You can’t visit New Orleans without trying the oysters. An early-day chef from France began using them, trying to find a substitute for escargot, an almost impossible commodity to procure in the colony.

New Orleans chefs now prepare them a thousand different ways, from fried to raw. Here is a simple but wonderful recipe from the Acme Oyster House on Iberville. As their name implies, they know oysters. Try this recipe and enjoy.

OYSTERS LOUISIANA
Ingredients:

• 4 oz. butter - melted
• 1.5 pints oysters - drained
• 4 green onions - chopped finely
• 3 cloves garlic - minced
• ½ lb. fresh lump crabmeat
• ½ cup bread crumbs
• Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
Melt butter in a skillet. Add oysters and cook until dry. Add onions and garlic and cook slowly for at least 10 minutes. Fold in crabmeat and crumbs. Simmer 5 minutes more. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Eric’sWeb

After returning from Vietnam, I entered the master’s program at the University of Arkansas.  Gail and I both had part-time jobs; I was on the GI Bill and had a quarter-time assistant-ship.

We raked in well over a thousand dollars a month.  Since we had no debt and little overhead, I probably had as much money at that time as I ever have in my life. My quarter-time assistantship consisted of work at the University of Arkansas Museum located then on the fourth floor of the Old Main Building, the oldest building at the University.

When I wasn’t giving guided tours to grades one through three, I was unwrapping rocks, bones and other artifacts.  There seemed to be at least ten times more material in the back than there was in the actual museum, most still packed in the same boxes as when it came to the University.

It was sort of creepy working late in the old museum because there were rows and rows of human bones and complete skeletons, mostly stacked unceremoniously on the various shelves.  The rock, mineral and ore specimens were wrapped in old newspapers, most very old.  I spent half my time, it seems, reading old newspaper stories.

One of the museum’s greatest treasures, at least in my mind, was the giant quartz crystals donated by geologist Hugh D. Miser.  Some of the crystals weighed a thousand pounds or more.  They are rare and irreplaceable.

I loved leading tours through the little museum and seeing the eyes of the young people, all agog with discovery.  It struck me that enthusiasm and desire to absorb knowledge, filled kids of this age.  Less than professional teachers often manage to blunt most of this desire and enthusiasm.

Yes, I had a canned story that I used on all age groups. I usually ended at the quartz crystal display where I attributed the collection to Hugh D. Miser, Arkansas’ greatest geologist ever.  One day, a group of adults followed along as I conducted my tour.  When I concluded, the teachers and kids thanked me and departed.  One of the women listening to my conducted tour approached me.

“Excuse me, but you said that a man named Miser was Arkansas’ greatest geologist.  I beg to differ.  It was my father John Branner.”

I know my mouth must have dropped as this unknown woman invoked the name of the first Arkansas State Geologist.  I took a breath and said, “Your Dad was truly a great geologist and did so much for Arkansas.  He and Miser were both great men and I was judgmental to say Miser was the greatest.  It is only because I’m a mineralogist and he donated those beautiful crystals that I admire so much to the State.  I apologize if I offended you because your father was truly a great man.”

The woman must have accepted my apology because she smiled, shook my hand and thanked me.  She and her party departed with smiles on their faces, leaving me with a rapidly beating heart and a greater understanding about blanket endorsements.

My thesis advisor, Dr. K almost busted a gut laughing when I told him the story.  He shook his head and said, “Wilder, you may never make it as a geologist but you have the best line of bulls—t of any student I’ve ever had.”

Eric’sWeb

While a geology student at Northeast Louisiana (now University of Louisiana Monroe), I attended a Geological Society of America convention in New Orleans.  The St. Charles Hotel was the convention headquarters.  When we arrived, I learned the hotel had lost my reservation.

It was an earlier place and time.  Instead of turning me away to seek lodging some other place, they erected a cot for me in a large towel closet (I kid you not!) and I spent the night there.  It was only for one night because they found a room for me the next day.

The original St. Charles Hotel burned in 1841, reconstructed and burned again in the 1890’s.  I stayed in the third hotel built on the original site, it razed in the 1970’s.  It was already a bit seedy when I stayed there but the original St. Charles Hotel was widely accepted as the most regal hotel on earth at the time.

The original St. Charles Hotel was a meeting place for wealthy Americans.  The French built the equally regal St. Louis Hotel.  Like many historical places, they had their dark sides.  Stocks for selling slaves stood inside both hotels.  Here is a compelling excerpt from an account of the everyday slave trade as told by Harnett T. Kane in his book Queen New Orleans – City by the River published in 1949 by William Morrow & Company.

The two hotels shared a sight that made certain visitors, Southern as well as Northern, wince.  Here stood blocks on which human beings were auctioned.  From one point of view it was merely a sale of property, no different from that of a horse or a table.  From another – but let us watch such an event as eyewitnesses reported it.

An elderly dark woman, sunken –chested, is helped up to stand on the block. The auctioneer starts briskly: “Now, gentlemen, here’s Mary.  Clever house-servant, excellent cook.  Only one fault, shamming sick.  Nothing wrong with her any more than with me.  Put her up, gentlemen.  A hundred dollars to begin?”

Several men reach over and prod Mary in the ribs.  “Are you well?” one asks.

“No, very sick.”  The words are strained.  “Bad cough, pain in my side, suh.”

The auctioneer interrupts: “Gentlemen, I told you she’s a shammer.  Damn her humbug!  Give her a touch or two of the cowhide, and she’ll do your work.  Speak, gentlemen.  Seventy dollars only?  Going, going, gone!”

Nobody is much interested.  “Lots of skin and bone,” a younger man comments, and his neighbor chuckles loudly:  “Guess that ‘ere woman will soon be food for the land crabs.”  Amid general laughter, the sick slave is led away.

A bright-eyed youth steps up.  The auctioneer praises his intelligence.  Neither he nor any of the others would be for sale, the man says, if their master were not in financial trouble.  Several growers escort the boy to a side room to strip him for sores or other imperfections.  A high price.  Next!

A smile on her lips, a pert mulattress glides over.  A stout man opens her mouth to examine the gums.  He and several others make a motion to the auctioneer and take her away, as in the previous case, for private examination.  A yet higher bid, a lively raising of it while the girl’s smile widens proudly.  Sold!

A middle-aged woman takes the block, her eyes somber, in her arms a sleeping child.  “How much/” The auctioneer describes her training at length.  Not once does she raise her eyes from her baby.  He tells of her experience, what her masters have said of her dependability.  She still stares down.  Sold!  Next –

The planters stroll about, bored.  “Not much left, eh?”

“Have to hurry home, anyway.”

They throw on their top coats.  Tonight they will be back, a few feet from this spot, sipping wine, dancing.  And the cadence of the music will rise where Negro men and women have been whispering together, and the dancers’ feet will slide across a polished floor where slave people shuffled to the block and off it again.”

There are still many compelling stories about New Orleans but there were no slave blocks in the lobby when I stayed at the hotel, only friendly people trying hard to accommodate a young geologist wannabe.  Still, I felt the specter of the slaves as they dragged their shackles down the hall - that night long ago spent in the towel closet of the St. Charles Hotel.

Eric’sWeb

After spreading Anne’s ashes, Angela and I stayed another night on Cape Cod before returning to Boston.  We stopped for dinner in Salem, Massachusetts (at least I think it was Salem.  I wasn’t very coherent at the time) and met some very friendly folks.

I don’t remember the name of the restaurant but it was in a two-storied wood-framed building that overlooked the bay.  Angela and I went upstairs to a room that featured a large picture window affording a wonderful view of the boats moored in the marina.  The bar wrapped around in a 360-degree oval, manned by a friendly waiter that introduced himself as Matt.  Affable darkness draped the room with comforting shadows.

At least twenty-five feet long, the bar was expansive enough to seat fifty patrons.  It was nearly empty but we weren’t alone.  I ordered a Sam Adams when Matt asked us what we wanted.

“I don’t usually drink beer but I think I might like one tonight,” Angela said.  “Do you have a suggestion, Matthew?”

Angela is an attractive woman and she instantly enamored Matt with the flash of her eyes and tone of her voice.  “Why don’t I let you taste some samples,” he said.

Matt, a slender young man with wavy brown hair was youthful enough to be Angela’s son.  It didn’t matter because Angela exercises, watches what she eats and usually passes as someone at least twenty years younger than she is.  In addition to her youthful good looks and expressive eyes, she has the wonderful resonating voice of a radio talk show host (which she was at the time).

Matt proceeded to open a selection of different beers and then pour small samples into shot glasses.  Angela sipped each proffered selection, turning her nose up at all of them.  Matt didn’t seem to mind.  He just kept smiling and pouring.  She finally decided on a glass of chardonnay instead of beer.

Matt gave me what she didn’t drink and I was soon feeling eerily loose.  Never at a loss for words, I asked, “Where is everybody?”

“We don’t get many tourists after Labor Day,” the man across the bar answered.

“We’re not from around here but we’re not tourists,” I said, already tipsy enough to explain our mission on the Cape to the stranger.

The couple introduced themselves as Beth and Dutch.  After my story, they became immediately friendlier.  “I could tell by your accent that you aren’t from here,” Beth said.

At first glance the couple looked to be in their fifties but the timbre of their voices suggested they were both much older, Beth’s well coiffed and bouffant hair popular during a decade past.  I had the notion that her highlighted brown tresses had cost a bundle at an expensive salon and the big diamond on her finger did nothing to belie my observation.  She had shoehorned herself into a low-cut slinky black dress that went perfectly with expensive accessory jewelry adorning her slender bod.  I couldn’t see her legs but imagined she was wearing black, fishnet stockings.

Dutch’s hair was also perfect – maybe too perfect.  The diamond encrusted Rolex on his wrist clashed with his diamond pinkie ring.  The cut of his handmade shirt indicated wealth and my fiction author’s mind surmised he could have attended Harvard with the Kennedy’s.

“Born in Louisiana,” I told her, “But I’ve lived in Oklahoma so long now that I call it home.”

Jay and Linda were sitting to the left of us.  A burly man with dark wavy hair, Jay had a small tattoo visible beneath the sleeve of his flowered Hawaiian shirt.  He looked younger than he probably was because Linda’s hair had gone totally gray.  Their shorts revealed athletic legs that likely took many long walks along the beach.

“I was in Louisiana during Vietnam,” Jay said.  “Fort Polk.”

“Me too,” I said.

“Basic training,” he explained.  “I was on my way to Nam but blew out a knee.  They sent me home after that.

“Where in Oklahoma are you from?” the man sitting to the right of Angela asked.

“Oklahoma City,” I told him, along with a brief description of my past twenty years.

His name was Ray, his wife’s Sandra.  They wore shorts, and matching tee shirts featuring a procession of ships sailing into New York harbor.  The caption said “Tall Ships.”  They were drinking draw beers and eating bowls of chowder.  Ray had a Wyatt Earp moustache that drooped to his chin.  Sandra was a blonde-haired woman whose blue eyes twinkled when she smiled, even in the interminable darkness of the bar.

Matt had implanted himself in front of Angela, his elbows on the bar and his chin resting in the palms of his hand as he hung on every word she uttered.

“This is wonderful,” she said.  “The view is gorgeous.  I wish I lived here.”

“Its hell until after Labor Day,” Dutch said.  “We rarely get out during tourist season.”

The three couples had lived in Salem their entire lives.  They knew each other and all hated tourists.  Angela and I dined on lobster thermidor, drank more beer and wine than needed, and continued to kibbutz with the locals.

Before the evening ended, it seemed as if we had known each other all our lives.  I invited them to visit me in Oklahoma and they asked Angela and me to call them next time we were in the area.  Finally, it was time to leave.

Matt held Angela’s hand, beseeching her to stay until he got off work.

“I’m married,” she said, showing him her wedding ring.

I have never returned to Salem since that night and Angela now lives in California.  Still, I’m grateful to the wonderful folks we met in the bar that night because for a while they took my mind off Anne’s passing.

Driving as if unimpaired, Angela returned us to Boston.  I sat in moody silence, battling without success as aching melancholy crept slowly back into my soul.

Eric’sWeb

  My dog Lucky died today. He was twelve-plus, an advanced age for a Labrador retriever. My deceased wife Anne bought Lucky six months before she died and the big pup soon became my constant companion and best friend.

Lucky helped ease me through a hard time in my life. I am sad tonight, but I am happy that he lived such a long and happy life, and died on such a gorgeous day with no apparent trauma.

Goodbye Lucky and rest in peace. 11-02-2009.

Eric’sWeb

Some say Edmond is a hotbed of urban legends
Tales of paranormal activity haunt on.

http://newsok.com/some-say-edmond-is-a-hotbed-of-urban-legends/article/3413267

Eric’sWeb

Edmond, Oklahoma is the home to thousands of crows. Here are a few pics I took in my backyard.

Eric’sWeb

Born on the day before Halloween, I seem forever connected to that holiday.  Anne and I married early in 1980 and decided to host a Halloween party that year.  Halloween was on a Friday, but we planned the big bash for Saturday.

Not all of our guests got the message as three revelers showed up for the party Friday night.  Jakob, an Israeli expatriate that was doing stonework around our house for us, came as a cowboy.  Nancy, a geologist, dressed, strangely enough, as an Indian princess, soon followed.  John, a fellow geologist, showed up a little later, his only costume a mask.

Nonplussed, Anne and I broke out the alcohol.  There was a championship-boxing match on television that night - Oklahoma City's own Sean O'Grady versus James Watt, a Scottish boxer.  The fight took place in Glasgow, Scotland and to say that there was a bit of home cooking going on is but a mild statement.  After a few rounds Watt head-butted Sean resulting in a horrible cut over his eye.  Watt De served disqualification and O'Grady the title.  Instead, the local judges ruled the cut caused by a punch rather than a head-butt.

Those days there was no rule about excessive bleeding.  To say that there was a little blood strewn around the ring would be a true understatement.  The ring looked more like the inside of a working slaughterhouse, all the viewers, including myself, in shock.  The ref soon called the fight and proclaimed Watt the world champion.

We went on to drink, carouse and to celebrate into the wee hours, neither Anne nor I in much shape for the real party that continued as planned the next day. As it happened, the first Halloween party I ever hosted, an unscheduled party became the one I remember the most.

Eric’sWeb