I bought my first camera, a 35 mm Yashica rangefinder during the summer of 1968.  I ached for that camera for weeks before purchasing it from one of the many electronics stores that line both sides of Canal Street in New Orleans.

The Yashica was great and let you do the focusing, set the f-stop and the shutter speed.  Of course if the printed picture was over or under exposed, or out of focus you had no one to blame but yourself.

The sturdy Yashica took awesome photos but I soon decided that I couldn’t live another day without a single lens reflex.  Since I couldn’t afford a more expensive brand with interchangeable lenses, I settled for a fixed-lens, Kowa SLR.  It wasn’t as sturdy as the Yashica nor did it take pictures even half as good, but I kept it until it finally locked up on me.

Gail and I had little money for cameras after we married but I did manage to purchase a Minolta SRT-101 while passing through Japan on the way back to Vietnam from R & R.  The Minolta was another awesome camera that finally, like all SLRs, finally broke because of all its moving parts.  Since the Minolta, I’ve owned many more cameras.  My latest purchase arrived this very day, an old Pentax K1000 with a 50 mm lens.

No one buys 35 mm SLRs anymore.  Well, except me.  A few years ago, on a surfing trip through eBay, I purchased ten or so SLRs of various makes and models.  I have so many cameras and lenses that I can never use them all, and, well, I’ve now discovered digital photography.

I have a tiny little Nikon S210 that takes wonderful pictures and movies if I feel like it.  I can download them instantly to my computer and crop, touch-up and doctor any photo to my heart’s content, or delete it completely if I don’t like it.

Unlike my old Yashica, the Nikon performs all the tasks for me. I barely have to think about it.  I love it, but sometimes, usually late at night and after quaffing a few strong brews I regret the loss of choice and decision I had back in 1968, but not enough to give up my little Nikon.

Eric’sWeb

  Here is a picture taken more than twenty years ago behind my former house at Ski Island Lake in Oklahoma City. You can see a hot air balloon on the horizon that says Duers, a now defunct real estate agency.

Eric’sWeb

Located a half block from Bourbon Street, the Bombay Club features spirits, music and nouveau Creole cooking. Here is an original recipe from their website. Try it and enjoy.

Creole Crawfish and Tasso Chowder

Ingredients:

• ½ c. Salad oil
• ½ lb. Bacon, diced
• 1 cup Tasso, finely diced
• 1 Large Onion, diced
• 3 Celery stalks, diced
• 1 large carrot, diced
• 1 ea. Red and Green Peppers, diced
• 2 ears Corn, remove kernels from ears
• 1 Tbs. Tarragon, Thyme, Kosher Salt
• 1 ½ Tbs. Garlic, minced
• 2 tsp. Fresh cracked black pepper
• 1 ea. Bay leaves, 1 pinch Cayenne pepper
• ½ c. White wine
• ¼ c. Worcestershire sauce, 2 dashes Tabasco
• 1/2 gal. Shrimp stock or broth
• 1 c. Blonde roux
• 1 qt. Heavy cream
• 4 c. Crawfish tails, pre-cooked
• 3 ea. Russet potatoes, cubed and par-boiled

Directions:
Heat oil in a medium stock pot, add bacon, sauté 3 to 5 minutes or until bacon is slightly crispy. Add Tasso, onions, celery, carrots and peppers, sauté for 5 to 7 minutes. Add corn, garlic, herbs, and spices, sauté another 2 to 3 minutes. Deglaze with white wine, Worcestershire, and Tabasco, simmer for 2-3 minutes. Add shrimp stock, bring to a boil then whisk in roux, stirring well, so no lumps form. Turn down heat and simmer for 5 minutes, add heavy cream, crawfish, and strained potatoes. Simmer for 5 to 10 minutes.

Season to taste. 

Eric’sWeb

I am listening to the radio, feeling melancholy tonight because of the death of my Labrador retriever Lucky. Celine Dion’s song My Heart Will Go On began playing, evoking a memory that will remain forever poignant in my heart.

My wife Anne was within a few months of death in her battle with cancer when old friends, Sammy and Stephanie, dropped by unexpectedly. They asked us to go to the movies with them. Barrett, one of Anne’s fellow law students at OCU, was visiting for the weekend, also helping to lift her spirits. Anne pulled herself out of the bed and that night, we saw the movie Titanic.

Titanic is an awesome movie, but it is long, Anne very weak, on oxygen and in a wheelchair at the time. I didn’t know how close to death she was, but perhaps she did. She cried during the last scene, not for herself but because of the powerful emotion that the movie evoked.

The movie and the visit from Stephanie, Sammy and Barrett lifted Anne’s spirits and added quality months to her life. Of this, I am convinced. After receiving a wonderfully supportive email from my Aunt Dot tonight concerning my big pup Lucky, I am now positive that interaction with caring human beings is an elixir stronger than any medicine your doctor can ever prescribe.

Eric’sWeb

I’ve chronicled my summer job in New Orleans many times.  I worked for a now defunct geophysical company named GTS Corp.  They had an office on St. Charles Avenue, near Jackson Circle.

The seedy front door opened into a modern office that employed at least a hundred professionals and technicians.  I developed many of the characters in my French Quarter mystery Big Easy during that summer in New Orleans.

I lived in a broken down wood framed building in Arabi, a little town located between the Lower Ninth Ward and Chalmette - all three areas decimated by Hurricane Katrina.  My rent was only seventy-five bucks a month but there was no air conditioning and someone should have paid me to stay there.

I lived across the street from a convent of cloistered Catholic nuns and the entire time I never saw a single occupant of the large building.  I generally walked the half mile, or so, to St. Bernard Avenue, the road leading to downtown New Orleans, and took the bus to work.  I usually slept all the way there and all the way home.  This practice got me into trouble on more than one occasion.

The worst situation occurred at the Arabi Station.  I awoke to find the bus deserted except for me, the woman sitting next to me, and a desperate-looking man brandishing a pistol.  I grabbed the woman’s shoulders and pulled her down behind the seat, the crazy man’s pistol pointed right at us.  We held our breaths, hoping that he didn’t shoot in our direction, even though I knew that the ricochet of a single bullet would probably get both of us more than once.

Instead of shooting us, the loony fellow ran out of the bus where police officers quickly apprehended him.  Cops are often hard asses but considering the service they perform for the public and the constant danger they are in, I can only commend them for their almost daily acts of bravery that rarely earns them an atta boy.

I didn’t make much money at GTS, even in those days, but I spent what I earned having fun in the Big Easy.  All the fun and work left little time for sleep and I –like I said – spent lots of time sleeping on the bus.  One way from the bus stop on Canal, next to the old Saenger Theatre, took about forty minutes.  More than once, I awoke about two hours after boarding the bus and finding myself in the same spot where I had started.  When this happened, I usually felt newly invigorated and simply headed for an evening on Bourbon Street.

Growing up in the little town of Vivian, I was familiar with many poor people but I had never seen the masses of derelict winos such as those that populated St. Charles Avenue.  I’ve since seen many others since in Boston, New York, Oklahoma City and even Amarillo but that summer in New Orleans was my first day end, day out experience with humans little more alive than voodoo zombies were.  Hmmm!  Sounds like the makings of a suspenseful murder mystery novel.

Eric’sWeb

An interesting article explaining how certain superstions evolved.

http://www.divinecaroline.com/24133/86121-knock-wood--superstitions-origins

Eric’sWeb

A great recipe from the wife of former Oklahoma governor and U.S. Senator Henry Bellmon.

http://www.newsok.com/shirley-bellmons-pecan-pie/article/3418169

Eric’sWeb

Misty rain fell as I walked through the neighborhood tonight. It reminded me of a similar rainy night that I spent during basic training at Fort Polk in Louisiana.

I spent years trying to forget my tour of duty in the Army. Now that I’m older, I sometimes have trouble remembering exact details of things that happened in the past. No problem! I’m a fiction writer. If I can’t remember the exact details of an event - Well, you get the picture.

This event took place during the last week of basic training. Despite an aging brain and attempts to forget this period of my life, it remains branded in my memory with blazing detail. There were four of us, Tommy, Robert, Bob and me.

We spent the last week of basic training camping out and undergoing exercises designed to test our resolve. The four of us were a team in a game called “elude and evade,” or at least something to that effect. A truck dropped the four of us off on a Louisiana road deep in the forest.

We had no light, food, water, or compass. Our mission was to make it back to the base camp, a mile or two away, without capture. If the enemy captured us, they would torture and abuse us, the drill sergeants told us. It was raining, a mild drizzle, but still wet.

“No one’s catching me,” Tommy said. “I been huntin’ since I was five and I can get around in the woods like a fox.”

Uh huh! It was dark within the hour, the four of us completely and totally lost, the trees so tall we couldn’t see the stars or the hazy moon. Since we had no watches, we didn’t know the time. We only knew how tired we were and how desperate we felt.

“Shit, my feet hurt!” Robert said. “Maybe we should just give up.”

Tommy shook his head. “You see or hear anyone out there? Who you gonna give up too?”

“Then what are we going to do?” Bob from Wisconsin asked.

“They are patrolling the dirt road. Let’s catch a few hours of sleep. When the sun comes up, we’ll go out to the road and follow it back to the base station. If we hear a truck, we’ll just hide in the trees until it passes.”

With no better plan, my three companions accepted my suggestion. The ground was hard but I was asleep soon after I closed my eyes. It was morning when I opened them again.

“Which way is the road?” Bob asked.

“That’s east because I can see the reflection of the sun,” Tommy said. “Follow me.”

We eventually came out on the dirt road, turned right and followe it. We soon heard an approaching truck and dived back into the forest. Once it passed, we got back on the road, walking for almost an hour until we reached the base camp. No one seemed to notice, or to care as we straggled into camp, going directly to the food line and not caring that a cold misty rain was falling on our aching backs.

No one ever told us, but we were the only team that made it back to base camp intact and not captured. I’m not sure what the moral of this story is, but I guess it’s just that when you have a problem that seems unsolvable, sometimes the best thing you can do is sleep on it.

Eric’sWeb

Ed is a well site geologist that offices with me. We were discussing ghosts and he conveyed this ghost story to me. It happened in southwest Kansas.

There aren’t many cities in southwest Kansas and most of the towns small. Drilling wells are often located miles from the nearest town. The primary roads are blacktopped, but narrow. The side roads are often impassible when the weather turns bad.

Ed was sitting a well miles from the nearest town. Early winter snow had melted, leaving dirt roads that were all but impassible.  After driving fifty miles for dinner, Ed and the tool pusher were returning to the rig, finding the road into the location too muddy to traverse in their truck. Parking on the blacktop, they began the quarter-mile hike to the location.

Ed and the tool pusher had a lone flashlight that cut a narrow swath of dim light through the misty darkness. About halfway to the rig, they both smelled something that Ed described as putrid and ugly. The temperature dropped, perhaps twenty degrees.

“Did you just feel something?” Ed asked.

“Yes, did you?”

“I think we just passed through something evil.”

“Amen to that,” the tool pusher said.

The experience unnerved both men. When Ed returned to his truck the next day, he felt the same sense of dread as he passed the spot where he and the tool pusher first sensed the presence of evil.

“It was so far from town, I couldn’t imagine what was haunting the hollow we crossed on the way to the rig. Maybe it was an Indian spirit. I don’t know. It was evil, whatever it was. That I know.”

Eric’sWeb

Vivian is a small town in northwest Louisiana surrounded by pine forests, rolling hills and swampy bayous. I didn’t visit many museums or art galleries growing up, but I spent hours enjoying the outdoors that dominated my childhood.

My brother Jack and I were Boy Scouts, although neither of us advanced beyond the rank of First Class Scout. It didn’t matter because we did lots of camping and hiking. The parents of Murray, one of our fellow scouts, had a fishing camp on Black Bayou. The place was rustic, the accommodations meager. The weekend our scout troop spent there remains as one of the most frightening events of my life.

Black Bayou is a shallow expanse of dark, almost opaque water, and thus the name. It is the home of snakes, alligators, aquatic birds and every manner of fish. Murray’s little camp was an unpainted, one room structure situated on the bank of Black Bayou, sheltered by pines and cypress trees with bloated trunks that grew out into the water. A wooden dock, several rowboats moored to it, jutted out into the sleepy bayou.

So close to Vivian was the camp that we had no adult supervision that weekend. Joe, the head scout, was in charge but we had no specific agenda except to have fun. The first evening, Joe suggested we go gigging for frogs.

“We paddle out into the bayou until we hear the bullfrogs croaking. When they do, we turn on the flashlight and shine it in their eyes. The light will stun them until we have a chance to gig em.”

There were four of us in the paddleboat, Jack, Joe, Murray and me. Joe was in the back of the boat with our only flashlight and an eight-foot long, three-tined gig. A few stars were out but not much of a moon. An occasional shooting star brightened the sky a bit, but mostly we were just paddling around in the darkness.

“Watch out for the cypress trees. Water moccasins perch on the branches and if they drop into the boat with us, we’ll pretty much be goners.”

Joe’s words gave us little comfort as we soon passed beneath the low-lying branches of a cypress tree, Spanish moss draping almost into the water. Dry cypress needles dropped down the back of my shirt and a spider web wrapped around my face and neck. As I was trying to untangle the mess from my glasses, Joe began yelling and something dropped into my lap that felt suspiciously like a snake.

“Snakes in the boat,” he yelled.

Murray didn’t need another warning, tumbling headfirst into the shallow water. Jack and I were right behind him, swimming away from the boat as fast as our arms and legs could flail. The sound of laughter soon stopped us in our tracks.

“There ain’t no snakes,” Joe said. “Cept rubber ones. I got you guys good.”

Joe had spirited a handful of rubber snakes in his shirt, throwing them on us when we passed beneath the cypress tree. He rolled with laughter, right up to the moment that Jack, Murray and I pulled him into the water with us.

No frogs were gigged that night, just a few gullible Boy Scouts. Still, I’ll never forget the rubber snake that tumbled into my lap, giving me the fright of my life.

Eric’sWeb

A wonderful article on Eureka Springs, Arkansas.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704112904574477360084334816.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Eric’sWeb

There is a wealth of wonderful restaurants in New Orleans, every one vying for customers grown used to only the best food and entertainment in the world. One of those is Mulate's Cajun Restaurant, known for its Cajun dance floor. Here is one of their recipes from their website. The restaurant’s name was the inspiration for the character Mama Mulate in my novel Big Easy.

Ingredients:

- 1 ½ sticks butter or margarine
- 2 medium bell peppers - chopped
- 3 large onions - chopped
- 3 stalks celery - chopped
- 1 tsp. salt
- 1 tsp. cayenne pepper
- 2 cups bread crumbs
- 1 tbsp. Flour
- 3 eggs
- 1 handful chopped parsley
-  ¾ - 1 lb. claw crabmeat - (suit to taste)
   (Pick all of the shells out.)

Directions:

Melt butter or margarine. Sauté vegetables (bell peppers, onions, and celery) on medium heat until translucent - approximately 15 minutes.

Salt and cayenne pepper, season to taste. Mix all ingredients except crabmeat. Add vegetable mixture you've already cooked.

Mix well. Fold in crabmeat.

To Fry:

Batter with egg. Cover with breadcrumbs. Fry until golden brown.

To Bake:

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Cook approximately 20 to 30 minutes.

You can use this stuffing in Stuffed Mushrooms, Stuffed Bell Peppers, and Stuffed Crabs.

Eric’sWeb

   The dictionary defines triskaidekaphobia as the fear of the number 13. Today is Friday the thirteenth, supposedly an unlucky day. My day started in frustration with me thinking things are going badly for me. It made me think, which spirit have I angered. My first thought was my Mother.

My Mom died of lymphoma about two years ago. She was eighty-five when she died and mentally as sharp as a twenty-year-old. She fought her cancer until the end because she didn’t want to leave my Dad, who has advanced Alzheimer’s, alone. I assured her, just before she died, that Brother Jack and I would look after him.

I have wondered lately if she is keeping an eye on things and somehow unhappy with the way Jack and I are managing things. I have thought this for sometime now because my “Magic Moonflowers” haven’t bloomed since she died.

I don’t know if any of this is true, but last night I called on the spirits of my Grandpa and Grandma Pitt, my Mom’s parents, to intercede if this is truly the situation. Jack and I are far from perfect and neither of us can be with Dad as many hours each week as he would like us to. I also know that no one could ever take care of him as good as my Mom Mavis.

Now I know lots of you out there don’t believe in spirits, but today my luck took a turn for the best. Two very positive things that I had almost given up on happened and I have had a mile-wide grin on my face since noon.

I know the world is an imperfect place. I have thought many times that no one can do anything as well as I. I also know that when things don’t go right you often tend to blame the ones you love the most. I’ve known this since I was a child.

My Mom and my Grandma Pitt were very close and never a day passed that they weren’t together. Brother Jack and I were no angels and got into trouble on a daily basis but we always knew that Grandma Pitt would intercede on our behalf, no matter what mischief we had caused. Grandpa Pitt would back her up and tell my Mom to cut us some slack.

“They are just being boys,” he would say.

Today is Friday the 13 and a chill wind is blowing outside the house. I am happy as I keyboard this story because I realize that “family” is the single strongest entity that exists and that I can still grab my Grandma’s spirit leg and ask her to protect me, and know that she will.

Eric’sWeb

Anne and I had little expendable cash following the eighties oil bust.  We usually ate dinner at nearby Wyatt’s Cafeteria.  Times were tough all over and their food was not only good, it was also inexpensive.

During a visit from Bruce, our close friend and former employee, we let him convince us to visit a seafood restaurant on Northwest Expressway called Harry’s.

“They have free hot wings during happy hour, and half-priced drinks.  I’ll even go in Dutch.”

Bruce, a formerly strapping young man, had leukemia.  He was looking bad at the time and Anne and I would have spent our last penny to make him happy.  The trip, contrary to our doubts, proved fruitful.

There was a new game in town called NTN Trivia.  Restaurants belonging to the NTN network have interactive boxes that their patrons use to play various games of trivia.  A satellite transmits the network to restaurants all over the United States and Canada and these restaurants compete against each other in real time.

Every Tuesday night, NTN has their premium game called Showdown and rank the top one hundred restaurants and bars following the game based on their top five boxes.  Harry’s didn’t finish in the top one hundred that night but Anne, playing as OILIES, finished tenth overall for individuals.  We were pleasantly surprised at the end of the game when our waitress presented us with a twenty-five dollar gift certificate.

“We give it every Tuesday to the highest ranked player in the restaurant,” the blonde-haired woman told us.

From then on, Tuesday nights had us hooked.  Bruce went with us to Harry’s on Tuesdays until his disease progressed beyond the point where he couldn’t make it every week.  If I told you we won the gift certificate every week you will probably think that I am lying, but we won the prize almost every week.

Lil, another close friend, began accompanying us to Harry’s and we played as a team, helping each other with the answers.  This went on for nearly a year until Oklahoma’s rapidly waning economy caught up with Harry’s and it went out of business.  There were other restaurants still playing trivia and Anne and I soon found one.  Along the way, we met other Trivia addicts and began playing together as a coherent team.

I won’t bore you with details except to say that our group included a dozen very smart people and I’m proud to say that Anne and I were part of the fabled Don Serapio’s group that won so many championships.

That was a while back.  Bruce is now gone, as is Anne. So is Harry’s and Don Serapio’s in Oklahoma City - though Jimmy and Janie still have a very successful (and quite wonderful) Mexican restaurant in El Reno.

There’s a point to this story: even when the economy is in the dumpster, there’s still a place out there offering free hot wings, half-price drinks and maybe more – sometimes much more.  Find it!

Eric’sWeb

My Dad was a soldier in WWII and has six battle stars. My brother Jack served in the Army in Germany while I was in Vietnam. We all understand service and we all understand the sacrifice service men and women undergo.

Marilyn and I sat on the patio of Kang’s Asian Restaurant tonight, drinking sake and Sapporo Beer. The night was warm, maybe a bit too warm for a date this late in November. It didn’t matter as we enjoyed Kang’s wonderful patio.

Kang asked if we liked venison. Even being from Louisiana, I had never tried it. Marilyn has. He treated us to bowls of venison soup that was nothing short of wonderful.

As I keyboard this story, I think how lucky I am to live in the greatest country this world has ever known. I also reflect on how lucky I am to live in a country where brave men and women risk their lives and limbs on a daily basis to protect our freedoms.

Happy Veteran’s Day and thanks for your service. We wouldn’t be here without you.

Eric’sWeb

During my stay at Fort Polk, I became close friends with a fellow draftee named Tommy Picou.  We went through Basic Training, Leadership Preparation and Advanced Infantry Training together.  There were only four draftees in my AIT; all the rest were in the National Guard.  Because of this, the four of us performed every KP and sh-t duty that came along.

During the summer of 1970 at Fort Polk, draftees were the lowest of the low, at least in the minds of our superiors – literally everyone, even the cooks.  Picou and I became best friends because we had many things in common.  We were both recently married and both from Louisiana, although I was from north Louisiana and he from south Louisiana.

Picou was of French-Acadian descent and spoke fluent Coon-ass French, a language we both assumed identical to the Mother tongue.  A series of events that happened during AIT proved us both wrong.

We were at a rifle range, eating lunch when the MP’s brought a new addition to our training company.  The young man, like all of us, was dressed in fatigues.  None of us was very happy but this fellow seemed particularly indignant.  When we tried to talk to him, he replied only in French.

”What’s he saying?” I asked Picou.

Picou shook his head.  “Beat the hell outa me.”

“I thought you speak French.”

Picou grinned.  “He damn sure don’t speak the same French I do.”

“Try saying something to him,” I suggested.

Picou rattled off a few questions for which he received only a quizzical look from the Frenchman, a universally understood open palm gesture and a shake of his head covered with thick dark hair.

He seemed to understand when I said, “Want something to eat?”

We got the young man a hot plate of chow and sat with him beneath the trees as he ate.  When he finished, he said, in passable English, “My name is Charles and I’m from France.”

Charles just shook his head and grinned when I said, “Tommy’s French.  Didn’t you comprehend what he was asking you?”

“Not a word,” he said.

Charles proceeded to tell us how he was a flight attendant for a French airline.  On a layover in New York, the U.S. Army conscripted him.

“They have no right to do that,” I said.

“Apparently they do,” he said.  “But I won’t stay here for long.”

“What’ll you do?” Picou asked.

“Escape as soon as I can.”

“Then what?  They’ll hunt you down.”

“Make it to an airport where my airline flies and catch a flight back to France.”

“But they’ll just come after you,” I said.

“I’m a French citizen.  They can’t touch me in France and I don’t intend to serve in your war.”

“We’re not too happy about it either,” Picou said.

“My brother was a soldier in Vietnam.  He died at Diem Bien Phu,” Charles said.  “My family has already lost too much to that damned country.  I swear they won’t kill me too.”

True to his word, Charles was gone the next day.  Picou and I both ended up in Vietnam, me in the First Cavalry and he in the 101^st Airborne.  We both made it home safely and kept in touch for several years.

I don’t know if Charles got back to France or spent years in an Army prison, but I know one thing for a fact – he was a man of resolve and had no intention of ever going to Vietnam and fighting another country’s war.  I can’t say as I blame him.

Eric’sWeb

    Two pics from a weekend fundraiser held east of Edmond, OK this past weekend.

Eric’sWeb

I didn’t get much time off during my stay at Fort Polk, maybe two weekends.  One of them I spent in Chalmette, visiting wife Gail and her parents.  I traveled there on the bus and the trip was memorable, not in what I saw but in what I felt.

Leesville is the Louisiana town just outside of Fort Polk and one word describes it - seedy.  The Leesville bus station fit the bill.  I can’t remember how I got there but I probably hitchhiked from the base.  The lobby reeked with the vague odor of despair.  The station was empty except for the lady that issued my ticket without seeming to see me, and about a half dozen GI’s; like me, they were all privates.

I sat alone in the back of the bus, reveling in the legroom but saddened by its darkened loneliness.  We were fifty miles out of town when one of the GI’s began to sing.  I wasn’t very old but this kid was younger, probably no more than eighteen.

There was a song out at the time called And When I Die.  Laura Nyro wrote it but a group called Blood, Sweat and Tears had a hit with the song.  The young man had no accompaniment and sang it much slower even than Nyro’s version.  His words tore the heart right out of my chest.

The young man was an Eleven Bravo, I an Eleven Charlie.  We were both infantry bullet-stoppers; bound for the human gristmill that was Vietnam.

Like me, he was probably afraid of death.  I was afraid of something much worse - the decisive act of taking another human life. I didn’t know if I was up to the task even though I’d had the act of ultimate enactment drummed into the very essence of my brain for the past four months.

The song’s lyrics ripped at my soul but didn’t make me cry.  I was drenched in the steel resolve of personal survival at the time.  I would do what I had to do.  I hoped that any act of violence I might perform wouldn’t corrupt my soul – at least not forever.

Eric’sWeb

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