally, I would rub my eyes, take a big whiff of the coffee aroma wafting from the kitchen, and follow her.

Two wives later, I still love coffee, but in all my travels I have never had a cup as good as Lily brewed, or smelled that wonderful aroma that can revive you fully from a hard day’s work, a long drive, and only four hours of sleep.

Eric’s Website